US soldier killed in bomb attack west of Baghdad

A US soldier was killed and two soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack yesterday west of Baghdad, as Kurds near the Iranian border said they had captured dozens of militant fighters trying to infiltrate Iraq.

A US Army spokeswoman said the soldier died when three synchronised bombs were detonated near a US convoy in the restive town of Ramadi.

The attack brought to 57 the number of US soldiers killed in guerrilla attacks since the start of May.

In the northern city of Mosul, a US Humvee was destroyed in a blast and witnesses said four casualties were taken away. The US Army said it had no details.

US forces occupying Iraq come under daily attack, and Washington says die-hard Saddam Hussein loyalists and some foreign militants are behind the guerrilla campaign.

Adel Murad, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), told Reuters in Baghdad that Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen had rounded up 50 people near the Iranian border - some of them members of the shadowy Ansar al-Islam group, which Washington has linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Mr Paul Bremer, Iraq's US governor, told a news conference that Ansar al-Islam was one of the groups under suspicion for a truck bomb attack on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad last week that killed at least 17 people and wounded scores.

He said the attack was "an act of irresponsible terrorism by criminals" but it was too early to say who was to blame.

"It's possible this attack was conducted by foreign terrorists. It is also possible it was conducted by Iraqis," he said. "The investigation by Iraqi police is going forward."

Mr Bremer said that although it was not yet known whether Ansar al-Islam were behind the embassy attack, there was no doubt the group was linked to Osama bin Laden's network.

"Ansar al-Islam, of course, has long-standing connections, affiliations if you wish, with al Qaeda," Bremer said.

Ansar al-Islam was based in Kurdish territory outside Saddam's control close to the border with Iran before the war that toppled the Iraqi leader. Bremer said its fighters had fled to Iran during the war but that "a couple of hundred" had now returned to Iraq.

Murad of the PUK said Ansar al-Islam was regrouping. "Now we think the group has returned to the area to resume their terrorist acts in Kurdistan and to participate in terrorist operations inside Iraq," he said.

Earlier yesterday, US forces hunting Saddam loyalists ended a search of an isolated region near the Iranian border after troops backed by helicopters and tanks seized stockpiles of weapons but found no trace of the fugitive dictator. Operation Ivy Lightning, launched on Monday, was the latest effort by the 4th Infantry Division to hunt down guerrillas loyal to Saddam, who remains on the run despite an intense US manhunt and a $25 million price on his head.

The operation focused on remote villages around 130 kilometres north of Baghdad, after intelligence reports suggested Saddam loyalists may have fled there to escape repeated raids around the deposed president's hometown of Tikrit.