The deputy governor of Diyala province, Aqil Hamid al-Adili, was in stable condition and was being treated at a US-led coalition medical facility, military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said.

"This was a suicide attack with a booby-trapped car," Police Brig. Daoud Mahmoud Mahmoud said. "We are busy moving casualties to the hospital."

Meanwhile, Iraq's chief investigating judge issued a warrant for arrest of former Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi and his nephew Salem. Dismissing charges filed against them, the two termed the allegations part of a political conspiracy against them and their family.

The latest development pushed Ahmad Chalabi, once a Pentagon favorite to take leadership of the new Iraq, further from the center of power, over which he seemed to have a firm grip until he fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the US occupation ended in June. He was charged with counterfeiting.

At least 17 people were also wounded when a white station wagon laden with explosives blew up outside al-Adili's home, where several police were deployed in two vehicles.

The blast shattered the windows of al-Adili's house, blew doors off their hinges and lightly injured the deputy governor's 9-year-old son, Mahmoud said.

Qaiser Hamid, a hospital official in the area, said his hospital had received two of the dead. It was not immediately clear whether they were police or civilians.

Meanwhile, four Iraqi security guards were killed and nine other people wounded, including three US soldiers, when insurgents attacked the district council building in Baghdad's Shia Muslim stronghold of Sadr City, prompting the Iraqi government to impose curfew there between 4:00 pm (1200 GMT) and 8:00 am (0400 GMT).

"The curfew will be on during this period till further notice," said Sabah Kadhim, an interior ministry spokesman said.

The US military said in Baghdad yesterday insurgents attacked the council building at about 1:30 pm (0930 GMT) Sunday.

"The building received rocket-propelled-grenade fire and small-arms fire," its statement said. On Monday, mortars were fired at the same building, but no casualties were immediately reported.

Also a US marine has been killed in the volatile Iraqi province of Al-Anbar, the military said yesterday.

The marine, assigned to the I Marine Expeditionary Force, was killed on Sunday while conducting what the military described as "security and stability operations".

A senior US military official said yesterday US forces had killed at least 360 loyalists from Sadr's Mehdi Army militia since the uprising in Najaf erupted on Thursday, but denied coalition forces were hunting the young firebrand Muslim cleric.

Meanwhile, a video purporting to show an Iraqi police general being held by Mehdi Army against the release of captured colleagues was shown Monday on Al-Jazeera television.

In Baghdad interior ministry spokesman Sabah Khadim admitted that a policeman had been abducted from a police station in the capital's Shia stronghold of Sadr City, but said, "He is not a high ranking officer."

Sadr's spokesman in Sadr City Abdul Hadi al-Darraji said he was not aware of the kidnapping.

The video aired by Al-Jazeera showed an officer identified as Brigadier General Raad Mohamad Khudr, former head of the Rasafa police station in Baghdad, sitting in front of masked gunmen.

Ahmad Chalabi, the one-time Iraqi exile opposition leader, was in Tehran, Iran, for an economic conference and said that despite his doubts about the Iraqi criminal system, he would return.

"I'm now mobilised on all fronts to rebuff all these charges," Ahmad Chalabi told CNN. "Nobody's above the law, and I submit to the law in Iraq ... despite my serious and grave reservations about this court."

Salem Chalabi, head of the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein, was charged with murder after having been named as a suspect in the June murder of Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry. He said he too did not fear conviction.

"I don't think ... that I had anything to do with the charges so I'm not actually worried about it," Salem Chalabi told CNN from London. "It's a ridiculous charge, that I threatened somebody ... there's no proof there."

If convicted, Salem Chalabi, 41, could face the death penalty, which was restored by Iraqi officials on Sunday, judge Zuhair al-Maliky said. His uncle, who is in his late 50s, would face a sentence determined by trial judges.

"They should be arrested and then questioned and ... if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial," al-Maliky said about the warrants against each, which he disclosed Sunday.

Ahmad Chalabi was somewhat marginalised when he was left out of the new interim government that took power June 28 but has since worked to reposition himself as a Shia populist. At the helm of the war crimes tribunal for Saddam, the Ivy League-educated Salem Chalabi remains a central figure in Iraq.

In Washington, the Bush administration had no comment about the charges against the Chalabis. "This is a matter for the Iraqi authorities to resolve and they are taking steps to do so," White House spokeswoman Suzy DeFrancis.

Ahmad Chalabi is accused of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars, which were removed from circulation after the ouster of Saddam's regime last year.

(AP/AFP/REUTERS)