BOMBERS killed 42 people yesterday at a Baghdad restaurant favoured by police and an army recruiting centre to the north, while Iraqi troops along the Iranian border found 27 decomposing bodies, unidentified victims of the grisly violence plaguing the country.

At least 10 people, including a suicide bomber, were killed in an overnight suicide bombing in a remote village north of Baghdad, officials said today.

Using car bombs and a man with explosives strapped to his body, insurgents killed more than 60 people in three Iraqi cities today, police said.

In another attack targeting Iraqi security forces, a suicide car bomb destroyed a police minibus at a checkpoint in Saddam Hussein’s hometown today, killing at least eight policemen, officials said.

Intelligence agencies were scouring militant Islamic websites today for the first news of the fate of a young Briton and two Americans who were kidnapped in Baghdad yesterday.