Iraq:Among the victims of yesterday's carnage in Iraq was 34-year-old Fr Rajheed Ganni, a Chaldean priest who studied at the Irish Pontifical College in Rome for seven years and who also said his first Mass there.
Fr Ganni and three deacons were shot and killed yesterday morning in the northern Iraq town of Mosur, just after they had celebrated Mass.
Mons Liam Bergin, rector of the Irish College in Rome, said last night that Fr Ganni had previously received death threats: "For many of the years that he studied with us, it was simply too dangerous for him to go back home to Iraq. So, instead, he spent a number of summers working at Lough Derg. For that reason, he was well known to a lot of people in Ireland."
Sixteen American troops died in Iraq in the first three days of June, marking a bloody start to the month as the US military presses on with its crackdown in Baghdad.
A total of 127 American troops died in May, the third worst total for US forces since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Fourteen of the latest deaths were reported on Sunday alone by the US military.
North of the capital, a suicide car bomber attacked a police convoy in Diyala province, killing 10 people in a busy market area and wounding 30 others, the local police chief said.
Gunmen at a fake checkpoint near Diyala's provincial capital of Baquba sprayed two minibuses with bullets, killing five people, police said.
Heavy machine gun fire and explosions boomed across central Baghdad late on Saturday from the direction of Sadr City, a sprawling Shia slum and stronghold of radical anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army militia.
The US military said helicopters had strafed militants preparing to fire rockets into the Green Zone, Baghdad's most secure area which houses the Iraqi parliament, government ministries and the US embassy.
A Reuters journalist saw an air-to-ground missile fired during Saturday's operation. A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieut-Col Scott Bleichwehl, said helicopters opened fire after gunmen were spotted trying to launch rockets at the Green Zone.
"Reports indicate four terrorists were killed and one wounded," he said.
US and Iraqi troops claim to have launched a security crackdown in Baghdad to try to quell sectarian violence that threatens all-out civil war. The US military says it expects higher casualties as more of its troops take to the streets. - ( Reuters)