A rocket struck near a UN compound in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad today, killing two foreigners and wounding 15 other people, according to UN and military officials.

IN politics honesty is not necessarily the best policy. Just ask Samantha Power.

Rescue workers today called off the search for survivors at the UN building in Algeria blasted apart by a suicide bomber.

Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out the suicide bombings at United Nations and government buildings that killed 37 people, an Algerian security official said.

A United Nations office was the target of one of two car bombs that killed at least 45 people in Algiers today.

The American White House welcomed a symbolic unannounced visit to Iraq by France’s foreign minister.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief said today that sectarian killings are “out of control” in Iraq, with about 100 deaths a day and civilians fleeing neighbourhoods and towns because of the cycle of Sunni-Shiite reprisal attacks.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked militant who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings in Iraq, has been killed in a US air raid north of Baghdad.

The UN is hopeful that elections in Iraq can be held on schedule in January 2005 despite escalating violence – but the level of UN electoral assistance will depend on security, the top UN envoy to Iraq says.

The UN Staff Union urged Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday to consider withdrawing UN personnel from Afghanistan following the bombing of a UN voter registration site and a spate of attacks on election workers.

The United Nations will have to rely on the US-led multi-national force in Iraq for security for its new envoy in Baghdad because no countries have offered troops for a separate UN protection force, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

The Philippine government made a direct appeal early today to insurgents holding a Filipino hostage, pleading with them to show mercy for the man they pledged to kill if the country did not agree to pull its troops from Iraq early.

A UN human rights report today credited the US-led coalition with ending years of violations by Saddam Hussein’s regime, but also cited concerns over prisoner abuse.

The prisoner abuse scandal has so tarnished the US Army’s 800th Military Police Brigade that soldiers recommended for an Army Bronze Star medal have been dropped from the list, the brigade’s commander says.

Four people were killed and two wounded when gunmen and police fought an armed battle in a diplomatic quarter of the Syrian capital Damascus, officials said.

A UN team sent to Iraq to study whether elections can be held before the handover of power to Iraqis by June 30 arrived safely in Baghdad today, the secretary-general announced.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today that the world body will send a team to Iraq to determine whether elections should be held.

Rebels fired a rocket tonight at the headquarters of the US-led coalition after gunmen killed seven Iraqi policemen in attacks west of Baghdad.

He may represent the greatest challenge to the US-led coalition's plans for restoring sovereignty to Iraq, but powerful cleric Ali al-Sistani hides behind an arcane and near-impenetrable curtain of Shi'ite Muslim ritual and austerity.

Two US soldiers and three Iraqis were killed in separate bomb attacks today, a day after UN security experts arrived in the capital to study the possible return of its international staff.

Three Iraqis were killed when a truck bomb exploded soon after a US patrol passed by as two UN security experts arrived in the Iraqi capital Baghdad to study the possible return of international staff.

American and British officials faced tough questions from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today about the transfer of power back to the Iraqi people.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was meeting coalition and Iraqi officials today, in top-level talks on a role for the UN as Iraq moves towards democracy.

US SECRETARY of State Colin Powell said yesterday the security situation in Iraq will be brought “under control” by June, the deadline for forming an interim Iraqi government.

A SENIOR garda is set to play a key role in determining future United Nations involvement in Iraq.

UN operations in Iraq “will be handicapped considerably” following the second suicide bombing attack on its Baghdad headquarters, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said tonight.

Six people are still unaccounted for after a suicide car bomber killed himself and a policeman at a checkpoint outside the UN headquarters in Baghdad today.

A suicide car bomber has killed an Iraqi policeman and himself at a road checkpoint behind the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

At least two people were killed and eleven others injured when a car bomb exploded morning while the vehicle was being examined at a checkpoint as it tried to enter the UN compound in Baghdad.

At least two people were killed and seven others injured this morning when a car bomb exploded while being examined at a checkpoint as it tried to enter the UN compound in Baghdad, Iraqi police reported.

Tony Blair has warned the situation in Iraq is serious but insists the coalition will not waver in the face of terrorism.

US Army sergeant William von Zehle has told of his battle to save top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, after a bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Iraq.

IRISH Red Cross chairman David Andrews said US forces were obliged by international law to protect humanitarian organisations, workers and aid agency staff from attack in Iraq.

A BRAZILIAN Air Force plane carrying the body of slain UN envoy to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello headed to Geneva on Sunday, one day after a vigil and funeral ceremony in his hometown.

The International Committee of the Red Cross today said it was scaling back the number of people working in Baghdad after receiving warnings that the organisation might be a terror target.

Iraqi agents working as security guards at the UN headquarters in Baghdad may have helped the bombers who killed 23 people earlier this week, a US official said today.

A PREVIOUSLY unknown group has said it bombed the UN headquarters in Baghdad as the UN said it was pulling a third of its staff out of Iraq.

IRAQ'S new Governing Council was warned about the possibility of a terror attack in Baghdad just days before Tuesday's truck bombing ripped through the United Nations headquarters.

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund informed the US Treasury they are pulling their staff out of Iraq on following the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

David Andrews, the chairman of the Irish Red Cross, has paid tribute to Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envy to Iraq who was killed in a truck bombing in Baghdad yesterday.

United Nations staff in Baghdad were told to stay at home today after a massive truck bomb levelled their headquarters and killed at least 20 people, including the top UN envoy in Iraq.

A cement truck packed with explosives detonated outside the offices of the top UN envoy in Iraq, killing him and 19 other people.

THE United Nation’s top envoy in Iraq was one of 20 people killed yesterday after a suicide bomber in a truck set off a massive explosion that tore through the organisation’s headquarters in Baghdad.

The United Nations' special envoy to Iraq, Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, has died after today's horrific bomb blast.