The commander of US ground forces in Iraq acknowledged Thursday that four of the country’s most populous provinces are not yet secure enough to hold national elections.

Seven United States soldiers were killed in Baghdad on Thursday when a roadside bomb hit their Bradley armoured fighting vehicle, killing all aboard, a military spokesperson said.

In a separate development, it has emerged that 18 Iraqi men recruited to work at a US base near Mosul have been murdered. Their bodies were found in a field outside the northern city.

An Iraqi civilian yesterday told how he and his cousin were forced at gunpoint into the Tigris River by US troops who laughed as they struggled against the current. The man's 19-year-old relative drowned.

The US Army Reserve, whose part-time soldiers serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, is “rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," due to misguided military policies and practices, the head of the Army Reserves said in a memo released Wednesday.

Thirty-four Israeli army reserve officers living in Jewish settlements in the West Bank urged soldiers Thursday to disobey orders to evacuate settlements in the Gaza Strip.

The FBI released new documents describing aggressive interrogation practices at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prompting the army to start an investigation into the agents’ accusations of prisoners’ abuse in the detention facility.

Suicide bombers have killed 21 people in attacks on an Iraqi police academy and a checkpoint. The attacks are the latest by insurgents who have killed more than 90 people, mostly policemen, this week alone.

Mahmoud Abbas, who is expected to win Sunday's election for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, condemned "the Zionist enemy" yesterday after seven children on their way to pick strawberries were mistaken for Palestinian militants and killed by Israeli tank shells. The tanks used anti-personnel shells, which throw out thousands of metal darts in a deadly cloud. Children aged 10, 12, 13 and 14 and three 17-year-olds were killed. A further 11 people were injured, four critically. The attack took place near Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, from where militants had been firing mortars at Israeli positions on the Gaza border, injuring one person.

The US Military and the State Department were given advanced warning. America's Navy base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was notified.

Why were fishermen in India, Sri Lanka and Thailand not provided with the same warnings as the US Navy and the US State Department?

Why did the US State Department remain mum on the existence of an impending catastrophe?