A highly coordinated string of attacks have hit Iraq killing at least 36 and wounding more than 200.

A car bomb has killed two civilians and wounded four more in eastern Baghdad on the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, the day after a series of co-ordinated attacks left scores dead, officials said.

Gunmen killed seven members of an Iraqi family including four children when they broke into the home of two anti-al-Qaida militiamen north of Baghdad, officials said today.

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

Dozens of people were killed today when two car bombs and a suicide bomber struck outside a textile factory.

Bombings and drive-by shootings killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more today around Iraq.

US troops clashed with suspected Sunni insurgents holed up in a mosque north of Baghdad and launched an air-to-ground Hellfire missile into the structure.

Nine US soldiers were killed and 20 were wounded in a suicide car bombing against a patrol base in Iraq, the military said.

A suicide car bomber rammed a truck carrying Shiite pilgrims returning from a major religious commemoration today, killing at least 31 people a day after Iraqi leaders warned sectarian violence could eventually spread around the region.

A car bomb and a suicide attacker killed at least 11 people in Baghdad today as militants showed increasing defiance to a major security operation in the Iraqi capital.

Police in Iraq today confirmed the kidnapping of more than 40 Shiites along a notoriously dangerous road just north of Baghdad.

FOUR peace activists taken hostage in Iraq were shown in an insurgent video broadcast on Arab television yesterday, with a previously unknown group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping.

Gunmen killed an aide to Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric and two bodyguards in a drive-by shooting outside a Baghdad mosque today – an attack likely to stoke tensions between the Shiite majority and the Sunni minority, officials said.

A fire erupted today in a transformer room that feeds electricity to a main water plant near Baghdad, shutting it down completely and leaving millions of residents in the Iraqi capital without water.

An explosion near a group of US soldiers north of Baghdad killed and wounded several troops today.

A SUICIDE car bomber linked to al-Qaida killed 13 people in Baghdad yesterday as seven US Marines were also killed on the first anniversary of the capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.