IRAQ Bomb kills 2 policemen

A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A roadside bomb killed a local police chief and another officer in Baghdad today, hospital and police officials said, in the latest insurgent attack on Iraq's battered police forces.
In other violence, two U.S. soldiers were killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb late Monday in Iraq's capital, and an American Marine died in action today west of Baghdad, the military said.
Associated Press Television News footage from western Baghdad's al-Washash district showed a destroyed white Iraqi police pickup truck, its doors smashed and blood splattered across the driver's seat.
Police, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified one of the dead Iraqi officers as Col. Mouyad Mohammed Bashar, who was chief of al-Mamoun police station.
A third officer was wounded in the blast, said Zayed Mohammed, a doctor at al-Yarmouk hospital. At the hospital, a bloodied policeman lay on a bed, bandages wrapped around his stomach and leg.
Police are targets
Police in Iraq have repeatedly been targeted by insurgents pressing a campaign to destabilize the interim government. The guerrillas see police as collaborators with American coalition forces.
From April 2003 to May 2004 alone, 710 Iraqi police were killed out of a total force of 130,000 officers, authorities said. A truck bomb last Wednesday targeted a police recruiting center in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, where hundreds of job applicants were gathered. It killed 70 people.
U.S. forces battled supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf in southern Iraq on Monday and may have surrounded a house where al-Sadr was staying.
Reports conflict
Accounts of the fighting conflicted. Al-Sadr spokesman Ahmed al Shabani, reached by phone, said the fighting began in the early evening and lasted for four to five hours. Shabani said members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia thought the U.S. troops had come to arrest al-Sadr and opened fire.
Barrages of gunfire and mortar rounds set cars on fire before Iraqi police intervened and the U.S. forces withdrew, witnesses said.
"One woman was killed and we have three injured," said Ajwak Kadhim, director at Al-Hakim Hospital in Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad.
Ali al-Yassiry, a Baghdad spokesman for al-Sadr, said U.S. troops briefly surrounded al-Sadr's house in Najaf but then withdrew from the city. He said the fighting ended and the Mahdi Army was patrolling the area.
Capt. Carrie C. Batson, a spokeswoman for the 11th Marine Expeditionary Force, said in an e-mail that the Marines "simply responded to the fire they were receiving -- in self-defense." Batson stressed that, "The Marines DID NOT search al Sadr's home, nor did they surround his house."
Al-Sadr, who is wanted by U.S. forces for the April 2003 murder of a moderate cleric in Najaf, was in his house at the time, witnesses said.
The radical cleric, who has grassroots support for his anti-coalition stance, began a two-month rebellion in early April after the U.S.-led occupation authority closed his newspaper and arrested a key aide. A series of truces ended the fighting, and the issue of whether to carry out his arrest warrant was postponed.
Prison scandal
Meanwhile, a military hearing was set to start today that will begin gathering evidence to see if Pfc. Lynndie England should be court-martialed for her actions in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Article 32 hearing is the military equivalent of a grand jury in civilian court.
The hearing will be the first chance in court for the 21-year-old Army reservist's attorneys to make their case that she was following orders from higher-ups when she was photographed mocking naked detainees at Abu Ghraib.
Witnesses on a list the defense released earlier this year included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top generals, though military officials say it is doubtful they will appear. Other witnesses may be called by telephone from Iraq.
England, from Fort Ashby, W.Va., is seen smiling for the camera in one picture, cigarette in her mouth, as she leans forward and points at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqi. Another photo shows her holding a leash that encircles the neck of a naked Iraqi man lying on his side on a cellblock floor, his face contorted.
England is charged with 13 counts of abusing detainees and six counts stemming from possession of sexually explicit photos which the Army has said do not depict Iraqis. The maximum possible sentence is 38 years in prison.
Sabotage on pipeline
In northern Iraq, saboteurs bombed an oil pipeline northeast of the town or Beiji today in the latest attack on the nation's infrastructure, the U.S. military said.
Police Col. Nurzad Ahmed, a security official at the state-run Northern Oil Company, said a fire was raging near al-Fattah, about 135 miles north of Baghdad, but the pipeline, which was not an export line, was not on fire. He said a nearby trash heap had been set ablaze.
"The fire is huge and we have started our efforts to put it out," Ahmed told The Associated Press.
Maj. Neal O'Brien, a spokesman for the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division, said the fire had spread to a nearby construction site.
It was unclear what effect, if any, the explosion would have on oil exports. Insurgents have repeatedly attacked Iraq's oil infrastructure in an effort deprive the interim government of money for reconstruction efforts.
Marine killed
A U.S. Marine with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action today west of Baghdad, the military said. The Marine died of wounds suffered in Anbar province, a volatile, Sunni-dominated region that includes Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim on the Syrian border.
He died conducting "security and stability operations," the U.S. command said. His name was withheld pending notification of kin.
In Baghdad, insurgents set off a roadside bomb late Monday, killing two U.S. soldiers and wounding two more, the military said today.
The Marine's killing brought to at least 915 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq.