FALLUJAH, Sep 20, 2004 (AFP) - A US air strike on the extremist stronghold of Fallujah killed 20 people overnight, as Paris lobbied the Arab world in a desperate bid to save two reporters kidnapped in Iraq

A deadline for France to revoke a controversial ban introduced Thursday on the Islamic headscarf in state schools has passed with no word from the Islamist militants who seized the two men on August 20.

But seven foreign hostages held for six weeks were freed by their kidnappers on Wednesday after their Kuwaiti employer paid a half a million dollar ransom, and one of the French journalist's bosses said he held out "cautious hope".

In Fallujah, two buildings were destroyed when a US fighter jet struck an alleged hideout belonging to wanted Jordanian militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, according to police, medical officials and the US military.

Rescue workers had pulled 20 bodies from the rubble by Thursday morning as bulldozers cleared wreckage and a crowd dug through the debris and searched for body parts and bits of flesh, said rescue worker Hossam Ibrahim.

"All the wounded are families. Among the dead, there could be two or three children but the bodies are torn to pieces and it's difficult to tell," Doctor Doctor Seifeddin Taha of the Fallujah general hospital told AFP late Wednesday.

Two giant craters gouged the ground, leaving one house completely destroyed and another badly damaged. The blast knocked down several palm trees and smashed up furniture and television could be seen in the wreckage.

The US military described the attack as a "precision" strike on "safe houses and meeting locations" for associates of Zarqawi whom US officials blame for dozens of car bomb attacks in Iraq and who has a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head.

Earlier Wednesday, Zarqawi supporters were observed removing a corpse from a car trunk and burying the body in southern Fallujah, the military said.

Another five people were killed and 42 wounded on Saturday when US marines pounded suspected Islamist positions in the restive city, where the military has regularly bombed suspected Zarqawi safe houses in Fallujah since June.

In April, Fallujah was the scene of bitter fighting, leaving hundreds dead as US marines and insurgents clashed in the streets. US forces besieged the city after four American civilian security contractors were killed in Fallujah and two of the bodies mutilated.

But since the failed April assault on Fallujah, the city has become a no-go zone for US ground troops and the area has fallen under total control of insurgents, dominated by Islamic fighters.

The city has become associated with the wave of kidnappings of scores of foreigners since April.

In the latest hostage crisis, French diplomats were racing Thursday to rescue two French reporters snatched on August 20 by a group identified as the Islamic Army of Iraq.

The group says it will only free Le Figaro journalist Georges Malbrunot and Radio France correspondent Christian Chesnot if France scraps the controversial headscarf law.

A French Muslim delegation was in Baghdad for talks aimed at securing the pair's release after meeting French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier in Amman Wednesday.

French officials were "nearly certain" late Wednesday that two journalists held hostage in Iraq were still alive, Le Figaro editor-in-chief Jean de Belot said, adding that he was holding out "cautious hope" for the two men.

Nepal was observing a day of mourning for 12 workers murdered in cold blood in Iraq by their kidnappers as protests spread to the west of the Hindu kingdom following two deaths during riots in the capital.

Another seven truck drivers from Kenya, India and Egypt held hostage for six weeks were however freed on Wednesday after their Kuwaiti employer paid a half a million dollar ransom.

Meanwhile, US forces and insurgents clashed in the western city of Ramadi, leaving two civilians killed and 11 wounded, said police Lieutenant Abdullah Khalaf.

In central Iraq, near the Iranian border, four Iraqi national guardsmen were wounded when a grenade was tossed at their vehicle in the town of Mandalay, police said.

In Baghdad, US troops patrolling the streets of the Shiite rebel bastion of Sadr City called on fighters from Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army to turn in their heavy weapons after the firebrand cleric called for a truce.

None of the militiamen in the sprawling Baghdad slum could immediately be seen handing over their rocket-propelled grenade launchers or mortars but a surprise ceasefire ordered by Sadr on Monday has so far been observed.

But Sadr aide Naim al-Qaabi confirmed that handing over heavy weapons was part of an agreement being brokered between his movement and the Iraqi government, stressing however that no final deal had been reached.

Sadr's men fought US forces in the Shiite holy city of Najaf for most of August until backing down last week.



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