Iraq: Iraq yesterday named Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter and first wife on a most-wanted list along with top Baathists and al-Qaeda's new leader in Iraq, a day after the bloodiest bombing in three months killed more than 60 people.
The remains of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a US air strike last month, have been buried in Iraq in a secret grave after the US military handed over the body to the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials and the US military said.
In Baghdad, mortar and gunfire rang across a Sunni Arab neighbourhood and militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades prowled the streets, a witness said. US armoured vehicles entered the area as US helicopters flew overhead.
It was not immediately clear who was involved in the clashes in Adhamiya, a Sunni insurgent bastion near the Shia Sadr City where a car bomb devastated a market in the deadliest blast since a Shia-led unity government was formed six weeks ago.
The US army declined to comment on "current operations".
In more violence that has defied a massive government clampdown in the capital, a car bomb killed two people and wounded 13 outside a popular restaurant in central Baghdad.
South of Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a market killing at least three people. A source at a Baghdad hospital said they were treating 21 wounded from the explosion in Mahmudiya.
Saturday's bombing drew angry responses from Shias against prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's national reconciliation plan and his efforts to reach out to the once dominant Sunni minority.
It has stoked sectarian tension, already a factor in dozens of daily killings since a Shia shrine was bombed in February.
The 41 "most wanted" list, which offers a $10 million bounty for former Saddam deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, accuses Saddam's daughter, Raghd, and her mother of using millions stolen by the former Iraqi leader to finance Sunni insurgents.
Raghd has taken a leading role in organising her father's legal defence in his trial for crimes against humanity. Aged about 40, she lives in Jordan having been granted asylum there.
Her mother, Sajida, is also on a list that includes the new head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri. The government also offered a $50,000 reward for Masri - far less than the $5 million the United States placed on the man named by Osama bin Laden to succeed al-Zarqawi. The low sum may be intended to insult.
"We're releasing this list so that our people can know their enemies," national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told a televised news conference to unveil the pictorial list.
He declined to say if arrest warrants had been issued for Raghd and Sajida, but said Interpol had received the list.
Also included in the document was a former Saddam intelligence chief as well as senior Baathists.
Some, like Douri, are still on the three-year-old "deck of cards", a list of 55 wanted Baathist officials issued by the US military. Most of the 55 are dead or in captivity but Douri, at times reported killed, appears still to be at liberty.
National security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said that al-Zarqawi, who led a bloody campaign against Shias in an apparent bid to ignite civil war in Iraq, had been buried in a secret location somewhere in Iraq.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had called on the US military to release the body of Jordanian al-Zarqawi to his family in a website audio tape.
Meanwhile, a Shia member of Iraq's parliament escaped an attempt to kidnap her yesterday but several bodyguards were abducted in the second such attack on a woman lawmaker around Baghdad in as many days. Another woman lawmaker, a Sunni, was kidnapped on Saturday.
- (Reuters)