Suicide boats attack Iraq oil terminal

9.30am

BASRA, Iraq - Suicide bombers have launched three coordinated boat attacks on Iraq's vital southern Basra offshore oil export terminal, killing two members of US-led forces.

A spokeswoman for the US Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said by telephone on Saturday that five other coalition members were wounded, but a Fifth Fleet statement put the number at four. Officials said there was no damage to the terminal, Iraq's primary oil outlet.

"The coalition boarding team were killed and wounded as a result of three concurrent waterborne attacks in the Arabian Gulf," the statement said.

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman in London said: "A boat exploded next to (the terminal). But there was no damage to the oil terminal or the boat alongside it. As far as I know there were no British casualties."

Two of the attacking boats exploded alongside a ship tied up at the terminal, some six miles offshore, British military spokesmen and Iraqi officials said.

The third boat was intercepted by a coalition ship as it approached an exclusion zone around the terminal and there was an explosion soon after it was boarded, they said.

Officials at Iraq's Southern Oil Company said the Basra terminal had been shut down.

"All workers were evacuated (from the Basra terminal). We are concerned about the possibility of more attacks," an official stationed in the Faw Peninsula said.

BLOODIEST MONTH

The attack capped a bloody day for Iraq, in which dozens of people were killed in rocket, bomb and mortar attacks.

Five US soldiers were among the dead in the latest spate of violence in the bloodiest month for US-led forces since Saddam Hussein's fall.

In one of the worst incidents, at least 13 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded when mortar bombs struck a busy market in the Shi'ite Muslim area of Sadr City in Baghdad, witnesses and hospital sources said.

"There was blood and bodies everywhere," said Bassam Abdul Rahim.

BUSH BLAMED

Angry residents of Sadr City -- a powerbase of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who US-led forces have vowed to kill or capture -- held up bloodied human remains to television cameras and said US helicopters had fired at the market.

They put a sign on a dead donkey saying: "This is Bush."

Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, the top US military spokesman in Iraq, denied US involvement and said those responsible may have been aiming at an old cigarette factory nearby that was used by US-led forces.

One woman was killed in a separate attack in the Sadr City area when a mortar bomb hit her home. Her daughter was wounded.

Sadr, who US officials say is wanted by an Iraqi judge in connection with the murder of another cleric, is holed up with his Mehdi Army militia in the southern city of Najaf, a holy site to Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

On Friday, Sadr threatened to unleash suicide bombers if he was attacked by US forces poised just outside the city.

US forces say they are allowing time for Iraqi mediators to resolve the standoff.

Fourteen Iraqis were killed when a bus, travelling to Baghdad just ahead of a convoy of six US military vehicles, was hit by a roadside bomb.

The five US soldiers were killed in a guerrilla rocket attack on their base just north of Baghdad, a US military spokesman said. Six soldiers were wounded, three critically.

US helicopter gunships destroyed the truck from which the rockets were launched, but there was no word of casualties among the guerrillas.

Since US-led forces invaded Iraq in March last year to oust Saddam, 515 US soldiers have been killed in action -- more than a fifth of them this month.

Near the flashpoint city of Falluja, US Marines said they killed around 30 Iraqi insurgents overnight after calling in air support in a firefight at a village on the banks of the Euphrates, Colonel John Coleman said.

In Saddam's home town of Tikrit, a car bomb killed three policemen and wounded 16 people -- 12 of them police. It appeared to be a suicide attack.

POLISH TROOPS KILL GUNMEN

Polish soldiers killed five Iraqi gunmen who opened fire on their patrol in the holy city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad, Polish military officials said.

West of Baghdad, US Marines were poised to resume an offensive in the Sunni city of Falluja unless guerrillas turned over heavy weapons.

Iraq's US Governor Paul Bremer and General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the region, visited Falluja on Saturday.

The visit was "part of our effort to reach a peaceful resolution", Dan Senor, spokesman for the US-led administration in Iraq, told a news conference. He declined to say who Bremer met or what the results were.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq who is trying to put together an interim Iraqi government to take over from US-led occupation authorities on June 30, urged the Marines to hold off from a new offensive.

"I think that there is always a better solution than shooting your way into anywhere," Brahimi said.

Brahimi said he wanted the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council to be dissolved on June 30 and its politicians to be excluded from the interim government of technocrats he thinks should see Iraq through to elections in January 2005.

In an interview with US TV network ABC to be broadcast on Sunday, Brahimi dismissed the idea of expanding the existing 25-member council.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq