<B>A US </B>soldier died and 34 were wounded when insurgents fired mortars at a military base near Baghdad while hundreds of Iraqis gathered in the capital to wait for relatives to be freed from prison under a new US amnesty.

A US military spokesman said at least six mortar rounds struck a logistics base west of the capital shortly after sundown on Wednesday, with some landing close to a sleeping quarters, sending shrapnel and glass flying across a wide area.

?We now know that one US soldier was killed and 34 were wounded,? a US military spokesman in Baghdad said yesterday. Several of the wounded were flown to a nearby military field hospital for emergency treatment.

The attack came hours after Paul Bremer, the US administrator in Iraq, announced plans to free up to 500 Iraqi prisoners as part of a new policy of reconciliation that gives those seen as a low-level security threat a second chance.

Hundreds of families began gathering at dawn outside the gates of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad ? now renamed the Baghdad Central Penitentiary ? in the hope that friends or relatives may be part of the release programme.

?We heard on the radio and television that they (US forces) will release detainees, so we came here in the early morning,? said Hussein Ali, who drove from Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad, to try to find his brother Hassan.

?My brother has been detained for two months and we heard that he is sick and he has no medication,? he said.

It was not exactly clear when the first prisoners would be released, although Adnan Pachachi, president of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, said 100 prisoners would be freed on yesterday and thousands more soon.

The prisoner-release programme follows last month?s capture of Saddam Hussein, the biggest success for occupation forces since the Iraqi leader was ousted in April in a US-led invasion.

In the United States, a major think-tank said US officials had played up the danger of Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction capability as they readied for war, and said the weapons were not an immediate threat to the United States or the Middle East.

<B>332 US soldiers killed since March 2003</B>

?Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq?s WMD and ballistic missile programmes,? the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an influential Washington-based think-tank, said in a report.

In the face of controversy over the justification for war, and relentless attacks on occupation forces, US administrators are trying to speed up the pace of transition ahead of the handover of power to Iraqi authorities in July.

Wednesday?s mortar attack took the number of US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq since March to 332.

Officials with the US-led coalition say they hope a carrot-and-stick approach ? freeing low-level threats while at the same time stepping up the hunt for still-at-large members of the former regime ? will create more peace and security.

?It is time for reconciliation, time for Iraqis to make common cause,? Bremer told a news conference on Wednesday. Those suspected of serious violent crimes would not be freed, he said.

Altogether some 9,000 prisoners detained over the past eight months are still being held while many others have been detained and released since Saddam was ousted in April.

Along with the releases, Bremer announced a renewed effort to capture or kill the 13 at-large members of the US military?s 55-most-wanted list and around 30 other senior former regime members believed to be masterminding the insurgency.

Luke Baker