The Fallujah city council chairman, a critic of al-Qaida who took the job after his three predecessors were assassinated, was killed today – the latest blow in a violent internal Sunni struggle for control of an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

The jury in the credit card counterfeiting trial at Cork Circuit Criminal Court has found the three accused men guilty on all 16 counts by unanimous verdicts tonight.

A credit card counterfeiting gang was interrupted by gardaí in the process of making cards at a house in Cork city for use in ATM machines, it was claimed on the opening day of a trial today.

Gunmen raided the Baghdad offices of a new Sunni-Arab television station today, killing four guards and four technicians, police said.

A suicide truck bomb crashed into a Baghdad police headquarters today, killing seven and wounding at least double that many in a deadly 24 hours that saw more than 45 killings in Iraq, including two American soldiers, authorities said.

A suicide truck bomb crashed into a police headquarters building in Baghdad today, destroying the building and killing seven policemen, police said.

A parked car rigged with a bomb exploded today in Baghdad’s eastern neighbourhood of Rashad, killing two civilian pedestrians and injuring five others.

A roadside bomb ripped through a bus today killing 10 people working for an organisation opposed to the Iranian regime, police said.

Al-Qaida has sent several fighters from Iraq to join insurgents in Afghanistan, a provincial governor said after interrogating an Iraqi suspect who was caught sneaking across the country’s western border.

TARIQ Aziz, Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, has appeared before Iraq’s special tribunal as it steps up the process of questioning former regime loyalists about war crimes.

Four people were shot to death today in clashes with police as protests over allegations that interrogators in Guantanamo Bay desecrated Islam’s holy book spread to more Afghan cities, officials and witnesses 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.

MILITARY police are investigating allegations that British troops mutilated the bodies of Iraqi fighters killed during a skirmish near the town of Majar al Kabir last month.

A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people when he blew up his truck outside an Iraqi police station where dozens of men were queuing up to apply for jobs today.

A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people when he blew up his truck outside an Iraqi police station where dozens of men were queuing up to apply for jobs.

A SECONDARY school teacher who “groomed” two vulnerable schoolboys by sending the pair up to 1,500 lewd text messages before indecently assaulting both of them was jailed for four years yesterday.

A man who worked as Saddam Hussein’s translator for 15 years defended his former boss today as “gentle,” and suggested the strongman was a victim of biased reporting.

American forces advanced into Iraq’s third city today, as the coalition continued to seize control across the north of the country.

GANGS of looters, many of them armed, roamed the streets of Baghdad yesterday, ransacking offices and government buildings as US troops looked on and breaking into the houses of Saddam Hussein’s top aides.

A crowd rushed two Islamic clerics and hacked them to death in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf today, witnesses said.

Looting surged and buildings were set on fire across Baghdad today while American troops focused more on fighting pockets of resistance than on keeping order.

BRITISH military officers say they have found the body of “Chemical Ali,” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s cousin and commander of the southern region.

THE US military yesterday said it had found the body of the bodyguard of Iraqi commander “Chemical Ali,” but Iraq dismissed reports the military chief himself may have died in an air strike.

The United Nations Security Council has ordered a global freeze on the assets of a Pakistani organisation, two former nuclear scientists and a Pakistani industrialist suspected of links to Osama bin Laden.

There are claims Osama bin Laden met with two retired nuclear scientists, who were recently arrested and questioned over their work in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's government is denying reports the CIA and FBI are questioning three of its nuclear scientists.