IRAQ:A car bomb exploded in the southern city of Basra last night, killing five people and wounding 10, police said.
Two other car bombs were discovered in the area and dismantled by police.
Car bombs are rare in the city, located near the Iranian border in the oil-rich Shia south of the country. However, tensions have been rising there due to political-infighting among Shia groups.
The explosion occurred in a western district of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 550km (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said. Police, responding to the explosion, discovered the other two vehicles before they could explode.
The blast occurred in an area containing several restaurants frequented by followers of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, police said.
Al-Sadr's group is among several factions locked in a power struggle with a rival Shia party, Fadhila, for control of the city.
Earlier yesterday US forces fired an artillery barrage in southern Baghdad, rocking the capital with loud explosions.
The size and the pattern of the explosions suggested they were directed at Sunni militant neighbourhoods along the city's southern rim.
In a brief statement, the US military said it fired the artillery from a forward operating base near Iraq's Rasheed military base southeast of Baghdad, but provided no other details.
The blasts came a day after the US military announced the deaths of nine American troops, including four killed in separate roadside bombings south of Baghdad and five in fighting in Anbar province, a Sunni stronghold west of the capital.
American troops also detained 72 suspected insurgents and seized nitric acid and other bomb-making materials during raids targeting al-Queda in Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of the capital, and Salahuddin province, a volatile Sunni area northwest of the capital, the US military said.
Authorities in northern Iraq imposed an indefinite curfew in the Sunni stronghold of Samarra after leaflets signed by rival insurgent groups threatened policemen if they did not quit their jobs and warned oil companies exploring in the area. The warnings to the policemen were signed by al-Queda in Iraq and threatened to destroy their houses if they didn't comply.
Leaflets signed by a separate insurgent umbrella group calling itself the Mujahedeen of Samarra warned against oil exploration. They were posted on the walls of mosques in central Samarra, about 95km north of Baghdad.
Samarra was targeted in raids by the US military, which said 36 insurgents with alleged ties to al Qaida in Iraq were taken into custody there.