BIAIJI, Iraq, January 3, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Eight corpses, including those of two children, were pulled on Tuesday, January 3, from the rubble of a house in the northern town of Biaiji after it was bombed the previous night by US aircraft.

"I was with some friends in a small shop 100 meters (yards) away from the house when I heard the bombing at around 9:30 pm," Ghadban Nahd Hassan, the house owner, told Agence France Presse (AFP).

"I rushed over to see. My house was destroyed and there was smoke everywhere," he said.

Hassan, who runs a gravel-making firm, said 14 people were inside his house when it was bombarded by a US aircraft.

He said he had no idea why his home in an industrial part of the restive town was bombed.

Rescue workers recovered the bodies of a nine-year-old boy, an 11-year-old girl, along with those of three women and three men from the debris.

Two more women and an eight-year-old boy were found badly injured but alive.

Another three people were still missing Tuesday afternoon.

Last October, a former US Marine blamed incessant resistance attacks in occupied Iraq on the American "genocide", accusing the US army of training soldiers to be desensitized.

Pundits believe the high numbers of civilians killed by US-led occupation forces in Iraq has been a decisive factor in alienating Iraqis and giving huge momentum to resistance groups.

Hamad Hamud Al-Qaisi, the governor of Salaheddin province, said he would demand an official investigation into the attack.

The US military confirmed it attacked a house in Baiji, 200 kilometers (140 miles) north of Baghdad, allegedly after an unmanned drone spotted three men planting a roadside bomb and then fleeing into the building.

"The individuals were assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces, and the location of the three men was relayed to close air support pilots," said US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson.

"Coalition forces employed precision guided munitions on the structure," he told AFP.

A US military statement, however, made no mention of casualties and said Iraqi police had handled the scene after the attack.

US aircrafts regularly bomb buildings under the pretext of housing "insurgents" – the American term for Iraqi resistance fighters.

The US military increasingly relies on air power in Iraq.

The number of air strikes rose from an average of about 25 a month last January to 120 in November, according to a tally published by the Washington Post newspaper.

A recent survey by the Iraq Body Count (IBC), a US-British non-government group, found US-led occupation forces responsible for 37 percent of civilian deaths in the war-torn country.

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