A suicide bomber has killed at least 88 people in a bustling Baghdad square where laborers had gathered waiting for work. Around 220 others were injured, many of them seriously, when the attacker drove a van packed with explosives into the crowd. It was the worst suicide attack in recent weeks, and one of the most violent since the posts-war insurgency began.

The attack happened in the Kazimiyah district of the Iraqi capital, where around 950 people also died on September 1, when a crowd of Shiite pilgrims stampeded after rumors of a suicide bomber spread through the crowd.

This time, a police spokesman confirmed that the bomber struck at 6:30 a.m. in Baghdad's Oruba Square, where construction workers congregate every day seeking employment. Initial reports suggest the attacker my have lured workers towards the van with the promise of work, before detonating his explosives.

And eyewitness named Hadi, who had come to the square to find work, told Reuters, "We gathered and suddenly a car bomb blew up and turned the area into fire and dust and darkness."

Satah Jihad, a shopkeeper, also witnessed the attack. He seemed to confirm rumors that the bomber had deliberately attracted the attention of workers keen to find work, before the deadly cargo exploded. "There were dozens and dozens of people around the car when it blew up," he said.

Officials fear the death toll will rise. The wounded were taken to four hospitals across the city, with many so badly injured that they are not expected to survive.

Only a few hours earlier, 17 Iraqi civilians died when uniformed militants attacked the village of Taji, 15 km north of the capital. An unnamed interior ministry spokesman told AFP that villagers were dragged out of their homes and rounded up on the village square before being publicly executed. A local police officer, Lieutenant Walleed al Hayali, confirmed that the victims had been handcuffed and blindfolded before they were shot.

Both attacks have been blamed on Sunni militants who are thought to want to provoke a civil war in the run up to a referendum on Iraq's new constitution on October 15.

Yet more gruesome details of militant attacks emerged from Iraq yesterday. A US commander fighting insurgents in northern Iraq has spoken of atrocities committed by rebel fighters against Iraqi civilians. Torture and beheadings are common place, he said.

"The enemy here did just the most horrible things you can imagine -- in one case murdering a child, placing a booby trap within the child's body and waiting for the parent to come recover the body of their child and exploding it to kill the parents," confirmed Colonel H.R. McMasters, in Tal Afar, near the Syrian border. (2:45 p.m. CET)

First Charges over Katrina Deaths

Amid the bitter anger and resentment at the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, many no-doubt wish the powers that be could be brought to justice. The failure to evacuate Gulf Coast residents quickly enough and subsequent inability to deliver food, water and medical supplies to those in desperate need cost scores of lives.

But two people have now been charged with criminal neglect. The owners of a nursing home near New Orleans, where 34 elderly and infirm residents died after their care-providers failed to evacuate them, are facing 34 counts of negligent homicide.

Salvadore Mangano Sr. and his wife Mabel, both in their 60s, turned themselves in to police yesterday. Although they were repeatedly warned by authorities in the parish of St. Bernard, the owners of St. Rita's nursing home did not evacuate residents as Katrina approached. Then the floodwaters came.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. explained the charges at a press conference yesterday. "They did not die of natural causes; they drowned," he said. "Thirty-four people drowned in a nursing home where they should have been evacuated." Foti insists the owners had both the time and means to move residents from the one-storey building, and were offered the use of buses to do so.

But attorney Jim Cobb, defending the Manganos, said his clients were unaware of a mandatory evacuation order and were fearful that moving critically ill patients would endanger lives. The couple had an exemplary record, and were popular in the St. Bernard community. They faced the "horrible choice" of staying put and sitting out the storm, or moving residents in the knowledge that doing so would inevitably cause the deaths of some of them, Cobb said.

Neighbors have recounted details of the distressing scenes as waters rose in St. Bernard on August 29. Local residents arrived in boats and attempted to smash their way through the nursing home roof.

"We got 25 to 27 people out alive," Steve Snyder told USA Today. "And then we didn't hear any more screaming, any more people calling for help." (12:15 p.m. CET)

Annan: UN Summit Document "a Disgrace"

As United Nations summit gets underway today to celebrate the world body's 60th birthday, there won't be any shortage of beaming smiles in Manhattan. Managers of New York City's luxury hotels are gleefully posting "No Vacancy" signs at their concierge desks and heads-of-state are no doubt busily preparing for their brief moments in the international spotlight.

But, behind the scenes, UN diplomats are more likely to be wearing grimaces. Charged this past spring with the ambitious task of developing a statement of goals for the summit -- a document that would map out large-scale organizational reform and re-affirm the global fight against poverty, terrorism and human rights violations -- the diplomats have come up short.

The 35-page document that resulted from their months of toil is a collection of vague promises, and piecemeal reforms and is far from the radical overhaul UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for.

He's not happy and has labeled their work "a disgrace." Specifically, of course, he was referring to the document's limp-wristed handling of nuclear disarmament. But the same harsh assessment could apply to other issues as well: commitment to development aid wasn't significantly bolstered; the hot-button issue of Security Council expansion -- despite months of pressure by Germany, Japan, India and Brazil -- was left un-touched; and the UN council charged with ensuring the protection of human rights will still feature representatives from countries -- like Iran, Syria and Sudan -- that are notorious violators of these rights.

Most UN diplomats, in describing the document, eschewed Annan's harsh rhetoric for language that was, well, more diplomatic. And, perhaps one ought to applaud the fact that diplomats have managed to craft any sort of document to which 191 nations can agree. But given the final result, that applause will be muted by the realization that the only point on which the world's nations can concur agree on is that they all must agree to disagree. (11:15 a.m. CET)

Mein Dance

Fans of World War II history have recently been given a bit more material to work with. With the release of a 65-year-old report, we now have a better idea of what Berlin would have looked like had the Nazis won World War II. Aside from plans to transform it into the capital city -- to be called Germania -- of a new German empire, it seems Adolf Hitler also intended to make Berlin into Europe's hottest clubbing destination.