BBC News with Michael Powles

Saddam Hussein's

right hand

man, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, better known as Chemical Ali, has been executed in Iraq. Last week, he received his fourth death sentence for his most

notorious

acts, ordering a poison gas attack in the Kurdish village of Halabja. The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki called Mr al-Majeed one of the bloodiest evil-doers of the Saddam-era. From Baghdad, Jim Muir reports.

As Saddam Hussein's chief enforcer, Ali Hassan al-Majeed spearheaded

brutal

campaigns against both the Kurds in the north and the Shi'ites in the south. But it was for Halabja that the Kurds wanted to see him hanged. On his orders, chemical bombs were dropped on the town in March 1998, killing at least 5,000. With his execution, both the Kurds and the Shi'ites may begin to feel a chapter has been closed, although the wounds will take much longer to heal.

There has been a series of bomb attacks in the center of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, targeting hotels popular with western business people and journalists. Police sources say at least 36 people have been killed and more than 70 injured. Reports say they were set off in cars by suicide bombers. There were coordinated bomb attacks on official buildings in Baghdad last year.

The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said it will take more than a decade to rebuild Haiti after this month's devastating earthquake that killed at least 150,000 people. Mr. Harper is hosting talks in Montreal on reconstructing the island nation. He said international donors must provide more than just emergency relief.