US troops attacked again in Iraq, blast hits mosque

Six more American soldiers were wounded in Iraq yesterday and a fatal blast at a mosque fuelled Muslim anger toward US forces, all within hours of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisting Iraq was no new Vietnam.

Three soldiers were hurt near Baghdad's university when a makeshift bomb exploded by their vehicle, a military spokesman said. Their Iraqi interpreter was missing. Bystanders saw troops drag four seemingly badly wounded people from the burning wreck.

Three others were wounded in two separate grenade attacks. In Falluja, a Sunni Muslim stronghold near Baghdad where Americans and Iraqis have been involved in fatal clashes, a US commander denied troops had caused the overnight explosion which locals said killed eight people, including clerics, at a mosque.

But thousands of Iraqis chanted angry slogans as they buried the dead: "America is the enemy of God! Avenge the killings!"

Exactly two months after US President George W. Bush declared a formal end to the major combat operations that ousted Saddam, troops are hunting what Rumsfeld said were "terrorist" remnants of Saddam's Sunni-dominated Baath party administration.

Operation Desert Sidewinder began on Sunday with infantry backed by aircraft and armour. Battles would "go on for some time", Rumsfeld said. But he hit out at suggestions that almost daily attacks and the deaths of 22 US and six British soldiers since May 1 meant Iraq was sliding into prolonged guerrilla war.

Rumsfeld insisted this was no new Vietnam: "It isn't. It's a different time. It's a different era. It's a different place."

Echoing his confidence, Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, dismissed recent attacks as the predictable and increasingly desperate response of die-hard Saddam loyalists to American success in winning the support of the Iraqi people.

"Those few remaining individuals who have refused to fit into the new Iraq are becoming more and more desperate," Bremer said. "They are alienating the rest of the population."

He dismissed suggestions that the violence reflected a wider discontent with US rule and insisted his Provisional Authority was making great strides in restoring services and sovereignty.

A Reuters reporter at the scene of the central Baghdad attack near al-Mustansiriyah University saw a US vehicle and an Iraqi car on fire shortly after the mid-morning blast.