BAGHDAD (AFP) - A car bomb tore through an Australian army patrol in an attack close to the country`s embassy in Baghdad that left three Iraqis dead and 16 people wounded, including three Australian soldiers.
A mushroom cloud hung over the site of the early morning blast as elsewhere in the capital three roadside bombs exploded in the path of US convoys, leaving one Estonian soldier dead.
The attack against the Australians was later claimed by the militant group of alleged Al-Qaeda frontman in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, in a statement posted on an Islamist website.
The United States has borne the brunt of the violence that has flared since last year`s war to topple Saddam Hussein, but other coalition members have also payed a price.
A truck bomb killed a Bulgarian soldier and wounded three others in Iraq on Sunday.
An Australian defence spokesman described the latest bombing as the first direct attack on vehicles of Australia, which has 850 troops in the country.
"A security detachment patrol of armoured vehicles was engaged by an improvised explosive device that was hidden in a vehicle," Brigadier Mike Hannan told Australian national radio.
Canberra, London and Washington were the founding members of the coalition that led the invasion of Iraq last year.
"We know that two of the three Australian vehicles were damaged and three of our people suffered non life-threatening injuries," said Hannan, adding that the most serious of these were facial wounds.
The convoy was on a routine patrol near the embassy and was tasked largely with protecting diplomatic staff, the spokesman said, although no such staff were in the convoy at the time.
Citing witnesses, a US military official at the scene said attackers used a remote control device to detonate a bomb inside a white vehicle as the Australian soldiers drove past in the Karrada district.
Local hospitals said 13 Iraqi civilians, including four young children aged between four and eight, had been brought in with injuries, while ambulances rushed to and from the blast site, ferrying away casualties.
In an all-too common scene, US soldiers cordoned off the area, where hundreds of local people had gathered to try to glimpse what was going on.
An AFP reporter saw an army vehicle, damaged by the force of the blast, which detonated near a school and a bridge leading to the heavily guarded Green Zone that houses Iraqi government buildings and foreign embassies.
The US official, Major Scot Stanger, said no diplomats had been travelling in the convoy.
"It was only a military convoy trying to get to checkpoint 11 near the bridge," Stanger said, referring to a southern entrance of the Green Zone.
Suicide bombers penetrated the fortress-like compound on October 14, killing at least five people, including three US civilians when they detonated their charges close to a popular cafe.
Two more car bombs, a favourite weapon in the guerrilla warfare dogging Iraq, also exploded against Iraqi administrative targets in the northern city of Mosul early Monday, killing four people and wounding four others.
10/25/2004 - 16:09 GMT - AFP