Eight corpses, including those of two children, were pulled on January 3 from the rubble of a house in northern Iraq after it was bombed the previous night by US aircraft.
The airstrike came as a team of international monitors started to review contested results from Iraq's December general elections following accusations of fraud by Sunni-based and secular parties.
The US military confirmed that it attacked a house in Baiji, 200 kilometers (140 miles) north of Baghdad, on Monday after an unmanned drone spotted three men planting a roadside bomb and then fleeing into the building.
"The individuals were assessed as posing a threat to Iraqi civilians and coalition forces, and the location of the three men was relayed to close air support pilots," said US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson.
"Coalition forces employed precision guided munitions on the structure," he said, reading from a statement.
Ghadban Nahd Hassan, 56, whose family members were killed in the attack, said that 14 people were in the house when it was hit.
"I was with some friends in a small shop 100 meters [yards] away from the house when I heard the bombing at around 9:30 pm," Hassan said. "I rushed over to see. My house was destroyed and there was smoke everywhere," he said, adding that he heard the plane responsible for the attack.
Rescue workers recovered the bodies of a nine-year-old boy, an 11-year-old girl, along with those of three women and three men from the debris, Hassan said. Two more women and an eight-year-old boy were found badly injured but alive. Another three people were still missing on Tuesday afternoon.
Hassan, who runs a gravel-making firm, said that he had no idea why his home, in an industrial part of the restive town, was bombed.
Hamad Hamoud Al Qaisi, the governor of Salaheddin province, said that he would demand an official investigation into the attack.
US aircraft regularly target buildings believed to house insurgents, along with weapons caches or locations thought to conceal booby-traps.
The US military increasingly relies on air power in Iraq. The number of airstrikes rose from an average of about 25 a month last January to 120 in November, according to a tally published by the Washington Post newspaper.
MORE NEWS (Jan 4): MUKDADIYAH, Iraq - Thirty people were killed and 36 wounded on January 4 when a suicide bomber attacked a Shia Muslim funeral procession northeast of the Iraqi capital. The attack by a bomber wired with explosives took place in Mukdadiyah, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Baghdad, and targeted mourners at a grave site.
The funeral was being held for a bodyguard who died of his wounds overnight after being shot during a drive-by shooting on Tuesday targeting a local representative of the Shia-based Dawa party. A young girl was also killed and two more bodyguards wounded in the drive-by shooting.
Away from the violence, four members of the International Mission for Iraqi Elections, an independent body sent to study complaints about the December 15 election, arrived in Baghdad to begin work.
They joined three other colleagues already on the ground, said one of them, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The team comprises five election experts - including two from the Arab League, one from Canada and another representing the European Union - as well as members of the mission's secretariat.
Over the next few days, the experts must decide whether complaints of fraud in the poll - Iraq's first for a permanent parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 - are valid.
The country's election commission is expected to announce the final results of the vote following the mission's review.
A Sunni-based alliance and a number of small secular parties, including the National List of former prime minister Ayad Allawi, have alleged widespread fraud in the ballot and threatened to boycott the new parliament.
Adel Lamy, a member of Iraq's electoral commission, said that the monitoring team would check ballot samples and tally votes. Members "will also meet with representatives from political parties that have raised objections to the results and look into their complaints," he said.
The commission said that it had received around 1,500 complaints, including more than 20 that might affect the results of some constituencies. But it suggested that canceling tainted votes would not change the overall election result.
Meanwhile, a hostage drama took another twist as the kidnappers of a Jordanian embassy driver issued a new three-day ultimatum saying that they planned to kill him if Amman failed to release a would-be suicide bomber, Al Arabiya satellite channel reported. The group, calling itself the "Hawks Brigade", kidnapped Mahmoud Salman Saaidiyat in southern Baghdad on December 20.
Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Jawdeh said that his country was making "intense efforts on every level, including non-official contacts with parties in Iraq" to secure the hostage's release. Jordanian authorities last month rejected any possibility of negotiating with the hostage-takers.
Eight corpses dragged from Iraqi home after US air raid
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