The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, has expressed his shock and sadness at today's bomb attack on Italian troops in Iraq, which left 22 people dead.

THE formation of a new Iraqi government will start next week, the country’s US administrator said yesterday, after American forces netted four more senior members of Saddam Hussein’s old guard.

IRAQ took its first tentative steps toward democracy yesterday and they began with a boycott and demonstrations.

IRAQI troops released seven captured US soldiers - some wounded but in good condition - to US Marines yesterday, a surprise discovery near where troops were entering Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit.

TWO Iraqi children were killed and nine other civilians injured yesterday when US marines opened fire on a minibus approaching a checkpoint.

THE suddenness of Saddam Hussein’s fall has opened a power vacuum in Iraq, a power struggle in Washington and another transatlantic tug-of-war.

AS thousands of Iraqis took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Saddam Hussein, the United States was already sabre rattling in the next phase of its war on so-called rogue nations.

US Marines said yesterday they had found photographs of burned bodies and a device to deliver electric shocks in what they suspect was a torture centre used

THE US military has begun flying Iraqi opposition fighters to join in the war, a top general said, as the Pentagon warned the military may have to run the country for more than six months after the conflict.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he expected the United Nations to play an important role in rebuilding Iraq after the war and said this would bring legitimacy to the effort.

THE US military yesterday said it had found the body of the bodyguard of Iraqi commander “Chemical Ali,” but Iraq dismissed reports the military chief himself may have died in an air strike.

IT’s already been dubbed Saving Private Lynch.

AMERICAN forces yesterday turned their sights on one of Saddam Hussein’s most notorious henchmen.

IRAQIS said more than 50 people were killed yesterday in an air raid on a Baghdad market after the United States unleashed some of the heaviest air strikes of the war on the capital.

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S regime was reported to be under attack from his own people and from coalition forces last night as bombs rained down on Baghdad, and the population of Basra staged an uprising.

US-LED forces have suffered their worst casualties of the war in two bloody battles near Nassiriya that raged for hours before Iraqi resistance was vanquished.

COALITION forces suffered setbacks in southern Iraq yesterday despite moving within 50 miles of Baghdad.

IRAQI forces, with a hail of small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, downed two Apache helicopters yesterday and forced 30 other helicopters in their brigade back to their base.

US AND BRITISH troops continued their advance on Baghdad yesterday after more than 20 coalition soldiers were killed in "the toughest day" of the war so far.

The Arabic television network Al-Jazeera has screened footage of US soldiers, apparently taken captive in the current conflict.

US-led forces have captured the southern Iraqi town of Nassiriya, an American military spokesman said today at Central Command in Qatar.

As Allied troops established their positions throughout the day, one British military spokesman said they could be on the streets of Baghdad within three to four days.