Simultaneous bomb attacks struck the US and Israeli embassies in Uzbekistan as well as the state prosecutor's office in the capital Tashkent on Friday, killing at least two people and wounding five.

The action appeared clearly co-ordinated, days after the start of a trial in Tashkent of 15 suspected Islamist extremists on charges of trying to overthrow the ex-Soviet state in connection with attacks in March that killed nearly 50 people.

The three late afternoon blasts in Uzbekistan, a mainly Muslim country that backs Washington's "war on terror" and hosts a US airbase, appeared to have been triggered by suicide bombers, almost certainly on foot.

The three buildings are spread across the modern city of 2 million people. lUzbek President Islam Karimov, visiting Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, was due to return home overnight, local officials said.

Israeli Ambassador Zvi Cohen said two people had died outside the Jewish state's embassy. Cohen said he and three other Israeli officials were in the building at the time along with two local security guards. Security had been stepped up since the earlier bombings.

Sources said one of the dead was the ambassador's personal bodyguard, the other an embassy guard.

Israel's Foreign Ministry confirmed there were no casualties to embassy personnel or other Israelis in the blast. No one had claimed responsibility for the attack, it said.

Uzbek Foreign Minister Ilkhom Zakirov said five people were injured at the prosecutor's office, where a man blew himself up in the lobby, and two were injured at the US Embassy.

Previously, a US spokesman said there were no known injuries in the blast outside the embassy 's compound.

Israel called for a concerted international drive to root out those behind the bombings on Friday.

(China Daily July 31, 2004)