Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Monday blamed a recent series of deadly bombings in Baghdad on cells of the Baath Party. Over the course of three days last week, eight car bombs struck Shiite districts of Baghdad, killing at least 51 people. The Baath Party, led by late dictator Saddam Hussein, was removed from power in Iraq in 2003 by the US-led invasion.

Baghdad - Baghdad is not seeking to buy advanced Russian weapons systems, an Iraqi government spokesman said Monday, denying earlier reports. "Iraq does not want to buy heavy, advanced weapons from Russia," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Baghdad's al-Iraqia television Monday.

Any reports to the contrary were "absolutely untrue," al-Dabbagh said, adding that budget cuts and Iraq's current security requirements precluded the purchase of advanced fighter jets or air defence systems.

Baghdad - In a surprise visit, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday arrived in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq, Iraqi national television reported. Abbas arrived from Saudi Arabia, but had been in Baghdad last week. His visit to Baghdad was the first by a Palestinian president since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Last week in Baghdad, Abbas discussed the Middle East peace process and the situation of Palestinian refugees stranded on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

Baghdad - Hundreds of Kurds took the streets in Mosul on Monday calling for the inclusion of the province in the northern Kurdish Autonomous Region. Demonstrators in the heavily Kurdish populated villages of Shekhan and Singar carried signs calling for Mosul, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, to join the federally recognized, autonomous region in the north that is home to the majority of Iraq's Kurdish minority.

Baghdad - Iraq's National Reconciliation Minister said Iraq will hold a meeting later this month to discuss the participation of former Baath party members in politics, a local newspaper said Sunday. "The Iraqi government seeks to hold a meeting to resolve this sensitive issue and to form a unified national stance to the issue," Minister Akram al-Hakim told state-controlled al-Sabah newspaper.

Baghdad - A suicide attack in southern Iraq on Saturday killed at least nine members of a Sunni group aligned with US forces and injured 30 members of the group, the al-Jazeera news channel reported. A suicide bomber targeted the headquarters of the Iraqi army in al-Askandariyah city in Babil province, where he blew up himself among a gathering of Sahwa fighters, or members of Iraq's so-called "Awakening Councils."

The victims had been collecting their monthly wages at the time of the attack, according to al-Jazeera.