15 Iraqi Civilians Killed As Us Aircraft Target Al-qaida Leaders

At least 15 Iraqi civilians, including nine children, were killed last night in American air strikes against suspected al-Qaida militants north of Baghdad, the US military said yesterday.

The operations, which inflicted one of the heaviest tolls on Iraqi civilians for months, comes only days after the Iraqi authorities accused private security firms of firing indiscriminately on civilians.

The US military said last night it regretted the deaths of the civilians - six women and nine children - in the strikes near lake Tharthar, 75 miles north of the capital.

"We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism," Major Brad Leighton, a military spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters.

The US military claims it ordered the air strikes after receiving information that senior al-Qaida leaders had gathered for a meeting in the area north of Baghdad.

Four suspected militants were killed in the initial air assault. Fifteen others died in further air and ground raids on a building where the al-Qaida suspects were believed to be meeting, the spokesman said.

The heavy toll follows complaints from the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, that the commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has pursued a heavy-handed strategy that has inflicted a heavy toll on civilians.

The strikes also came on a day when six Iraqi insurgent groups took a step towards unifying the factions fighting the US yesterday by announcing the creation of a political umbrella organization. A spokesman for the new alliance, his face blacked out, made the announcement on a video broadcast by al-Jazeera. He described the alliance as "the political council of the Iraqi resistance".

The six Sunni groups have been in discussion about the move for months. The aim is to reduce the fragmented nature of the insurgency, but also to try to claim a slice of the political agenda after the expected US withdrawal.

In a lengthy statement published yesterday, the six groups listed a 14-point political program, of which the first was continued action against US forces. It declared all laws passed by the Iraq government null and void.

The six groups are opposed to al-Qaida in Iraq, which has been behind some of the most spectacular and bloodiest attacks, often on civilians - tactics that have alienated large swaths of Iraq's population. The main reason for the partial success of US deals with local leaders, initially in Anbar province, is widespread hostility towards al-Qaida.

The six groups in the alliance are the Islamic Army in Iraq, the al-Mujahideen Army, Ansar al-Sunna, al-Fatiheen Army, the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (Jami), and Iraqi Hamas.