Baghdad - Iraqi security sources killed an Iranian man on Thursday and arrested another after an armed struggle in Kut, south-east of Baghdad, a security source said.

The two men held Iranian nationalities, and were believed to have been in Iraq to conduct terrorist attacks, General Aziz Latif al- Emarah told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) confiscated four machine guns from th two men. Kut is located some 180 kilometres south-east of Baghdad.

Investigations with the detainee are still underway, the ISF said.

Baghdad - After a series of atrocities against Iraqi Christians in Mosul, around 400 Christians arrived in Syria to escape the harsh conditions of home, according to a statement by a Syrian refugee assistance organization Friday.

In the last few days, some 20 Christian families arrived in the city of Qamhley, which is close to the Syrian-Iraqi border, said Lauren Gul, a representative of the refugee assistance group.

Ankara - The Turkish military on Friday claimed to have killed 25 Kurdish rebels and wounded several others in airstrikes last week on Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) positions in northern Iraq.

General Staff spokesman Metin Gurak told reporters that Turkish war planes hit the PKK positions in the Qandil mountains near the Iraqi border with Iran on October 17.

The PKK uses mountainous northern Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks inside Turkey.

Ankara blames the separatist group for the deaths of more than 35,000 people since the early 1980s when the PKK began its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated south-east of Turkey.

Amman - The interior ministers of Iraq's neighbouring countries ended a one-day meeting in the Syrian capital Amman Thursday by pledging their support for the restoration of security to the violence-torn country.

According to a joint communique, the participating countries agreed to "cooperate bilaterally or collectively and to take all necessary measures to prevent terrorists" from using their territories as bases for mobilization, training or financing.

Baghdad- An apparent suicide bomb attack on the convoy of an Iraqi minister killed 11 and injured 22 Thursday, witnesses told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The attack on the convoy of Iraqi Labour Minister Mahmoud al-Radi occurred in the Tahrir Square area in Baghdad, al-Arabiya TV reported.

Al-Radi was not injured in the blast, his ministry said in a statement.

Separately, a blast in a market area injured 16 people in Iraq's Diyala province.

Amman  - Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Bolani said Thursday that the security pact being negotiated with the United States was a "purely national issue" and that Baghdad rejected any external interference in its contents.

"The security agreement with the United States is a purely national issue and thus we cannot accept any meddling that injures Iraq's interests," Bolani told reporters before the opening of a meeting that groups Interior Ministers of Iraq and eight neighbouring countries.

"The security agreement is subject only to the vision of the Iraqi government," he added.