TIKRIT, Jan 17: Guerrillas killed three US soldiers and two Iraqi officials on Saturday, taking the death toll of US soldiers in Iraq to 500 since the beginning of the invasion on March 20.

The roadside bomb north of Baghdad appeared to be one of the most powerful used against US occupation forces to date - killing the five inside a Bradley armoured vehicle, which resembles a small tank.

Previous attacks on US convoys have tended to cause casualties aboard lighter vehicles such as trucks.

In Washington, the US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, said after meeting with President Bush that the US was willing to adjust plans for handing over power to appease Iraq's top Shia leader, but was unlikely to meet his key demand for direct elections this year.

Mr Bremer also stressed the June 30 deadline for transferring power to an Iraqi government would not be extended. Occupation troops are, however, scheduled to stay under bilateral agreements with the new government.

He will meet UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday and is expected to press him to send a U.N. team to Iraq to convince Shias that direct elections are not feasible or suggest a workable compromise.

In the latest attack, the roadside bomb near the town of Taji, 30kms north of Baghdad, set the Bradley on fire, killing five inside, said Lt Col William Macdonald of the US Army's Fourth Infantry Division.

Three US soldiers and two Iraqi civil defence officials were killed and two US soldiers were injured, he said. Troops arrested three Iraqi men in a sweep of the area shortly after when a truck they were travelling in was found to contain bomb-making material.

Taji was at the heart of Iraq's military-industrial complex during Saddam Hussein's rule and lies in an area US forces call the "Sunni triangle" - dominated by members of the former president's community whose opposition to the occupation troops has been the fiercest.

The US military also said on Saturday an American soldier died from a "non-hostile gunshot wound" on Friday.-Reuters