A suicide bombing has taken place outside the Baghdad home of an aide of Iraq's interim interior minister, with the aide and his family wounded, the minister said.
"There was a suicide attack against one of my deputies outside his home in Baghdad. My aide and his family are in hospital," Samir al-Sumaiday said, without giving any further details.
He did not identify the deputy hurt in the attack.
A car bomb has exploded in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing up to five people."
Witnesses have said a car packed with explosives crashed near the home of a government official.
The explosion lifted cars off the ground and shattered windows.
The engine block of one vehicle was thrown more than 50 metres away from the blast.
The car bomb exploded in the front yard of the home of Abdel Jabar Yussef, the Under Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior.
Mr Yussef and his family were injured.
Witnesses say up to 20 security guards were killed or injured in the blast.
The attack happened in a middle class neighbourhood in the east of the capital.
United States soldiers have sealed off the site.
Bewildered neighbours are starting to clean up the damage.
Many families were preparing to take their children to school when the explosion tore through the street.
U.S. troops and Iraqi police on Thursday suddenly surrounded and raided Chalabi's house - and police also searched offices of his organization, the Iraqi National Congress.
CIA sources told Fox News there are reports that the INC passed information to Iran, but as far as what type of information, the sources said that isn't known for sure.
Defense officials also told Fox News there was speculation that INC members allegedly shared information with Iran (search) and misused funds and property belonging to the Iraqi Governing Council.
CBS News reported that the U.S. has evidence Chalabi has been passing highly classified U.S. intelligence to Iran, citing senior U.S. officials.
CBS said the "rock solid" evidence was said to show that Chalabi himself gave Iranian intelligence officers information so closely guarded that if revealed it could "get Americans killed."
[Habib] is a Shia Kurd who ran a program for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress which the Pentagon funded to gather Saddam Hussein-era documents and provide informants until it abruptly dropped its support this month. The Information Collection Program had received $340,000 a month since October 2002."
A U.S. intelligence source said that information about Karim's activities came in part from a detainee at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are being held.
Another source with access to sensitive intelligence and who was interviewed separately confirmed that the United States had developed information leading the government to believe that "this guy is an agent of the Iranians."
"
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The head of Iraqi Governing Council (search) was killed Monday in a car bombing near a U.S. checkpoint in central Baghdad, an Iraqi official said.
Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem (search), was among four Iraqis killed in the blast, according to Redha Jawad Taki, a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite Muslim organization.
Saleem, the name he went by most frequently, was a Shiite and leader of the Islamic Dawa Movement (search) in the southern city of Basra. He was a writer, philosopher and political activist, who served as editor of several newspapers and magazines.
Overnight fighting has claimed 15 coalition and Iraqi lives and left dozens wounded in several Iraq cities, according to military and hospital sources.
Nine Iraqis were killed and 14 others were injured during clashes overnight between radical Shiite militiamen and Italian troops in the southern city of Nasiriyah, hospital sources said on Monday.
The clashes followed fighting on Sunday during which six Italian soldiers were injured, one seriously, as the coalition troops were forced to temporarily abandon a position on one of the main bridges.
Twenty-eight people were also hurt on Sunday when a shell hit a market in the centre of the city, 375 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, where the Italians and the Mehdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr continued to exchange fire.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed and two others injured in a gun battle in a city south of Baghdad, the American military said in a statement.
The soldiers, from the 1st Armoured Division, were not named.
The statement did not specify the city where the clash happened.
In Karbala, at least five Shiite militiamen were killed and 32 injured during fighting overnight between US troops and fighters loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, hospital sources said.
Fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr drove Italian forces from a base in the southern city of Nasiriyah and attacked coalition headquarters there with grenade and mortar fire as tensions in the Shiite region escalated.
Two US soldiers died elsewhere and gunmen killed three Iraqi women working for the US led-coalition.
[?]
Two Iraqi fighters were killed and 20 were wounded in battles in Nasiriyah, mostly at two bridges across the Euphrates, residents said.
[?]
At least 10 Italians were wounded, one critically, contingent spokesman Lt. Col. Giuseppe Perrone told The Associated Press by phone. He said the Italians relocated to the nearby Tallil air base.
[?]
Also in Nasiriyah, a convoy transporting the Italian official in charge of the city, Barbara Contini, came under attack as it neared the headquarters of the US -led Coalition Provisional Authority, Perrone said. Two Italian paramilitary police were wounded.
[?]
Elsewhere in southern Iraq, assailants in Basra fired a mortar shell that hit a house near a British military base, killing four Iraqi civilians, including 2-year-old twin girls, witnesses said. Four people were wounded. All the victims were related.
Gunmen fired on a minibus and detonated explosives in Baghdad on Sunday, killing two Iraqi women and their driver and injuring another woman. Police said the women were working for the Americans but did not specify their jobs.
Early yesterday, a female Iraqi translator working with US troops was killed and another was critically injured when gunmen broke into their houses in Mahmoudiyah, Dawood al-Taee, director of the city's hospital, said.
The civilian killings appeared to be part of a rebel strategy to deter co-operation between Iraqis and the coalition, which plans to hand over sovereignty on June 30.
One US soldier was killed on Saturday night when a bomb exploded beside a vehicle in Baghdad, the Army said. A second soldier died of wounds suffered during a fire fight on Saturday south of the capital, the military said.
