Iraq

Baghdad, October 08: Iraq’s oil ministry said on Thursday it had agreed commercial terms for a key deal with Britain’s BP and China’s CNPC International to almost triple production at a giant southern oilfield.

Officials from Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Company and the two oil majors have put their initials to the deal, paving the way for final approval, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad said.

“The contract will be sent to the cabinet for approval, then a final date will be chosen to sign the contract during an official ceremony,” he said.

Iraq, October 08: Five people have been killed, including two policemen, and 13 others have been wounded in two attacks in Iraq, police officials say.
In the deadlier attack, three civilians were killed by a bomb placed inside a barber shop in the town of Yusfiyah, about 25 km south of Baghdad.

The attack occurred about 5pm (1am AEDT) and left 10 other people injured, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Kabul, October 07: A Taliban suicide bomber exploded near the Indian embassy in Kabul Thursday, killing 12 people and injuring nearly 90 in the second such attack since July 2008.

No Indian was killed in the devastating bombing on the busy road outside the embassy. Afghan officials said the dead were one police officer and 11 Afghan civilians, most of whom were Indian visa seekers.

The deafening 8.27 a.m. blast extensively damaged the embassy’s outer wall and blew off windows and doors, injuring three Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel deployed outside the fortified mission.

Baghdad, October 08: A roadside bomb struck a police patrol northeast of the Iraqi capital, killing three officers, a police official said Thursday.

U.S. and Iraqi forces continued to be targeted by insurgents with regularity, raising concerns about the ability of Iraqis to keep the lid on violence once U.S. combat troops leave by Aug. 31, 2010.

The bomb targeted the patrol late Wednesday on the outskirts of the town of Jalula in the Diyala province, according to Maj. Ghalib al-Kharki, a police spokesman. Among the dead was a police colonel, he said.

Baghdad, October 07: Iraq’s government spokesman says a group of 36 Iranian opposition members have been freed after nearly three months in custody in Iraq.

Ali al-Dabbagh says the men were returned Wednesday to Camp Ashraf in northern Iraq, where nearly 3,500 members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran have been confined since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Tehran, October 07: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that “some countries” had offered to provide Iran with uranium enriched to 20 percent for use as nuclear fuel, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“There have been some proposals by individual countries and groups of countries. We are ready to hold talks with anyone interested. Our experts will soon start talks with those sellers,” he said.

Istanbul, October 06: Turkish police used water cannons, tear gas and pepper spray on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank held in Istanbul.

Dozens of masked protesters shattered the windows of a McDonald’s restaurant and several banks, also damaging vehicles as they ran into the streets behind Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which is less than a kilometer (half a mile) from the venue of the IMF and World Bank meeting.

Najaf, October 05: Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani has warned that he may call for a boycott of January’s general election if MPs adopt a closed voting system, an aide said on Monday.

Iraqi MPs are working on a law that will govern the vote and on Sunday they moved to adopt a system that would list parties contesting the ballot without disclosing the names of individual candidates.

Baghdad, October 05: A suicide bomber walked into an Iraqi funeral tent and blew himself up on Monday, killing at least six mourners and wounding 15, Iraqi police said.

The toll from the attack in the town of Haditha, 190 km (120 miles) west of Baghdad, could rise, police said.

Once the heartland of a raging Sunni Arab insurgency, Iraq’s western Anbar province has calmed down since Sunni tribes allied with U.S. troops kicked out Al Qaeda in 2007.

Baghdad, October 05: A suicide bomber struck a funeral Monday in western Iraq, killing at least six mourners for a member of a prominent tribe with ties to security forces, a police official said.

The bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a funeral tent in the mostly Sunni area of Haditha, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. At least 15 people were injured, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

The funeral was for a member of the al-Daghaytha tribe, which includes members of the police and army.

Kabul, October 05: Before their country’s fraud-riddled election in August, some Afghans complained it was the international community that would decide the result. With the United Nations having fired a top diplomat for urging a tougher stand against vote-rigging, a move made public Wednesday, they say they now have proof.

Baghdad, October 05: A bomb scare forced the evacuation Saturday of the Iraqi parliament building after explosives-sniffing dogs alerted authorities to a possible threat an hour before lawmakers were to meet.

