Baghdad  - The strategy always carried risks. But the immediate results - largely pacifying broad swathes of what had formerly been the most unstable areas of Iraq - were so spectacular that many were willing to set their worries aside.

Baghdad  - A US warplane killed at least one Iraqi insurgent and wounded at least two more when they were spotted planting explosives by the side of a road, the Multinational Forces in Iraq announced Friday.

US forces said an air weapons team on Thursday night fired on four armed men spotted placing an explosive near a road intersection north of Taji, not far from the site of a large US military base north of Iraq, killing at least one and wounding at least two others.

Baghdad  - A seven-year-old child was among three Iraqis killed in three separate bombings on Wednesday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

The child was killed by an explosion that targeted a police convoy in eastern Mosul's al-Akha district, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

In a second bomb attack, this time targeting the Kharzaq district in the south of the city, two brothers died, police said.

Baghdad - The Iraqi military said on Wednesday said that Iraqi security forces had defused five explosive devices and had detained 31 people in Baghdad over the past 24 hours on suspicion of planning insurgent attacks.

In a statement, Baghdad's operations command said the detainees included many of Iraqi security's most-wanted "outlaws and miserable remnants of defeated terrorist groups."

Baghdad  - At least nine people were killed and 29 injured in two separate blasts in the northern Iraqi province of Mosul, police said Tuesday.

Seven people died when a man drove a truck laden with explosives towards a police station in the northern city of Mosul, police told dpa, the German news agency.

The explosion, which also left 25 people injured - including nine policemen, took place in the district of al-Mahata, south of Mosul.