A suicide car bomber detonated explosives among a crowd of labourers across the street from a major Shiite shrine in southern Iraq today, killing 53 people and wounding 105.

A suicide car bomber detonated explosives among a crowd of labourers across the street from a major Shiite shrine in southern Iraq today, killing 43 people and wounding 64.

Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi made an unannounced visit to the war-torn city of Najaf today, calling on militants to lay down their weapons after days of fierce clashes with US forces.

British forces clashed with a rebel Shiite cleric’s militia which had threatened to unleash 1,000 fighters in Basra today unless four arrested men were freed.

Parts of one of the most sacred shrines of Shia Islam suffered damage during clashes today between US forces and radical Shiite militiamen that left at least nine people dead.

Thousands of angry mourners called for vengeance today as they gathered outside Iraq’s holiest Shi-ite shrine where a day earlier a car bomb ripped through a crowd of worshippers, killing at least 85 people – including a leading cleric.

TOWARDS Baghdad, part of the 3rd Infantry Division had reached the area of the Shiite holy city of Najaf after a 230 mile, 40-hour sprint through the desert, killing 100 machine gun-toting militiamen along the way.

DRIVING night and day, more than 70 American tanks and 60 armoured troop carriers raced 700 miles across rough desert terrain, a bold flanking movement that placed US forces less than a day's march from Baghdad yesterday.

In one of the fastest penetrations of hostile territory ever recorded, the US 3rd Infantry division, 2nd Brigade covered 228 miles in less than 40 hours to take fighting positions near the halfway mark to Baghdad.

THE death toll from a stampede at a railway station after a huge political rally in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh rose to 16 yesterday when two more people died in hospital, police said.

Five militants were killed and 13 policemen were wounded during a fierce three-hour gun battle in the southern Indian state of Karnataka early today, police said.