Increased attacks by insurgents over the past two days have killed at least 44 Iraqis, including 12 labourers – five of them brothers – who were gunned down at a construction site.

A suicide car bomber killed two Iraqis and wounded five today in an attack on a police patrol in an area of Baghdad where insurgents had kidnapped and murdered a defence lawyer in Saddam Hussein’s trial last week, police said.

The defence team in the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has demanded that the case be delayed or moved out of Iraq, following the kidnapping and murder of one of its lawyers.

A defence lawyer in Saddam Hussein’s mass murder trial who was kidnapped has been found dead, his body dumped near a Baghdad mosque, police and a top lawyers’ union official said today.