IRAQ:A truck bomb killed 24 people and wounded 68 others near the Sunni Abdul Qadir al-Gailani mosque in central Baghdad yesterday, police said.
In Mosul, four policemen were killed when a car bomb exploded. The car was booby-trapped and contained the bodies of two men.
The latest violence came as President George Bush made a visit to the US war dead cemetery at Arlington, Virginia.
The annual Memorial Day holiday was tempered this year by the deaths of more than 100 Americans in Iraq in May alone, one of the bloodiest months of the war.
The president's visit came at a time when America's assessment of the Iraq War has never been worse. A poll by CBS News and the New York Times released last week said 76 per cent of Americans believed the war was going somewhat or very badly.
President Bush praised the number of Americans still signing up to join the US armed forces. "Those who serve are not fatalists or cynics," Mr Bush said. "They know that one day this war will end, as all wars do. Our duty is to ensure that its outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it.
"From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled, where our nation is more secure from attack and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it," he added.
US forces raided an al-Qaeda hideout northeast of Baghdad on Sunday and rescued 41 people who had been kidnapped, some as long as four months ago, a US military spokesman said.
Some of the captives had broken bones and bore signs of torture, said Col Steven Boylan, spokesman for Gen David Petraeus, the US military commander in Iraq. It was apparently the largest number of people ever rescued from al-Qaeda, Col Boylan said.
"This is typical of al-Qaeda. This is how they intimidate towns and villages - they take people and hold them," he said.
Col Boylan said the raid occurred in Diyala province, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shia region north and east of Baghdad that has been the scene of some of the worst sectarian violence in Iraq. About 3,000 additional US forces have been sent to the province in recent weeks to help quell the fighting.
Diyala has become a new stronghold for al-Qaeda since it has been put on the defensive in neighbouring Anbar province, where tribal leaders have begun working with US and Iraqi forces to root out the extremist group. US forces raided an al-Qaeda prison in Anbar last week, freeing 17 people, including a 13-year-old boy who had been tortured. - ( Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service/ Reuters)