Some locals were angered by the civilian death toll in the city 60 miles northwest of Baghdad. Of the 70 dead brought to Samarra General Hospital since fighting erupted, 23 were children and 18 were women, hospital official Abdul-Nasser Hamed Yassin said. An additional 160 wounded persons were treated. "The people who were hurt most are normal people who have nothing to do with anything," said Abdel Latif Hadi, 45. Police also reported the discovery of a headless man and a dead woman 12 miles south of Baghdad and said the corpses looked like those of Westerners. Police Lt. Hussein Rizouqi said no identification was found on the corpses. The woman, who was shot in the head, had blond hair, he said.
U.S. warplanes hammered another rebel-held city, Fallujah, in the latest strike in weeks of attacks targeting groups linked to terrorists, particularly the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi. The city hospital said two persons were killed and 12 wounded in the air strikes. Two more persons, a man and his wife, were killed, and two others were wounded when a tank fired on a house, Dr. Rafe al-Issawi said. The U.S. military, which confirmed only one strike targeting a building where terrorists were moving weapons, regularly accuses the hospital of inflating casualty figures. Residents said U.S. troops built temporary checkpoints across two entrances into the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, regarded by the U.S. military as the "toughest nut to crack" in Iraq. "We're very worried that Fallujah might be next after Samarra," said Fallujah resident Saad Majid, 40. "I have children. I'm very worried about them. We don't sleep all night because of the strikes."