The Iraqi TV reporter who hurled his shoes at US President George Bush was kidnapped once by militants and, separately, detained briefly by the US military.

The official video of hanging of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants screened for reporters today shows the former leader's half brother lying headless below gallows, his severed head several yards away.

The half-brother of Saddam Hussein and the former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court were hanged before dawn today, two weeks and two days after the former dictator was executed in a disturbing scene that drew worldwide criticism.

Heavy clashes broke out this afternoon between gunmen and guards of the Iraqi Health Ministry building in north Baghdad, security officials said.

US and Iraqi forces swept into Baghdad’s Sadr City Shiite slum in an early morning raid today, killing four Iraqis, wounding eight and detaining five, police said.

SADDAM HUSSEIN was convicted and sentenced yesterday to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shi’ite town, as the ousted leader, trembling and defiant, shouted “God is great”.

Iraq’s High Tribunal today found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to hang for the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites in the city of Dujail. The visibly shaken former leader shouted “God is great”.

Iraq's High Tribunal today found Saddam Hussein guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to death by hanging.

The brother of Iraq’s Sunni Arab vice president was killed early today in his Baghdad home, a government spokesman said.

Iraqi and US forces killed or captured more than 20 terrorist suspects, many linked with al-Qaida in Iraq, in a series of raids, the US command said today.

Six bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50 today, hours before a highly anticipated ceremony in which the US-led coalition was to hand over control of the country’s armed forces command to Iraqi authorities.

Baghdad was busy today after a two-day lockdown during a Shiite religious commemoration that was disrupted by sniper attacks on pilgrims in another spasm of sectarian bloodletting.

Sniper attacks on a Shiite religious procession left 10 pilgrims dead and 43 injured in several places in Baghdad today.

A rash of bombings in Baghdad killed at least 30 people and injured dozens, police said.

A 13-year-old Iraqi schoolboy was killed after a roadside bomb exploded in front of a school today in the city of Basra in southeast Iraq, police said.

More than 50 Iraqis died today in violence including a car bombing that killed 25 people in the third major attack on a police station in three days.

At least 35 people have died today in bombings, mostly in Baghdad and police have discovered more bodies as well.

A large explosion today destroyed the golden dome of one of Iraq’s most famous Shiite religious shrines, sending protesters pouring into the streets. It was the third major attack against Shiite targets in as many days.

At least 73 people were killed and 162 wounded early today when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a group of construction workers in the north Baghdad district of Kazimiyah, police said.

Thousands of people in Baghdad and its surroundings today flocked to the funerals of nearly 1,000 Shiite pilgrims killed in a mass stampede during a religious procession.

Insurgents unleashed a wave of five car bombings across the capital, killing about a dozen people, despite stepped-up US and Iraqi measures to protect this month’s elections.

Gunmen ambushed a convoy of Westerners on a highway in north Baghdad tonight, killing at least two people with a number of others believed to have been abducted, police and witnesses said.

A roadside bomb blasted a US convoy in north Baghdad on Monday, killing an American soldier and his Iraqi interpreter, the military reported, and the top American commander announced plans to establish an Iraqi militia to patrol the country.