Fighters have blown up an oil train in Baghdad and US warplanes have bombarded an Iraqi village near the Syrian border.

Thursday's hit on the train carrying petroleum products was the first such attack in Iraq, railway spokesman Jawad al-Kharsan said.
The explosion ignited a massive blaze extending down the railway line in southern Baghdad and killed an Iraqi soldier. Four others, including a civilian, were injured in the blast.

The five-man train crew, however, escaped unhurt, railway officials said.
The seven-tanker convoy was attacked less than a kilometre away from the Dura oil refinery.

An Interior Ministry official said the train struck a bomb on the line, but railway workers said the explosion could also have been caused by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Laser-guided missiles

In a separate incident on the Syrian border, US fighter jets bombarded the Iraqi village of Haditha, 220km northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

Laser-guided missiles and other ordnance were used in the air strike, killing nine alleged fighters - five of them Syrians, according to the US military.

The air strike was apparently launched after US and Iraqi troops came under fire from three buildings in the village, the military said.

Fighter jets dropped four bombs on buildings, destroying all three of them, the statement added.

Two suspects were arrested, the statement added.

US casualties

In other incidents, the US military said on Thursday that two of its soldiers were killed and one wounded when a bomb went off on Wednesday in north Baghdad.

The deaths brought the total number of US military personnel who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 1784, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

Northeast of Baghdad, four Iraqis were killed, including three soldiers, and eight wounded in two separate attacks on checkpoints in and around Baquba, police said.

And four soldiers and a police officer were killed in attacks in the Samarra area north of the capital, police said.

Bush blasted

Meanwhile in the United States the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO), the largest US union movement, called for the rapid return of US troops from Iraq.

"An unending military presence will waste lives and resources, undermine our nation's security and weaken our military," the AFL-CIO stated in a resolution adopted at the federation's convention in Chicago.

The federation, which has nearly 11 million members, also blasted President George Bush for misleading the public about the war.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iraqis try to remove a piece of a car bomb's wreckage from under an oil tanker, Monday afternoon, July 18, 2005, in Rawah, northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP)