A suicide car bomb struck Baghdad’s Shiite militia stronghold today, killing at least 18 people as international envoys met in the Iraqi capital to talk about stabilising the violence-shattered country.

AT LEAST 118 Shi’ite pilgrims were slaughtered in attacks across Iraq yesterday, sparking fears of reprisals that could frustrate efforts by Iraqi and US forces to quell sectarian violence.

Iraq’s prime minister has blamed the mass kidnapping at an education ministry building on an inter-militia conflict.

A pair of suicide bombs ripped through a crowd of would-be police recruits in Baghdad on today, killing at least 35.

In Iraq Sunni gunmen ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint on the dangerous highway south of Baghdad, killing 10 Shiite passengers and kidnapping over 50.

American forces killed more than 40 insurgents, and a known al-Qaida operative, in five raids south of Baghdad.

Iraqi police and soldiers fanned out today to enforce an extraordinary daytime curfew in Baghdad and three provinces in a bid to halt the wave of sectarian violence that has killed about 120 people since the bombing of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines.

SUNNI Arab and secular groups refused yesterday to open discussions with the Shiite religious bloc, leading in Iraq's parliamentary elections, until a full review of the contested results is carried out.

FOUR US Army soldiers died in a roadside bombing, gunmen killed a Sunni Arab candidate for parliament, and militants tried to blow up a leading Shi’ite politician in separate attacks yesterday.

Many of Iraq’s major politicians held pre-election gatherings around the country today, the last day that campaigning is permitted.

Two suicide car-bombings, along with a string of other attacks in and around Baghdad today, have left 14 people dead, police and army officials said.

Ten people were killed in a string of separate attacks in and around Baghdad today, including a suicide car bombing at an army checkpoint, police said.

SADDAM HUSSEIN could face up to 500 charges, but prosecutors will focus on 12 well-documented cases, including the gassing of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq, an official said yesterday.

Paul Garwood, Baghdad

Three suicide car bombings killed 23 people in northern Iraq today, including a top municipal council leader plus a bodyguard of Iraq’s Kurdish deputy prime minister, officials said.

At least eight Iraqis were found shot near a Baghdad dam and a slain Iraqi Kurd was left in a garbage dump in northern Iraq, police said today, raising the number of bodies recovered in the past 48 hours to 45.

THE bodies of at least 30 men, including 10 Iraqi soldiers, were found shot execution-style in three locations across Iraq yesterday.

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.

Leading Iraqi politicians have called for a six-month delay in the January 30 election because of the spiralling violence as US forces uncovered more bodies in the northern city of Mosul, apparent victims of an intimidation campaign by insurgents against Iraq’s fledgling security forces.

GUNMEN yesterday assassinated a member of an influential Sunni clerics’ group that has called for a boycott of national elections.

Four buses carrying pilgrims to the Iraqi holy city of Karbala plunged into a river today, killing 18 people on board.

US forces battled insurgents around the rebel stronghold of Fallujah today as militants ambushed and killed nine Iraqi policemen returning from training in Jordan.

Nine Iraqi policemen returning from a training course in Jordan were ambushed and killed on their way home to Karbala, police said today.

US warplanes struck an alleged hide-out where operatives from an al Qaida-linked group had gathered today killing at least 20 people.

GUNMEN ambushed American soldiers on patrol with a roadside bomb then opened fire on them in Mosul yesterday, wounding one, as fears grew that the anti-coalition insurgency was spreading north a day after two American soldiers were killed here and their bodies mauled.

Gunmen killed two American soldiers today while they were driving through the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and a crowd swarmed over the scene, looting the vehicle and pummelling the bodies, witnesses said.

American troops today found thousands of boxes of white powder at an industrial site south of Baghdad, but initial tests showed it was probably just explosives.