Killing of Qaeda leaders 'won't end Iraq attacks'

Al-Qaeda has confirmed the deaths of its top two Iraq commanders in a joint US-Iraqi military raid, a US monitoring group said, days after a wave of apparent revenge attacks killed 58 Iraqis.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, who had direct links with Osama bin Laden, were reported by Iraqi and US officials to have been killed in a shootout on April 18 near Tikrit in central Iraq.

BAGHDAD — Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq claimed responsibility Tuesday for audacious raids on two high-security prisons on the outskirts of Baghdad this week that killed dozens and set free hundreds of inmates, including some of its followers. The statement issued in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, was posted on an online jihadist forum. It said months of planning went into the highly co-ordinated assaults on the prisons in Abu Ghraib and Taji that began late Sunday.

Iraqi authorities said on Thursday that the arrest of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Baghdad chief six weeks ago triggered a series of events that culminated in the killing of the jihadist network's top commanders.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the political leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant and the insurgent group's self-styled "minister of war," died on Sunday, according to Iraqi and US officials.

A car bomb in executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's home city and two other attacks killed eight people, including four police officers, and wounded 14 others on Thursday, police said.Six people, including three police, were killed by a car bomb that targeted a patrol in the centre of Tikrit, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Baghdad, said Colonel Hathem Akram, while 11 people, six of them police, were wounded.A fourth policeman was killed in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad, by an unknown gunman, local police said.

A US defense contractor accused of helping torture prisoners at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison has paid former detainees more than $5 million to settle a lawsuit, according to regulatory filings obtained by AFP on Wednesday.

A car bomb in executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's home city and three other attacks killed 10 people, including four policemen, and wounded 24 on Thursday, security officials said.Six people, including three police, were killed by a car bomb that targeted a patrol in the centre of Tikrit, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Baghdad, said Colonel Hathem Akram, while 11 people, six of them police, were wounded.

With suicide blasts and waves of car bombs, al-Qaida picking up tempo of attacks in Iraq BAGHDAD (AP) — First came the fireball, then the screams of the victims. The suicide bombing just outside a Baghdad graveyard knocked Nasser Waleed Ali over and peppered his back with shrapnel.

BAGHDAD/MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Hundreds of convicts, including senior members of al Qaeda, broke out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail as comrades launched a military-style assault to free them, authorities said on Monday.