DEAR Taoiseach and Tánaiste, You probably don’t need me to tell you that this whole Reilly business is a terrible mess.

Al-Qaida’s third in command is believed to be have been killed by a US Predator drone strike, a US official said today.

US and Iraqi officials are still trying to confirm reports that the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq was killed by rivals north of Baghdad.

US and Iraqi forces killed 104 insurgents in hundreds of raids since last week’s killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the American death toll in the war in Iraq hit 2,500, the US military said today.

Yasser Arafat is considering Monib al-Masri, a Palestinian billionaire with no apparent political ambitions, for the job of prime minister, an associate of the West Bank businessman said.