BAGHDAD, May 5: Insurgents killed 22 people in a string of attacks in Baghdad on Thursday, capping a week that has left about 250 dead since Iraq’s first elected government in half a century was formed. A US audit also revealed that nearly 100 million dollars disbursed from a fund UN-approved fund for reconstruction projects were unaccounted for by Iraq’s now-defunct US administration.

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 once again woke up to a spate of insurgent attacks against the country’s embattled security forces, the day after a suicide bombing killed 46 people at a police recruiting centre in the Kurdish city of Arbil.

A suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden vehicle 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 also rained gunfire on police vehicles in two separate attacks, killing eight policemen and setting the cars ablaze. A guard was also killed in a car bomb attack against the home of a senior defence ministry official.

The fresh bloodshed came a day after one of the deadliest attacks in recent months, when a suicide bomber set off his explosives belt in the middle of a crowd of Iraqis queuing to enlist in the police in Arbil. The attack in the Kurdish city was claimed by the Ansar al-Sunna organisation, an extremist group with links to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

The devastating bombing fueled fears of sectarian strife as it was the second major attack against Kurdish targets in three days, after a bomber rammed an explosives-laden ambulance into a funeral for a Kurdish official.

The Committee of Scholars — the leading Sunni Muslim organisation in Iraq — condemned the Arbil bombing and warned against any attempt to trigger civil unrest. As Iraq’s fledgling security forces were being targeted across the country, the defence ministry’s director-general said Iraqi troops would not be ready to take over from the US military before the end of next year.

“By the end of 2005, we’ll have fewer multinational forces (in Iraq) and by the end of 2006, it will be complete,” Bruska Shaways told AFP.

The unrest has dashed hopes that the announcement of a new cabinet after January’s elections would unndermine the insurgency.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari was still struggling to complete his line-up amid differences over the choice of a Sunni Arab candidate for the key post of defence minister.

As US military actions in Iraq came under further scrutiny, a Human Rights Watch statement charged that the army’s checkpoint procedures were grossly inadequate.

The rights watchdog said the deaths of many Iraqi civilians and that of an Italian agent killed two months ago when shepherding a freed hostage could have been avoided had recommendations issued 18 months ago been implemented.

In Washington, an audit revealed that officials for the former US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq have been unable to account for nearly 100 million dollars from a reconstruction fund.

The Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction said the audit had revealed “indications of potential fraud.”—AFP