Ankara - Turkish Air Force jets bombed a number of suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the Turkish military confirmed.

In a short statement posted on its website, the Turkish General Staff said warplanes had bombed the banned Kurdish Workers'Party (PKK) positions in the Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern Iraq.

According to the statement the airstrikes were successful and all planes had safely returned to their bases.

Amman - Jordan and Iraq on Wednesday decided to step up coordination to tackle a possible outbreak of swine flu, confirmed cases of which have surfaced in several countries around the world.

Jordanian Health Minister Nayef Hayel met with his Iraqi counterpart Saleh al-Hasnawi to discuss what both countries should do in the face of an outbreak.

"The two ministers underlined the importance of exchanging information at the highest level over latest developments relating to the disease," an official statement said.

Baghdad - At least 17 people were killed in two car bomb attacks in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadr City, the satellite news network al-Arabiya reported Wednesday.

It was the latest in a series of deadly attacks targeting Shiite Muslims in Iraq. Suicide bombers killed more than 120 people over the space of two days last week.

In Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, police found the body of a beheaded girl in the city's eastern district of al-Karama, police there told the German Press Agency dpa on Wednesday.

Baghdad - Iraqi police have confirmed that a man they detained last week is the mysterious "emir" of an umbrella group including al-Qaeda in Iraq, an Iraqi security spokesman said Tuesday. Baghdad security spokesman Qassim Atta told the al-Arabiya satellite news channel that investigations had confirmed that the man Iraqi police arrested in Baghdad last Thursday was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq.

Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minster Nuri al-Maliki is expected in London on Wednesday, the latest stop in his tour of Europe to drum up investment in his country, local media reported. The Iraqi premier, who is traveling at the head of high-level delegation of Iraqi ministers and senior officials, is expected to sign a memorandum of understanding with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to strengthen Iraqi-British cooperation in a number fields, Baghdad's daily al-Sabah reported on Tuesday.