BAGHDAD - Insurgents killed 26 people Thursday 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 dollars 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, annoucing 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 AFP they had pulled another battalion of Iraqi commandos from the rebel bastion of Samarra 125 kilometres (75 miles) north of Baghdad last month after repeated incidents of misconduct.
In a March incident that sealed the unit's fate, the commandos set a home near Samarra on fire after searching it and finding no incriminating evidence.
Many of the controversial 12,000-strong unit are from Saddam's former special forces, security directorate and Republican Guard.
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.
The revelation a year ago of sexual and physical abuse in US-run prisons marked a turning point in the US venture in Iraq, rallying public opinion to the insurgency.
Another picture beamed around the world, fanning Arab anger, was that of a US soldier shooting to death an Iraqi lying on the floor of a mosque during the American assault on the former rebel stronghold of Fallujah in November.
US news network NBC reported that the marine was cleared of any wrongdoing by the military, which argued he had fired his weapon in self-defence.
In Washington, the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction said an audit finding nearly 100 million dollars 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 Thursday.
The United States accuses Syria of backing terrorism and seeking to destabilize Iraq, but Damascus denies the charges.
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.
International backing for the US-led coalition in Iraq ebbed further, as the Japanese and Bulgarian parliaments announced they would withdraw their troops at the end of the year, when the current UN mandate runs out.
But Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, buffeted by controversy over US troops killing an Italian agent in Baghdad, suggested Italy's own troop deployment should not be affected by the March incident.

05/05/2005 16:52 GMT