SYRIAN protesters have called for international protection from a military crackdown on nearly six months of nationwide demonstrations demanding an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

GUNMEN in plainclothes are randomly shooting people in the streets of the besieged Syrian city of Hama and families are burying their loved ones in gardens at home for fear of being killed themselves if they venture out to cemeteries, residents said.

TRIBES in one of Iraq’s most volatile provinces have joined together to fight the insurgency in their region, calling on the government and the US-led military coalition to give them weapons, a prominent tribal leader said.

IRAQI Shi’ite politicians agreed yesterday to nominate Jawad al-Maliki as prime minister, replacing the incumbent in a bid to clear the way for a long-delayed new government.

Three of Saddam Hussein’s co-defendants testified for the first time today, denying any role in the deaths and arrests of Shiites in the 1980s, as the trial of the former Iraqi leader entered a new phase.

The trial of Saddam Hussein and fellow members of his regime resumed today, with the judge calling in each defendant individually to present his testimony.

INSURGENTS fired rocket-propelled grenades at the home of an Iraqi police officer yesterday, killing his four children and his brother and wounding his wife.

A FORMER Syrian vice president who has openly broken with President Bashar Assad has intensified his criticism, saying the Damascus regime has outlived its time and is unlikely to survive much longer.

SYRIA’S ruling Ba’ath Party stripped former Vice-President Abdul-Halim Khaddam of membership and joined parliament in demanding he be tried for high treason, the official news agency SANA reported yesterday.

TALKS on the Iraqi constitution remained deadlocked last night over a proposal to ban members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party from public life.

THE speaker of Iraq’s Parliament last night announced a one-day extension in talks on Iraq’s new constitution.

SADDAM Hussein has vowed to sacrifice himself for the cause of Palestine and Iraq in a letter.

BOMBING and shooting attacks west of Baghdad killed six US troops and a suicide car bomber slammed into a truck carrying Iraqi policemen near the airport yesterday, killing at least eight and wounding 25 - the latest wave of violence aimed at derailing Iraq’s advancing political process.

THE tribunal that will put Saddam Hussein on trial released a new video yesterday of the former dictator being questioned by magistrates about the killing of 50 Iraqis in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt in 1982.

AFTER nearly three months of political wrangling, Iraq’s interim National Assembly approved a partial cabinet yesterday, ushering in the country’s first elected government since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

IRAQI officials said yesterday Syrian authorities had captured Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and 29 other officials of the deposed dictator’s Ba’ath Party in Syria and handed them over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture.

ANY delay in Iraq’s January 30 elections would lead to civil war and a “bloodbath” in the country, the interim government’s national security advisor warned yesterday.

Differences between the Iraqi Governing Council and US authorities over who should be the country’s new president stalled a final agreement on the make-up of an interim government to take power on June 30.

TWO US soldiers were killed and one was wounded in an ambush north of Baghdad while insurgents attacked a convoy setting off huge explosions in several vehicles.

American soldiers arrested a suspected former Ba’ath Party official in northern Iraq today as three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks.

IRAQ got its first post-war cabinet yesterday as the funeral march for Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, killed in the Najaf car bomb massacre, continued its three-day journey to the revered cleric’s final resting place.

HUNDREDS of US soldiers raided a northern Iraqi town yesterday in a bid to smash a crime ring wanted for murder, gunrunning and a terrorist attack on a police station that killed a US soldier earlier this month.

A NEW Iraqi war crimes court will try ousted President Saddam Hussein and his top associates, a party in Iraq’s Governing Council said yesterday.

A US-BACKED Iraqi Governing Council held its inaugural meeting yesterday, stressing the start of a new era by abolishing national holidays that honoured Saddam Hussein and creating a new one to mark his downfall.

US President George W Bush yesterday ducked questions over a White House admission that he used flawed intelligence on Iraq’s nuclear programme, while insisting he was right to oust Saddam Hussein.

US forces in Iraq have arrested two more former officials on Washington’s Most Wanted list, Central Command said today.

US FORCES launched a massive operation early yesterday to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from the ousted regime in a show of force designed to stem a wave of deadly attacks on US troops.

US forces today launched a massive operation in Iraq to crush insurgents and capture senior figures from Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime.

GUNMEN opened fire on American troops at a checkpoint early yesterday, killing two US soldiers and wounding nine others in the troubled town of Fallujah – a hotbed of support for Saddam Hussein’s fallen Ba’ath Party, the US military said.

ALLIED forces were yesterday holding a commander of the Baghdad Ba’ath Party after he was handed over by Iraqi Kurds.

THE 13-point statement agreed at the end of the meeting on post-war Iraq said:

AMERICAN troops yesterday made what could be a crucial intelligence discovery - thousands of microfilm cartridges and hundreds of files in a Ba’ath Party enclave in central Baghdad.

TAKING the law into their own hands, Baghdad residents blockaded streets and beat up looters yesterday as the US said the military does not intend to act as a police force.

US-LED forces are providing security against looting in Iraqi cities and are working to prevent further lawlessness, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday.

A FIRST contingent of US special forces made its way into the centre of the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday and was greeted with sniper fire, an AFP correspondent reported.

BASRA’S citizens were last night turning their thoughts to re-establishing order in their city, with signs that the frenzied looting was subsiding.

THE Ba’ath Party ruled Iraq well before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein seized full control and it is likely to haunt Iraqi politics long after he disappears.

THE port of Umm Qasr is not only strategic for the coalition forces attempting to oust Saddam Hussein, it is vital to the very future of the town.

AMERICAN forces yesterday turned their sights on one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen.

IRAQIS said more than 50 people were killed yesterday in an air raid on a Baghdad market after the United States unleashed some of the heaviest air strikes of the war on the capital.

Troops on the edge of the southern Iraqi city of Basra destroyed the ruling Ba’ath Party headquarters overnight in preparation to take over the city, it emerged today.

ABOUT 20 of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen were killed and a key party official captured in a daring night-time raid by British forces in southern Iraq.

PICK-UP trucks mounted with machine guns roam Baghdad streets. Dark grey clouds of smoke from burning fuel darken the sky.