US airstrikes target Iraqi strongholds

The robust strikes came during a week in which nearly 20 American troops were killed -- pushing the US military death toll in the Iraq campaign above 1,000 -- and Al Qaeda claimed US forces neared defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

''The Americans in both countries are between two fires, if they continue they bleed to death and if they withdraw they lose everything," Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin-Laden's top deputy, said on a videotape broadcast yesterday by Al-Jazeera.

President Bush received a National Security Council briefing on Iraq early yesterday from General John Abizaid, US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, and other top officials. White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to say what they told Bush in reference to the surging violence.

In a statement, the US command said military operations around Tal Afar were designed to rid the city of ''a large terrorist element that has displaced local Iraqi security forces throughout the recent weeks."

The US military said 57 insurgents were killed in the attack on Tal Afar, a northern city near the border with Syria that lies on smuggling routes for weapons and foreign fighters. The provincial health director, Dr. Rabie Yassin, said 27 civilians were killed and 70 wounded. It was unclear whether those reported by the Iraqis as civilians were counted as insurgents by the Americans.

Late yesterday, the regional government's television station reported US and Iraqi government forces had agreed to allow medical teams to enter Tal Afar to care for the wounded but that military operations would continue ''until the city is liberated from outsiders and saboteurs so that peace can be restored."

Bashar Mohammed, a teacher who fled the city with his family, said, ''Fighting went on throughout the night in three streets of Tal Afar between US and Iraqi forces on the one hand and the resistance on the other."