Attackers hit US targets as Iraqis seethe

One American special forces soldier was killed and eight others wounded yesterday by hostile fire in southwestern Baghdad, the US military said.

In a statement, the US Central Command did not describe the circumstances under which the American troops came under fire.

Grenade attacks also killed an Iraqi and wounded two Americans on the outskirts of Baghdad yesterday as even Iraqis who loathed Saddam Hussein said they were seething against the US-led occupation.

Angry leaders in Majjar, a town of traditionally anti-Saddam Shi'ite Muslims, warned against attempts to arrest anyone suspected of killing six British soldiers in a gun battle there on Tuesday.

Officials said they feared saboteurs had struck Iraq's battered oil sector again yesterday after an explosion set an oil pipeline ablaze.

With sabotage and attacks on US-led forces increasing in frequency, a former senior official of the US reconstruction team said Washington was mishandling Iraq after the war to topple Saddam.

After one of yesterday's attacks had destroyed a US military tractor trailer, a group of boys and men in traditional garb hurled stones at the smouldering wreck in an apparent gesture of support for the guerilla-style ambush.

"Suddenly there was an explosion... The Americans started shooting indiscriminately," said Qassem Hassan, who was selling soft drinks nearby.

A US military spokesman said a rocket-propelled grenade had hit the trailer, which was ferrying a smaller truck on a highway on Baghdad's southern outskirts. Two Americans were wounded but their injuries were not life threatening.

Earlier in the day, an explosion hit a US vehicle carrying Iraqi electrical workers in another Baghdad suburb, killing the driver and wounding one other person.

"We think they were hit by an improvised explosive device in a rocket-propelled grenade," said Colonel Guy Shields, a US Army spokesman.

Yesterday's oil pipeline explosion near al-Fatha near the River Tigris was Iraq's sixth in two weeks. "I expect the incident to be another act of sabotage," said Adal al-Kazaz, director general of Iraq's Northern Oil Company.

Iraq's de facto oil minister, Thamir Ghadhban, warned yesterday that sabotage could undermine the drive for oil exports needed to fund post-war reconstruction.