It said six soldiers of the US-led coalition in Iraq were wounded in the fight against suspected members of al Qaeda's wing in Iraq, which is headed by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Coalition forces followed a truck which drove to a small camp from a suspected insurgent location at the town of al Qaim, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad and 1 mile from the Syrian border, the US military said.

The truck was loaded with material from a shed and tent at the camp and several adult males also boarded the truck before it headed back toward al Qaim, the statement said.

"Before the occupants in the vehicle could reach their destination the commander of the operation decided to interdict the vehicle; upon stopping the truck, the suspected insurgents opened fire on Coalition forces," it said.

"A firefight ensued with nine enemy adult males killed in action and one enemy wounded."

The US military said a six-year-old girl "sustained a minor injury to her right calf and to her head" and a suspected insurgent was also wounded.

A US military spokesman told Reuters the wounded girl and suspected insurgent were taken to a coalition medical facility and that the girl would be treated by a female doctor.

All of the nine men killed were heavily armed with assault rifles and hand grenades, the US military said.

Three more people were killed by a coalition airstrike on the camp.

Coalition forces found fake identification cards, foreign currency and other things which the U.S. military said linked the people at the camp and on the truck to Zarqawi's network.

The US military has found the body of the pilot of a Marine F-18 jet that crashed in Iraq but a second F-18 is still missing, a US military spokesman said on Tuesday.

There were no indications that the plane had come under hostile fire and it was not clear if the two aircraft had collided, the spokesman said.

"We have not found the second pilot," he said. "The planes were flying too high to be shot down."

The US military lost contact with two Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet aircraft in Iraq on Monday night, a statement said. The planes were from the USS Carl Vinson, the military said.

A heavy sandstorm and lightning hit central Iraq on Monday night.