UN experts check out Iraq's nuclear site

A Reuters cameraman said the seven-member International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team was working under tight US military escort at the vast Tuwaitha site, about 20 km south of Baghdad.

US soldiers confiscated the cameraman's video, saying no media coverage was permitted near the nuclear research compound.

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The IAEA team arrived in Iraq Friday on a limited mission to check on looting from the site where low-enriched uranium, known as yellow-cake, was stored in barrels.

Looters emptied some of the barrels and sold them to local people for $2 each. US forces say they paid $3 a barrel to recover the stolen items and five radiological devices.

Some locals who unwittingly washed clothes or stored food in the barrels say children are falling ill, but IAEA and US military officials say they believe the health risk is low.

The IAEA team is operating under strict guidelines from the Pentagon, which does not want to open the door to a renewed role for the agency in post-war Iraq.

The United States is expanding its own team to hunt for Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and wants to exclude the IAEA and other UN arms inspectors.

The failure of the United States and Britain to find any banned weapons since their March 20 invasion has fuelled a political furore over whether they misled the world by arguing that Iraq posed a deadly threat to international security.

Meanwhile, US troops were ambushed near Saddam Hussein's hometown Saturday, as UN nuclear experts began work to assess looting at Iraq's main nuclear facility.

The US military said a soldier died and four were wounded when gunmen fired small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade at them near Tikrit, 110 miles north of Baghdad.