Kamal Taha

At least eight people were killed in violence in Iraq on Thursday amid a continued power vacuum as prime minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki missed a personal deadline to present his new Cabinet. Though the constitutional deadline for the new Cabinet is not until May 21, al-Maliki had pledged to have the government ready by Wednesday.

The defence lawyer for a co-defendant of Saddam Hussein who was kidnapped just a day after the opening of the former Iraqi dictator’s trial over a Shi’ite massacre has been killed, officials said on Friday. The body of Saadoun Janabi was found with a bullet to his head in the impoverished northern Baghdad neighbourhood of Ur.