Baghdad - Two brothers, one of them a policeman, were fatally shot on Monday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

Police said the pair were gunned down in the district of al-Arabi, in eastern Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad - which remains among the most dangerous areas of Iraq, despite a series of security pushes by Iraqi and US forces.

Monday's deaths follow a US shooting in Kut, the capital of the predominantly Shiite province of Wasit, southeast of Baghdad, on Sunday, which killed the wife and brother of a local dignitary.

Baghdad - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assured Iraqis on Saturday that both their countries were partners and that the US would continue to support them even as it withdrew combat troops. "Our strategy working with you may be a new phase, but I pledge our full and continuing commitment to Iraq and the Iraqi people," Clinton said in a press conference with her Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari, at the end of her one-day unannounced visit.

Tehran - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday blamed the United States and

Baghdad- US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in the Iraqi capital on an unannounced visit, Voices of Iraq news agency reported on Saturday. The visit comes at a time as the new US ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, is taking up his office.

The trip - Clinton's first to Iraq as secretary of state - also comes after 48 hours of suicide bombings in Baghdad and other cities which have killed at least 155.

President Barack Obama vowed to withdraw US combat troops from Iraqi cities by summer during a recent visit to Iraq.

Baghdad - At least 30 people were killed and as many as 100 others were injured when two suicide bombers struck a Shiite shrine in Baghdad on Friday, witnesses said.

Witnesses told the German Press Agency dpa that a man detonated explosives strapped to his body at the door to the shrine to a revered, eighth-century Shiite imam in the northwestern Baghdad neighbourhood of Kadhimiya. Soon after, a woman blew herself up at the woman's entrance to the shrine.

Washington - The US Defense Department next month will release 44 photographs of prisoner treatment at facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, in response to a long-running lawsuit over detainee abuse.

In documents filed late Thursday, the government said that 44 photos would be issued by May 28.

The court documents were released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a non-governmental organization that sued starting in 2004 for the release of photos and other documents pertaining to possible detainee mistreatment and abuse at numerous military facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.