The US military said the raids had probably killed a "large number" of insurgents who had been shifting weapons.

"We have receivel two dead and 10 wounded," said Dr Dhiya Ahmed at the general hospital in Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

The strike, the third in just over 24 hours, severely damaged the targeted building, triggering a wave of secondary explosions that indicated ammunition had been stored inside, the army said in a statement.

According to the military, 10 |o 15 rebels suspected of links with Iraq's most wanted man Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi had been present when it struck at about 1:00 am (2200 GMT Saturday), but it gave no exact casualty figure.

Earlier eight Iraqi customs officers have been found dead and the valuable cargo of antiquities they were transporting from southern Iraq is missing, police said Saturday in Nasiriyah.

"Seven customs officers and their commander, reported missing on September 27, have been found dead in the region of Latifiyah," a Sunni Arab insurgent bastion immediately south of Baghdad, the chief of police in the nearby Shiite majority provincial capital of Hilla, told AFP.

Reuters adds: Iraqi police have found the bodies of a man and a woman, both believed to be Westerners, south of Baghdad, the director of the hospital that received the corpses {aid yesterday.

He said the man had been beheaded and the woman had been shot, but no other details about the circumstances of death were available. The bodies were found late on Saturday.