Sadr's 16 militiamen killed in Iraq

"A homemade bomb exploded as the governor's convoy passed by," said police lieutenant Abdullah Hassan al-Jabburi, adding that the attack occurred a short distance outside the the provincial capital Baqubah.

"The governor escaped unha-rmed, but two of his guards were killed and three others wounded in the attack, carried out at 9:30 am (05H30 GMT)", the officer said in Baqubah, 60km northeast of Baghdad.

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"Sixteen anti-Iraqi forces were killed in the night in a series of incidents through the early morning," the officer said on condition of anonymity.

"The likelihood of them being Sadr militia fighters is high."

The fighting started around midnight in the Sadr City ghetto, a bastion of support for the firebrand cleric, and lasted till 4:00 am (0000 GMT), the officer said.

Meanwhile residents said US forces had totally destroyed Sadr's offices in the district overnight with tank fire.

Earlier a police officer died after being shot by gunmen on Sunday in Baqubah.

Meanwhile, assailants yesterday gunned down a New Zealander, a South African and an Iraqi working for a reconstruction firm in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, police said here.

"A New Zealander, a South African and an Iraqi were shot dead at 7:30 am (0330 GMT) by several armed men in front of their home in Kirkuk," said police offficer Hazem Mohammed Amin.

The men, who worked for an Iraqi construction company, were ambushed by more than five armed men, Amin said.

Police chief General Turhan Yussef said that the Iraqi driver and the South African was killed immediately while the New Zealander was declared dead on arrival at hospital.

The city's deputy governor Ismail Hadidi said there was most probably a a "network planning assassinations of foreigners and local officials."

The deaths were the latest of civilians working on the multi-billion dollar project led by the US-led coalition occupying Iraq to rebuild an infrastructure debilitated by decades of war and trade sanctions under jailed dictator Saddam Hussein.

Two British nationals and two Iraqis were wounded when a bomb exploded at a Baghdad hotel late Sunday, a US military spokesman

said here yesterday.

"Iraqi police confirmed that two British and two Iraqi civilians were injured in an improvised explosive device attack May 9 at the Al-Fossul Al-Arabaa hotel in Baghdad at 10:50 pm," the spokesman said.

No further details were immediately available about the attack at the hotel, whose name means Four Seasons in English.

At the hotel Monday morning, the lobby's ceiling was destroyed. Workers were cleaning out the debris. Four US army Humvee vehicles were parked outside the hotel but then departed.