Prayer services ended in tragedy when a bomb exploded outside a crowded mosque northeast of Baghdad on Friday killing five and wounding 38, while Iraq's Arab and Kurdish politicians struck a tentative deal on the oil-rich nation's future.

In the tense northern city of Kirkuk, two Iraqi policemen were killed by mistaken coalition gunfire late Friday, the US military confirmed.

US spokeswoman Major Josslyn Aberle said Saturday the policemen were shot after failing to identify themselves as they were being pursued by US troops after a shooting incident.

Soran Mohammed, a policeman at the scene, said the two slain men had been in a clearly marked car when the US patrol arrived and had repeatedly shouted "we are police".

The US Defense Department named Saddam a prisoner of war after much legal wrangling, nearly a month after the fugitive strongman was discovered hiding in a small hole on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was informed Friday that Pentagon lawyers concluded that Saddam met the definition of an enemy prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said.

However, DiRita said under the conventions, his legal status could be re-evaluated at a later date.

It was unclear what impact the clarification of his status would have for Saddam, who already had been accorded treatment due a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has asked to visit Saddam as allowed under the convention, said Saturday it considered the prisoner of war status legally acceptable.

Nada Dumani, Iraq's ICRC spokeswoman, said it was now essential for Saddam to be granted rights enshrined in the convention and accorded fair treatment.

Kurdish Governing Council member Dara Nuraddin told AFP Saddam could be tried in six months time before an Iraqi war crimes tribunal, but he expressed irritation that the Pentagon did not consult Iraqis about his legal status.

"Maybe you will see Saddam on trial in the next six months or possibly more," said Nuraddin, an independent judge who heads the Governing Council's judicial committee.

"There will be Iraqi judges and we might take some assistance from international judges," said Nuraddin, who helped craft Iraq's war crime laws.

Saddam would most likely be tried for the 1988 gassing of some 5,000 Kurds in Halabja, as well as the mass expulsion of Kurds from their homes during his 24-year rule, the judge said.

Nuraddin added that Saddam would also likely be tried for the persecution of the Shiite Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as for war crimes against Iran and Kuwait.

On December 10, Iraq adopted a war crimes tribunal statute, setting up five-man tribunals to judge those members of Saddam's regime suspected of such crimes.

Still, the judge expressed dismay about the Pentagon's latest decision.

"We are shocked and are in talks with the Coalition Provisional Authority about it because we were not consulted," Nuraddin said, referring to the US-led occupation administration.

Nuraddin had previously said it would take no less than six months to investigate the former regime's crimes, with around 20 investigative magistrates working on the dossier.

Meanwhile, tragedy struck Friday as a propane gas tank strapped to a bicycle exploded outside a Shiite mosque where some 500 people were praying in the restive town of Baquba, 60 kilometres (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

The blast killed five and wounded 38, medical sources said.

The US army confirmed the incident but said a man "detonated an IED (improvised explosive device) attached to a propane tank" killing himself and four others and wounding 36.

Some in Iraq fear insurgents are trying to stoke violence among the country's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Looking to defuse ethnic tensions, Iraq's Governing Council has agreed to a federal structure for the country and to enshrining Kurdish self-rule in three northern provinces in the basic law that will precede national elections in late 2005, Nuraddin said.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2003 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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