Following the blast, a curfew was imposed in Beiji, 155 miles, north of Baghdad.

In the Karradah neighborhood of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded during morning rush hour near a bank, killing at least 14 people and injuring 37, said police Lt. Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman.

The target was well chosen because Iraqi security forces draw their salaries from the bank on the first day of every month. The blast set several cars on fire in the leafy Shiite neighborhood. Dismembered bodies were strewn on the sidewalk.

Abdul Hassan Mohammed, a 62-year-old teacher, said he was walking to the bank to draw his pension when the bomb exploded. "A big explosion slammed me 4 meters (12 feet) into a wall. My friends took me to one of their stores, gave me water and asked me to relax ... I didn't get my pension," he told The Associated Press.

Karradah has seen increasing violence in the sectarian fighting between Shiites and Sunnis in recent months. Last Thursday, rockets and mortars rained down in the neighborhood, collapsing an apartment house, shattering shops and killing 31 people. A car bomb also exploded at the same time.

Elsewhere, a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and six civilians in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, said an official of a joint Iraqi-U.S. security force center. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details.

A roadside bomb narrowly missed a car belonging to the Ministry of Electricity, killing one civilian and wounding another in eastern Baghdad, police said. Gunmen in two cars raided a mosque west of Baghdad, killing a cleric and his brother.

A suicide attack was foiled when soldiers fired at a car trying to slam into an army convoy in Baghdad. The car exploded, killing the driver but nobody else, police said.

And two insurgents were killed when a roadside bomb they were planting on a highway detonated prematurely in Karma, 25 miles west of Baghdad, police said. In the northern town of Mosul, a drive-by shooting killed one civilian.

On Monday, gunmen dressed in military fatigues burst into the offices of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce and a nearby mobile phone company, seizing 26 people in a daylight raid in a mostly Shiite area of the capital. The same day, a millionaire businessman and his two sons were abducted from their car in Baghdad.

All the victims were believed to be Iraqis. The Iraqi-American Chamber is an independent organization not affiliated with the U.S. government, and maintains branches throughout Iraq and in Amman, Jordan.

The Interior Ministry denied that the kidnappers were police - despite the uniforms - and blamed the attack on "terrorists," Iraqi state television reported.

U.S. officials estimate an average of 30-40 people are kidnapped each day in Iraq, although the real figure may be higher because few families contact the police. Security officials believe most of the ransoms end up in the hands of insurgent and militia groups.

Many abductions are believed to be tied to the ongoing violence between Sunni and Shiite extremists who target civilians of the rival Muslim communities.

On Monday, the government said that since February, 30,359 families - or about 182,000 people - had fled their homes due to sectarian violence and intimidation. That represented an increase of about 20,000 people from the number reported July 20.

They were the seventh and eighth British soldiers to die this year in southern Afghanistan, where NATO is embarking on what it calls its most challenging mission yet to crack a growing Taliban insurgency.

The NATO force announced the casualties in a statement without releasing their nationalities, adding that the attack happened at 7:30 am in the restive northern part of the province.

A ministry of defence spokeswoman in London later revealed the soldiers were British and had died during "ongoing" clashes with insurgents.

"A UK vehicle patrol was attacked by insurgents with rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. Sadly, two UK soldiers have died. One is missing, presumed killed, and another seriously injured," she said.

The bulk of a British deployment of around 4,000 troops to Afghanistan is based in Helmand. Britain announced earlier this month that it would boost its initial deployment due to the unexpectedly fierce resistance.

British newspapers have reported dissatisfaction in the military at the vulnerability of army vehicles being used in Afghanistan, especially Land Rovers. It was not clear which vehicles were involved in Tuesday's attack.

The attack came a day after the US-led coalition that overthrew the Taliban in 2001 transferred command of foreign forces in southern Afghanistan to a NATO contingent.

ISAF's move into southern Afghanistan is NATO's most ambitious military undertaking yet and its first outside of the Europe Atlantic area.

It is also a risky mission, with insurgents more active in the lawless south than in the west and north of the country and Kabul, where ISAF has already been working to extend the government's authority.

Helmand is also the main producer of Afghanistan's illegal opium crop, which is the biggest in the world, and experts say the rebels and drugs-runners have joined forces against the new troops.

NATO's civilian spokesman in Kabul said Tuesday's attack would not change the ISAF mission and was not unexpected in an area that had already seen several encounters between foreign and insurgents.

