BAGHDAD, 11 June 2003 — Three Iraqis were killed when munitions exploded at a depot in the southern city of Diwaniyah, US Central Command said yesterday, highlighting the dangers of the sea of ordnance which washed over Iraq after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces. Two Iraqis were also wounded in Monday’s blast but there were no US or British casualties.

Later Monday, a series of explosions ripped through another ammunitions depot in the central Shiite Muslim pilgrimage city of Karbala. No casualties were reported but US forces established a four-kilometer buffer zone around the dump to protect residents. Centcom said the Diwaniyah blast was in an Iraqi depot but the Karbala blasts were in a US one. It said the multiple explosions at the American depot were not believed to be the result of hostile action but added that investigations were under way into both incidents.

US commanders have repeatedly warned of the dangers of the huge arsenals of military materiel that Saddam’s forces, both regular and irregular, stashed in clandestine dumps in towns and cities across Iraq. In late April, at least six people were killed after an explosion at a collection point for Iraqi munitions established by US troops in a residential area of south Baghdad sent rockets raining down on nearby homes.

US troops have staged a series of raids to crack down on guerrilla fighters north of Baghdad, detaining 384 people and suffering four casualties from Iraqi resistance, the US military said yesterday. A military spokesman said 30 of the Iraqis detained in the raids around the towns of Balad and Baquba on Monday had been confirmed as supporters of Saddam. Twelve of those detained had tried to escape by boat down the Tigris River but were captured by US military engineers in a patrol boat.

The spokesman said of the four wounded US soldiers, three were evacuated to Germany for medical treatment and one later resumed active duty. Several US soldiers have been killed or wounded in the last two weeks in ambushes concentrated in two main areas — to the west of Baghdad around Falluja and Ramadi, and to the north around Balad, Baquba and Tikrit, Saddam’s home town.

The US military blames members of Saddam’s Baath Party for the attacks. It says the ambushes are not being centrally coordinated but are organized on a local level. The spokesman said while Baath Party members were the main suspects, the military was not ruling out other groups, including Muslim militants. But many residents in the tense areas around Baghdad say local anger is fuelled by US troops frisking women and bursting into houses.

Meanwhile, Sharif Ali Bin Hussein, a scion of Arabia’s Hashemite dynasty, returned to Iraq yesterday, 45 years after the revolution that toppled the British-backed monarchy and killed his cousin, King Faisal II. Now he says he wants to help shape Iraq’s political future after the US-led war, though it is not clear how many Iraqis would welcome any move to restore a monarchy that had little popular support in its day.

Only 2,000 tribesmen and intellectuals turned out to welcome him at the royal mausoleum in Baghdad after his arrival from London in a privately chartered jet. “We are very happy. This is the moment we were waiting for all our lives,” Sharif Ali, flanked by a dozen bodyguards, told the cheering crowd in the heat-baked mausoleum garden, after praying for the royals buried there.