US forces battling Shi'ite and Sunni rebel groups in Iraq today bombed a mosque compound in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
Despite earlier indicating that up to 40 suspected insurgents were killed in the air strike, a marine officer was later forced to admit that US forces had failed to find any bodies in the mosque.
He said it was possible other insurgents had dragged the bodies away in the 30-40 minutes before marines arrived to sweep the area.
A Central Command spokesman said gunfire from within the mosque wounding five marines led US forces to bomb it.
Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the way US-led occupation forces were tackling the Shi'ite uprising and called for calm on all sides.
Elsewhere followers of the Shi'ite cleric, Moqtada Sadr, continued to confront Bulgarian, Polish, Ukrainian and Italian troops in Nassarya, Amara, Kut and Kerbala.
In the past three days at least 200 Iraqis and 35 Coalition soldiers have been killed in some of the heaviest fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein nearly a year ago.
Earlier, the US-led coalition vowed to destroy the private Mehdi Army. A senior American military officer said coalition forces were actively conducting operations against the militia.
