Blair said in an interview with Abu Dhabi television monitored here that "the Baghdad street market bombings, for example, we are sure that the first one is not coalition forces, we are still trying to check out the second one."

Around 30 people were wounded on March 26 when two missiles fell on a market. Baghdad has said allied fire was responsible, while British officials have previously suggested Iraqi missiles might have malfunctioned and fallen back on the city.

Meanwhile, a total of 30 civilians were killed and 47 wounded in a second Baghdad market bombing on March 28.

"I understand why, when people see the carnage and the bloodshed, they feel very angry about it," Blair said.

"But I ask people not to treat these reports as correct until they are actually proven. There will be innocent civilians that are killed but we have done everything we possibly can to minimise this," he added.

The coalition has said there was no evidence that one of its missiles had caused the destruction in the residential area and suggested it might have been an Iraqi air defence missile that missed its target and fell back to earth.

Blair also promised in his interview that Britain and the United States would not abandon the people of Iraq and would not leave until Saddam Hussein has been removed from power.

In another interview, with the Arabic service of BBC World Service radio, Blair said that concerning civilian casualties, "I would say to people in Iraq, the numbers that have lost their lives (in the war) are only a small number compared with hundreds of thousands who have lost their lives under Saddam.

"Our pledge to the people of Iraq is to make sure that they get freedom, the ability to live their lives free from fear," Blair said.

He said: "The one thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that at the end of this, Iraq is not going to be run by Americans or by Britons, or by any other outside power.

"As soon as the process of transition is over, it's going to be run by Iraqi people and a broad, representative government, not a small clique, an elite around someone like Saddam," the prime minister said.

Blair said he wanted the transitional period between the end of the war and the establishment of an Iraqi-run interim authority to be as short as possible.

"As soon as the conflict ends, obviously there is a period of time when the country is stabilising.

"But as soon as possible we have got to put in place an Iraqi interim authority that will be run by Iraqis," he said, referring to what many believe with be either a UN or UN-military-run transitional administration.

He said the coalition was not planning to attack other countries in the region.

"There is no question of 'who next?'. We're in Iraq for a particular reason and this is not a war against Iraq, this is a war against Saddam." Blair said.

Blair said there was no plans to attack countries in the region like Syria and Iran.

SPACE.WIRE