Turkish troops continue to hold their positions across from Iraq's northern border. Villagers on the Iraqi side are concerned they could be caught in the shelling if the Turkish military targets Kurdish rebels who have been conducting raids into Turkey. A number of those villagers are Christians who had fled the violence in Baghdad.

Iraqi police say a bomb exploded in a crowded animal market in central Baghdad Friday, killing at least 13 people. Authorities say the blast wounded at least 40 others, including four police officers.

Al Qaeda militants killed at least eight members of a neighbourhood police patrol in southern Baghdad after taking them by surprise by driving up in a stolen Iraqi army vehicle, police said.

A former top US commander in Iraq has thrown his support behind a war funding bill proposed by Democrats that calls for withdrawing most combat troops by the end of next year.

A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi Interpreter were killed by a sophisticated roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said Wednesday. Three other soldiers were wounded in the attack, the military said in a statement.

Turkey is still massing tens of thousands soldiers on the Iraqi border, a response to a series of attacks by Kurdish militants that have claimed the lives of more than 50 soldiers and civilians. Rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK, many based in northern Iraq, have been fighting Turkey for autonomy for more than 20 years.

The employer claim that the five Western security contractors, kidnapped a year ago in Iraq, are still alive and the authorities are exerting all efforts to secure their release.

Syrian soldiers speed along the border with Iraq on truck patrols designed, officials say, to prevent jihadists from Syria joining the insurgency on the other side.

Poland's new Defence Minister, Bogdan Klich, says the country will end its mission in Iraq, where it currently deploys 900 soldiers, next year.

Iraqi security officials say two civilians have been killed in a roadside explosion near a U.S. military patrol outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy and several Iraqi government offices are located.

The Iraqi government cordoned off the building and seized the west Baghdad headquarters of a powerful Sunni Muslim group. They accuse the group of supporting al-Qaida.

The government of Iraq controls 95% of proceeds from the export of the country's oil, President Jalal Talabani said on Wednesday.