Rockets pounded the US-led coalition's compound in Baghdad, while the violence spreads to the southern Iraqi port city of Basra where at least four Iraqis were killed in a bomb blast. In the latest of near nightly attacks on the US-led coalition's Baghdad compound, at least four rockets hit inside the closed-off security zone, but there were no casualties, a senior US military officer told AFP. One burst in the air just northeast of the main gate to Saddam Hussein's former presidential palace, while a second rocket landed in a parking lot, damaging several cars. The shrapnel from the first rocket looked like an 81-millimeter surface-to-air rocket, which has been used on previous attacks on the coalition compound, the officer said. He added the rockets were most likely fired from the east bank of the Tigris river, just south of the commercial Karada district, at the coalition compound on the opposite river bank. The coalition, meanwhile, acknowledged its soldiers shot and killed a local official in Sadr City, a volatile Baghdad Shiite neighborhood where clashes have previously cost the lives of US troops. And demonstrators sacked the police station and city hall in the town of Haditha to the west of the capital, witnesses said. A bomb attack on a Baghdad courthouse left two Iraqi police and four prisoners wounded as insurgents there added to the war on the coalition around the country. In Basra, four Iraqis died, two of them policemen, and nine people, including schoolchildren, were hurt when a bomb exploded in the town centre, said police Colonel Mohammed Khazim al-Ali. British spokesman Major Charlie Mayo said the bomb blew up prematurely, killing the man planting it and wounding his three accomplices, one of whom died later, while two civilians passing in a car were also wounded. He said it was possible more people were killed or injured. A second blast echoed over downtown Basra about midday, an AFP correspondent reported, but it was not known if there were further casualties. Mayo reported a surge of violence in Basra over the past week, blaming Saddam supporters. Widespread unrest has largely been confined to the north, where the ousted president had his power base. Tension was still rife in Sadr City two days after the killing of Mohannad Ghazi al-Kaabi, as hundreds of residents marched on the heavily fortified municipal building guarded by the Americans. The shooting of the US-backed official in an area home, which has been a source of trouble for the Americans, was sure to inflame the critics of the US occupation. Kaabi, the top municipal official for Sadr City, died from wounds Sunday after troops shot him when he refused to follow security procedures for entering Sadr City's municipal building, the US military said in a statement, adding an investigation had been launched. In Haditha, 200 kilometres west of the capital, demonstrators rioted, enraged over what they said was the detention of a woman when US soldiers could not find her husband. The crowd of hundreds clashed with police and shots were fired, leaving two people wounded before the mob proceeded burn the city hall and police station. **PHOTO CAPTION*** A British soldier inspects the side of the road after a British soldier was injured in Basra, southern Iraq, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2003 when a land mine exploded. (AP Photo/Nabil Aljurani)