One Iraqi was killed and 53 people wounded, including six US defense department personnel, in a suspected car bomb blast in Irbil, a US military spokeswoman said. Nicole Thompson said the blast went off at 9:05 p.m. Tuesday at a building in the northern Iraqi city, but she could not give any other details. "So far there are 47 wounded Iraqis and one confirmed dead. There were six US DOD (department of defense) personnel who were injured," Thompson told AFP. She said the explosion was "the result of a suspected car bomb." **US Soldier Killed*** One US soldier was killed and another wounded when a homemade bomb exploded near a military vehicle along a supply route Northeast of Baghdad, the US Central Command said on Wednesday. The attack occurred at about 5 pm local time on Tuesday, the Central Command said in a statement. The soldiers were from the US Army's 3rd Corp Support Command, it said. The wounded soldier was evacuated to a field hospital. Their names were withheld pending notification of their families. It was the first death of a US soldier in nearly a week. Also on Tuesday, a car bomb in the northern city of Irbil killed an Iraqi and wounded six Americans and 41 Iraqis. **Diplomatic Coup*** Meanwhile, Iraq's Governing Council took a step towards international legitimacy yesterday when its delegate took up Iraq's vacant seat at an Arab League ministerial meeting. A landmark decision by Arab foreign ministers to let the delegate join their talks, taken early yesterday after hours of debate, was a diplomatic victory for the council that could help determine if it will be allowed to fill Iraq's seat in other bodies like the UN and OPEC. In a highly symbolic move, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd newly appointed by the council, sat down in Iraq's chair at the ministerial meeting of the 22-member Cairo-based League. **PHOTO CAPTION*** An Iraqi man walks past the remains of a car after a car bomb was detonated outside an office used by U.S soldiers in between the towns of Irbil and Salahuddin in northern Iraq, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2003. (AP Photo/Gursel Eser/Anatolia)