The dawn strike, which came five days after a similar operation killed 11 people, targeted around a dozen men in the courtyard of a house in the southwestern part of the city, a US military statement said without indicating if there were any casualties.

A hospital in town said it received five wounded, including two children, after the attack.

"I was asleep when I heard a very loud explosion so I got up to help take the injured to the hospital," said Mohammed Jassim, a resident of the Jubail neighbourhood south of the city.

The US military said it has conducted seven similar operations over the past month against Jordanian-born Zarqawi's network in Fallujah and that the latest operation was coordinated with the interim government.

Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is on a Middle East tour, said in Cairo Thursday there would be no dialogue with foreign fighters, whom he has accused of being behind most of the attacks and car bombings in Iraq.

"Our government is not prepared to have a dialogue with these elements, who will be arrested and brought to justice under Iraqi law," Allawi said.

The premier also met with the country's highest Sunni religious authority in a bid to enlist its help in overcoming what he has described as the militant Salafist and Sunni foreign elements that are affiliated with Zarqawi.

Both the US military and the Iraqi government blame these foreigners for some of the worst and bloodiest attacks in Iraq over the past 15 months and say they have entered the country from neighbouring states.

They have vowed to capture or kill Zarqawi, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head.

Allawi urged Iraq's neighbours on Wednesday during a meeting in Cairo to do more to secure borders and combat terror because an unstable Iraq would undermine their security as well.

In another restive spot in Iraq, two US soldiers were killed and one wounded when their convoy hit a roadside bomb on Thursday outside Samarra north of Baghdad, the US military said on Friday.

The latest casualties brings to 664 the number of US troops killed in action in Iraq since the start of the US-led war in March 2003, based on Pentagon figures.

Samarra, 125 kilometers (75 miles) north of Baghdad, has turned into an insurgency hotbed with US troops and Iraqi police limiting their presence to its outskirts.

In addition to attacks by alleged foreigners and rebels loyal to the former regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's interim government is besieged by a wave of hostage-taking that threatens to derail its efforts to rebuild the war-torn country and keep all potential partners out.