A man looks at the damaged top tier of the Malwiya tower in Samarra, Iraq. (AFP)

Samarra (Iraq), April 1 (Reuters): An ancient Islamic minaret, one of Iraq?s most important monuments, was damaged in an explosion today, witnesses in the town of Samarra said.

Photographs show part of the top section of the spiralling 52-metre tower, built in the 9th century, was blown away in the blast, leaving crumbled brick and clay.

?Terrorists caused an explosion in Samarra?s spiral minaret on April 1, damaging the top of the structure,? the US military said in a statement. It said no US troops were at the site of the blast.

The Malwiya minaret is one of the most important sites of Islamic antiquity. It was built by Abbasid Caliph Al-Motawakel in 852 AD, when Samarra was capital of the declining Abbasid empire. Residents said insurgents might have detonated the blast to prevent US forces from using the tower.

Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris river, has been a focal point of the insurgency over the past two years. US forces overran the city late last year, taking it back from insurgents.

Crouched behind sandbags, US snipers sometimes fired at militants from the minaret. Insurgents also used it as a firing post, the US military said. A mortar round blew a small hole in the structure last year.

Before the war, the minaret drew large numbers of visitors from across the Islamic world and the West, including UN weapons inspectors who went sightseeing in Samarra when they were in Iraq before the war which toppled Saddam Hussein.

French hostages

France has proof that a French journalist and her driver are still alive nearly three months after they were taken hostage in Iraq, foreign minister Michel Barnier said in comments released today.

?We have proof they are alive,? Barnier said in a television interview recorded by France 2 television on Wednesday.