An explosion targeted a US convoy today in southern Baghdad, leaving a US vehicle in flames, while gunmen south of the capital assassinated a member of the Babil provincial council.

TWO years after the invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, politicians are continuing negotiations aimed at creating a democratic replacement amid a continuing backdrop of violence and inter-communal tensions.

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.

A suicide car bomber killed 25 people and wounded 71 others in a massive blast south of the Iraqi capital this morning, a senior Interior Ministry official said.

Two car bombs have exploded south of Iraq’s capital, inflicting dozens of casualties, police and witnesses said today.

Saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline south of Baghdad today, causing a huge fire.

US FORCES launched air strikes on Fallujah yesterday, targeting what they said was a meeting of key loyalists of their top foe in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

A CAR-BOMB attack killed 23 people south of Baghdad in the latest atrocity to blight Iraq's build-up to sovereignty this week as the caretaker prime minister said instability could delay national elections for two months.

The US has handed military control over a huge swathe of Iraq to a Polish commander during a ceremony in the ruins of an amphitheatre built by Alexander the Great near Babylon.

IRAQ got its first post-war cabinet yesterday as the funeral march for Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, killed in the Najaf car bomb massacre, continued its three-day journey to the revered cleric’s final resting place.

IRISH Red Cross chairman David Andrews said US forces were obliged by international law to protect humanitarian organisations, workers and aid agency staff from attack in Iraq.

TWO American soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were killed and one was injured in an ambush yesterday when their convoy came under rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire in northern Iraq, the US military said.

A US soldier, an eight-year-old Iraqi child, and a pro-American mayor and his son were killed yesterday as pro-Saddam Hussein insurgents unleashed a string of violent attacks on the eve of a recently banned Ba'ath Party holiday.

A US soldier was killed and two others were injured today when a powerful explosion hit their convoy west of Baghdad, troops at the scene said.

A mass grave outside Baghdad which may contain the remains of up to 15,000 bodies provides justification for the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s former head of protocol said today.

PRELIMINARY tests on substances found at a military training camp in central Iraq suggest they may contain a cocktail of banned chemical weapons, including deadly nerve agents, US officers said last night.

A US ARMOURED force punched into the heart of Baghdad yesterday and established a stronghold in one of President Saddam Hussein’s palaces, while troops in central Iraq found a cache of suspected Iraqi chemical weapons.

The first International Red Cross convoy carrying medical supplies today reached Basra, the charity said.