Congress approves $87bn for Iraq

The US wants to ease the burden on its hard-pressed troops in Iraq

The US Senate has approved President George Bush's request for about $87bn to fund military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But senators voted to cut $1.86bn from President Bush's request for $20.3bn for Iraq's reconstruction.

They also defied the president by voting to convert half of a $20bn aid package to rebuild Iraq into a loan.

The House of Representatives had earlier approved President Bush's $87bn package, which also has funds for operations in Afghanistan.

A joint committee of the two houses will now have to reconcile the bills and come up with a final measure, which President Bush wants before a donors' conference on 23 October in Madrid.

The emergency spending bill was passed by 87 votes to 12 in the Senate.

The House passed its version of the bill by 303 votes to 125.

Casualties

The announcement came on the day another four US soldiers were killed in Iraq.

Religious fanatics are being blamed for the Karbala tensions

Their deaths brought to more than 100 the total number of US personnel who have died in attacks since major hostilities ended.

In one incident on Thursday night, three US military police officers and at least two Iraqi police officers were killed when they clashed with supporters of a Shia cleric in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala, the US military says.

In the capital Baghdad, a military police officer died on Friday in a roadside bomb attack, marking the 101st death since the end of hostilities.

The violence came hours after the United States won unanimous backing at the United Nations Security Council for its plans for reconstruction in Iraq.

The US hopes the UN resolution will pave the way for more multi-national troops to go to Iraq to help stabilise and rebuild the country.

In other developments:

• Spanish and Iraqi investigators question suspects arrested over the recent killing of Spanish military attache Jose Antonio Bernal in Baghdad, Spanish media report.

• About 3,000 supporters of anti-coalition cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demonstrated peacefully at a Baghdad shrine against the US and the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

• One Humvee in an American convoy was damaged, and a soldier was reportedly wounded in an explosion near the central city of Falluja, witnesses reported.