Two British security guards and at least 20 Iraqis were killed in attacks across the country on Saturday as MPs worked against the clock to try to reach agreement on a draft constitution by Monday. In Amman, Saddam Hussein's defence team charged that the ousted Iraqi leader had been attacked by an unidentified man during a court hearing on Thursday discussing charges over the brutal 1991 suppression of a Shiite uprising.
The two British security contractors were killed when their consular convoy was targeted by a roadside bomb near the southern city of Basra, the foreign office said in London.
Two Iraqi children were also wounded by the blast, which damaged two vehicles in the convoy, a British army officer told AFP.
Another five people were killed and 25 wounded when a suicide car bomber attempted to ram a police patrol near the national theatre in the centre of Baghdad, police said.
Police reinforcements had been called in to the area to provide security for a public meeting to discuss the draft constitution.
Members of the constitutional committee must decide by Monday whether they have made enough progress for parliament to vote on a draft by August 15, or whether they will require a six-month extension as envisaged by interim constitutional rules.
Another 11 people were killed in separate attacks in Ishaki and al-Dur north of Iraq, officials said.
In another attack in Baghdad, several people were hurt when a bomb blew up near a US military patrol in the south of the city, the US military said. "We did have some casualties," it said, but gave no details. An Iraqi interior ministry official said that at least one civilian was killed.
In other violence, a senior Baghdad airport official and two employees were found with their throats slit after they were reported kidnapped three days earlier, and a top official at Iraq's health ministry, Imane Naji Abdelrazzak, was herself abducted from her home, an interior ministry official said.
Gunmen also fired at the Jordanian embassy, causing no victims.
Meanwhile, Saddam's defence team said an unidentified man had attacked the former president during a hearing of the Iraqi Special Tribunal on Thursday.
"As the president was leaving the courtroom a person... attacked the president and there was a fistfight between them," the Jordan-based team said in a statement.
His lawyers said it was not immediately known if Saddam, who is in US custody awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity, was hurt.
The tribunal could not immediately be reached for comment.
Moreover, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said President Jalal Talabani would attend the August 3 extraordinary Arab summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The meeting, called by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a few days after a series of deadly bomb attacks in the Red Sea resort, will focus on the fight against terrorism, along with the situation in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.
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