Iraqi guerillas kill US soldier

Iraqi insurgents attacked US troops with grenades on the outskirts of Baghdad yesterday, wounding two and sparking clashes that lasted hours, while a bomb blast killed another soldier west of the capital.

An Iraqi policeman was also killed in the unrest, which came as foreign governments warned of more terror strikes in Baghdad over the weekend following suicide bombings this week on the Red Cross and Iraqi police stations that killed at least 35 people.

The US consular office told Americans in the city to be vigilant citing "a number of rumours" that anti-US forces had declared Saturday or Sunday a special day of resistance.

The Australian government issued a similar warning. Foreigners still in Baghdad live and work behind high concrete walls guarded by Iraqi police and in some cases, US armoured vehicles. Ordinary Iraqis have no such protection.

"People approach me all the time now and say they are afraid to walk anywhere," Mohammad Saleh al-Ubaidi, imam at the 14th century Ramadan Mosque in Baghdad, said after Friday prayers.

In the latest violence, a US Army spokeswoman said a US soldier was killed in a bomb attack near Khaldiya, west of Baghdad, bringing to 118 the number killed since Washington declared major combat over on May 1 - more than the 114 killed in the war itself.

She said fighting and protests erupted in a market in the volatile Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad following the grenade attack there. An Iraqi policeman was killed by a rooftop gunman during the clashes, a senior Baghdad police officer said.

"There was fighting and demonstrations in the area which lasted for several hours," the spokeswoman said.

Also in the restive area west of the capital, Iraqis torched the governor's office building in the town of Falluja after police shot and killed a local man nearby, residents said.

Despite a US plea for them to stay, United Nations officials said they were moving about 18 remaining international staff from Baghdad to Cyprus over the next day or two, where they will assess the security situation in Iraq.

The New York Times yesterday cited senior US officials saying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, in hiding with a $25 million price on his head, may be playing a role in coordinating the resistance.

The report said Saddam was believed to have met Izzat Ibrahim, once a powerful aide in Baghdad, and quoted Defence Department officials as saying Ibrahim had recently been in contact with al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Islam, which Washington has said is its main "terrorist adversary" in Iraq.

Hamid al-Bayati, London representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shi'ite party, told Reuters: "Saddam Hussein is definitely playing a role in these attacks. I think he is playing an important role." A US official in Washington however, speaking anonymously, said reports of Saddam's involvement appeared overblown:

"Saddam's preoccupation is survival and his personal security. Certainly he is still at large and he might be involved to some extent, but it isn't clear to what extent, and I think the story really overstates what's known."

Meanwhile, heavily armed US troops began putting razor wire around Saddam's birthplace, the village of Awja near Tikrit, and ordered all adults there to get new identity cards. There were no clashes.

US President George W. Bush, under pressure going into an election year from the mounting toll of American dead, faces further examination of his decision to go to war, particularly since the arsenal of banned weapons Saddam was said to have possessed have not been found.