BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. jets pounded a suspected safe house of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah today, the latest in a series of strikes against the man suspected of masterminding deadly attacks and beheadings in Iraq.

The missile strike, which a doctor in the insurgent-controlled city said killed four people, came hours before Saddam Hussein was to appear in an Iraqi court.

Near the northern city of Mosul, a homemade bomb exploded as a military convoy passed by, killing one coalition soldier and wounding two others, the military said in a statement. The soldiers' nationalities were not immediately revealed.

A roadside bomb detonated near a central Baghdad hospital, injuring a senior Iraqi Finance Ministry official and killing two of his guards, police and hospital officials said. Ehsan Karim, the head of the ministry's audit board, suffered slight injuries in the bombing, said Col. Adnan Hussein, head of the Interior Ministry's information office.

In a separate incident, another roadside bomb went off in the Amiriya district of the capital after a U.S. patrol passed through. Several Iraqi bystanders were killed and injured, Hussein said.

The U.S. attack on the safe house was launched after "multiple confirmations of Iraqi and multinational intelligence," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the multinational force.

"This operation employed precision weapons to attack the safe house and underscores the resolve of multinational and Iraqi security forces to jointly destroy terrorist networks within Iraq," Kimmitt said.

Kimmitt did not mention casualties in his statement, but Dr. Loai Ali of the Fallujah General Hospital said four people were killed and 10 injured. There was no word on whether al-Zarqawi was in the house.

Fallujah residents contacted by telephone said U.S. jets fired missiles at a house on the eastern side of the city.

The raid came hours after rebels fired mortar rounds at a U.S. base on the outskirts of Baghdad's airport, wounding 11 soldiers and starting a fire that burned for more than an hour.

U.S. forces have mounted three previous airstrikes against suspected terrorist hideouts in recent days. On Friday, U.S. jets pounded a suspected al-Zarqawi hideout, killing up to 25 people, U.S. officials said.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant said to be connected to al-Qaida, is believed to be behind a series of coordinated attacks on police and security forces last week that killed 100 people. He is also believed to be behind the beheading of two hostages, an American and a South Korean.

U.S. authorities Wednesday increased to $25 million the reward for information leading to the arrest of al-Zarqawi, more than doubling the previous offering of $10 million. Osama bin Laden has a $50 million bounty on his head.

Fallujah is believed to have become a stronghold of the al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad movement since Marines lifted their three-week siege in April and handed security over to a locally raised force commanded by officers from Saddam Hussein's army.

The Tawhid and Jihad movement claimed responsibility for the beheading of American Nicholas Berg and South Korean Kim Sun-il.

In other violence, south of the capital, a roadside bomb killed a man, his wife and their child in Musayyib, 40 miles from Baghdad, said hospital director Imad al-Asadi.

Clashes were also reported overnight between militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and police in Amarah, southeast of Baghdad, but no casualties were reported, said Basim Bahloul, a senior police officer.