At least four people were killed today when a parked car bomb struck a bus packed with workers in a volatile city south of Baghdad.

Funeral processions began today for the people who were killed by car bombs and mortars in Baghdad’s largest Shiite district, the deadliest attack since the war began.

A pair of suicide bombs ripped through a crowd of would-be police recruits in Baghdad on today, killing at least 35.

In Iraq Sunni gunmen ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint on the dangerous highway south of Baghdad, killing 10 Shiite passengers and kidnapping over 50.

A Jordanian who was responsible for slaughtering two US soldiers last month was fatally wounded in a clash with security forces, a senior Iraqi official said today.

Four US soldiers have been charged with rape and murder and a fifth with dereliction of duty in the alleged rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman and the killings of her relatives in Mahmoudiya, the military said on Sunday.

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.

Two US soldiers missing in Iraq have been found dead, news reports said today.

The US military today said it had intensified its search for two missing soldiers, with more than 8,000 Iraqi and US troops combing the volatile area south of Baghdad where the men were attacked.

Insurgents killed more than three dozen people in a series of attacks that foiled stringent security measures around Baghdad after an al-Qaida threat to stage bloody reprisals for the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Gunmen ambushed a police station in the Sunni Muslim heartland north of Baghdad today, killing at least 17 police officers and a guard at a nearby court while freeing prisoners held at the station.

Iraqi police and soldiers fanned out today to enforce an extraordinary daytime curfew in Baghdad and three provinces in a bid to halt the wave of sectarian violence that has killed about 120 people since the bombing of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines.

A SUICIDE car bomber attacked a hospital in central Iraq yesterday while US troops were handing out toys to children, killing 30 people, including four police guards, three women and two children, officials said.

A car bomb detonated outside a hospital in the centre of a town south of Baghdad today, killing 30 and wounding 35.

A roadside bomb aimed at a US military convoy in Iraq’s Triangle of Death hit a minibus today, killing five Iraqis and wounding six, police said.

Capping the bloodiest month for American troops since January, the US military reported that seven more US service members were killed – all victims of increasingly sophisticated bombs that have been become the deadliest weapon in the insurgents’ arsenal.

Hundreds of Iraqi police and army troops fanned out across Baghdad yesterday, setting up checkpoints and fortifying polling stations with barbed wire and blast barriers two days ahead of a historic constitutional referendum.

Two suicide car-bombings, along with a string of other attacks in and around Baghdad today, have left 14 people dead, police and army officials said.

SADDAM HUSSEIN could face up to 500 charges, but prosecutors will focus on 12 well-documented cases, including the gassing of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq, an official said yesterday.

Bassem Mroue, Baghdad

At least eight Iraqis were found shot near a Baghdad dam and a slain Iraqi Kurd was left in a garbage dump in northern Iraq, police said today, raising the number of bodies recovered in the past 48 hours to 45.

THE bodies of at least 30 men, including 10 Iraqi soldiers, were found shot execution-style in three locations across Iraq yesterday.

A suicide car bomb exploded in central Baghdad today, killing at least six people and wounding nearly 30, including a number of American civilians.

For days, Iraq was shaken by claims that Sunni militants had abducted as many as 100 Shiites from an area at the tip of Iraq’s Triangle of Death.

Iraqi security forces, backed by US military, swept into a town south of Baghdad at dawn today after reports Sunni militants had kidnapped as many as 100 Shiites.

Iraqi security forces backed by US troops had the town of Madain surrounded after reports Sunni militants kidnapped as many as 100 Shiite residents, but there were growing indications the incident had been grossly exaggerated, perhaps an outgrowth of a tribal dispute or political manoeuvring.

The number of US troops killed in Iraq has topped 1,500 today after the military announced the deaths of three Americans, while car bombs targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least four people in separate attacks.

The total number of US military dead in the war in Iraq rose to 1,500, as the military announced the latest death of one of its troops.

In Iraq’s bloodiest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to dozens of police and national guard recruits today, killing at least 125 people and wounding 130.

BAGHDAD - Residents of Iraq’s capital turn out for the election but voting is also marred by a spate of mortar and suicide attacks, although many bombers fail to reach the interior of polling stations.

Iraqis turned out to vote today in their country’s first free election in a half-century, defying insurgents who launched deadly suicide bombings and mortar strikes at polling stations. By midday, at least 36 people were dead but the violence had slowed and voting picked up.

Iraqis turned out to vote today in their country’s first free election in a half-century, defying insurgents who launched deadly suicide bombings and mortar strikes at polling stations.

AL-QAIDA ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared war on Iraq’s landmark elections yesterday in a warning intended to scare away voters a week before they go to the polls amid a raging insurgency.

Multinational troops, including members of the Black Watch, have arrested 210 suspected militants in a week long crackdown against insurgents in an area south of Baghdad known as the ”triangle of death,” the US military command said today.

Five thousand US marines, British troops and Iraqi commandos launched a new offensive in the "Triangle of Death" south of Baghdad today.