Insurgents struck a US military base north of Baghdad with rockets at dawn Saturday, killing five American soldiers, an official said, while a rocket crashed into a crowded market in the Iraqi capital, killing at least three people.

Besides the deaths in the market, up to 12 Iraqis were killed Saturday in several attacks, including an apparent suicide car bombing in Tikrit, fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City, and clashes between Polish troops and Shiite militiamen in Karbala.

The fighting in Sadr City, an eastern mostly Shiite district in the capital, came when US forces launched raids against suspected militiamen, sparking a battle that the military said killed one or two Iraqis. During the fighting, three Iraqi girls were badly burned when a shell exploded in their bedroom where they slept.

Hours later, a rocket slammed into the neighborhood's crowded Chicken Market, killing at least three people and wounding dozens, residents said. Human flesh could be seen among scattered market goods and burned-out cars in the chaotic street. It was unclear who fired the rocket or what its intended target was.

The five US solders were killed around dawn, when two 57-mm rockets slammed into the base in Taji, Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Hudspath said. Taji is a former Iraqi air force base 12 miles north of Baghdad that is now used by the Army's Texas-based 1st Cavalry Division.

Six soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Elsewhere, a Marine died from combat injuries suffered on April 14 while fighting guerrillas in Iraq's western Anbar province, the military announced. The Marines have been besieging the Anbar city of Fallujah since the beginning of the month, but the military has refused to specify whether Marine casualties from Anbar are from that campaign.

The deaths of the five soldiers in Baghdad and the Marine brought to 107 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the beginning of April. Since March 2003, 715 service members have died in this country.

The Pentagon announced Friday that 595 US soldiers have been wounded in the past two weeks, raising the total number of troops wounded in combat to 3,864 since the start of the conflict.

Also Friday, the UN's top envoy for Iraq said the 25 members of Iraq's US--picked Governing Council should be excluded from a planned caretaker government that is supposed to take nominal sovereignty from the US-led occupation on June 30.

While a group of "technocrats" runs the interim government, the council members should spend the next nine months campaigning for elections due by the end of January, said the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.

Washington has thrown its backing behind Brahimi's proposal, suggesting the United States is prepared to allow the removal of Iraqis it had put forward to run the country

(China Daily April 25, 2004)