Iraq’s foreign minister welcomed the release today of 15 British sailors and marines but said the decision was not the result of a deal to release five Iranians detained by the US in Iraq.

A string of car bombs and other blasts killed at least 54 Iraqis on yesterday, including 17 outside Baghdad’s most venerated Sunni mosque.

At least 80 people were killed or found dead in Iraq on today, including 33 victims of a bomb attack on labourers lined up to find a day’s work in Baghdad’s Sadr city Shiite slum. The U.S. military announced the death of the 100th service member killed in combat this month.

The US military today announced that four Marines had been killed – three of them in a roadside bombing in Iraq – during operations in insurgent-ridden Anbar province.

Two British soldiers were killed in Amarah, 180 miles south-east of Baghdad, the Ministry of Defence reported, but gave no other details.

Iraqi police in Beiji said US aircraft bombed a house last night and that seven people were killed and four injured, Capt Arkan Jassim said.

Two US soldiers were killed by gunfire during combat operations in south-west Baghdad, the U.S. military said today.

A US military inquiry has been completed and will be released soon into television footage purportedly showing Americn troops burning the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters.

Two US Marines were killed by a roadside bomb during fighting with insurgents in western Iraq, the military said today.

Suicide attackers carried out a string of car bombings against Iraqi policemen in Baghdad and Kurdish militiamen in the north, killing 14 people and wounding at least 59 today in the latest major assaults on Iraqi security forces and U.S. allies in the country.

A series of explosions rocked Baghdad tonight.

Several hundred tons of conventional explosives are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed today.

U.S.-led forces unleashed a strike today against a building on the outskirts of rebel-held Fallujah believed to be used for insurgents training, the military said in a statement.

Insurgents detonated a pair of car bombs outside an Iraqi National Guard compound today, wounding American and Iraqi forces, a U.S. military official said.

Four people were killed in shelling at a checkpoint of the Fallujah Brigade, which had been patrolling the city since April, security and hospital officials said.

ATTACKERS detonated a car bomb near police and government buildings in the western city of Haditha yesterday, killing 10 Iraqis.

Iraqi militants shot dead an American soldier they have held hostage for nearly three months, saying he was killed because the US government did not change its policy in Iraq, Al-Jazeera television said today.

An American military OH-58 Kiowa helicopter has crashed into a river west of Baghdad, killing the two crew members on board.

A US Apache helicopter went down this morning near the western Iraqi town town of Habbaniyah today.

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.

The United States has apologised to Pakistan for the recent “friendly fire” deaths of two of its soldiers, the foreign ministry said today in Islamabad.

US troops were today moving toward the coast of Liberia to support the arrival of a West African peacekeeping force after 26 Liberians were killed in mortar fire in the besieged capital, Monrovia.

Two US soldiers missing for days from a checkpost have been found dead north of the capital, a senior US army officer said.

Two American soldiers appear to have been abducted in Iraq, defence officials said in Washington today.

ARABS and Turks in Iraq’s main northern oil city threatened yesterday to boycott a vote for mayor as an American general approved six final members of a city council charged with healing ethnic feuding that threatens the region’s stability.

The US military’s top general insisted today that war withIraq can still be avoided.

Iran's Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani has warned the US it will use force if it enters its airspace for attacks on Afghanistan.

The Pentagon on Saturday dubbed the U.S. military's increased role in homeland defense and support for civil authorities "Operation Noble Eagle."

Recent developments related to Tuesday's terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and crash of jetliner in Pennsylvania: