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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A bomb exploded on the outskirts of the southern city of Mahawil on Friday, wounding two Polish soldiers on patrol in the area.
A military spokesman said the soldiers' injuries were not life-threatening and that the attack was under investigation. Mahawil is about 50 miles southeast of Baghdad.
Two other coalition soldiers were slightly injured earlier Friday when Iraqi insurgents fired at least two projectiles, possibly mortar shells, at coalition headquarters in Baghdad. A spokeswoman said she did not know their nationalities.
A building in the so-called Green Zone, the downtown area housing the headquarters, was slightly damaged in the attack, the first against the U.S. seat of power since the Americans mounted a massive counteroffensive against insurgents last month.
"I heard what appeared to be incoming mortar rounds," Charles Krohn, a U.S. defense spokesman, said by telephone from his room inside the Green Zone. "I was shaken and I heard a couple of thumps. I felt the vibrations."
The zone includes the Al Rasheed Hotel, which was rocketed Oct. 26 in an attack that killed a U.S. colonel and wounded 18 other people. Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying in the hotel at the time but escaped injury.
Meanwhile, members of the Iraqi Governing Council said they may ask the U.S. military to expel 3,800 paramilitaries of the Mujahedeen Khalq, an anti-Iran group operating from Iraq.
"We might ask the Americans because they have the military capabilities," Governing Council member Dara Noor al-Din said. "We don't have an army and the police force isn't well enough equipped to face the Mujahedeen, because they have light weapons."
The U.S.-appointed council has no plans to hand them over to Iran, where they are wanted for terrorist attacks, Iraqi officials said.
The Mujahedeen Khalq has for years sought to topple Iran's clerical government and kept an armed force in Iraq. During Saddam Hussein's rule, its fighters are believed to have taken part in some of Saddam's campaigns to suppress dissent among the country's Kurdish and Shiite Muslim communities.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
