A senior figure in an outlawed Sunni Muslim militant group that has been linked to al-Qaida was among six men arrested last week in eastern Pakistan, a police official said today.

Hundreds of police secured a religious procession through Peshawar in north-west Pakistan today, after a suicide bomber killed 15 people near a similar Shiite Muslim gathering and heightened fears of sectarian violence.

The prime minister of Iraq today ordered an investigation into the conduct of Saddam Hussein’s execution in a bid to learn who in the group of witnesses taunted the former Iraqi leader in the last minutes of his life and leaked a mobile-phone video of his death to an Arab satellite television station and website.

Sunni Muslims, angered by the execution of Saddam Hussein and the hurried and undignified way his hanging was carried out, have taken to the streets of Iraq in mainly peaceful demonstrations.

An appeals court decision upholding Saddam Hussein’s death sentence is final and does not require the approval of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, a presidential spokesman said today.

Police who raided a militant hideout said today they arrested the alleged mastermind of major sectarian attacks that killed more than 100 minority Shiite Muslims in south-western Pakistan.

A stampede after an Islamic religious seminar killed at least 29 women and children and injured more than 70 others in Karachi today.

Suicide bombers killed 65 worshippers at two mosques in eastern Iraq today while in Baghdad two car bombs destroyed the blast wall protecting a hotel housing foreign journalists and killed eight Iraqis.

Pakistani police detained dozens of suspected militants overnight as part of a crackdown on radical groups in the wake of the London suicide bombings, officials said today.

A SUICIDE attacker blew up a car in a crowd of hundreds of men waiting outside a Baghdad army recruiting centre yesterday, killing at least 46 in the second bombing in two days targeting Iraqis working with the coalition.

The Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV network has reported the death toll in a car bomb attack at an Iraqi holy shrine was at least 17.

The job of rebuilding Iraq from its war-torn ruins begins today with the first of a series of meetings to shape an interim authority and a future government.

SHOOT-OUTS between political rivals killed three people yesterday, marring the first general elections in Pakistan since a 1999 military coup led by President Pervez Musharraf ended democratic rule.

British and US warplanes have bombed an anti-aircraft artillery base in southern Iraq after coming under artillery fire.

At least 15 worshippers were massacred today when attackers opened fire on a Christian church in southern Pakistan.

A man convicted of killing an Iranian diplomat 10 years ago has been hanged in Pakistan.