A suicide bomber and a huge car bomb ripped apart a market in Baghdad’s Sadr City Shiite slum shortly before dusk today, killing at least 37 and wounding 95.

A suicide bomber detonated his car today near a police patrol in Baquoba, 35 miles northeast of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

A suicide car bomb exploded in front of a provincial government building in northern Iraq today, killing three people and wounding 14, police said.

Iraqis voted today in their country’s first free election in half a century, defying threats of violence from militants vowing to sabotage the balloting.

US troops have staged a series of raids in northern and central Iraq, arresting dozens, as insurgents stepped up their attacks two weeks ahead of national elections, ambushing a car carrying a female candidate and killing 24 people in other assaults.

BETWEEN 40 and 50 suspected Taliban militants have been killed in heavy fighting with Afghan forces backed by US attack helicopters and "tank buster" aircraft near the Pakistan border, the US military said yesterday.

Bombers killed three Iraqi national guardsmen, a police chief and one of his officers today in the militants’ unrelenting attacks against the country’s security forces.

US soldiers escorting a convoy of prisoners released from the Abu Ghraib jail came under fire today after they stopped in the middle of a road outside the Iraqi capital.

American soldiers today captured a man described as one of Saddam Hussein’s “executioners.”

Baghdad