Robert Fisk is a veteran war correspondent and one of the world's most experienced journalists covering the Middle East. He has reported from across the Arab world for the past thirty years. His latest book is "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East." He joins us in our Firehouse studio. [includes rush transcript]

In Iraq, at least 26 people died today when a suicide bomber struck a busy commercial district in Baghdad. Over 50 people were injured. In other reported violence, gunmen killed five people when they opened fire on Shia pilgrims in two separate incidents around the capital. Elsewhere in Bagdad, police said that since Saturday, they had found 20 bodies of men who were believed to be victims of Shiite death squads

The latest news comes as more than one thousand US and Iraqi troops have moved into the Shiite stronghold of Sadr city to conduct house-to-house searches and street patrols. It marked the largest operation into the area in more than three years.

Meanwhile in southern Iraq, British-led troops have uncovered an Iraqi government facility in Basra where Shiite forces were torturing prisoners and producing bomb-making equipment. The torture was going on inside the local headquarters of the Iraqi interior ministry"s domestic intelligence agency.

The news comes amid the backdrop of a planned security conference on the tenth of March in Iraq. The United States says it will attend the talks that include both Syria and Iran.

Robert Fisk is a veteran war correspondent and one of the world"s most experienced journalists covering the Middle East. He has reported from across the Arab world for the past thirty years. He was in Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, in the early 1990s during the Persian Gulf War and most recently during the U.S. invasion and occupation. He has also reported on the civil wars in Algeria and Lebanon, the Iranian revolution, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and Israel"s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

Robert Fisk joins me in our firehouse studio.

• Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. He is the author of several books, his latest is "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East."