"It tells us what we already knew, which is (that) the south is a difficult and challenging environment," Mark Laity told AFP.

"But it was challenging yesterday and it will be challenging tomorrow. The key thing is, this does not change our determination to continue the mission."

Laity said the incident also did not detract from NATO's ambition to put a greater emphasis on reconstruction than the US-led coalition, which was mandated primarily to hunt down insurgents.

"Development and security cannot be separate but we obviously know that the establishment of security is more challenging in some areas than others," Laity said.

A total of 62 foreign troops have died in action in Afghanistan in 2006, the bulk of them Americans.

Following the blast, a curfew was imposed in Beiji, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad.

A few hours later, a bomb-laden car blew up near a bank in the once-fashionable Karradah neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing at least 14 people and injuring 37, said police Lt. Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman.

He said the target was well chosen because Iraqi security forces draw their salaries from the bank on the first of every month.

The blast set several cars on fire in the Shia neighbourhood. Dismembered bodies were strewn on the sidewalk.

Abdul Hassan Mohammed, a 62-year-old teacher, said he was walking to the bank to draw his pension when the blast happened.

"A big explosion slammed me four metres into a wall. My friends took me to one of their stores, gave me water and asked me to relax," he said. "I didn't get my pension."

Karradah has seen increasing violence in the sectarian fighting between Shias and Sunnis in recent months. Last Thursday, rockets and mortars rained down in the neighbourhood, collapsing an apartment house, shattering shops and killing 31 people. A car bomb also exploded at the same time.

Such repeated violence, carnage and daily kidnappings are chipping away people's confidence in the ability of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to impose the will of his security forces and end sectarian strife as well as general lawlessness.

Much of the violence is blamed on the Shia-Sunni conflict, but some of it is also the handiwork of criminals who see a lucrative business in abductions for ransom.

Abd al-Mahdi was speaking at a gathering commemorating the third anniversary of the death of Baqir al-Hakim, the former leader of SCIRI who was killed by a bomb in Najaf in 2003.

"We suggest continuing the establishment of regions. We are going to submit the project to the parliament in the coming two months," he said.

Abd al-Mahdi acknowledged the government's failure in terms of public services and economy.

"Achieving public services that Iraqis hope for will help us in fighting terrorism. We have to hit terrorism by providing services and achieving a good economy," he said.

Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, chairman of SCIRI and brother of the late al-Hakim, led another ceremony on Saturday, also commemorating the third anniversary of his brother's death.

He gave a speech in which he highlighted "a number of important issues that we should take care of and give them priority in our daily movements".

Al-Hakim repeated his claim for a Shia federal region consisting of nine Iraqi governorates stretching from Babylon, 100km south of Baghdad, to Basra at the tip of southern Iraq.

He said: "Federalism is constitutionally secured. We have to work seriously on this issue, and figure out the necessary mechanism to switch to federalism. Dear countrymen, this issue is important to your governorates' security, safety and reconstruction."

Prosperity

He urged his followers to follow the example of Kurds in northern Iraq who declared their federal state earlier this year.

"Kurdistan was devastated by wars and suffered the same amount of negligence you suffered, but now - thanks to federalism - it has started to enjoy progress and prosperity more than any part of Iraq," he said.

Al-Hakim urged the Iraqi government to give the Iraqi governorates their constitutional rights to decide their state of rule.

"I am thinking about people such as Bill Clinton. We can find others, one per continent, who will be able to relaunch dialogue and give the feeling that we can talk to each other again," she said.

"We need person-to-person talks so that this little 48-hour glimmer of truce can be transformed into a ceasefire," Royal added.

A week later President Bush was forced to apologize publicly for not notifying Tony Blair that the U.S. was transporting bunker busters through Scotland to Israel (Israel's Justice Minister Haim Ramon said Israel was given a green light to continue attacks after the United States convinced Arab and European ministers not to call for an immediate truce at a Rome.) The news of U.S. bomb shipments to Israel broke on the same day four U.N. peacekeepers were killed in Israeli air strikes on Lebanon.

Bad enough? After 17 days of Israeli sorties over southern Lebanon, Hezbollah rather than being decimated showed up by complete surprise firing Khalibar 1's into Israel. Israel said the newer rockets have four times the range of the Katyushas, possibly putting northern Tel Aviv in range.

