Two U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq warehouse blast

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A suspected chemical weapons warehouse exploded in flames Monday moments after U.S. troops broke in, killing two soldiers and wounding five. Jubilant Iraqis swarmed over the Americans' charred Humvees, waving looted machine guns, a bandolier and a helmet.\nIn Fallujah, Iraq, U.S. troops battled insurgents in the latest violation of a tentative cease-fire for the besieged city. One Marine and eight insurgents were killed.\nMarines fought Sunni guerrillas around a mosque in Fallujah's Jolan district, a poor neighborhood where insurgents are concentrated. Helicopter gunships joined the battle, which sent heavy black smoke over the city. Tank fire demolished a minaret from which officials said gunmen were firing.\nThe U.S. troops met "a real nasty bunch," said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, commander of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. But he said the violence would not deter plans to begin joint U.S.-Iraq patrols in the city.\nBrig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt did not say what sort of chemical munitions were believed to be produced at the Baghdad warehouse. After the blast, there was no sign of precautions against chemicals. "Chemical munitions could mean any number of things," including smoke grenades, he said.\nThe cause of the blast was unclear. Kimmitt said a large number of explosives were in the building in the northern neighborhood of Waziriyah.\nAsked about reports that the search team included members of the Iraq Survey Group -- the U.S. team looking for weapons of mass destruction -- Kimmitt said only: "The inspection was by a number of coalition forces."\nHe said the owner of the site was "suspected of producing and supplying chemical agents" to Iraqi insurgents, but did not elaborate.\nThe blast leveled the front half of the one-story building and set ablaze four Humvees parked outside. A U.S. soldier was seen being taken away on a stretcher, her chest and face severely burned. Several Iraqis were pulled from the wreckage, including a woman who wept as she was carried over a man's shoulder to safety.\nAfterward, dozens of cheering teenagers started to smash the abandoned Humvees. One child climbed on a hood of one of the vehicles and beat it with a stick. A man held up a photo of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Iraqis stripped the vehicles of equipment, one carrying a heavy machine gun, another waving a U.S. helmet. One man sported military headphones.\n"This is for the madman Bush, for the madman Bremer!" said one youth as he waved a rifle, referring to President Bush and the top American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.\nOutside Najaf, Iraq, Shiite militiamen in cars fired rocket-propelled grenades at a U.S. position, witnesses said. Apache helicopters and U.S. troops opened fire and set the cars ablaze.\nAround 200 U.S. troops and Military Police made their first deployment inside Najaf, moving into a base Spanish troops are vacating about five miles from holy shrines at the heart of the city.\nU.S. commanders have said they will not move against the shrines in order to capture al-Sadr. The Americans say they're aware doing so could turn al-Sadr's limited revolt into a wider anti-U.S. uprising by Iraq's Shiite majority.\nBut in Baghdad Bremer heightened warnings about the reported stockpiling of weapons in "mosques, shrines and schools" in Najaf -- and his spokesman noted such actions make the sites fair targets for military action.\n"The coalition certainly will not tolerate this situation," Bremer said in a statement addressed to residents of Najaf. "The restoration of these holy places to calm places of worship must begin immediately."\nBremer's spokesman, Dan Senor, would not elaborate about steps the coalition was ready to take to do so. He noted in the case of military action, "those places of worship are not protected under the Geneva Convention" if they are used to store weapons.