IRAQI security forces will dig trenches around Baghdad and set up checkpoints along all roads leading into the city to try to reduce some of the violence plaguing the capital, the Interior Ministry said yesterday.

The leaders of Jordan and Egypt held an emergency meeting in Cairo today as thousands demonstrated across the Arab world against Israel’s expanding assault on Lebanon – the worst Israeli attack on its neighbour in 24 years.

A rubbish collector and a Baghdad University security chief were killed today - among the latest victims of seemingly random violence in Iraq as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki steps up his efforts to bring insurgents into the political process.

A senior Iraqi military official today said the bodies of two missing US soldiers had been discovered on a street near the town where they went missing.

Eleven people were killed and at least nine injured when a motorcycle bomb exploded in the courtyard of a Baghdad mosque this evening.

Car bombs killed at least 16 people and injured dozens others in Baghdad and a Shiite holy city today, dashing hopes that the formation of a new government alone would provide a quick end to the country’s violence.

VIOLENCE continued across Iraq yesterday on the eve of the anniversary of the US-led invasion.

Iraq’s Electoral Commission announced today that preliminary results showed that about 70% of the country’s 15.5 million registered voters took part in last week’s election for a new parliament.

Iraqis voted in an historic parliamentary election today, with strong turnout reported in Sunni Arab areas that had shunned balloting last January, bolstering US hopes of calming the insurgency enough to begin withdrawing its troops.

Iraqis voted in a historic parliamentary election today, with strong turnout reported in Sunni Arab areas that had shunned the election last January.

Insurgents attacked several US bases and government offices with mortars and rockets today before dispersing in Ramadi, the capital of western Iraq’s Anbar province.

Three gunmen in a speeding car killed a lawyer for a co-defendant in Saddam Hussein’s trial and wounded another today in Baghdad, a member of the defence team and police said.

RESIDENTS fled an Iraqi town on the Syrian border yesterday during a lull in fighting between 3,500 US and Iraqi troops and suspected al-Qaida insurgents armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Five US Army soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb during Iraq’s constitutional referendum, the military said today.

US and Iraqi forces stepped up security across Iraq today and prepared to impose an overnight curfew in an effort to reduce insurgent attacks aimed at wrecking this weekend’s constitutional referendum.

A US Apache attack helicopter crashed yesterday north of Baghdad, killing both pilots as US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it may take as long as 12 years to defeat the insurgents.

Iraq’s interim president said that tens of thousands of people may have been unable to vote in the country’s historic weekend election because some polling places – including those in Sunni Arab areas – ran out of ballots.

SOME came on crutches, others walked for miles then struggled to read the ballot, but across most of Iraq millions turned out to vote yesterday, defying insurgent threats of a bloodbath.

IRAQIS defied violence that killed 44 people and calls for a boycott to cast ballots in Iraq's first free election in a half-century yesterday.

Iraqis defied violence and calls for a boycott to cast ballots in Iraq’s first free election in a half-century today.

Iraqi authorities set January 30 as the date for the nation’s first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and pledged that voting would take place throughout the country, despite rising violence and calls by Sunni clerics for a boycott.

There were fears tonight for the lives of 31 Iraqi policemen who were kidnapped as they returned from a training camp in Jordan.

ABBAS ALI was jubilant when the northern Iraq frontlines moved.