BLACK Watch troops were on alert last night in the wake of a suicide bomb attack near their camp in the so-called Triangle of Death that left two soldiers fighting for their lives.

The men, both bomb disposal experts, were in the back of an armoured Warrior combat vehicle when a suicide car bomber crashed into them.

The attack came on the same day that the interim Iraqi government declared a state of emergency and a British security worker was killed near Basra.

Rebels also attacked a number of police stations, in western Anbar province, in a wave of violence that left 22 dead.

The suicide bomb, near the Black Watch base at Camp Dogwood, blew the legs off one of the British soldiers and caused horrific limb injuries to the other. Their lives were probably saved by a doctor at the scene.

The men, one serving with the Royal Logistics Corps and the other with the Royal Signals, were airlifted to a US medical facility where their condition was described as stable by the Ministry of Defence.

They were airlifted to a military hospital in Germany last night.

The rebel action came four days after three Black Watch soldiers were killed following their controversial deployment in the US-controlled area.

Sergeant Stuart Gray, 31, and privates Paul Lowe, 19, and Scott McArdle, 22, all from Fife, were killed in a suicide attack at a checkpoint, for which followers of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - responsible for the death of kidnapped Briton Ken Bigley - claimed responsibility.

The latest suicide attack happened as tension was rising in Iraq ahead of an imminent assault on Fallujah by US and Iraqi troops.

And Black Watch troops responded to an "urgent request" from the US army to move into a position on the east bank of the Euphrates river, which would help bar routes to and from Fallujah.

The British security man and a South African colleague were killed by a roadside bomb in Zubayr, just south of Basra.

The Foreign Office confirmed that a British national was killed, but gave no further information.

Zubayr is Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles south-east of the capital, Baghdad.

* US troops seized their first part of rebel territory in the guerilla sanctuary of Fallujah last night. It included a medical aid station where several people were taken prisoner.

As troops began final preparations for battle, commanders warned them to expect the most brutal urban fighting since the Vietnam War.