Coalition strikes Zarqawi 'safe house'
Mosul professor, husband slain
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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Coalition forces Tuesday night conducted the second strike within a week on a site in Fallujah believed to be a safe house for suspected terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior coalition official said.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the strike was directed at a target in central Fallujah, and was based on "multiple confirmations of actionable intelligence."
A journalist in the region said several loud explosions were heard.
Pentagon officials said information from "very reliable sources" suggested the building was connected to Zarqawi.
However, a U.S. official said there is "no information to suggest his [al-Zarqawi's] demise."
Kimmitt said the operation "employed precision weapons to target and destroy the safe house, and underscores the coalition's continuing resolve, in partnership with the Iraqi Security Forces, to defeat and destroy terrorist networks within Iraq."
He added, "Wherever and whenever we find elements of the Zarqawi network, we will attack them."
Another coalition strike over the weekend left 18 people dead at a suspected Zarqawi safe house in Fallujah, where large amounts of ammunition were being stored.
Zarqawi, who is believed to have links to al Qaeda, is blamed for several attacks on U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians.
Pentagon officials said both strikes did not target Zarqawi directly, but were aimed at targets known to be connected to the so-called terrorist leader.
Two civilians were killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the U.S.-led coalition said. The dean of law at Mosul University and her husband were found dead Tuesday morning outside their home.
Police are investigating the deaths of Layla Abdullah Saeed and her husband, Moneer Yahya Ali Al-Khairo, in the Kuwait neighborhood of southern Mosul.
Saeed was the only woman to hold such a prominent position at the school, the coalition said.
Reuters reported that she had received death threats because of voicing a moderate opinion.
Residents told Reuters that the slayings appeared to fit a pattern of attacks designed to intimidate moderates in Iraq's third-largest city.
The killing was the second of a university official. In January, the dean of the political science department, Abdul Jabbar Mustafa, was killed by a group of men.
Near Baqubah, three Iraq civilians were killed Tuesday morning by an improvised explosive device, the U.S. military said. Two others were wounded and evacuated to a hospital.
Insurgents also killed two U.S. soldiers in a convoy ambush Tuesday near Balad, 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Baghdad, the Coalition Press Information Center said.
Another soldier was wounded and taken to a medical facility, the coalition said.
Hostage beheaded
Insurgents decapitated a South Korean civilian they had been holding hostage in Iraq for nearly a week, the U.S. military confirmed Tuesday. (Full story)
A spokesman said the U.S. military informed the South Korean Embassy in Iraq about the discovery of a body that appeared to be that of an Asian male, officials said.
The embassy identified a photo of the body as Kim Sun-il, 33, a translator for a trading company who was kidnapped Thursday in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
The Islamist Web site "Voice of Jihad" posted a message saying that the insurgents had killed Kim. The Arab television network Al-Jazeera also reported the killing.
After an emergency National Security Council meeting Monday, South Korea said it would go ahead with its planned troop dispatch despite the militants' threat.
South Korea has about 600 troops in Iraq and has plans to send another 3,000. The deployment would make South Korea the third-largest contributor to the coalition in Iraq, after the United States and Britain.
President Bush said the "United States will not be intimidated" by the insurgency. He said he hopes South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun "will understand that the free world cannot be intimidated by the brutal action of these barbaric people."
Other developments
A military judge in Tuesday denied a motion ordering a new Article 32 investigation into allegations that Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib. An Article 32 hearing is the equivalent of a grand jury hearing, and the staging of such a hearing would have been akin to dropping the original charges. (Full story)Eight members of the British military arrested for crossing into Iranian waters could be freed "very soon" if it is established they did not have "bad intentions," Iran's student news agency ISNA quoted a top Iranian military official as saying. The British Defense Ministry said the sailors were based in southern Iraq and were detained while delivering a boat. (Full story)Salim Chalabi, head of the Iraqi war crimes tribunal, said that the Iraqi government could get legal custody over Saddam Hussein while leaving him under U.S. guard. He said he doesn't believe that Iraq presently has the ability to hold Saddam securely, citing the chance that insurgents might try to spring him from jail.CNN's Sohn Jie-Ae in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
