Gunmen killed two relatives of a senior Kurdish official and 14 others died in a string of bombings and shootings overnight and today, shattering three days of relative calm that followed the country’s first election for a full-term parliament.

Capping the bloodiest month for American troops since January, the US military reported that seven more US service members were killed – all victims of increasingly sophisticated bombs that have been become the deadliest weapon in the insurgents’ arsenal.

Two US Marines were killed by a roadside bomb during fighting with insurgents in western Iraq, the military said today.

A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers in north-east Iraq today, and six people were wounded in attacks by insurgents on four of Baghdad’s 1,200polling stations during the country’s constitutional referendum, police said.

A suicide car bomb exploded at an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Baghdad today, killing nine people and wounding 12, most of them soldiers, police said.

IRAQI forces have launched a new security operation against insurgents in the Baghdad area.

SIX car bombs targeted US and Iraqi troops across Baghdad yesterday, killing as many as 20 people, and the military said two US Marines died the day before in a roadside bombing near the Jordanian border.

IRAQI officials said yesterday Syrian authorities had captured Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and 29 other officials of the deposed dictator’s Ba’ath Party in Syria and handed them over to Iraq in an apparent goodwill gesture.