Eleven detainees escaped early today from Iraq’s Camp Bucca prison, but 10 were believed to have been caught hours later, the US military and Iraqi police said.

Insurgents are preparing attacks with suicide cyclists and loading bombs on to donkey carts in a bid to thwart measures which will keep cars off the streets during Iraq’s elections, military sources said today.

The US military’s most critical operation since the capture of Saddam Hussein is putting boat patrols on the Euphrates River, tanks on strategic routes and warplanes overhead in a mission tens of thousands of troops strong: ensuring a credible, Iraqi-run national election.

A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb north of Baghdad today, killing 12 Iraqis – all but one of them National Guards – in another strike against those co-operating with American forces, the US military said.

BRITAIN yesterday said Iraqi leaders had exhausted all political options in Fallujah as the US war ally gave its backing to the all-out US assault on the rebel-held city.

US forces launched airstrikes against suspected militant bases in Fallujah and carried out probing attacks on the city’s outskirts, as they prepared for a major operation in the insurgent bastion that has become the symbol of Iraqi resistance.

IRAQI police suffered two mortal blows yesterday in attacks that left at least 59 people dead and more than 120 injured.

Iraqi police suffered two mortal blows today when a car bomb blew up recruits in the centre of Baghdad, killing at least 47, injuring 114, and an ambush north of the capital left 11 officers and their driver dead.

A series of co-ordinated explosions rocked churches across Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul today in the first attacks targeting the country’s Christian minority during the 15-month violent insurgency.

A SUICIDE bomber blew up a fuel truck near a Baghdad police station yesterday, killing at least nine people, wounding 62 and destroying cars and buildings.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari appealed today for the European Union to help rebuild the country and establish democracy.

THE Iraqi government issued a long-anticipated package of security laws yesterday to help crush insurgents, including a provision allowing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to impose martial law.

The United States tonight launched an airstrike in Fallujah on a safe house used by followers of Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – the second strike against the terror network in three days.

Iraqi insurgents targeted the British run city of Basra today killing at least 55 people, including ten children on their way to schools, in a series of bomb blasts.

A bomb exploded in a school yard in a Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of Baghdad today, killing two people, believed to be children, and wounding three others.

At least three rockets slammed into the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Baghdad early today, causing damage to the buildings that house many US workers and foreign journalists. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

US Marines battled snipers outside a hotel in central Baghdad today, while calm appeared to return to other parts of the Iraqi capital.