An Iraqi civilian was killed by US troops during an ambush in the troubled city of Fallujah, US military said yesterday.

　　It said gunmen attacked a US patrol with automatic weapons and a rocket propelled grenade late on Saturday. Soldiers returned fire and killed one of the assailants, while the other fled, said a statement released by the Central Command. None of the US soldiers was injured.

　　"Pockets of resistance remain in the region between Fallujah and Ramadi and they appear to be coordinated at the local level," it said.

　　Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold about 50 kilometers west of Baghdad, has been the scene of almost constant clashes since US troops shot dead 18 demonstrators and wounded 78 others in two confrontations in April.

　　There also remain serious problems in the field of public health. Relief agencies are still struggling to control widespread problems aggravated by the conflict, UN officials said yesterday.

　　Geoffrey Keele, Baghdad spokesman for UNICEF, the UN children's fund, said 66 cases of cholera have been confirmed in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, three of them fatal. He blamed the country's damaged infrastructure.

　　Incidence of diarrhea has increased 250 percent among Iraqi children, worsened by war-related damage to Iraq's health and sanitation, Keele said.

　　Meantime, the world-famous treasures of Nimrud, unaccounted for since Baghdad fell two months ago, have been located in good condition in the country's Central Bank - in a secret vault-inside-a-vault submerged in sewage water, US occupation authorities said on Saturday.

　　They also said fewer than 50 items from the collection of the Iraqi National Museum's main exhibition are still missing after the looting and destruction that followed the US capture of Baghdad.

　　The artifacts - gold earrings, finger and toe rings, necklaces, plates, bowls and flasks, many of them elaborately engraved and set with semiprecious stones or enamel - were found last Thursday when the vault was opened, according to an official of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the official name of the US-led occupation force.

　　The Nimrud treasures date back to about 900 BC.