Baghdad

Six car bombs killed at least 133 people in a Shi’ite stronghold in Baghdad on Thursday, one of the bloodiest attacks since the United States invasion and likely to inflame sectarian passions in a nation sliding towards civil war. A further 201 people were wounded, police said.

Iraq and neighbouring Syria agreed to restore full diplomatic relations on Tuesday in an accord in which Syria accepted that United States troops should stay while the Iraqi government needed them. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem was making the first visit by a Syrian minister to Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

A day after a mass kidnap from a Baghdad ministry raised fears Iraq’s sectarian militias are out of control, government leaders gave sharply differing accounts on Wednesday of whether dozens of hostages were still missing. The minister whose staff were targeted said up to 80 were still unaccounted for, possibly held by Shi’ite militia.

Most of the dozens of hostages seized at a Higher Education Ministry building on Tuesday were freed in operations by security forces in Baghdad, state television Iraqiya said early on Wednesday. There was no immediate confirmation of late night raids to free the hostages or word on whether any had been injured.

Gunmen in Iraqi police uniforms rounded up dozens of men at a government building in central Baghdad on Tuesday and drove off, in what may be the biggest mass kidnapping seen in a city becoming used to such violence. A spokesperson said dozens of men — ”100 or maybe 150” — had been rounded up.

A suicide bomber killed 35 people at an Iraqi police recruiting centre in Baghdad on Sunday, in the latest attack that undermines United States and Iraqi government efforts to bolster the country’s security forces. Interior Ministry sources said 56 people were also wounded in the attack after a bomber wearing an explosive-laden vest walked into the recruiting centre for police commandos.

A pair of mortar rounds slammed into a soccer field while young men were playing a game in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Wednesday, as more than 60 people were killed in attacks nationwide. United States forces also said they killed 14 suspected insurgents, detained 48 and rescued a kidnapped Iraqi policeman in a pair of raids outside Baghdad.

Iraq began on Monday to lift a curfew imposed to quell any insurgent backlash against the death sentence passed on Saddam Hussein, amid a wave of jubilation among his former victims and fury among diehard supporters. Italy and France urged Iraq not to execute Saddam and Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain opposed the death penalty.

Judges put Saddam Hussein’s appeal process into motion on Monday as Baghdad lifted a round-the-clock curfew imposed to prevent attacks in the aftermath of the ousted president’s death sentence. Saddam was sentenced to hang by the Iraqi high tribunal, which found him guilty on Sunday of crimes against humanity.

More than three-and-a-half years after Iraqis cheered the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue, the ousted dictator’s own end will probably draw a little closer on Sunday with the verdict in his first trial. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said an execution order ”on this criminal despot and his criminal aides will be passed soon”.

Iraqi troops dragged prisoners to a pit dug out of the desert sands and shot them two-by-two under the lights of a waiting bulldozer, a survivor of Saddam Hussein’s alleged genocide said on Tuesday. The ousted Iraqi leader sat impassively in the dock as five witness gave their testimony.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki distanced himself on Wednesday from a United States-announced ”timeline” to end sectarian violence and criticised a raid on a Shi’ite militia stronghold aimed at a death squad leader. Al-Maliki, himself a Shi’ite Muslim, spoke a day after the top US civilian and military officials in Iraq said his government had agreed to a series of steps to end the bloodshed.

The United States urged Iraqi leaders on Tuesday to work harder to achieve key political and security goals, amid mounting pressure on US President George Bush to change his policy. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told a news conference in Baghdad that success in Iraq was still possible and could be achieved in a ”realistic timetable”.

Iraq’s prime minister sent an envoy to the southern city of Amara on Friday after clashes between Shi’ite militias and police in areas United States and British forces handed over to Iraqi control months ago. Violence between Shi’ite militias and Iraqi security forces have killed 15 people and wounded 91 since Thursday, a security source in Amara said.

Saddam Hussein’s troops drove truckloads of terrified Kurdish villagers into the desert and gunned them down by the hundreds, a witness told the ousted Iraqi leader’s genocide trial on Wednesday. After managing to escape, the detainee ran off through the night and fell into a ditch of the recently killed, in the middle of a vast field of burial mounds left behind by a systematic slaughter, he told the court.

The chief judge ejected Saddam Hussein and a co-defendant punched one of the guards and denounced prosecutors as pimps and traitors during the toppled Iraq leader’s genocide trial on Tuesday. The government criticised the United States-backed court after the chaotic scenes. Last month it sacked the previous presiding judge because it believed he was too soft with Saddam.

Iraqi police found 60 bodies dumped across Baghdad in the 24 hours until Tuesday morning, all apparent victims of sectarian death squads, an Interior Ministry official said. The United States military also said Iraqi and US forces had killed 11 militants, most dressed as Iraqi police officers, in fresh clashes in the southern Shi’ite city of Diwaniya.