The magnitude, implications, and irresolvable conundrums of this ever escalating Israel-Hezbollah conflict have kept from the front pages and from proper analysis matters of enormous significance regarding the region. The July 29 deaths of 3 Marines brings the number of U.S. military war deaths in Iraq to 2,573 since the U.S. led invasion of 2003. The day before that, 3,700 troops about to go home were stopped and held back (3,700 troops who had been planning to return home over the next two weeks probably will remain for at least the next six weeks and possibly as long as four months, this time in the most violent area of the country, reports The Washington Post). Just weeks earlier, every public figure including President Bush spoke enthusiastically about beginning the process of troop withdrawal from Iraq. This rhetoric met a sudden and complete about face as the U.S. Central Command said that 5,000 additional troops in armored vehicles will patrol Baghdad streets, where nearly 100 civilians die each day, many of them victims of reprisal killings by death squads. In Iraq nearly 100 civilians die EVERY DAY!

The most significant matter about this horrific Israel-Hezbollah war has yet to dominate the attention of analysts. It has to do with intelligence. Here are three invaluable observations from Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post: 1. Israel has been forced to improvise furiously on the battlefield after discovering how much it did not know about the forces Hezbollah had amassed in southern Lebanon... Israelis take intelligence deadly seriously. For them, it is a tool of survival. 2. The intelligence failures by the Israelis in Lebanon and by the Americans in Iraq are related. 3. American intelligence has done no better at predicting the course or strength of Iraq's insurgency and the sectarian warfare that the insurgents have deliberately fanned between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis. Months of Bush administration happy talk about a government of national unity based on Sunni inclusion did not lead to the reduction of violence that was predicted, but to a sharp spike in Iraqi deaths and destruction instead. Intelligence (like everything) has two dimensions, an interior impulse and an exterior manifestation. The public and political figures tend to focus on the exterior aspects of intelligence gathering even though they are of lesser importance. The exterior aspects of intelligence, (what information you gather, how, and how accurately) are only valuable if guided well by insightfulness. In fact the term "intelligence" in common parlance does NOT refer to how much you know or how accurate your information, rather to how well you think.

The fact that two of the finest militaries in history (and the nations attached to them) find themselves up to their elbows in tar babies with no end in sight, after days for one and years for the other, and countless billions poured into shocking and awe-ing, is not for the lack of "a big right hand," but for not thinking straight.

A person or state operating on the following understanding might be described as intelligent. Further, the "gathering of intelligence," might proceed more fruitfully from an "intelligent" starting point. 1. Iran, Syria, and over 50 major, independent and state sponsored Islamist, and anti-Israel/US militias and "terrorist" organizations do not like the United States and do not like Israel. Bombing them will not make them change their minds. 2. The term "democracy" is not regarded as representing a virtuous social order to the intelligentsia, leaders, and rank and file of these states and these groups. Bombing them will not make them change their minds. 3. These states and groups do not uphold Christian and European conventions on how properly and "justly" to conduct war. Bombing them will not make them change their minds. 4. There are too many of them to bomb until they are all gone. Many argue that attacks on them strengthen them politically and strengthen their recruitment efforts.

It would be pleasant if we could bomb people into seeing things our way, and failing that bomb the recalcitrant ones until they are all gone. But we cannot. Good and effective strategies cannot arise from such a starting point. That is bad intelligence.

Strong and effective intelligence gathering should be based in clear understanding. Better understanding as the ground of "intelligence" would help to avert occasions in which powerful and economically and militarily advanced countries make big and costly mistakes with dire and enduring repercussions.

Asked who they consider to be in charge of the war between Israel and Lebanon, 23 percent of the recipients said that they blame Israel, and another 21 percent named the U.S. and other Israeli allies.

Only 14 and 13 percent of those polled believe that Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively, are responsible for the crisis. 5 percent think that Iran, Syria and other terrorist organizations' sponsors must be blamed. 4 percent think Lebanon provoked the predicament.

28 percent of Russians think that both sides are equally guilty.

Assessing the conflict, 39 percent said that Israel is fighting Palestinian and Lebanonese terrorist groups. 26 percent think that Israel is waging a military campaign against peaceful Lebanon, another 17 percent on the contrary, think that Lebanese and Palestinian extremists are fighting peaceful Israel. 18 percent has found it difficult to assess the conflict.

Most of the Russians polled also believe that Moscow has to stay away from the tangled Middle East conflict. 70 percent of the 1600 polled think that "Russian peacekeepers must not get involved in the conflict settlement."

At the same time 38 pecent of those polled believe that Russia should continue independent mediation. 11 percent think Moscow should support one of the sides.

The poll was conducted July 22-23 2006.

