A US soldier, a Portuguese telecommunications worker and two Iraqis were also killed in the violence-torn nation.

Witnesses said the Falluja house had been hit in a US helicopter strike, but the US military had no immediate information about the incident.

A foreign journalist said casualties were pulled from the rubble and taken to hospital after the raid.

The US military yesterday said around 20 Iraqi insurgents were killed or wounded in a day of clashes with US soldiers in the Baghdad Shia slum of Sadr City earlier in the week.

"A number of patrols around Sadr City were ambushed by small arms fire and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), it went on throughout the day," said a US military spokesman, referring to the fighting that raged on Thursday.

"Around about 20 were killed or wounded."

Small, armed bands attacked the US patrols as they went about their work in Sadr City, a packed neighbourhood of around two million people, which is named after the father of firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr, who was killed by Saddam Hussein's agents in 1999.

"We rendered the teams ineffective," said the spokesman, though he declined to give an exact breakdown of the dead and injured.

"There were no coalition casualties or damage to our equipment," he added.

Sporadic fighting between the US army and Sadr's Mehdi Army militia have claimed the lives of several people in the past week alone.

Family and medical sources said six Iraqis lost their lives last Sunday, while two Iraqi children were killed and 23 people injured in fighting on June 11.

The impoverished neighbourhood is a Sadr stronghold where the rebel cleric's militiamen have clashed repeatedly with US troops since he launched his uprising against the US-led occupation more than two months ago.

A Portuguese telecommunications worker and two Iraqis were killed in a roadside bombing near the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday.

"The body of a Portuguese man, registered under the name of Roberto Carlos, working for (telecommunications) company Al-Atheer was brought to Basra hospital after an attack on the road to Zubair," said Ismail Mulla, an official with the emergency services.

An Iraqi policeman assigned to protect oil installations and an oil worker were also killed in the attack, which happened about three kilometres (two miles) south of Basra at about 9:15am (0515 GMT), a local police officer said.

A US soldier was killed in a firefight with insurgents near the Iraqi city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, on Friday evening, a US military spokeswoman said.

"A 1st Infantry Division soldier died on June 18 after anti-Iraqi forces engaged his unit with small-arms fire at about 7:00pm (1500 GMT) near Baquba," she said yesterday.

(Reuters, AFP)