Iraq

The Salhiya telephone exchange, a three-story building that serves about 200,000 subscribers, was struck several times. Nearly eight hours later, the building still smoldered, and mangled iron dangled over a street strewn with office equipment — rolls of printer paper, desks, cabinets, wires and chairs.

The force of the blast shattered the windows of the Saddam Center for Cardiac Surgery across the street, and damaged a house next door.

"Thanks be to God, none of us was hurt," said Zeinab Fouad, who lives in the damaged house with her husband, Nafaa Abu Ali, and their five children.

Iraqi officials accused coalition warplanes of bombing a cooking gas cylinder-filling factory in the southern city of Qurnah on Saturday morning, according to state-run Iraqi satellite television. The officials complained that the factory was in a residential neighborhood. Qurnah, at the confluence of the T...