From Holden:

What a horrid weekend in Iraq where even the headquarters of the country’s security forces are not safe.

A suicide car bomber struck at the nerve centre of Iraq’s embattled security forces, killing 14 people and injuring 45 more in an attack on the interior ministry.

The attack came as Interior Minister Jawad Bolani was due to hold a meeting with police chiefs, and capped off a torrid 24 hours of carnage in which more than 60 Iraqis and five American soldiers had already been killed.

A security official told AFP that eight police commandos were among those killed when the bomber detonated his cargo of explosives near a checkpoint outside the ministry’s tightly-guarded compound in downtown Baghdad.

And the violence is not confined to Baghdad.

Iraqi Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed has said that the security situation in the southern oil city of Basra was getting worse despite the presence of British troops.