TENS of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza yesterday, after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah.

Lebanon’s prime minister vowed to wipe out an Islamic militant group barricaded in a Palestinian refugee camp, raising the prospect that the army will either storm the camp or dig in for a long siege to force its surrender.

Insurgents blew up a small Shiite mosque north-east of Baghdad today, while police reported the discovery of nearly 40 bodies in several neighbourhoods of the Iraqi capital. The US military reported the death of three American soldiers.

Car bombs have exploded in a synchronised sequence of attacks outside at least four churches in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least three Iraqis and wounding nine, according to police.

ABOUT 24 top former officials in Saddam Hussein’s regime, including a biological weapons expert known as ‘Dr Germ’, have been released from jail, while a militant group released a video yesterday of the purported killing of an American hostage.

Notorious Saddam-Hussein-era officials have been released from jail in Iraq and some have already left the country, an Iraqi lawyer said today.

A member of the Turkoman Front political group was assassinated today in northern Iraq while driving his children to school, police said.

Worsening security, legal complexities and the lack of an Iraqi lawyer willing to represent Saddam Hussein make it impossible for the ousted dictator and 11 others to stand trial any time soon, a US official said today.

WITH time running out for British hostage Kenneth Bigley, US and Iraqi officials said last night they would not free female Iraqi prisoners as demanded by an al-Qaida ally whose group has already beheaded two Americans.

British hostage Kenneth Bigley’s life was tonight in the blood-stained hands of a terrorist who has severed the heads of two other captives.

Two high-profile women prisoners in American custody will not be released immediately, the US embassy said in Baghdad despite an earlier announcement by Iraqi authorities.

A headless corpse was found in Baghdad today hours after an al-Qaida-linked group boasted it had killed a second American hostage, leaving the Briton they are holding to face execution.

Iraqi authorities and US forces have decided to free one of only two high-profile women prisoners currently in American custody, an Iraqi ministry spokesman said today.

Iraqi authorities and US forces have decided to free one of only two high-profile women prisoners currently in American custody, a ministry spokesman said today.

A Sudanese woman who came to Northern Ireland to give birth died of massive internal bleeding during an emergency caesarean section, a Belfast inquest heard today.

Israel freed one of the co-founders of the militant Palestinian Hamas today after holding him without trial for the past 14 months.

Sudanese government and rebel officials overcame a significant hurdle toward reaching a comprehensive peace agreement today by signing a protocol on how to share the nation’s wealth, one of the major issues in the 20 year civil war.

Gunfire erupted as hundreds of protesters marched in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk today and at least two people were reported killed in the oil-rich metropolis.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said today that the Sudanese government and rebels fighting a 20-year civil have committed themselves to reaching a comprehensive peace deal by the end of December.

At least four American soldiers were wounded, two of them seriously, in a grenade attack on a US military convoy that also hit a civilian bus, officials said today.

COALITION forces have taken custody of the Iraqi scientist known as ‘Dr Germ’ for her work in creating weapons-grade anthrax, according to Pentagon officials, who said they also had initial field reports that the head of Saddam Hussein’s military has been captured.

American special forces today raided the Baghdad home of the female microbiologist nicknamed Dr Germ who ran Iraq’s secret biological laboratory.

ISRAELI troops raiding a Gaza refugee camp arrested a Hamas founder yesterday, targeting the political leadership of the Islamic militant group for the first time in 29 months of fighting.