Bomb kills 6 Iraqis, 4 Americans in Baghdad

By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A bomb killed 10 people including two U.S. government employees and two U.S. soldiers at a council meeting in the Baghdad stronghold of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday, officials said.

Police said six Iraqis were killed and 10 wounded in the attack at a local council building in southern Sadr City.

The U.S. military blamed renegade Shi'ite militias called "special groups" for the bombing. That is jargon for rogue elements of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia that the military says are equipped, trained and funded by Iran. Tehran denies the charges.

U.S. forces also blamed a special group cell for a truck bomb that killed 63 people in a Shi'ite neighborhood of Baghdad a week ago.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the deaths of the American civilians, one from the State Department and the other from the Department of Defense, were "a terrible reminder of the dangers that our colleagues face daily in advancing our critical foreign policy goals".

The U.S. military said a suspect who had tested positive for explosives residue had been caught trying to flee the scene. That suggests a bomb was planted in the council building.

Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, a U.S. military spokesman, said the target of the attack was believed to be a high-ranking council member. It was unclear if that person survived.

Stover said the rogue Shi'ite militant groups were unhappy the council member was working with U.S. forces.

Mahmud al-Zamili, a member of Sadr City's council, said the blast occurred inside the office of the deputy head of the council. Police said the deputy was among the wounded.

"Special groups are afraid of progress and afraid of empowering the people," Lieutenant-Colonel John Digiambatista, operations officer, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, said in a statement.

The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told U.S. lawmakers in April that the "special groups" were the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq.

Sadr City is the bastion of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, where battles between gunmen and security forces raged for weeks until a truce took effect in May.

EFFORTS TO BOOST GOVERNANCE

Scores of Americans work closely with local authorities across Iraq in an effort to improve governance and restore essential services following five years of war.

Those efforts have picked up as violence has dropped.