UN experts greeted with nine deaths

BAGHDAD - Insurgents killed five American soldiers and four Iraqi civilians in bomb attacks north and west of Baghdad yesterday, only a day after United Nations experts arrived to assess security conditions in the country.

The two UN security experts will liaise with United States-led authorities on any return of UN staff. The world body pulled international staff out of Iraq last year after two suicide bomb attacks on its Baghdad headquarters.

In the worst attack on US troops, a car bomb exploded at the entrance to an American military base, killing three soldiers and wounding six, hours after separate blasts elsewhere left two servicemen and at least four Iraqis dead.

Witnesses said they saw a car ram a checkpoint outside the base in Khaldiyah, 110km west of Baghdad, and explode as several soldiers were getting out of a vehicle.

All three attacks took place in Iraq's volatile "Sunni triangle", the epicentre of resistance to US forces.

"Three taskforce All-American soldiers were killed and six were wounded when a vehicle-born explosive device detonated at an installation in Khaldiya," an Army spokesman said.

A loud explosion was heard in central Baghdad. The US Army confirmed the blast but had no details. The headquarters of the US-led occupation forces is often a target of night mortar attacks, although sirens did not sound and no smoke could be seen rising from the compound.

Earlier a bomb exploded in Samarra, 100km north of Baghdad, killing four Iraqis and wounding three dozen people, including three US soldiers who were slightly hurt. The US Army earlier said seven troops had been wounded.

In another attack, near Fallujah, 50km west of the Iraqi capital, two American soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded as their convoy passed.

US officials said the Samarra bomb was an attempt to derail council elections in the town. They said the blast was caused when a device placed on the road under a car exploded.

In Washington, the White House insisted that the search would go on for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, despite the resignation of the man leading the hunt.

"I don't think they existed," David Kay said after stepping down.

Kay's departure had been expected, but his comments will put more pressure on President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair over their justification for going to war.

"We remain confident that the Iraq Survey Group will uncover the truth about Saddam Hussein's regime, the regime's weapons of destruction programmes," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. A spokesman for Blair said: "Our position is unchanged."

But Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday held out the possibility that pre-war Iraq may not have possessed such weapons.

Powell was asked about comments by Kay that he did not believe Iraq had large quantities of chemical or biological weapons.

"The answer to that question is, we don't know yet," Powell said.

Powell acknowledged that the US thought deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had banned weapons, but added, "We had questions that needed to be answered. What was it? One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many litres of anthrax, 10 times that amount, or nothing?"

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq