BAGHDAD - At least 12 Iraqis died on Saturday when an arms dump exploded on the edge of Baghdad, sending rockets scything into nearby houses. Residents blamed the Americans for the carnage.

The U.S. military said unknown attackers fired an incendiary device into an Iraqi munitions store, at Zaafaraniya on the capital's southern outskirts, triggering a series of blasts.

Iraqi Munthir Sabir, who lost six members of his immediate family when an American ammunition dump exploded Saturday April 26, 2003 walks in the ruins of his destroyed home. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

But local people turned their anger on the Americans, shooting at soldiers trying to help relief efforts and forcing them back from the scene for a while.

Some soldiers were wounded, the Army said, but their condition was not immediately known.

Residents said U.S. troops had packed cars with confiscated weapons and detonated them at the site. The Americans denied this and said the location of the dump near a residential area showed Saddam Hussein's disregard for civilians.

Anti-American protests broke out later in the capital and the incident seemed sure to fuel mounting opposition to a continued U.S. military occupation of Iraq.

It was unclear how many people were killed in the blasts in Zaafaraniya, a mixed residential-industrial suburb.

An Iraqi medic traveling in a civilian ambulance ferrying casualties to hospital said the explosions had killed many people. Asked how many, he replied: "Forty."

One distraught man, Tamir Kalaal, said his wife, father, brother and 11 other relatives had been killed when a rocket shot out of the arms dump and destroyed their home.

The main hospital in the district said at least 12 people had been killed and 40 injured. U.S. Central Command in Qatar said at least six had died.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld left for the Gulf on Saturday to thank regional leaders for support in the war that toppled Saddam and to discuss future U.S. military deployment in the oil-rich area.

U.S. officials did not say whether he would visit Iraq.

"TERROR AFTER WAR"

Kudeir, a 30 year-old Iraqi worker, carries his badly burned nine month-old son Amir Yas to safety after a US weapons dump exploded in the Zaafaraniya neighborhood in the outskirts of Baghdad, April 26, 2003. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

About 500 men, chanting anti-American, pro-Islamic slogans, drove out of Zaafaraniya in a convoy of trucks, buses and cars. One truck carried six coffins. Two banners in English read: "Stop Explosions Near Civilians" and "The Terror After War."

Later, scores of men gathered in a central Baghdad square to protest at the U.S. military presence in Iraq, waving their fists and chanting: "Yes, yes to Islam! Yes, yes to Iraq!"

A Muslim cleric with a megaphone egged on the crowd. One green banner read: "U.S. forces kill innocent with Saddam's weapons in Zaafaraniya."

The incident underlined how far Baghdad is from being pacified 17 days after U.S. troops took the city.

It came just hours after aides said President Bush would declare an end to hostilities next week and hail the success of U.S.-led combat operations.

Saddam, his sons Uday and Qusay and many of his closest aides are still missing and no weapons of mass destruction -- one of the reasons the United States and Britain gave for launching the war on March 20 -- have been found.

American interrogators were quizzing captured former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz and at least 11 other detainees from a U.S. list of 55 most wanted Iraqis. They hope the captives will help them find the fugitives and their alleged weapons caches.

In Madrid, meanwhile, more than 100 Iraqi opposition figures gathered for a weekend of talks on future democracy in Iraq.

Members of the pro-U.S. Iraqi National Congress, the Shi'ite Muslim party Al Dawa, the Iraqi Communist Party, Kurdish parties and other groups were taking part.

U.S. administrator in Iraq Jay Garner has said the process of forming an Iraqi-run government will begin by next weekend.

HOMES DESTROYED

In Zaafaraniya, a group of women in black shawls stood amidst the rubble of destroyed houses weeping uncontrollably.

Hussein Hafez, a 57-year-old neighbor, said: "Saddam was a butcher, and now this. This is a residential area. Why are the Americans blowing up weapons near us?"

The explosions at Zaafaraniya were so loud they were heard in central Baghdad.

U.S. troops in the city center told reporters initially they were controlled detonations, but later the American military spoke of an attack by "an unknown number of individuals."

"One soldier was wounded in the attack," the Central Command statement said. "During the attack, the assailant fired an unknown incendiary device into the cache, causing it to catch fire and explode. The explosion caused the destruction of the cache as well as a nearby building."

Zaafaraniya residents said U.S. forces had been packing cars with Iraqi weapons over the last three days and detonating them.

Kalaal, the man who lost 14 relatives when his house was destroyed, had no doubt who was to blame for the tragedy. "Those Americans did this," he said, shaking his finger in rage.

TROOPS STONED

Apart from Saturday's protests in Baghdad, U.S. soldiers and Reuters correspondents reported scattered anti-American incidents in other cities.

Groups of 250 to 300 teenagers hurled stones at Marines patrolling the holy city of Najaf, south of the capital, in two separate incidents on Thursday and Friday, officers said.

There were no reports of injuries and the exact trigger for the stone-throwing was unclear.

Marines said their translators had told them that in one case the crowd had mistaken them for British troops, against whom they have grievances dating to colonial times in the first half of the 20th century -- a sobering lesson for the Americans about how long memories are in Iraq.

In the northern city of Mosul, where soldiers have been attracting swarms of curious people, at least 200 children and a few adults crowded round some soldiers on foot patrol this weekend and soon the stones came raining in.

About a dozen of the older children were involved. "They were throwing them like they were pitching a baseball," said Sgt. John McLean, who was hit on the helmet, in the back and on the heel.

The troops took up a defensive position but the crowd only dispersed when a warning shot was fired over their heads.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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