BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. airstrike targeting an alleged militant safehouse in the western city of Fallujah killed some 17 people, including three children, according to doctors and witnesses, and angry crowds gathered to mourn the victims and denounce the United States.

Elsewhere, the bodies of two slain Turkish citizens and an unidentified man were discovered in northern Iraq, a police official said today, while Al-Jazeera broadcast part of a video by a militant group purportedly showing the killing of three Turkish hostages.

The U.S. military said it had carried out a precision strike late Wednesday on a safehouse in Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, used by followers of al-Zarqawi. Witnesses said the strike hit a residential house in the southern neighborhood of al-Jubail.

Dr. Ahmed Hamid of Fallujah General Hospital said the bodies of nine civilians, including three children, had been brought to the hospital. An Associated Press reporter saw eight more bodies pulled from the rubble.

"There is only one God, Allah!" crowds chanted at the hospital, where the bombing casualties were brought before dawn today. A blanket filled with body parts could be seen lying on the ground, while relatives loaded corpses into the back of a pickup truck for burial.

U.S. forces repeatedly have carried out airstrikes in Fallujah since Marines pulled back after a three-week siege of the city in April aimed at rooting out Sunni Muslim insurgents.