Angry Iranians attacked several fuel stations in protest after the government suddenly began long-threatened fuel rationing, while many others rushed to fill their tanks.

A series of car bombs in three different Iraqi cities today left at least seven people dead and dozens wounded.

Gunmen in Baghdad hunted down three different government employees and shot them dead on their way to work today.

A SUICIDE bomber detonated an explosive belt yesterday in a line of Iraqis waiting to receive government payments, killing eight people and wounding about 30, including children, police said.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt today in a line of Iraqis waiting to receive government payments, killing 10 people and wounding about 40, including children, police said.

A roadside bomb attack has killed two Iraqi policemen northeast of Baghdad, police said today.

BRITISH MP George Galloway yesterday angrily rejected charges by the US Congress that he profited from the Iraq oil-for-food programme as “utterly preposterous”.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry has awarded its first contract since the fall of Saddam Hussein, choosing a British, Turkish and local company to develop a northern oil field.

Gunmen kidnapped a Lebanese-American businessman – the second US citizen seized this week in Baghdad – and militants released a tape showing the beheading of an Iraqi officer as a warning to those who deal with “the infidel” Americans.

Rocketing oil prices will not have an immediate effect on the price UK motorists pay for petrol, retailers said today.

Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties warned today they might leave the new government if the Shiite majority gains too much power.

Pipelines and a petrol storage depot were attacked in three different parts of Iraq, setting fires that blazed for hours and lost millions of gallons of oil, officials and media reports said today.

IRAQI rebels combined hi-tech with low-tech yesterday when using donkey carts as launchers in a missile attack on the oil ministry and two Baghdad hotels.

More than a dozen rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq’s Oil Ministry and two hotels today – in brazen coordinated strikes at Baghdad’s most heavily protected civilian sites.

Rockets fired from donkey carts slammed into Iraq’s Oil Ministry and two hotels used by US workers and foreign journalists in Baghdad today injuring at least one man.

Irish exploration company Petrel has placed over seven million shares at 13p each in a private placing with a small number of institutions raising £959,000 (€1.402m).

A GRENADE attack killed a US soldier in Iraq yesterday as a pipeline fire blazed on after an overnight explosion described by an Oil Ministry official as sabotage.