Three suicide bombers driving chlorine-laden trucks struck in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Anbar province, killing two policemen and forcing about 350 Iraqi civilians and six US troops to seek treatment for exposure to the gas, the military said today.

The chief US military spokesman in Iraq today insisted that Muqtada al-Sadr has left the country and is believed to be in Iran, despite denials from the radical Shiite cleric’s supporters.

Iraqi forces today detained a senior Health Ministry official accused of corruption and helping to funnel millions of pounds to Shiite militiamen blamed for much of the recent sectarian violence in the capital, the US military said.

A Sea Knight helicopter crashed near Baghdad today, sending flames and a huge plume of black smoke into the sky, the fifth helicopter lost in Iraq in just over two weeks.

All four US helicopters which have crashed in Iraq in recent weeks appear to have been brought down by “some kind” of ground fire, the chief US military spokesman said today.

Iraqi authorities have reported the arrests of two guards and an official who supervised Saddam Hussein's hanging and said the guard force was infiltrated by outsiders who taunted the former leader and shot the video showing his body dangling at the end of a rope.

US president George Bush said the enemy in Iraq was “far from being defeated”, but vowed not to be rushed into adjusting his strategy.

Beset by rampant sectarian violence, Iraq’s parliament today voted to extend the country’s state of emergency for 30 more days, and suspected Sunni-Arab insurgents set off bombs in three different areas of the country that killed eight Iraqis and wounded 40.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said today that Iraq is close to civil war as the Bush administration stepped up diplomatic efforts to stabilise the violent country.

The US military has acknowledged that its two-month drive to crush insurgent and militia violence in the Iraqi capital Baghdad has fallen short, calling the raging bloodshed disheartening and saying it was rethinking its strategy to rein in gunmen, torturers and bombers.

The official start to Ramadan was punctuated with violent attacks around Iraq today, including an assault on a police station and the discovery of more apparent victims of sectarian death squads in the capital.

Human embryonic stem cells can help slow sight loss in rats, US researchers reported today.

Coalition forces handed over control of Iraq’s armed forces command to the government today, a move US officials have hailed as a crucial milestone on the country’s difficult road to independence.

Six bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50 today, hours before a highly anticipated ceremony in which the US-led coalition was to hand over control of the country’s armed forces command to Iraqi authorities.

A series of attacks in eastern Baghdad this evening killed at least 39 people and wounded 115 within half an hour, police said.

Car bombs triggered gas explosions in a Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad, Iraq, two days ago, the US said today, acknowledging its U-turn and that the carnage had been due to a hostile act.

A rubbish collector and a Baghdad University security chief were killed today - among the latest victims of seemingly random violence in Iraq as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki steps up his efforts to bring insurgents into the political process.

One of Iraq’s largest Sunni Arab groups endorsed the prime minister’s national reconciliation plan today, and the government announced new benefits to help freed detainees return to normal lives.

Two US soldiers missing in Iraq have been found dead, news reports said today.

THE US Army has charged three soldiers in connection with the murders of three Iraqi men who were in military custody in Iraq in early May, the military said yesterday.

The US military today said it had intensified its search for two missing soldiers, with more than 8,000 Iraqi and US troops combing the volatile area south of Baghdad where the men were attacked.

Insurgents killed more than three dozen people in a series of attacks that foiled stringent security measures around Baghdad after an al-Qaida threat to stage bloody reprisals for the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

US and Iraqi forces killed 104 insurgents in hundreds of raids since last week’s killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the American death toll in the war in Iraq hit 2,500, the US military said today.

A US military doctor today said al-Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi died 52 minutes after an airstrike against his safe house north-east of Baghdad.

The American military flew in two forensic specialists today to examine the body of slain al-Qaida chieftain Abu Musab al-Zarqawi “to see how he actually died” in an effort to reconstruct the last minutes of his life, a US general said.

THE killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi deprives Islamic terrorism of one of its most high-profile leaders.

INTELLIGENCE officers said they found Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by following his spiritual adviser and deputy, who visited him at a safehouse.