The British ambassador to Iraq issued an appeal today for the release of five kidnapped Britons and asked Iraqis to come forward with any information about them.

Hundreds of Iraqi and US troops cordoned off sections of Baghdad’s Sadr City slum early today for a series of raids in an effort to find five Britons abducted from a nearby government building.

The leader of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was killed today in a gun battle with British soldiers, Iraqi police said.

Iraq’s prime minister has named an Iraqi general who was taken prisoner of war by US troops during the 1991 Gulf War as the commander of a new security plan that aims to restore stability in Baghdad, military officers said tonight.

Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital.