KIEV, Ukraine — A day after eight Ukrainian soldiers died in an explosion at an ammunition dump in Iraq, President Leonid Kuchma yesterday ordered development of a plan for withdrawing the nation's troops from Iraq within months.

Ukraine, whose 1,650 troops are the fourth-largest contingent in the U.S.-led operation in Iraq, previously expressed intentions to withdraw this year, but Kuchma's order speeds up the apparent timetable.

Sixteen Ukrainian soldiers have died in Iraq.

"The situation in Iraq has deteriorated, and, as a consequence, we lost our men," acting Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk said, adding that the withdrawal could begin in March.

Kuchma will leave office in a few days, but his successor, Viktor Yushchenko, also has promised to withdraw soldiers from Iraq.

The initial official account of the explosion said the troops had been killed accidentally while trying to detonate a cache of explosives.

But a group called the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed on a Web site that it was responsible for the explosion. Ukraine's Defense Ministry said authorities now were investigating the possibility it was an attack.

"It's a preliminary scenario, but this might have been a preplanned action," a spokesman said.

U.S. soldier mistakenly kills Iraqi teenager

BAQOUBA, Iraq — A 13-year-old Iraqi girl was mistakenly shot and killed yesterday by a U.S. soldier, the military said.

Capt. Marshall Jackson, a spokesman for the Army's 3rd Brigade Combat Team, called the shooting, which also injured a 14-year-old boy, "an absolute tragedy."

The military said a U.S. soldier in a guard tower spotted smoke outside the base and opened fire. A team sent to investigate found the two children. The boy was evacuated to a hospital in the nearby city of Balad.

"An accident like that, we'll lose credibility," Jackson said. "We don't take this lightly."

Bomb misses convoy, kills seven Iraqis, hurts one

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A roadside bomb that missed a passing U.S. military convoy killed seven Iraqis and injured one south of Baghdad today, police and hospital sources said.

The victims were traveling in a minibus in Yussifiyah, 10 miles south of Baghdad, when the blast occurred, said the director of the town's hospital, Dawoud al-Taie.

The killings were the latest in a series of attacks by insurgents who are trying to disrupt a landmark Jan. 30 national election.

Vatican envoy: Bush promised quick war

VATICAN CITY — The Italian cardinal sent to the White House by Pope John Paul II in March 2003 in a last-hour bid to dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq, said yesterday that the president had promised him the U.S. intervention would be wrapped up quickly.

Bush "told me, 'Don't worry, your eminence. We'll be quick and do well in Iraq,' " Cardinal Pio Laghi said.

Laghi, who was speaking on Telepace, a Catholic TV station, was the Vatican's first envoy to the United States in the 1980s and established a friendship with Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush.

"Unfortunately, the facts have demonstrated afterward that things took a different course — not rapid and not favorable. ... Bush was wrong," Laghi said.

ALSO

The governor of Iraq's volatile Anbar province, Sheik Fassal Raikan al-Gout, yesterday urged members of Saddam Hussein's dissolved military to form a unit under the new Iraqi army to help defend the troubled region against insurgent attacks.

The United States has rejected a request by Sunni Arab clerics to spell out a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq in exchange for calling off their boycott of the Jan. 30 elections, the chief U.S. Embassy spokesman in Baghdad said yesterday.

A roadside bombing killed three Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded six yesterday during a joint patrol with U.S. troops in the restive northern city of Mosul, said Maj. Andre Hance, a U.S. military spokesman. He said there were no U.S. casualties.