Iraq's Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has signed new security law giving his government wider powers to combat insurgents on a day of serious street clashes in various parts of the country.
Foreign minister Mr Hoshiyar Zebari has said the new security law empowers the government to impose curfews, set up checkpoints and search and detain suspects.
The measures will be temporary and are unlikely to apply nationwide. Details of the widely anticipated National Safety Law will be outlined later today after several delays since the government formally assumed sovereignty from the US-led occupation on June 28th.
Mr Allawi's government has said it also plans to restore the death penalty, suspended during the occupation, and offer a temporary amnesty for rebels who fought the Americans.
He blames Saddam Hussein supporters and foreign militants for sabotage, guerrilla attacks and kidnappings aimed at making postwar Iraq ungovernable.
US defence officials said 90 of 5,700 security detainees in Iraq were foreign fighters, about half of them Syrians. Others were from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, unidentified militants kidnapped an Egyptian driver who was delivering petrol from Saudi Arabia to the US military in Iraq , Al Jazeera television is reporting.
The station broadcast a video tape from the unnamed group, which said it represents the "legitimate Iraqi resistance". It showed four armed men standing behind the seated hostage, identified by the television as Sayed Mohammed Sayed al-Arabawi.
While the violence continued today Mr Allawi received good news about Iraq 's vital oil exports today. Exports rebounded to the usual level of 1.7 million barrels a day after repairs to a pipeline damaged by weekend sabotage were completed. The output had fallen to 1 million after the bomb attack
Mr Allawi will meet European Union foreign ministers in Brussels next Monday to discuss Europe's contribution to Iraqi reconstruction. Mr Allawi has been invited by the EU's Dutch presidency.
