Street fighting raged between Kurdish defenders and Islamic State militants who advanced into Kobani yesterday after subjecting the Syrian border town to an assault lasting almost three weeks, a monitoring group said.

In Iraq’s bloodiest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to dozens of police and national guard recruits today, killing at least 125 people and wounding 130.

At least 106 people were killed today when a suicide car bomber drove into a crowd applying for work at a government office south of Baghdad, then blew himself up.

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.