Baghdad - The British military on Tuesday formally transferred control of its base in the southern Iraqi city of Basra to US forces in a military ceremony attended by Iraqi leaders.

The transfer follows Britain's agreement last year to withdraw all but 500 of the 4,100 troops it had stationed in Iraq ahead of its complete military withdrawal from the country in July.

The 500 remaining British soldiers will train Iraqi forces, the Iraqi navy in particular.

Baghdad - Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and four civilians were wounded in a blast in the northern city of Mosul, police said.

The bomb went off in the al-Akhaa district of eastern Mosul, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

It was the second blast in Mosul on Tuesday. Earlier, seven people were killed and 25 were injured when a man drove a truck laden with explosives toward a police station in al-Mahata district, south of Mosul.

Baghdad 

Arbil, Iraq - A Kurdish parliamentarian on Monday charged that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's description of Iraq as an Arab country was unconstitutional.

Al-Maliki told Arab leaders gathered in Doha, Qatar for the 21st Arab League summit that all Iraqis, regardless of their ethnicity or religion, were agreed that Iraq was an Arab country.

"Al-Maliki's statement ran contrary to the Iraqi constitution," Saad al-Barazanji, deputy head of the Kurdistani Alliance parliamentary bloc, told the Kurdish AKA news agency on Monday.

Baghdad  - Three people were killed and 15 others were injured by a bicycle bomb in Baquba, the capital of the ethnically divided Iraqi province of Diyala, police said Monday.

All the casualties were construction workers looking for day jobs, police in Baquba told the German Press Agency dpa on Monday.

Divided between concentrations of Kurds in the north, Shiite Muslims along its border with Iran, and Sunni Muslims in the south-west, Diyala has been the site of deadly clashes between rival militias and insurgent groups for years.

Baghdad/Cairo  - Three people were killed and 15 others were injured by a bicycle bomb in Baquba, the capital of the ethnically divided Iraqi province of Diyala, the Arabic satellite channel al-Jazeera reported on Monday.

All the casualties were construction workers looking for day jobs, al-Jazeera reported, citing police officials.