US bombs Falluja, rebels strike in Samarra, Ramadi

US forces hit Iraq's rebel stronghold of Falluja with the fiercest air and ground bombardment in months, as insurgents struck back yesterday with attacks that killed 34 people in Samarra.

The Falluja strikes, before a threatened major assault on Saddam Hussein loyalists and militants allied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, destroyed a hospital, a medical warehouse and dozens of homes, dazed residents said after a sleepless night.

Hospital staff said ambulances had been unable to go out as the city shook to explosions. Later, they collected two dead and seven wounded civilians, among them women and children. With a US-led offensive on Falluja apparently imminent, rebels hit back with attacks in Samarra, Baghdad, Ramadi - another rebel-held city to be included in any Falluja offensive.

The deadliest assaults were in Samarra, where a suicide car bomber rammed into a police station and three car bombs exploded elsewhere in the city. Insurgents also attacked three other police stations.

Police said the onslaught killed 34 people, including 19 Iraqi police, two Iraqi National Guards, two members of an Iraqi Rapid Reaction Force and 11 civilians. They said 43 people had been wounded, 28 of them members of the security forces.

US and Iraqi forces stormed Samarra a month ago to dislodge rebels in what was seen as a prelude to the full-scale assault rebel-held areas ahead of January elections.

The latest attacks showed that Samarra is far from pacified. A Marine spokesman said an attack on a US convoy wounded 20 Marines in Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad. A police source said it had been a car bomb blast. Hospital staff said at least one Iraqi was killed and 14 wounded in clashes between rebels and US forces in the city. Insurgents also battled US troops near a highway just north of Falluja and American planes bombed targets on the northern edge of the city, witnesses said.

In Baghdad, a powerful explosion struck the main airport road, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding another and three US soldiers, the US military said.

In Falluja, residents said the overnight bombardment had reduced a small Saudi-funded hospital to rubble. Only its façade, with a sign reading Nazzal Emergency Hospital, remained intact. A nearby compound used by the main Falluja Hospital to store medical supplies was also destroyed, witnesses said. Most of the city's 300,000 people have already fled.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned an attack on Falluja could undermine the elections, but his comments drew a chilly response from interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Annan criticised the expected assault in letters to Allawi, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying it would spark more Iraqi anger and damage the credibility of the nationwide elections set for January 27.

Allawi, due back in Baghdad soon after a trip to Europe, told the BBC Annan's letter was confused and unclear. Allawi says Falluja is a haven for former Saddam fighters and militants led by Zarqawi's group, an ally of Al-Qaeda which has claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing on Thursday that killed three British troops south of Baghdad.