Baghdad - The Iraqi government has decided not to renew the operational licence for Blackwater, a private US security firm involved in a 2007 firefight that left at least 14 Iraqi civilians dead, local media reported Thursday.

"The licence is finished. By order of the interior minister, it will not be renewed," interior ministry spokesman Abdel Karim Khalaf said in remarks broadcast on Arabic satellite news channels Thursday.

Baghdad - Early voting in provincial elections began Wednesday in Iraq, ahead of the main round of balloting due to begin at the weekend, election officials confirmed.

The special voting day allows Iraqi security forces, detainees and hospital patients to cast ballots in the provincial elections.

The polls will be held in 14 of 18 provinces. A total of 614,998 people are expected to vote in the special election Wednesday, Iraqi election officials told the Voices of Iraq news agency.

Around 800 international observers are monitoring the 75 electoral centres in Baghdad and other provinces during the early voting.

Baghdad  - A string of politically-targeted attacks took place on Tuesday across Iraq, as the country gears up for provincial council elections on January 31.

Unknown militants set fire to a school that was set to be a polling station in the town of Falluja, about 50 kilometres west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a security source said.

The school was completely destroyed, the source told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, adding that security around polling stations would be tightened across the country.

Baghdad - Unknown militants set

Baghdad-  A car bomb exploded Tuesday near the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in eastern Mosul, killing four people and injuring one, a security source told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

The blast appears to be one of a string of politically-targeted attacks that have occurred in recent weeks, as Iraq gears up for provincial council elections on January 31.

The dead included four Iraqi army officers," the source said. A member of Kurdish milita forces, or Peshmerga, was also wounded.

Mosul, the capital city of Nineveh province, lies some 400 km north of Baghdad.

Baghdad  - In 1980, while Mouein al-Qatimy was still a student in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein executed his two brothers. They had refused to join the former dictator's Iraqi Baath Party.

Mouein was told that he was next.

"From that day the security forces started to follow me. They told me 'your destiny will be like them' if you don't conform," he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"The old regime did not give any room for opposition in Iraq," he said.

Mouein fled Iraq and lived in exile for more than 20 years.