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Main weekly Muslim prayers in the holy city of Najaf were scrapped yesterday for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein after scuffles between rival Shiite factions, as bombs wounded four US soldiers elsewhere in Iraq.

Overnight clashes between militiamen and soldiers in Baghdad claimed the lives of two Iraqi children and left 23 people wounded as the death toll kept rising in the countdown to a return of Iraqi sovereignty on June 30.

Supporters of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr in Najaf, 160 kilometres south of the capital, chucked stones and shoes at a rival Shiite group, preventing prayers from taking place at a revered mosque, an AFP correspondent said.

They launched the attack as some 200 members of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a mainstream Shiite religious party, began to enter the world-famous Imam Ali mausoleum after holding a street demonstration calling for unity among Muslims.

They injured a top Sciri official in the head as he helped to prepare a platform for his brother, Sheikh Saddredin al-Kubbanji, who conducts prayers at the shrine every week and is a vocal opponent of Sadr's followers. Kubbanji has called from the pulpit for the firebrand cleric's Mehdi Army to exit the city.

Sciri officials asked people who had come to pray to leave the mausoleum after this "act that runs contrary to Islam," but a few returned.

The area surrounding the site in the city centre is controlled by militiamen loyal to Sadr.

On Thurday, Iraqi police battled the Mehdi Army in the streets.

Six people were killed, while militiamen seized a police station and looters burned it down.

Sadr, wanted in connection with the murder of a rival cleric last year, subjected the Shiite holy city to the rule of the gun for the better part of two months as his followers revolted against the US-led occupation.

A truce to end the fighting around Najaf and Sadr's neighboring stronghold of Kufa resulted in five days of comparative quiet before the police and Sadr's men battled Thursday.

Deadly fighting also raged overnight between the US army and armed militia, thought to be loyal to rebel cleric Sadr, in eastern Baghdad's Shiite slums.

"We received the bodies of two young children and admitted 23 wounded people over the course of Thursday evening, including two women," said Doctor Hassan Najim of the Sadr City general hospital.

A US military spokesman said assailants targeted US troops with rocket-propelled grenades as they conducted regular patrols in the neighbourhood on Thursday night. The soldiers shot back.

"There were minor casualties on the anti-Iraqi forces side," said a second military spokesman, Captain Brian O'Malley.

Asked about the children caught up in the clashes, O'Malley said two young boys were injured, one critically, when insurgents launched eight mortar rounds on the US base outside Sadr City on Thursday afternoon.

The impoverished neighbourhood is a Sadr bastion where the cleric's militiamen have clashed repeatedly with US troops since he launched his uprising.

Separately, three US soldiers were wounded in a car bomb attack on a military convoy in southern Baghdad at 12:20 pm yesterday.

"Right now we have got three wounded, no deaths. Two of the wounded returned to duty," a military spokesman said.

The convoy was travelling down a road in the Saydiya district in the south of the capital. It passed a stationary car, which exploded, the spokesman said, adding that the device was probably detonated remotely.

A fourth US soldier was slightly injured when a roadside bomb and gunfire targeted a military supply convoy near a US army base in the town of Baquba north of Baghdad yesterday, a second AFP correspondent said.

The attack earlier in the morning occurred almost an hour after a witness saw a bomb explode after another US military convoy passed outside the restive city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

Overnight, the military announced a US soldier died of his wounds Thursday following a coordinated attack on coalition troops in eastern Baghdad the previous day. Four other soldiers were wounded in the attack.

The death raises to 609 the number of US soldiers killed in action since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to Pentagon figures. - Sapa-AFP

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