The flow of bad news from Iraq is hard to keep up with these days. It appears that almost every day there is another car bomb attack or suicide bomber, more foreign soldiers returning home in body bags, and just yesterday we now learn that British forces storm an Iraqi police station to rescue two British servicemen believed to be held there.

It later emerged that the two SAS officers were in fact not in the police station, but had been released a little earlier to a local militia group. They were rescued from a house near to the police station, but now there are serious questions over the so called ‘close working relationship’ between the occupying forces and Iraqi police.

While British newspapers carry dramatic pictures of yesterdays prison raid yet more bad news comes from the region. An Iraqi journalist, Fakher Haider, working for the New York Times has been killed after men claiming to be police officers abducted him from his home in Basra. And four American security guards travelling in a US diplomatic convoy have been killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul this morning when a suicide car bomber rammed their three-car convoy.

The occupation of Iraq by foreign forces is set to last until democracy and security has been established. But as the situation in the country seems to deteriorate with each passing day one wonders just how long that might be. For now at least, any hope of an early departure from Iraq must surely have been put aside.

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BBC News coverage of Iraq occupation
Al Jazeera reports on jail break
Iraqi anger explodes in the face of the British occupiers
New York times reporter killed