Gunmen attacked women picking vegetables in a field outside the Iraqi capital, killing six adults and two young girls and kidnapping two teenagers.

A car bomb killed five people today and wounded another 34 after it exploded near a restaurant in central Baghdad, police said.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and 10 more injured early today when a suicide car bomb slammed into a checkpoint in northeast Baghdad, police said.

US Marines have arrested four Iraqi men in connection with the kidnapping of US journalist Jill Carroll, who was freed last March after 82 days in captivity, a US spokesman said today.

President George Bush retains confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki despite the failure of the Shiite politician’s signature effort to improve security in Iraq’s bloody capital, the White House said as Bush prepared to host the new leader.

IRAQ’S top Shi’ite cleric yesterday urged his followers to refrain from reprisal violence against Sunnis, his strongest call yet for an end to increasing sectarian bloodshed.

The new leader of al-Qaida in Iraq killed the two US soldiers abducted last week, an umbrella group for Iraqi insurgents said in a web statement posted today.

US and Iraqi intelligence found Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by following his spiritual adviser and deputy, who visited the terror leader at a safehouse, prompting the airstrike that killed both men, the US military said.

The US military has shown a picture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with his eyes closed and spots of blood behind him after he was killed by an air strike north of Baghdad.