U.S. Fighter Jets Bomb House in Falluja
American fighter jets bombed a house belonging to a family of 15 in a village just north of here overnight, killing three and injuring three others, members of the family said today.

They said they had been asleep in the house and on its roof when an American patrol began firing on them just before 2 a.m. The residents put up no resistance, they said, and after about 15 minutes the patrol began to withdraw. Several minutes later, a pair of American jet fighters unleashed almost a dozen bombs on the house without warning, the residents said.

An American military spokeswoman confirmed that soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division killed at least one Iraqi this morning after they had come under attack just north of Falluja, which lies within the so-called Sunni Triangle, a region north and west of Baghdad where loyalty to Saddam Hussein runs deep and most of the attacks against American soldiers have taken place.

"Folks from the 82nd Airborne were attacked, the attackers fled into a building and were pursued by coalition forces," said the military spokeswoman, Specialist Nicole Thompson. The Americans established a security perimeter around the building and called in "air support," she said. "One enemy K.I.A. resulted," she said, using the military abbreviation for "killed in action."

There were no American casualties in the incident, she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/international/middleeast/23CND-IRAQ.html