US forces say they have have found nearly 20 houses in the Iraqi city of Fallujah where they believe people were tortured and where foreign hostages may have been held and killed.
"It looks like we found a number of houses," where torture took place, an intelligence officer, told reporters near Fallujah. US officers put the number of torture sites "close to 20".
Among them may have been houses where US contractors Jack Hensley and Eugene Armstrong and their British colleague Kenneth Bigley were beheaded after being kidnapped in Baghdad in mid-September, officers said. Jordanian al-Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for their killings.
"Murder and torture" took place at the "atrocity sites", Major Jim West, said, showing images of bloodstained walls and floors. "These thugs depended on fear and intimidation." Another US officer said hostages were found chained to walls
Maj West said Marines had also found a house thought to belong to associates of Zarqawi, but US intelligence indicates Zarqawi did not live there but visited on occasion.
A reporter from the New York Timesdescribed visiting a house on Sunday where a banner hung on the wall referred to Zarqawi's group and resembled flags seen in videos of hostages distributed by militants.
In another, he saw a wire cage similar to that seen in a video of Bigley pleading for his life - although the newspaper said US troops thought it differed from the one on film. A CNN reporter quoted other soldiers saying it might be the same cage.