SUICIDE bombers launched three coordinated boat attacks on Iraq's key southern Basra oil export terminal on Saturday, killing two members of US-led coalition forces.

Coalition officials said there was no damage to the terminal through which Iraq ships nearly all the 1.9 million barrels of oil it exports per day, but the installation ? some 10 km (six miles) offshore ? was shut down for an undisclosed period.

The US Navy said four other coalition members were wounded in the attacks, which followed suicide car bombings in the city of Basra itself this week that killed more than 70 people and were blamed by Washington on Osama bin Laden?s al Qaeda.

?The coalition boarding team were killed and wounded as a result of three concurrent waterborne attacks in the Arabian Gulf,? the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet said in a statement.

It said an eight-man interception team had approached a bomb-rigged boat when it exploded. Twenty minutes later, two unidentified small boats also blew up, the statement said.

The statement did not identify the nationalities of the dead and wounded, pending notification of next of kin.

A British Defence Ministry spokeswoman in London said: ?There was no damage to the oil terminal... As far as I know there were no British casualties.?

Terminal shut

Officials at Iraq?s Southern Oil Company said the terminal, which is in Britain's sector of responsibility in the country, had been shut down.

?All workers were evacuated. We are concerned about the possibility of more attacks,? said one official. The boat attacks capped a bloody day for Iraq.

Five US soldiers were among more than 40 other people killed in attacks elsewhere in the country, the latest spate of violence in the bloodiest month for US-led forces since Saddam Hussein was toppled over a year ago.

In one of the worst incidents, at least 13 Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded when mortar bombs struck a busy market in the Shi'ite Muslim area of Sadr City in Baghdad, witnesses and hospital sources said.

?There was blood and bodies everywhere,? said Bassam Abdul Rahim. Angry residents of Sadr City ? a powerbase of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who US-led forces have vowed to kill or capture ? held up bloodied human remains to television cameras and said U.S. helicopters had fired at the market.

They put a sign on a dead donkey saying: ?This is Bush.?

Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, top US military spokesman in Iraq, denied US involvement and said those responsible may have been aiming at an old cigarette factory nearby that was used by US-led forces.

One woman was killed in a separate attack in the Sadr City area when a mortar bomb hit her home. Her daughter was wounded.

Sadr, who US officials say is wanted by an Iraqi judge in connection with the murder of another cleric, is holed up with his Mehdi Army militia in the southern city of Najaf, a holy site to Iraq's Shi'ite majority.

North Iraq City

Four killed, 11 wounded

• Katyusha rockets hit a hospital and a hotel in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul yesterday, killing two hospital and two hotel workers and wounding 11 people, police said. They said a rocket slammed into the Salam (Peace) Hospital in the town, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, killing two women staff and wounding 10 other people. Less than an hour later, a second rocket hit Ashour Hotel in the city centre, causing extensive damage and wounding three people. Two of the wounded, both hotel workers, died shortly afterwards in hospital. It was not clear who launched the weapons but anti-US insurgents have regularly fired rockets and mortar bombs at US bases, sometimes missing their targets and hitting residential areas.