Iraqi Vice-President, minister hurt in bomb blast

Baghdad: Iraq's Shiite Vice-President and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt yesterday when a bomb killed six people at a ministry in Baghdad where they were attending an official ceremony.

Police sources said Public Works Minister Riad Gareeb, also a Shiite, had been seriously wounded when a bomb hidden at a ministry's meeting hall exploded. Aides to Vice-President Adel Abdul Mahdi said he escaped with light wounds caused by shrapnel.

Aides to the vice-president, a member of the Shiite majority that dominates the US-backed government, said he was later discharged from a US military hospital in the Green Zone, a vast government compound that also houses the US embassy, and that he had returned to his office.

Renewing accusations that Iranian-made weapons are being used by Iraqi militants fighting American troops, the US military showed yesterday what it said was a large cache of Iranian bombs found in a raid north of Baghdad on Saturday.

The cache, displayed to reporters at a US military base in Baghdad, included components to make sophisticated roadside bombs, mortar bombs and rockets.