An American convoy was hit on a highway between the flashpoint towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, locals said. A witness said two soldiers appeared to have been wounded.

Several Americans were wounded and three Iraqis arrested in the second incident in Falahat, on another road near Fallujah, some 60 km west of the capital, witnesses said.

Three mines blew up as three US army vehicles were passing, said office worker Abdel Hamid Ibrahim. An army spokesman said he could provide no details on either attack.

The Briton killed Thursday in Basra died when a military ambulance, marked with a large red cross, he was travelling in was hit by a remote-controlled explosion in an attack that left two other soldiers wounded, the British army said.

The death brought to seven the number of British servicemen killed in Iraq in attacks since major combat operations were declared over on May 1. Sixty American troops have been killed over the same period by suspected loyalists of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.

Another British soldier was found dead in his bed in southern Iraq, the defence ministry in London said, adding that an inquiry had been launched although there was no evidence of foul play or that it was suicide.

The Basra incident came as the top US soldier in Iraq said his army had apologised to Shiite Muslims in Baghdad over a clash on Wednesday that left an Iraqi dead and sent thousands of protestors into the streets railing against the occupation.

A letter of apology, given to Shiite clerics for the incident sparked when US troops in a helicopter apparently removed a religious flag from a tower, also promised to punish the soldiers responsible.

The incident, in Baghdad's impoverished and predominantly Shiite Sadr City district, sparked outrage with many there seeing it as an attack on their cherished faith.

Leaflets being distributed Friday called on Shiites to come from across Baghdad to Sadr City for Friday prayers, which would be held not in the mosques there as usual but under the tower with the flag that sparked Wednesday's confrontation.

The prayers would "denounce the assault on the people of Sadr City, the people of this religion, the people of Islam," said the leaflet, signed by the secretary general of the district's firebrand anti-occupation Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.