BASRA, April 24: Two crew of the occupation forces were killed on Saturday when suicide bombers launched three boat attacks on Iraq's crucial Basra offshore oil terminal.

Two boats exploded alongside a ship tied up at the terminal, which is around 10kms offshore, British military spokesmen and Iraqi officials said.

A third boat was intercepted by a US ship as it approached an exclusion zone around the terminal and there was an explosion soon after it was boarded, they said.

British officials, responsible for the area around Basra where suicide car bombers killed 73 people on Wednesday, said they were still gathering details of the attacks on a terminal responsible for most of Iraq's 1.9 million barrels per day of oil exports.

Officials at Iraq's Southern Oil Company said the terminal had been shut down on security fears.

The attack capped a bloody day for Iraq, in which dozens of people were killed in rocket, bomb and mortar attacks.

Seven US soldiers were among the dead in the latest spate of violence in the bloodiest month for US-led forces since Saddam Hussein's fall.-Reuters