Ankara - Turkish warplanes bombed suspected Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) positions in northern Iraq late Thursday, the Dogan news agency reported on Friday.

Sixteen jets participated in air raids that began around 10 p. m. (1900 GMT) against targets around the villages of Kurtek, Galibedran, Seyitharun and Girdasala near the Iraqi border with Iran.

No civilian casualties were reported.

The Turkish Air Force has conducted a number of airstrikes against PKK targets in northern Iraq since a week-long cross-border incursion into northern Iraq was launched in February.

Baghdad - Two children playing on the streets of Baghdad were killed in a drive-by grenade attack, a news report said Friday.

Cambridge (UK), Sept. 25 : Nearly two years after an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, Western lawyers who helped guide the court, have contended that Hussein was railroaded to the gallows by vengeful officials in Iraq’s new government.

According to The Telegraph, these lawyers say Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki forced the resignation of one of five judges in the trial only days before the court sentenced Hussein.

The purpose, the lawyers say, was to avert the possibility that judges who were wavering would spare Hussein the death penalty and sentence him to life imprisonment instead.

Baghdad - An ambush which targeted a police patrol and members of the Iraqi Awakening Councils on Wednesday evening has claimed 28 lives, including 11 council members, medical sources told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Thursday.

The ambush targeted the police patrol on Wednesday evening near al-Dalimat village in Diyala province, 57 kilometres north-east of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Sources said that the attackers killed a policeman before opening fire on the patrol.

Police published a statement blaming al-Qaeda for the attack.

Brussels - The European Union is to send a mission to Syria and Jordan to investigate the plight of Iraqi refugees there in the first week of November, officials from the European Commission confirmed Wednesday.

The "high-level fact-finding mission" is set to travel in the first week of November and should consist of experts from the commission, EU member states and the UN, commission spokesman Michele Cercone said.

The mission is intended to study the problems facing refugees from Iraq, with the aim of deciding whether and how the EU could help those for whom it would be too dangerous to return home.