In the wake of Israel's deadly July 30 attack on the Lebanese village of Qana, Associated Press writer Katherine Shrader reported that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had canceled a trip to Lebanon after Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and other Lebanese officials apparently made clear she "was not welcome to visit." But numerous subsequent AP articles -- including one written by Shrader herself -- simply reported that Rice had "cut short her diplomatic mission" or "scrap[ped] her planned meeting" with Saniora, ignoring entirely the AP's earlier report that the Lebanese government had asked her to postpone the trip.

Shrader's original article quoted Saniora refusing to discuss anything with Rice "other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire" and noted that "infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit," despite her statement indicating that the decision to postpone the meeting was hers. From the July 30 article:

Stymieing Rice's diplomatic mission, Israel's early morning missile strike sparked protests in Beirut and forced Rice to cancel an expected visit Sunday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

[...]

Speaking in Beirut, Saniora said the attack on Lebanese civilians demonstrates a cease-fire is the only option. "There is no place at this sad moment for any discussions other than an immediate and unconditional cease-fire as well as international investigation of the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," he told reporters.

[...]

She has spoken by phone to Saniora to express the condolences of the U.S. government and its citizens and let him know she wouldn't be coming. But infuriated Lebanese officials said they had asked Rice to postpone the visit.

Either way, Rice was not welcome to visit Lebanon, an ally.

"In the wake of the tragedy that the people and the government of Lebanon are dealing with today, I have decided to postpone my discussion in Beirut," Rice said. "In any case, my work today is here."

Numerous other print outlets similarly reported that, while Rice stated that the decision to postpone the trip was hers, the Lebanese government's version of events differed. A July 31 Washington Post article acknowledged that "[v]ersions vary on who made the decision" and quoted from both Rice and Saniora's respective statements. The New York Times noted that Rice had canceled the meeting and reported that Saniora "made it clear that in any case Ms. Rice would not be welcome in Beirut on Sunday." And a July 31 Chicago Tribune article reported that "[i]n a rebuff to Rice, the Lebanese government responded to the bombing by telling the United States' top diplomat that she wasn't welcome in Lebanon unless the U.S would support an immediate cease-fire." The Tribune further noted that this "forced Rice to cancel her visit to Beirut later in the day."

But in subsequent articles on this development, the AP has failed to acknowledge the disagreement surrounding whose idea it was to cancel the meeting. AP writers Thomas Wagner and Kathy Gannon reported in a July 31 article that the "stunning bloodshed in Qana increased international pressure on Washington to back an immediate end to the fighting. ... The attack prompted U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cut short her Mideast mission to return home Monday." AP writer Deb Riechmann's July 31 report noted that Rice had "cut short her diplomatic mission in the Mideast." The same day, AP writer Nedra Pickler reported that the Qana attack had "prompted Rice to cut her trip short," and Tom Raum wrote that Rice "cut short her diplomatic mission to the Middle East without making an expected second stop in Lebanon."

Moreover, in a July 31 article, Shrader herself ignored entirely the account of the Lebanese government, which she had reported a day earlier. Instead, Shrader simply noted that Rice "had to scrap" the meeting and that, prior to leaving, she called Saniora "to discuss her plans to announce a framework for a U.N. resolution." Further, she reported that Rice had "disputed suggestions that this was one of her most difficult trips as secretary of State":

Rice had to scrap scheduled meetings with Lebanese leaders in Beirut on the final full day of her trip after Israel attacked the Lebanese village of Qana, killing more than 55 people while they slept. Searing images of children's bodies being pulled from rubble were replayed on international television.

[...]

A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about the sensitive diplomatic discussions, said Rice called Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora before leaving Monday to discuss her plans to announce a framework for a U.N. resolution. She also plans to dispatch her ambassador to Beirut to brief the prime minister in detail on the elements.

[...]

Rice disputed suggestions that this was one of her most difficult trips as secretary of State, but acknowledged she might not be as self-reflective as people think.

"I have a particularly strong sense of commitment to Lebanon itself. These are wonderful people, it's a beautiful place, and it's had such trouble and such misery for such a long time," she said. "It is hard to see what Lebanon is going through. It is hard to see what the Israeli citizens are going through. It's been way too long in the Middle East."

In an August 1 profile of Saniora, however, AP writer Sam F. Ghattas reported that the prime minister's "stance hardened after an Israeli strike in the southern town of Qana that killed at least 56 people" and that he subsequently "canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

-J.K.