BAGHDAD, 31 August 2005 — At least 56 people were killed in multiple US airstrikes in Iraq against suspected Al-Qaeda hide-outs near the Syrian border at dawn yesterday, an Iraqi security source said.

The attacks, the second such raid in less than a week, came as Sunni Arabs, believed to be the backbone of the raging insurgency, were seeking alliances to defeat Iraq’s newly drafted constitution.

“At least 56 people were killed in the airstrikes carried out by US forces near Qaim close to the Syrian border,” the security source told AFP. The US military said it had no exact numbers of casualties.

“There was a total of three strikes targeting terrorist safe houses... Abu Islam (a reported Al-Qaeda operative) and several associates are believed killed,” a US military spokesman said in Baghdad.

He said a total of eight bombs were dropped in three airstrikes on suspected Al-Qaeda hide-outs, including a safe house where Abu Islam and several associates were holed up. Abu Islam and several associates were believed killed in the strikes around Karabila near Qaim, 450 km west of Baghdad, he said.

On Friday the US military launched similar strikes against another suspected Al-Qaeda hide-out in the restive Al-Anbar province. Around 50 militants associated with Al-Qaeda front man in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, were in a safe house in the border town of Husaybah at the time, it said but did not provide details of casualties.

Meanwhile, disenchanted Sunni Arabs reached out across the sectarian divide to seek alliances with any ethnic or religious groups opposed to the newly drafted constitution.

After staging demonstrations on Monday, Sunni leaders said they were opening talks with the movement of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and preparing a national conference to generate public support for defeating the charter in a mid-October referendum.

“We would like to cooperate with Moqtada Sadr and very soon we will start negotiations with him,” Saleh Al-Mutlaq, a top Sunni negotiator, said.

Sadr, who rejects any constitution drafted under the US-led occupation, enjoys widespread support among poor urban Shiites and his militia led one of postwar Iraq’s fiercest rebellions against US-led forces last year. “It is not just about the Sunnis anymore. It is about all those who do not want Iraq to break up, including the Shiites,” Mutlaq said.

Yesterday, the US ambassador suggested there may be further changes to the draft constitution, saying he believed a “final, final draft” had not yet been presented.

“I believe that a final, final draft has not yet been, or the edits have not been, presented yet, so that is something that Iraqis will have to talk to each other and decide for themselves,” US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.

The law says the version signed off by Parliament on Sunday cannot be amended. But Khalilzad said the door could be open for changes declared as “edits” to the approved text. There was no official comment from the Shiite parliamentary leadership whether it shared that opinion.