Triumphant Bush to mark end of major combat, as US troops wounded in attack.

(From Agence France Presse)

As a triumphant US President George W. Bush prepared for a speech here announcing the end of major combat in Iraq, seven US soldiers were injured in a grenade attack in a city west of Baghdad.

Bush's address, the first by a sitting president aboard a moving carrier at sea, was to herald the end of "major combat operations" in Iraq and say that key war goals had been met, but stop short of declaring victory or formally declaring the hostilities over, which would oblige Washington to free its Iraqi prisoners.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was several hundred kilometers (miles) off the southern US coast in the Pacific steaming towards its homeport in San Diego, in southern California, after duty in the Gulf.

Bush, who reached this nuclear powered aircraft carrier aboard a four-seat S-3B "Viking" navy jet, was to hold the toppling of Saddam Hussein as "a crucial advance" in the war on terrorism, according to advance excerpts of the 6:00 pm (0100 GMT Friday) speech.

The US president however warned that "difficult work" lies ahead in the war on terrorism and in Iraq.

In one indication of those difficulties, seven US soldiers were injured when two unidentified men lobbed grenades over the wall of their positions in the Islamist stronghold of Fallujah.