U.S. warplanes pounded a hideout of suspected militants in Fallujah on Monday, killing at least 16 people and wounding 12, officials and witnesses said. The strike came a day after a surge in violence killed 78 people across Iraq. The U.S. military said jets carried out a precision strike on a site in Fallujah where several members of a group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were meeting. "Intelligence sources reported the presence of several key al-Zarqawi operatives who have been responsible for numerous terrorist attacks against Iraqi civilians, Iraqi Security Forces and multinational forces," the military said in a statement. The military said reports indicated the strikes had achieved their aim, but did not name the operatives. Witnesses said the bombing targeted the city's residential al-Shurta neighborhood, damaging buildings and raising clouds of black smoke. Dr. Adel Khamis of the Fallujah General Hospital said at least 16 people were killed, including women and children, and 12 others wounded. An ambulance rushing from the area of the blasts was hit by a shell, killing the driver, a paramedic and five patients inside the vehicle, said another hospital official, Hamid Salaman. "The conditions here are miserable _ an ambulance was bombed, three houses destroyed and men and women killed," the hospital's director, Rafayi Hayad al-Esawi, told pan-Arab Al-Jazeera television by telephone.
