Explosion levels Baghdad building; fighting in Fallujah

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- An explosion leveled part of a building as U.S. troops searched it for suspected "chemical munitions" on Monday, an American general said. Two soldiers were killed and five wounded, and a cheering mob of Iraqis looted their wrecked Humvees, taking away weapons, a helmet and a bandolier.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt did not say what sort of chemical munitions were believed to be produced at the site. After the blast, there was no sign in the area of precautions against chemicals.

"Chemical munitions could mean any number of things," including smoke grenades, he said.

Fallujah in turmoil

In Fallujah, U.S. troops and insurgents battled around a mosque in fighting that killed one Marine and eight militants. The area shook with heavy explosions a day after U.S. officials announced a fragile cease-fire in the besieged city was being extended.

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 this month. During the two-month invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago, 115 Americans were killed.

In the south, U.S troops rolled into a base in Najaf to replace Spanish forces who are withdrawing and to increase pressure on the militia of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Americans were three miles from the city's holy sites -- shrines that U.S. commanders have said they won't go near for fear of outraging Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority.

But the top U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, said weapons were being stockpiled in mosques, shrines and schools in Najaf and, in a message directed to residents, warned, "The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation."

Bremer's spokesman, Dan Senor, said the mosques must be "made safe immediately" but would not elaborate on what the coalition would do. He noted that in the case of military action, "those places of worship are not protected under the Geneva Convention" if they are used to store weapons.

The Baghdad explosion occurred as U.S. troops broke into the building in the northern Waziriya district. The front half of the one-story building was leveled, setting ablaze four Humvees parked outside. The owner of the site was "suspected of supplying chemical agents" to insurgents.

A U.S. soldier was seen taken away on a stretcher, her chest and face severely burned. Witnesses reported other U.S. casualties removed in ambulances. Several Iraqis were pulled from the wreckage, including a woman who wept as she was carried over a man's shoulder.

Afterward, dozens of cheering teenagers started to smash the abandoned Humvees. One child climbed on a hood and beat it with a stick. Iraqis stripped the vehicles of equipment, one carrying a heavy machine gun, another waving a U.S. helmet. One man sported military headphones.

"This is for the madman Bush, for the madman Bremer!" said one youth, waving a rifle.

Monday's fighting in Fallujah sent two columns of heavy black smoke over the northern Jolan district, a poor neighborhood thought to have a large concentration of Sunni insurgents. Explosions rang out, along with the sound of mortars and heavy machine guns.

The battle began when U.S. troops came under fire by rocket-propelled grenades from a mosque in a northwestern neighborhood, Kimmitt said.

The Americans were pinned down by fire and called in support from helicopter gunships in the ensuing gunbattle. The mosque was damaged in the fight, Kimmitt said.

Besides the one soldier killed, eight were wounded, Kimmitt said. He did not give their nationality, though no troops other than Americans are known to be involved in the Fallujah siege.

The fighting came a day after U.S. officials announced a fragile cease-fire would be extended for two days and that political efforts at a resolution would continue, backing off warnings that U.S. Marines could launch a full-fledged offensive in the city within days.

As part of the extended cease-fire, Marines are to begin joint patrols in Fallujah with Iraqi security forces -- a measure aimed at showing some degree of control without launching a new assault. Marines began training Iraqi security forces to join them on patrols, due to start by Thursday.

Marine Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne said patrols coming under fire wouldn't necessarily spark a renewal of a general U.S. offensive.

"We're perfectly happy to move down the street, destroy a bad guy over here and just continue on with the patrol," he said.

In Najaf, about 200 troops and military police rolled into the Spanish base. The move deploys U.S. troops within the Najaf urban area for the first time since massing outside the city earlier this month to put down al-Sadr's Al-Mahdi Army militia.

Phil Kosnett, of the U.S.-led coalition authorities in Najaf, said businesses are open part time, most schools are closed and the local government is mostly shut down.

"We continue to be mortared every night ... talk of a cease-fire is ludicrous," Kosnett said.

Shiite militias remain a threat in other southern cities, and insurgents in Karbala fired at Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov's motorcade Sunday as he made a brief visit to Iraq. The president's security detail fired back, the attackers fled and no one in the motorcade was hurt.

U.S. troops will take over security duties across Najaf and Qadisiyah provinces around May 27, said Polish Col. Robert Strzelecki, spokesman of the multinational troops that control those provinces and three others.

Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic -- under the Polish-led force -- have been patrolling Najaf and Qadisiyah.

Last week, new Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero ordered Spanish troops home as soon as possible. Honduras and the Dominican Republic decided to pull their forces soon afterward.

Zapatero's Socialist party beat Jose Maria Aznar's conservative Popular Party in March 14 elections, just three days after commuter-train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people and injured more than 2,000.

"The government has taken the road of appeasement, a road that history has shown to be the worst possible when dealing with threats," Aznar wrote in a column published Monday by the Madrid-based newspaper ABC.

Meanwhile, Iraq's U.S.-picked leaders approved a new flag, dumping the Saddam Hussein-era colors and slogan "God is great."

The new flag is white, with two parallel blue strips across the bottom representing the rivers and a yellow stripe between them representing Iraq's Kurdish minority. Above the stripes is a blue crescent representing Islam.