Another US soldier killed in Iraq

A US soldier covers the body of a comrade, killed following an explosion along the highway leading to the flashpoint town of Fallujah, west of Baghdad. Photo: AFP

One US soldier was killed and two were wounded on Wednesday when a bomb exploded near a highway just west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, US soldiers on the scene said.

The fatality brought to 147 the number of US servicemen killed by hostile fire in Iraqi since the invasion to topple president Saddam Hussein -- the same number of troops the United States lost in the 1991 Gulf war over Kuwait.

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"We were driving by in a convoy and we heard a big explosion. As the convoy passed that truck over there it blew up," Specialist Jose Colon told Reuters.

The two wounded men were treated on the highway. US soldiers stood guard, pointing their machineguns toward the edge of the road and peering through binoculars for other possible attackers.

One soldier put his arm around another and comforted him as he cried while sitting on the barrier that divides the highway. About 40 Iraqis walked out of their neighbourhood and watched.

The blast is the latest in a spate of increasingly bold guerrilla-style attacks. US forces have come under daily attacks in recent weeks which have continued despite a crackdown by US troops in areas to the Northeast and north of the capital, once a hotbed for Saddam loyalists.

Senate Democrats criticised President Bush on Tuesday for spiralling costs of the Iraq war and for not seeking more international help in Iraq's rebuilding in the face of skyrocketing US budget deficits.

The charges came as the White House tried to deflect accusations that it exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the war and announced that the federal deficit will balloon to a record $455 billion this fiscal year.

Sen. Mark Dayton, a Minnesota Democrat, said the deficit grew from "the most colossal financial mismanagement that's ever been written in this country's history," and called for "a clear, direct and reliable accounting" of the war's costs.

The Senate was debating a $369 billion bill to fund the Pentagon for the next fiscal year that ignores the $5 billion monthly costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Republicans said those costs will be dealt with in separate emergency spending bills, including the $60 billion measure Congress passed in April.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, broadened his call for a congressional inquiry into the administration's handling of post-war Iraq with mounting US casualties and into its intelligence on Iraq's weapons including the discredited claim that Baghdad tried to buy uranium in Africa.