Iraqi driver shot by US soldiers

A roadside bomb went off as a US military patrol passed by in western Baghdad, causing no injuries.

In the first attack, the American soldiers opened fire wildly in response, shooting three vehicles, witnesses said. One Iraqi was killed and six wounded, hospital officials said. "I was driving near the US convoy when I heard an explosion. Then the US soldiers randomly opened fire," said Kadhum Salih, a teacher who was wounded in the left hand.

In another incident, gunmen attacked a US convoy on the western outskirts of Baghdad setting one of the vehicles ablaze. Witnesses said US soldiers pulled three wounded foreigners from the stricken sports utility vehicle (SUV).

Elsewhere, a US civilian with a religious group was killed and three others were wounded when their taxi was ambushed by gunmen as they were returning to Baghdad from the ancient city of Babylon, the US military said yesterday.

American paratroopers conducting a combat patrol in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad discovered the four casualties in a local hospital on Saturday afternoon, it said in a statement.

The attacks come as China sent a team of diplomats to Iraq and Iraqi police captured a former leading member of Saddam Hussein’s government yesterday.

The official Xinhua news agency said the13 -member team, China’s first official delegation to the country since the war, left for Iraq from the Jordanian capital Amman yesterday.

"After entering Iraq, the mission will seek to develop the traditional friendly relations between the peoples of the two countries and protect the rights and interests of the Chinese in Iraq," Xinhua quoted mission chief Sun Bigan as saying.

Iraq’s Deputy Interior Minister Ahmed Kadhim said Iraqi police had arrested Muhammad Zimam Abd Al Razzaq Al Sadun, a senior member of Saddam’s toppled Baath Party and number 41 on Washington’s "most wanted" list.