Bloodshed follows US troops

An Iraqi gunshop owner identified as Mehmid Mutlag, 36, was shot dead Sunday by a US patrol in that town west of Baghdad after soldiers, who saw him repairing an assault rifle outside his store, mistook him for an armed assailant, witnesses said.

Mutlag's death came just a day after US troops killed another Iraqi after coming under fire near a mosque on the town's northern outskirts.

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US soldiers also came under attack Friday in Fallujah when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a US armoured vehicle, said a resident.

Six people, including a local Baath Party leader, have been detained in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on suspicion of planning attacks on US troops, coalition ground forces said.

Meanwhile, top US officials insisted they will find evidence Iraq was developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, despite growing doubts in many quarters about the existence of such programs.

"I believe we will find them," US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Secretary of State Colin Powell stood by his February statement to the UN Security Council, in which he detailed US claims that Iraq was hiding its weapons from UN inspectors.

"Not only have I been studying this for many, many years, but, as I prepared that statement, I worked very closely with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet," Powell told the "Fox News Sunday" program.

He said his statement had been vetted thoroughly by all of the analysts working on the matter and he had spent four days and nights at CIA headquarters, making sure that data in his speech were supported by intelligence information.