Fighting erupts in Iraq cities

Government troops regained control of the holy city of Karbala after killing ten members of a Shiite cleric's private army, arresting 281 more and imposing a strict curfew on the town.

But soldiers clashed with militia fighters elsewhere, including in Iraq's second city of Basra, where masked gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades at the governor's headquarters, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

At the same time, deadly violence continued in the capital, where a car bomb killed eight people and wounded another 28 near the main bus station.

Checkpoints were thrown up around Karbala, with only local people allowed in or out, after local cleric Ayatollah Mahmud al-Hasani's armed supporters killed at least six soldiers and civilians in clashes on Tuesday.

"On Tuesday, August 15, a group of gunmen attacked a police station and government offices in Karbala with the aim of destabilising it," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said, in a statement issued as head of Iraq's armed forces.

"The 4th Corps managed to kill 10 of them and arrest 281 others before calming the situation ... The situation is now under control," he added.

Hasani spokesman Dhia al-Musawi said the militia was switching to passive resistance. "Followers from Hilla and Basra are going to come to Karbala. They will hold a sit-in wherever they are stopped by the police," he said.

Police in Kut, 150 kilometres from Karbala, said Hasani's supporters there had ambushed a patrol and killed one officer.

Meanwhile, in Musayyibb, 55 kilometres south of Baghdad, police said they had arrested 25 pro-Hasani militants after fighting there.

In Basra, black-clad fighters fought an hour-long gunbattle with Iraqi troops after firing on the governor's headquarters. They were dispersed and five of them arrested, a police officer told said.

The fighting reflects growing tension between Iraq's US-backed security forces and increasingly confident Shiite militias, some of them followers of local preachers, others linked to parties in the fragile coalition government.

Shiite leaders such as radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, head of the powerful Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), have called for communities to form self-defence units.