Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s party will stick by him as the Shiite nominee for a second term and will put forward the name of a new candidate only if the premier decides to step aside, a top party official said today.

A bomb planted near a tea stand killed eight men waiting for jobs in a largely Shiite area of Baghdad today and six other people died in scattered violence across the country.

INSURGENTS fired rocket-propelled grenades at the home of an Iraqi police officer yesterday, killing his four children and his brother and wounding his wife.

Campaigning came to a stop today around Iraq to give the country’s 15 million voters an opportunity to reflect before deciding who will govern their country for the next four years.

The Iraqi parliament delayed a session today on whether to approve a new constitution hours before a deadline as faction leaders failed in last-minute talks to agree on a federated state and other divisive issues.

The Iraqi parliament session on whether to sign off on the new constitution was postponed today for two hours, Shiite member Mohammed Baqir al-Bahadli said.

Roadside bombs have claimed more US lives in Iraq, killing three US soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad and Sunni Muslim areas to the north of the capital.

A US soldier was killed yesterday in an apparent drive-by shooting at a gas station in Iraq, the US military said.

A MORTAR blast tore through a market north of Baghdad killing nine civilians and injuring more than a dozen as the UN said it was pulling more staff out of the strife-torn country.

A mortar blast at a market north of Baghdad killed eight civilians shortly after the United Nations announced plans to scale back its international staff because of continuing violence.

Aquila al-Hashimi, the only member of Saddam Hussein’s regime to be chosen by Iraq’s American occupiers to sit on the interim Governing Council, has died, five days after she was gunned down near her west Baghdad home.

A HOMEMADE bomb exploded yesterday in Baghdad, missing an American military patrol but killing at least one Iraqi and injuring 18 others as it destroyed two civilian buses.

THREE American soldiers were killed and 13 injured in a mortar attack and a bombing in the volatile region of central Iraq, the US military reported yesterday.

The Iraqi Governing Council member today targeted in an assassination attempt has been moved to a secret location after surgery.

Aquila al-Hashimi, one of three women members of Iraq’s Governing Council, was shot in the abdomen and critically wounded today in an assassination attempt outside her home in west Baghdad, police and doctors said.