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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, appeared before a US federal court in New York on Friday and pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to kill Americans.

Six bombs rocked Baghdad, killing at least 35 people, the second time the capital came under attack in three days, fuelling fears insurgents are making a return due to a political impasse.The explosions destroyed residential buildings in mostly Shiite neighbourhoods, and a security spokesman said Iraq was in "open war" with the remnants of Al-Qaeda and loyalists of executed dictator Saddam Hussein."Six bomb attacks in several neighbourhoods of Baghdad occurred, and seven buildings collapsed," an interior ministry official told AFP.

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.

Attacks in northern Iraq on Thursday killed eight people, including a senior anti-terror officer who led a key fightback against Al-Qaeda in his province, police said.Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed al-Fahel, the head of the Saleheddin province anti-terror squad, and at least three of his bodyguards were among five people killed by a suicide bomb in Tikrit, the hometown of executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein."The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, who was wearing a vest packed with explosives," said Colonel Abdel Haadi of the Salaheddin joint operations command.