Truck bomb blast killed three

Three Iraqis were killed when a truck bomb exploded soon after a US patrol passed by as two UN security experts arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad to study the possible return of international staff.

Meanwhile, a top Shiite Muslim leader declared that a US-backed plan for handing power to Iraqis was ”unacceptable”, while two American pilots were killed when their helicopter crashed.

The blast, in a Toyota pick-up, injured 40 people including seven American soldiers and damaged a dozen other vehicles in Samarra, said Captain Jennifer Knight of the 720th Military Police Battalion.

Sgt Rafie Falah of Samarra police said three people were killed in the blast, which left a deep crater, in front of a court.

“This is sabotage aimed at terrorising and harming the citizens and spreading a state of chaos,” he said.

The American military police patrol was turning into a police station to link up with Iraqi police when the explosion occurred behind it, according to Knight’s colleague, Sgt Maj Nathan Wilson.

Despite the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, insurgents loyal to him have continued to attack police stations and US troops in the so-called Sunni Triangle in central Iraq.

The region is home to hardcore supporters of Saddam, whose Sunni Muslim-dominated government held power for 35 years.

Today, at least one sniper in a building shot and injured an American soldier who was in a foot patrol in a Baghdad neighbourhood, Maj Kevin West said.

A bridge across the Tigris River in Baghdad, leading to the coalition headquarters, was closed by US troops for two hours today. Witnesses said they were searching for a bomb, but this could not be independently confirmed.

Baghdad has been a frequent target of the insurgents. In one of their deadliest attacks, the UN headquarters in Baghdad was bombed in August, killing 22 people including top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan withdrew all foreign UN staff in October.

A UN military adviser and a security coordinator arrived Friday in Baghdad, the first foreign staff to return since then.

They planned to meet with officials from the US-led coalition and inspect buildings the world body might use, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday.

“Their primary focus will be to open lines of communication … and also to look after the interests of our national staff in Iraq,” Dujarric said.

Separately, Annan is also considering sending a security team that would be needed if he decides to send experts to Iraq to determine whether direct elections for a transitional government were feasible.

That team would help resolve a dispute between the coalition and Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who is demanding direct elections.

However, a coalition plan calls for letting regional caucuses choose a legislature, which in turn will name a new Iraqi government that will take over from the coalition on July 1.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite leader, said Friday the plan “as it stands … is unacceptable.” But Americans and others are slowly coming around to the need for elections, he said.

Al-Hakim, who was among members of a Governing Council delegation that met with President George Bush on Tuesday at the White House, heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country’s most powerful Shiite political group.

He said if the UN experts conclude an early vote is not feasible, then sovereignty could be handed over to the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council. But he added it was ”a last-resort option”.

Al-Hakim’s views carry considerable weight in Iraq, where the Shiite majority has risen to dominate the political scene after decades of suppression by the Sunni Arab minority.

Al-Hakim, a close associate of al-Sistani, said the US plan reached in November between US civilian administrator L Paul Bremer and the Governing Council, is “complicated”.

“It was hurriedly agreed,” he said.

The United States maintains that it is impossible to hold elections in such a short tim given the lack of a census, lack of electoral rolls and the continuing violence by insurgents loyal to Saddam Hussein.

The Bush administration said Friday that it was holding to its July 1 deadline for ending the US occupation but the method of selecting a new government was not decided.

“We have an open mind about how to most effectively facilitate an orderly transfer of sovereignty,” State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said.

Under the US power-transfer plan, Iraqis will also vote early next year to chose delegates who will draft a constitution. The draft will later be adopted in a national referendum. The third and final 2005 vote, under the plan, is to elect a new parliament.

On Friday, a US Army OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter attached crashed in northern Iraq, killing the two pilots, the US military said. The deaths raised the American forces’ death toll in the Iraq conflict to 507. The cause of the crash was unclear.