Seven Iraqis killed in Baghdad market blast

BAGHDAD - An explosion at a crowded market in Baghdad has killed at least seven Iraqis, including three policemen, and wounded 13.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Shi'ite Mehdi Army militiamen clashed with US troops in the capital and in the holy city of Najaf to the south and also engaged in sporadic fighting with the British in Basra, where three soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack.

In the United States, where the administration is under fire during the presidential election campaign over abuse of Iraqi prisoners, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke up for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. People should "get off his case".

Despite assurances from President George W. Bush that the ill-treatment of prisoners by US soldiers was the "wrongdoing of a few", evidence has mounted of widespread abuses that have contributed to anger among Iraqis at continued US occupation.

A Pentagon official told the Washington Post that new pictures, including video made by soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison depicting "live-action abuse", could be released soon.

That would deepen a global scandal unleashed by images, leaked after months of allegations of ill-treatment by US guards and interrogators, of naked Iraqi detainees being humiliated.

The apparent bomb blast in the Bayaa district of southern Baghdad left body parts strewn around the market and blood and flesh coated on walls.

It was not clear whether the Iraqi police, regarded by guerrillas as collaborators, had been the intended target. A US military convoy had passed by shortly before. The unassuming neighbourhood, home to both Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, was not an obvious target.

Such bomb attacks, usually aimed at the security forces or foreigners, are not infrequent in Baghdad. On Thursday, a suicide car bomber killed five Iraqis and a US soldier outside the headquarters of the U.S.-run administration.

US tanks opened fire from a base on the edge of Najaf after a mortar attack by Mehdi Army guerrillas loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, witnesses said.

In Baghdad's poor Sadr City district, US soldiers also returned fire on several occasions against Sadr's gunmen, witnesses said. Guerrillas fired several mortar rounds at a government building a day after US troops, backed by tanks, raided Sadr's local office and arrested four aides.

BASRA INCIDENT

In Basra, three British soldiers were wounded when a grenade was thrown at their vehicle, a British military spokesman said.

He said British positions took mortar fire overnight in the town of Amara, but denied a report of a British air strike.

Mehdi Army fighters patrolled some streets in Basra but the city was generally calm a day after they fought running battles with troops in a show of strength after suffering heavy losses from US forces elsewhere in Shi'ite southern Iraq.

The US military has stepped up operations against Sadr in recent days, cracking down on the uprising he launched against the US-led occupation a month ago across the south.

Spurred on by rival Shi'ite leaders exasperated by the young firebrand, troops have reasserted control in many areas but not the holy sites in Najaf, where Sadr himself has taken refuge.

One US soldier was killed and another wounded in a mortar attack on a military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Saturday, a US military statement said on Sunday.

The death took to 559 the number of US military personnel killed in action in Iraq since the invasion of the oil-rich country 14 months ago. The killing of 129 US troops last month alone, made April the bloodiest month of the war.

The bloodshed and dismay among Iraqis and Americans at the torture and murder of prisoners by US soldiers has not helped Bush's task in justifying his Iraq campaign to voters.

The most recent Gallup poll showed his approval rating on Iraq had fallen by almost a third to 42 per cent since January.

His vice president came to the aid of Rumsfeld after Bush's Democratic challenger John Kerry called for his resignation.

"Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defence the United States has ever had," Cheney said in a statement. "People ought to get off his case and let him do his job."

The Washington Post newspaper said on Sunday the Bush administration was reviewing hundreds more photographs of abuse.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Bush called the case exposed by the initial pictures as the "wrongdoing of a few". Seven young soldiers face court martial in the affair.

But the Red Cross and other independent reports into prisons in Iraq paint a more general picture of ill-treatment.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq