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Falluja, Iraq - In bloodshed sure to inflame anger at the US presence in Iraq, US troops shot dead at least 13 Iraqis during an anti-American protest here overnight, witnesses said on Tuesday.

Witnesses in the town 50km west of Baghdad said the troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, but US officers said their men returned fire after being shot at first.

Falluja hospital director Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali said 13 people had been killed and at least 75 wounded. Some local people gave higher estimates, saying the protesters had been demanding that troops vacate a school in the town.

But US Lieutenant Christopher Hart said 100 to 200 chanting people approached his men, who opened fire after two gunmen with combat rifles appeared from behind the crowd on a motorcycle and started shooting. Some people in the crowd had then also fired at the troops.

"Our soul and our blood we will sacrifice to you martyrs," mourners in Falluja chanted as they buried some of the dead at a cemetery while US helicopters flew overhead.

"It was a peaceful demonstration. They did not have any weapons," said local Sunni Muslim cleric Kamal Shaker Mahmoud. "They were asking the Americans to leave the school so they could use it."

US officers seeking to restore order in the volatile aftermath of Saddam Hussein's fall said 3 000 to 4 000 extra troops and military police would move into Baghdad in the next 10 days to boost security in the capital.

The shooting in Falluja, and a clash between US forces and Iraqi fighters in the northern city of Mosul on Monday in which six Iraqis were killed, punctured some of the optimism generated by a meeting convened by the United States in Baghdad to jump-start the transition to democracy.

The meeting was attended by about 250 prominent Iraqis from across the political, ethnic and religious spectrum. They agreed to hold a national conference in four weeks' time to choose an interim government.

US forces announced they were holding Saddam's veteran oil minister, Amir Muhammed Rasheed, whose wife, bio-weapons scientist Rihab Taha, is known as "Dr Germ". He was 47 on a US list of the 55 most wanted members of Hussein's administration and the six of spades in the deck of cards issued to troops hunting former Iraqi leaders.

With Hussein removed from power, the United States said it was pulling nearly all of its military forces out of neighbouring Saudi Arabia in a major realignment of its presence in the Gulf.

A senior US official travelling with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on a tour of the region said the US was ending military operations in the kingdom and removing almost all of its forces because the southern "no-fly" operation had ended. - Reuters