'Iraq situation worsening'

Only 12 percent of the 1,009 people questioned said the troops' presence was helping to improve the situation in Iraq, and 51 percent said Tony Blair's government should set a date for the withdrawal of British soldiers from Basra, whatever security problems remained in the country.

In violence, a suicide car bomber killed at least 10 Iraqis in an attack near government buildings in Baghdad yesterday, police said, raising this week's death toll from violence in and around the Iraqi capital to 36.

Gunmen dressed as police executed Iraqi five teachers and a driver in front of children at a school south of Baghdad Monday, police said.

The 10 gunmen dragged the teachers -- all of them Shias -- from their classrooms at the primary school in Muwalha, near Iskandariyah, 60km south of the capital, police said.

US forces and the Iraqi government tried on Monday to reach out to moderates in Iraq, especially in the Sunni minority, by beginning to release 1,000 detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in honour of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week.

The first 500 prisoners were driven out of the prison on Iraqi public buses on the outskirts of Baghdad yesterday. The rest will be freed later this week, the US military said.