Friday, May 6 2005 08:56 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Baghdad: Insurgents yesterday (May 5, 2005) killed 26 people in a string of attacks across Iraq, capping a bloody week that has left some 250 dead since the country's new leaders unveiled the first democratically-elected Government in half a century.

Meanwhile, a US audit revealed that Iraq's now-defunct US administration failed to account for nearly $ 100 million disbursed from a UN-approved fund for reconstruction projects.

And in Texas, a judge declared a mistrial in the court-martial of Lynndie England, the US soldier who featured in some of the worst Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos, postponing the decision on her fate by weeks or months.

Baghdad woke up again to a spate of insurgent attacks targeting the country's embattled security forces, a day after a suicide bomber killed 46 people at a police recruiting centre in the Kurdish northern city of Arbil.

This time, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside an Army recruiting post at the former Muthanna airport in the centre of Baghdad, killing 13 and wounding 15, an Interior Ministry official said.

Insurgents in southern and eastern Baghdad neighbourhoods rained gunfire on police vehicles in two separate attacks, killing eight policemen and setting several patrol cars ablaze.

Four Iraqi commandos from the crack "Lightning Brigade" were killed and five wounded late in the day, when a suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives next to their patrol in Mosul in northern Iraq, police said.

A guard was also killed in a car bomb attack against the home of a senior Defence Ministry official.

As Iraq's fledgling security forces were being targeted across the country, the government struck back, announcing the arrest of a former official of Saddam Hussein's now-defunct Baath party in Mosul on suspicion of masterminding a string of insurgent attacks.

Illustrating the uphill task in training new Iraqi security forces, US officers told agencies they had pulled another battalion of Iraqi commandos from the rebel bastion of Samarra 125 kilometres north of Baghdad last month after repeated incidents of misconduct.

In the United States, the fate of the female soldier who became the face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal remained undetermined after the judge threw out her guilty plea.

Colonel James Pohl declared a mistrial after Charles Graner, the alleged abuse ringleader, testified he had ordered England to hold a leash tied to the neck of a naked Iraqi prisoner.

In Washington, the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction said an audit finding nearly $ 100 million unaccounted for by former US-led Coalition Provisional Authority officials suggested "potential fraud".

Meanwhile, US Central Command chief General John Abizaid charged that Syria had ignored US demands to stop foreign fighters crossing the border into Iraq, in remarks published by a Kuwaiti newspaper yesterday.

In an apparent response, Syrian authorities said they had detained 137 Saudis after they attempted to cross into Iraq from Syria to take part in the anti-US insurgency there, according to Al-Watan newspaper, which published the names of 17 of them.