BAGHDAD, Feb 19: Militants staged a bold daylight assault against a US combat post on Monday _ first striking with a suicide car bombing and then firing on soldiers pinned down in a former Iraqi police station. Two soldiers were killed and 17 wounded, the military said.

The head-on attack north of Baghdad was notable for both its tactics and target. Militants have mostly used hit-and-run ambushes, roadside bombs or mortars on US troops and stayed away from direct assaults on fortified military compounds to avoid US firepower.It also appeared to fit a pattern emerging among the suspected militants: trying to hit US forces harder outside the capital rather than confront them on the streets during a massive American-led security operation. But the sweeps have done little so far to ease the city's pain.

Nearly 100 people have died in two days of blasts and sectarian bloodshed in and around Baghdad and Iraqi officials who predicted swift results for the security operation have gone suddenly silent.

“A coordinated attack” is how the US military statement described the raid on the outpost in Tarmiyah, about 50kms north of Baghdad. It added that a suicide car bombing began the fight, but military authorities declined to give further details.

Witnesses and local authorities offered a fuller picture.

According to their accounts, one car _ and possibly others _ rigged with explosives was driven on a kamikaze mission at dawn into the concrete outer barriers around the army base, a former Iraqi police station taken over by American troops late last year.

The blasts ignited stored fuel, they said. Soon, parts of the base were ablaze and under gunfire, but the size of the guerilla force was unclear.

US helicopters evacuated wounded soldiers from the compound _ located in the centre of the town of more than.—AP