Roadside bomb injures two in Iraq

A roadside bomb went off early today as a US military vehicle drove by a street in central Baghdad, slightly injuring two soldiers.

The Humvee was also damaged in the blast, said Sgt James Kerphat from the 1st Cavalry Division.

There were no other reported injuries.

The blast came as militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Shiite militia has been battling US forces across Iraq, warned that he would fight “until the last drop of my blood has been spilled”, in his first appearance since the violence began.

The five-day-old uprising by al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army began to affect Iraq’s crucial oil industry, as pumping to the southern port of Basra – the country’s main export outlet – was halted because of militant threats to infrastructure, an official with the South Oil Company said Monday.

About 1.8 million barrels a day, or 90% of Iraq’s exports, move through Basra, and any shutdown in the flow of Iraq’s main money earner would badly hamper reconstruction efforts. Iraq’s other export line – from the north to Turkey – is already out of operation.

Clashes intensified around Basra, where a British soldier was killed and several others wounded in fighting with militia near the cleric’s office yesterday.

Three militants were killed and more than 10 others wounded, a senior Iraqi police official said.

In the holy city of Najaf, the main scene of fighting, US forces tried once more to drive militiamen out of a sprawling cemetery, and a US tank rattled up to within 400 yards of the Imam Ali Shrine, Najaf’s holiest site, which fighters have reportedly been using as a base.

While US and Iraqi forces were trying to quell the eruption of Shiite violence, attacks by Sunni Muslim militants persisted around Baghdad.

A suicide car bombing targeting a deputy governor killed six people, and a roadside bomb hit a bus, killing four passengers.

The US military also said a US marine was killed in action on Sunday in the western province of Anbar, a hotbed of Sunni militancy. The death brought to at least 927 the number of US troops who have died in Iraq.

A militant group warned in a videotaped message it would launch a campaign of attacks on government offices in Baghdad, telling employees to stay away.

Al-Sadr’s militants also kidnapped a top Baghdad police official and demanded that their comrades in detention be freed.

In the city of Nasiriyah, 190 miles south of Baghdad, militants raided the local office of interim prime minister Ayad Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord party, set it on fire and warned party members to leave the city, an assault captured on video obtained by Associated Press Television News.

One of the attackers in the video denounced Allawi as ”subservient to the occupation”. There were no injuries in the Sunday night attack, said police Capt Haydar Abboud.

Al-Sadr’s vow to keep fighting was a defiant challenge to Allawi, who visited Najaf on Sunday and called on the Shiite militants to stop fighting.

“I will continue fighting,” the young, firebrand cleric told reporters in Najaf. “I will remain in Najaf city until the last drop of my blood has been spilled.

“Resistance will continue and increase day by day. Our demand is for the American occupation to get out of Iraq. We want an independent, democratic, free country.”

US president George Bush said yesterday that coalition forces were “making pretty good progress about stabilising Najaf”.