BAGHDAD -- The U.S. army said Tuesday it killed a senior aide of Abu Musab Zarqawi in an air strike at dawn on Fallujah, west of Baghdad.
But witnesses said the rockets hit an empty building which had been deserted by its inhabitants a while ago.
They said the building was destroyed without causing any casualties.
The raid, the last in a series of almost daily airstrikes, came amid reports contacts between the Iraqi government and Fallujah tribal leaders failed to find a peaceful settlement to the security situation in the city of 400,000, regarded as a hotbed for Sunni insurgents fighting U.S.-led forces.
Zarqawi, a Jordanian, announced last week announced full allegiance to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and changed the name of his group to al-Qaida network for Jihad in Mesopotamia.
