Baghdad blast kills soldier

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A workshop believed to be producing chemical munitions exploded in flames Monday moments after U.S. troops broke in to search it, killing two soldiers and wounding five. Jubilant Iraqis swarmed over the Americans’ charred Humvees, waving looted machine guns, a bandolier and a helmet.

The cause of the Baghdad warehouse blast was unclear. One unconfirmed report at the scene indicated that sparks from a cutting mechanism used to slice through the locks may have set off highly flammable materials stored inside.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt did not say what sort of chemical agents were suspected of being supplied to insurgents from the Baghdad warehouse. After the blast, there was no sign of precautions against chemicals. “Chemical munitions could mean any number of things,” including smoke grenades, he said.

Asked about reports that the search team included members of the Iraq Survey Group – the U.S. team looking for banned weapons – Kimmitt said only: “The inspection was by a number of coalition forces.”

In Fallujah, U.S. troops came under a heavy insurgent attack a day after U.S. officials decided to extend a cease-fire rather than launch a full-scale offensive on the city. One Marine and eight insurgents were killed.

The deaths of the two soldiers in Baghdad and the Marine in Fallujah brought to 114 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat so far this month, according to the military.

Marines battled Sunni guerrillas around a mosque in Fallujah’s Jolan district, a poor neighborhood where insurgents are concentrated. Helicopter gunships joined the battle, which sent heavy black smoke over the city. Tank fire demolished a minaret from which officials said gunmen were firing.

The U.S. troops met “a real nasty bunch,” said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. But he said the violence would not deter plans to begin joint U.S.-Iraq patrols in the city.

The patrols are a key part of the U.S. effort to establish a semblance of control over Fallujah without a wider Marine assault, which would revive the bloody warfare seen earlier this month. The United States decided to try the patrols after President Bush consulted with his commanders over the weekend, and the cease-fire was extended in part to allow for patrols to be organized.

In the south, outside the holy city of Najaf, Shiite militiamen in cars fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. position, witnesses said. Apache helicopters and U.S. troops opened fire and set the cars ablaze.

The clash came as about 200 U.S. troops and military police made their first deployment inside Najaf, moving into a base that Spanish troops are vacating about five miles from holy shrines at the heart of the city.

U.S. commanders have said they will not move against the shrines in order to capture rebellious Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Americans say they’re aware that doing so could turn the cleric’s limited revolt into a wider anti-U.S. uprising by Iraq’s Shiite majority.

But in Baghdad, the top American administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, heightened warnings about the reported stockpiling of weapons in “mosques, shrines and schools” in Najaf – and his spokesman noted that such actions make the sites fair targets for military action.

U.S. authorities have vowed to “capture or kill” the vociferously anti-U.S. al-Sadr, who is wanted in connection with the slaying of a rival cleric last spring. Al-Sadr has threatened to unleash waves of suicide fighters if attacked.