Group: Notorious Iraq prison still open

The closure of a Baghdad detention facility at the centre of torture allegations is insufficient and authorities must probe and prosecute anyone implicated in the abuse, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday."Closing torture prison won't end abuse," the New York-based rights watchdog headlined a statement referring to a declaration this month by Iraqi authorities that Camp Honor had been shut down.The decision was a "positive move but only a first step," HRW said.

BAGHDAD — A wave of bombings tore through Baghdad on Tuesday morning, killing at least 57 people in a spasm of violence on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. The attacks show how dangerous and unstable Iraq remains a decade after the war – a country where sectarian violence can explode at any time. And though attacks have ebbed since the peak of the insurgency in 2006 and 2007, tensions simmer and militants remain a potent threat to Iraq’s security forces.

Two suicide car bombs exploded at an entrance to Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone Monday, killing at least five people and wounding 15 others, a security spokesman said.The attack occurred at around 8:30 am (0530 GMT) at an entrance to the Green Zone, where many foreign embassies and Iraqi government offices are based, as a queue of cars was waiting to enter.

Two suicide car bombs exploded at an entrance to Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone Monday, killing at least three people and wounding 10 others, an interior ministry official said.The attack occurred at around 8:30 am (0530 GMT) at the entrance to the Green Zone, where many foreign embassies and Iraqi government offices are based, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi government wants jailed former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz to die in prison and has shown no compassion for his declining health, his Amman-based son said on Monday.The warders of 74-year-old Aziz at Kadhmiyah jail in northern Baghdad want the ex-top official who cut an urbane and articulate figure in Saddam Hussein's regime "to die in prison," said his embittered son, Ziad.Ziad Aziz insisted that "there are no indications the government plans to release my father."

North Korea's prison camps are a closed-off world of death, torture and forced labour where babies are born slaves, according to two survivors who liken the horrors of the camps to a Holocaust in progress.

Iraqis on Sunday started voting in their war-shattered nation's second parliamentary election since the US-led overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein, as mortar rounds and bombs rocked Baghdad.The poll, which Al-Qaeda has threatened to sabotage, started at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) and is due to end at 5:00 pm.A total of six mortar blasts were heard, four of them in the secure "Green Zone" where foreign diplomats and several government ministries are based, said an interior ministry official and AFP correspondents in the Iraqi capital.