IRAQ: A suicide bomber killed at least four people as they ended Friday prayers at a crowded Shia mosque in central Iraq, underscoring the threat of religious conflict in a country already racked by an anti-American insurgency.
Guerrillas fired rockets at dawn into a Baghdad hotel used by Westerners, and hundreds of US troops stormed houses and shops in Saddam Hussein's hometown overnight in the hope of capturing those behind a wave of such attacks.
In Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a man strapped a gas cylinder packed with explosives to a bicycle and detonated it outside a small Shia mosque - close to people praying on the pavement because of lack of space inside.
"At the end of prayers, it exploded," Iraqi police Sgt Haki Ismail Mustafa reported. Officials at a nearby hospital said that at least 39 people were injured.
Baquba sits in a largely Sunni Muslim area and is a hot-bed of resistance to the US-led occupation. US forces have mounted major operations in and around the town to try to capture insurgents and quell nine months of resistance.
Shia make up about 60 per cent of Iraq's 26 million population but were largely excluded from power under the rule of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni. There has been tension between the two communities as they jockey for power in the post-Saddam era, and many fear an eruption of fullblown religious conflict.
A car bomb attack after Friday prayers in the Shia holy city of Najaf in August killed more than 80 people, including one of the religion's most senior leaders. The Najaf assailants have not been identified but there have been whispers among Shias that it was the work of Sunni radicals. Subsequent attacks on Sunni mosques were blamed on Shia militants.
Three rockets hit the Burj al-Hayat hotel in central Baghdad, used by western businessmen and US military contractors, but no one was hurt.
In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, US troops raided houses in the hope of rounding up insurgents. About 300 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division searched for suspects, weapons and other incriminating material in one of the biggest raids conducted by US forces in recent weeks.
Officials said they were still investigating what caused a helicopter to crash on Thursday, killing all nine US troops on board, near the town of Falluja.
A witness said the helicopter was in flames before it went down and some reports said it could have been hit by a rocket. The deaths raise to almost 500 the number of US soldiers killed in combat or accidents since the invasion last March.
In a boost for the US-led coalition, Italy's cabinet yesterday approved a plan to keep its 2,000-strong force in Iraq for a further six months, until June, despite the deaths of 19 Italians in car bomb attack in November.
And Japan's defence chief ordered an advance team of troops to leave for Iraq, as the military prepared for a humanitarian operation that will be Japan's biggest and most controversial overseas deployment since the second World War. - (Reuters)