Six people are still unaccounted for after a suicide car bomber killed himself and a policeman at a checkpoint outside the UN headquarters in Baghdad today.

At least two people were killed and eleven others injured when a car bomb exploded morning while the vehicle was being examined at a checkpoint as it tried to enter the UN compound in Baghdad.

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.

Paul Bremer, the US civilian administrator for Iraq, has said he was “shocked and saddened by the horrific and cowardly' assassination attempt on Governing Council member Aquila al-Hashimi.

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.