FRESH hopes emerged last night that Dublin-born hostage Margaret Hassan could be released by her abductors.

Gunmen stormed the compound of a Saudi company in a fashionable Baghdad neighbourhood, seizing an American, a Nepalese and four Iraqis after a gun battle in which a guard and one of the attackers were killed.

THE beheading of two Iraqi intelligence officers by their kidnappers appeared in a video on an Islamic website yesterday.

The beheadings of two Iraqi intelligence officers by their kidnappers appeared in a video on an Islamic website today.

Clashes between British forces and Shiite militia in the southern Iraqi city of Amarah left 14 people dead and 42 injured today, according to the Health Ministry.

A car bomb exploded today outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said.

Militants freed a Filipino truck driver after the Philippines government gave in to their demands to withdraw troops from Iraq to prevent the beheading of the 46-year-old father of eight who had been held captive for two weeks.

A United States air strike targeting a purported fighting position used by foreign militants in Fallujah demolished a house and killed 14 people, hospital and local officials said today.

A MILITANT group holding two Bulgarian truck drivers hostage in Iraq said last night it had executed one of them and planned to kill the other in 24 hours.

THE camera shows the suicide bomber warmly embracing a group of masked men. There are kisses on the cheek and a shot of him in the cab of a truck — his fingers resting on what appears to be a detonator.

INSURGENTS killed 89 people in a devastating series of co-ordinated attacks against police and government buildings across Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq yesterday, less than a week before the handover of sovereignty.

Insurgents influenced by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi launched co-ordinated attacks across Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq today, less than a week before the handover of sovereignty.