The brother of British hostage Ken Bigley said today he was looking into reports that a new Iraqi militant group had intervened to help negotiate the engineer’s release.

The unbearable heartache of witnessing her son’s torment at the hands of his brutal Iraqi captives proved too much for brave Lil Bigley tonight.

The brother of a British hostage in Iraq have appealed for his release on pan-Arab satellite television.

IRAQI Prime Minister Iyad Allawi yesterday said elections would be held on schedule in January despite a surge in violence and more than a score of hostages under threat of death from insurgents.

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

REBEL forces inside the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf were warned yesterday they have “hours to surrender” or face attack from US and Iraqi forces.

A car bomb exploded today outside a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing at least five people and injuring 53 others, police said.

The terrorist group of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's has kidnapped a Somali truck driver in Iraq and threatened to behead him if his Kuwaiti company does not stop working there, according to a videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera today.

A MILITANT group holding two Bulgarian truck drivers hostage in Iraq said last night it had executed one of them and planned to kill the other in 24 hours.