Rebels rocket US-UK consulates in S Iraq

al-Qaeda linked groups pledged deadly revenge attacks -- including the threat of chemical weapons -- over the Tal Afar assault, prompting Interior Minister Bayran Bager Sulagh to charge that they has "lost their senses".

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who on Friday had given the go-ahead for the assault after days of deadly clashes failed to dislodge the rebels, has gone to the northern town "to show his defiance of the terrorists", Sulagh said.

Overnight, four 107mm Chinese-built rockets slammed into ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's former Basra palace which houses both the US and the British consulates, a Western diplomat said.

"There were no casualties or injuries, and no significant structural damage," according to the US embassy.

The attack was the latest in a series of attacks which have increased tension in an area that has remained relatively free of the deadly insurgency engulfing much of the rest of the country.

On Sunday, a British serviceman was killed and three injured in a bomb attack in Basra, six days after two more British soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing near the city.

The Danish battalion commander in the area, Colonel Flemming Toft, suggested the recent spike in violence might be linked to the October 15 referendum on the constitution, or result from the fact rebels were having to redeploy because of coalition pressure further north.

"The Americans are making it pretty hot for them elsewhere," he said.

In northern Iraq, where a joint US and Iraqi force of some 10,000 men has been conducting a wide-scale counter-insurgency operation to recapture Tal Afar, insurgents were melting away after initially offering resistance.

"A majority of terrorists left the town without fighting," according to interior ministry commando General Adnan Sabet