In short

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Two bombs kill 55 in Baghdad

Two large bombs exploded within a few minutes of each other in a crowded Baghdad shopping area yesterday, killing 55 people on the day the US military said it was withdrawing 2,000 troops from the Iraqi capital.

Police said a roadside bomb exploded on a commercial street in the central Karrada district where street vendors gather to sell their wares and which many people visit on a Thursday at the start of the Muslim weekend.

Minutes later a suicide bomber detonated a second device, police said.

- (Reuters)

Jailed for triple murder

A man was given three life sentences by a Manchester judge yesterday for murdering his former girlfriend and her two teenage children with a hammer.

As Pierre Williams (33), from Birmingham, was told he would not be eligible for parole for 38 years, police said they feared he had committed other crimes against women and urged other victims to come forward.

Williams bludgeoned to death Beverley Samuels (36), her daughter Kesha Wizzart (18), and son Fred (13), at their home last July.

He was also found guilty of sexually assaulting the teenage girl and her mother. Kesha Wizzart was a former contestant in Young Stars in their Eyes, a television talent search show. - (Reuters)

Fears for Chad legislator

A Chadian opposition leader abducted from his home during a failed rebel assault on the capital last month said yesterday he feared a colleague seized at the same time was beaten to death by the security forces.

Arriving in Paris after fleeing Chad via neighbouring Cameroon, parliamentarian Ngarlejy Yorongar said he believed fellow opposition leader Ibn Oumar Mahamat Saleh had been killed after he was detained by soldiers just over a month ago.

"Ibn Mahamat Saleh arrived after me. The soldiers who brought him started punching him, pistol-whipping him, kicking him," Mr Yorongar told French radio station RFI shortly after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. "Given the state they left him in, in my opinion he's dead," he said. - (Reuters)

Explosion at Times Square

A small explosion damaged a US military recruiting station but caused no injuries in New York's Times Square before dawn yesterday, triggering a Pentagon alert for other stations across the country.

"We're treating it as if it were an incident of vandalism," army spokesman Paul Boyce said at the Pentagon.

Times Square was largely empty when the crude bomb went off at around 3.45am.

- (Reuters)

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times