US jets pounded suspected Shiite militant positions in the Baghdad slum of Al Sadr City yesterday, killing at least five people and wounding 46, as insurgents detonated a car bomb and fired rockets in separate attacks across the country targeting Iraq's beleaguered security forces.

The US military said the strikes in Al Sadr City, a hotbed of insurgents loyal to renegade Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, struck several "positively identified" militant hideouts.

Residents said explosions lit up the night sky for hours before dawn. Mangled vehicles, debris and shards of glass littered the streets.

Dr. Qassem Saddam of the Imam Ali hospital in Al Sadr City said five people were killed and 40 were wounded including 15 women and nine children.

At least two children wrapped in bloodstains bandages could be seen lying in hospital beds and one man suffered burns from head-to-toe.

Lt. Col. Jim Hutton, a US Army spokesman, said insurgents also fired three mortar rounds at a nearby US Army base, but that the shells fell short and exploded in a civilian neighborhood. It was not immediately known if there any casualties.

"While maintaining security is a primary concern, we are also very concerned about minimising collateral damage and putting the innocent residents of eastern Baghdad at risk," Hutton said. "The enemy shows no concern for the Iraqi people."

Meanwhile, four Iraqis were killed and one injured in a roadside bombing late Sunday in the town of Khan Bani Sa'ad, northeast of Baghdad on the road to Baquba, police and one of the injured said yesterday.

The men were farmers travelling in a pickup truck carrying petrol canisters for their own use when they hit a roadside bomb in Khan Bani Sa'ad, 20km south of Baquba, said an injured man, Faleh Turki, who was driving the vehicle.

In Mosul, a car bomb killed three members of the Iraqi National Guard and insurgents fired mortar bombs at a police academy in eastern Baghdad yesterday.

Doctors in Mosul said five other Iraqis were wounded by the bomb, which was not a suicide attack. The Interior Ministry said there were no casualties in the mortar attack in Baghdad.

Spokesman Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman said five mortar shells landed near the academy, causing no damage to the building.

Five mortar rounds also struck the Iraqi police academy in Baghdad without causing casualties.

Also yesterday, two Iraqis were killed in the premature explosion of a bomb they were planning to plant by a crucial export pipeline to Turkey, police in the northern oil centre of Kirkuk said.

"At around 4pm (1200 GMT), we heard an explosion and we expected that the pipeline might have been hit. When we reached the site we found the torn bodies of two men by a pick-up van," Lieutenant Colonel Mohammad Hussain said.

"They were apparently trying to plant a bomb by the pipeline, which is just a few metres away from the highway" near the town of Fadha, 90km west of Kirkuk, he said.

A US soldier was killed in an attack near the town of Balad, north of Baghdad, yesterday while another died in a traffic accident in the same area, the US military said.