Jordan’s military court today sentenced al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and two other militants to death for a failed suicide bombing on the Jordanian-Iraqi border a year ago.

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.

Suicide attackers carried out a string of car bombings against Iraqi policemen in Baghdad and Kurdish militiamen in the north, killing 14 people and wounding at least 59 today in the latest major assaults on Iraqi security forces and U.S. allies in the country.

Three US marines and a 1st Armored Division soldier were killed in fighting in western and central Iraq, the military said today.

Four US marines were killed “as a result of enemy action” in Iraq’s western Anbar province, the military said in a statement in Baghdad today.

Gunmen opened fire on the Spanish garrison near the holy city of Najaf today during a huge demonstration by followers of an anti-US Shi’ite Muslim cleric.

More UN staff have been ordered out of Iraq by Secretary-General Kofi Annan following the second bombing at the world body’s headquarters in Baghdad in a month.

Iraqi fighters tried to shoot down a US transport plane with a surface-to-air missile, gunned down the mayor of an Iraqi city and killed an American soldier in a convoy, in a marked escalation of violence.

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.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell is preparing to meet in Jordan with leaders of Russia, the European Union and the United Nations in an effort to repair the tattered road map for peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians, US and diplomatic sources said yesterday.

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

IRAQI construction worker Fayez Kazem gathered his meagre savings and headed for a bus stop in central Amman looking for a ride home. He said that he could not sit in Jordan while Baghdad was under coalition attack.

AN assassin pumped eight shots into an American diplomat outside his Amman home yesterday in the first known killing of a Western envoy in the Jordanian capital.

A car bomb exploded today in the commercial district of the Jordanian capital Amman, killing two people, a senior security official said.