US bombs western Iraq in anti-terror strikes

US forces said they had killed a known al-Qaeda militant in western Iraq overnight in air strikes which a hospital official said had killed 47 people.US warplanes launched three waves of strikes near the town of Qaim, on the Syrian border, in a remote area Washington has long said is a route into Iraq for foreign Islamist fighters allied to the insurgency among Iraq's Sunni Arab minority.
"Intelligence leads Coalition forces to believe that Abu Islam and several of his associates were killed in the air strike," a US military spokeswoman said in Baghdad.
A hospital official in Qaim, Mohammed al-Aani, said 35 people had died in a strike on one house and another 12 in a second house.
It was not immediately clear how many of the 47 might have been militants