Bombs striking Shiite neighbourhoods, security forces and other targets across Iraq killed at least 26 people today.

Revenge-seeking militiamen seized six Sunnis as they left prayers and burned them alive with kerosene in a savage new twist to the brutality shaking the Iraqi capital.

A HANDGUN that Saddam Hussein was clutching when US forces captured him in a hole in Iraq last December is now kept by US President George Bush at the White House.

A coalition soldier trying to defuse a roadside bomb was shot and killed by insurgents in Iraq, the US military said today.

Using sledgehammers, crowbars, explosives and armoured vehicles, US forces smashed down the gates of homes and the doors of workshops and junkyards in Samarra to attack the Iraqi resistance that has persisted despite the capture of Saddam Hussein.