Car bomb kills 16, brings bloodshed to S.Iraq

BASRA, Iraq, Thursday (Reuters) A car bomb shattered the relative peace of the southern Iraqi city of Basra after dark on Wednesday, killing 16 people and wounding 20 in a district packed with restaurants, officials said.

At least two children were among the dead carried away by rescuers from the popular Sayed restaurant. Police said a pick- up truck had exploded outside it. They found no evidence of a suicide attacker, they added.

Coming at the end of a day on which al Qaeda claimed a bomb attack that killed four U.S. security guards on diplomatic duties in Basra, it was not clear who had brought such violence to the relatively calm and mainly Shi'ite Muslim south.

Though there have been tensions among rival Shi'ite militias and between armed groups and British occupying forces around Basra, major attacks on civilians of the sort associated with Sunni Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda are rare.

Early on Wednesday, four U.S. security guards died when a bomb hit their vehicle near Basra, the U.S. embassy said in a statement. All four worked for a private security firm supporting the U.S. embassy office in Basra.

In April 2004, suicide bombers killed 73 people in blasts at four police buildings in and around Basra. A flare-up in fighting was swiftly damped down last month between Shi'ite groups divided by attitudes to the U.S.-backed, Shi'ite-led government and the new constitution it is presenting to a referendum in mid-October.

Violence by the minority Sunni Arab insurgents active in the north and west of Iraq has been relatively restrained in recent weeks. But opposition to a constitution that many Sunnis say may give too much autonomy to the oil-rich Shi'ite south, and passions raised by next month's trial of Saddam Hussein creates a risk of new bloodshed, Iraqi and U.S. military officials say.