Authorities in Thailand today cancelled a beach party popular with backpackers and ravers after two Swedish women drowned in the area, officials said.

US and Iraqi forces clashed with gunmen loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, killing at least eight Iraqis in an east Baghdad slum yesterday.

Syrian security forces clashed with militants, including former bodyguards of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, near the capital early today, leaving one policeman dead and two militants in custody, the state-run SANA news agency said.

At least 55 people were killed today and 238 injured – including four British soldiers – after a series of explosions in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

Ten Iraqi children on their way to primary school were among the 40 dead in a series of simultaneous explosions in Basra today.

A fourth possible suicide attack has rocked through a camp outside Basra shortly after the three blasts, the British Ministry of Defence has said.

Two terror attacks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad today left at least 11 people dead including a Spanish military attaché who was assassinated.

Three foot patrols were hacking there way through Peru’s mountain jungle today in the hunt for an airliner carrying 46 people that disappeared minutes before landing.