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Militants claim to have explosives

Neighbors dig through the rubble of a house before finding the bodies of two brothers killed in an apparent overnight airstrike in Fallujah, Iraq, yesterday morning. PHOTO: AP

An armed group claimed in a video yesterday to have obtained a large amount of explosives missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq and threatened to use them against foreign troops.

A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of "the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."

The claim couldn't be independently verified. The speaker was surrounded by masked, armed men standing in front of a black banner with the group's name on it.

"We promise God and the Iraqi people that we will use it against the occupation forces and those who cooperate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city," the man added.

Nearly 350 tonnes of conventional explosives have disappeared from the al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Meanwhile, a car bomb exploded yesterday in southern Baghdad, killing one US soldier and at least one Iraqi civilian, the US military said.

The attack against a 1st Cavalry Division patrol occurred at about 7:30am in the Rashid district of the capital, the military said. Two other soldiers received minor injuries.

At least one and possibly two Iraqi civilians were also killed in the blast, a statement said.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed an Iraqi news reader on her way home from work at al-Sharqiya television in Baghdad, her employers said yesterday.

Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq, a popular presenter who had worked for Iraqi state television before last year's war, was shot dead on Wednesday evening.

US aircraft also bombed a suspected rebel safehouse yesterday in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, killing two, the US military and witnesses said.

The overnight strike in the northern part of the city targeted a "meeting site" used by suspected allies of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the US military said in a statement. Al-Zarqawi and his terror group are believed to be operating from Fallujah.

Residents said two brothers died in the airstrike and a third sibling suffered injuries. The victim's family denied the men were insurgents and relatives buried the dead men hours after the strike.

"My brothers were no fighters ... I was preparing to marry them off after the Fallujah crisis ends, now I am burying them with my own hands instead," family member Mahmoud Nasser said.
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