SOME came on crutches, others walked for miles then struggled to read the ballot, but across most of Iraq millions turned out to vote yesterday, defying insurgent threats of a bloodbath.

INSURGENTS detonated a suicide car bomb at police headquarters in the Iraqi town of Baiji yesterday, killing at least 10 people, and shot dead eight Iraqi soldiers at a checkpoint ahead of January 30 polls.

INSURGENTS killed a police captain at a checkpoint and gunned down an Iraqi National Guard officer in a billiard hall in scattered violence against American forces and their allies in northern Iraq yesterday.

THE former top US weapons inspector in Iraq said yesterday he believes Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction before the US-led invasion.

A cache of 36 shells buried in the Iraqi desert have been uncovered, and preliminary tests by British experts showed they contained a liquid blister agent, it emerged today.

The area around Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, a hotbed of resistance since he was ousted by US-led coalition forces, was always an obvious retreat for the fallen dictator.

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.

IRAQ’S northern oil pipeline to Turkey will not reopen for at least two weeks, the US army said yesterday.

Saboteurs blew up a giant oil pipeline in northern Iraq, halting oil exports to Turkey only days after they had resumed and cutting off vital income for an economy in shambles.

An American civilian contractor was killed in Iraq today when a bomb was detonated under the truck he was driving north of Tikrit.

American forces in Iraq continue to close in on Saddam Hussein, conducted several top secret operations since killing his sons Uday and Qusay two weeks ago, the US military said today.

THE formation of a new Iraqi government will start next week, the country’s US administrator said yesterday, after American forces netted four more senior members of Saddam Hussein’s old guard.