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Dubai: Forty people were killed on April 26 in a series of explosions at an arms dump near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which US officials described as deliberate act, giving a jolt to the ongoing US-led efforts to cobble up a post-war administration.

A US officer said "hostile forces" fired flares into a munitions store, setting off many fires.

US troops were stoned by a hostile crowd who chanted anti-US slogans and demanded more security for civilians, when they reached the site and began taking victims to local hospitals.

Residents fled in panic as a series of explosions ripped through the dump, setting off many fires, in the Zafaranyah neighbourhood of Southern Baghdad, at one of the depots set up by US forces to collect Iraqi weapons, BBC reported.

Many people were badly wounded in the blasts, some with burned or severed limbs.

Reports reaching said that fires started all around and explosions ripped through the neighbourhood. In the next house, four women and a child were burned to death.

Meanwhile, coalition forces have killed "several" Iraqi paramilitaries and destroyed their vehicles after coming under attack near the North Western city of Mosul, the US military said.

The first post-war international meeting of Iraqi political groups has begun in the Spanish capital Madrid.

PTI