The Iraqi government issued no statement about whether explosives were found in the building, citing an ongoing investigation. The evacuation only heightened concerns about security breaches in Iraqi government buildings, which were targeted in August by coordinated bombings that killed 100 people and injured hundreds of others.

Baghdad, October 03: Iraqi troops have arrested 140 suspected al Qaeda members and other Sunni Arab militants in the past four days in raids on the northern city of Mosul, security officials said on Saturday.

Mosul is the last urban stronghold of a largely Sunni Arab insurgency that comprises Islamist groups such as al Qaeda plus some members of Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party.

“This operation targets al-Qaeda and Baathists in the city … and those collaborating with them,” said Defence Ministry spokesman Major-General Mohammed al-Askari.

Hilla, October 02: A would-be Al-Qaeda suicide car bomber who planned to detonate his payload to help comrades escape from an Iraqi prison was foiled after a tip-off about the attack, security forces said on Friday.

The man confessed to planning to blow himself up outside a prison in Hilla, the capital of Babil province, when he was apprehended at his house 35 kilometres (22 miles) north of the city, an Iraqi army official said.

“Our forces arrested a suicide bomber from Al-Qaeda, while he was preparing a car bomb for an operation near the main prison in the centre of Hilla,” he said.

Washington, October 02: Gaining the upper hand against Al-Qaeda in Iraq has required a big US military force coupled with manhunts against militant leaders, the American commander there said on Thursday.

“You have to have both combined,” General Ray Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, told a news conference.

Al-Qaeda did not have a presence in Iraq, and observers say they are likely to remain in Iraq as long as US troops remain there because of their eagerness to follow and fight American military presence in the region.

Baghdad, October 01: Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Thursday unveiled a broad-based political alliance to fight January’s general election, hailing a “historic” moment for a country often torn apart by sectarianism.

The State of Law Coalition, comprised of 40 political parties and groupings, will include candidates from Iraq’s ethnic majority Shiite community as well as Sunni tribal leaders and candidates from other minority groupings.

Baghdad, October 01: Iraq’s prime minister is reaching across sectarian lines for January’s parliamentary election with alliances that include Sunni groups.

Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led bloc is seeking a broad coalition with Sunni factions to turn back a challenge from Shiite religious parties. Earlier this year, voters strongly rejected Shiite religious parties in provincial balloting. Al-Maliki is hoping to again ride the trend toward secular-oriented politics.

Baghdad, September 29: Milad Jassim hobbles into the family sitting room, her legs dragging behind her and her slumped shoulders propped up by the arms of her sister and father, who sets out the young woman’s predicament.

“These documents prove the wounds my daughter suffered,” Jassim Mohammed Jassim says with a sigh, thumbing through a dossier of police, hospital and doctors’ reports, “but I do not think it will result in anything being done.”

Milad was at home in the family’s Baghdad apartment when a massive explosion 200 metres (yards) away killed dozens.

Baghdad, September 28: Iraqi commandos and U.S. forces have arrested a suspect in the 2006 kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi taekwondo team whose highway ambush became one of the symbols of Iraq’s lawlessness during its worse years of sectarian violence.

The U.S. military announced the arrest in a statement Sunday, but did not say when it took place or identify the suspect. The Iraqi military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ramadi, September 27: A suicide car bomber on Sunday killed four Iraqi policemen and wounded four others near the predominantly Sunni Arab western city of Ramadi, a police official said.

The attack happened around 10.30 am (0830 GMT) 10 kilometres (six miles) north east of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, which was an Al-Qaeda stronghold in the aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2003.

“The suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate at the entrance to the police station, causing the casualties,” the police official said.

Baghdad, September 26: An unmanned U.S. reconnaissance drone crashed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul early on Saturday, hitting the offices of one of Iraq’s biggest political parties, the U.S. military said.

No injuries were reported, and there was no indication the aircraft was shot down, said Major Derrick Cheng, a military spokesman in northern Iraq.

Cheng said it was a coincidence that the drone struck the local offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Iraq’s biggest Sunni Arab political group, the military said.

Baghdad, September 24: Iraqi security sources said Thursday that 13 prisoners, convicted of terrorist offences, had escaped from a jail in the northern city of Tikrit.

The prisoners escaped through a small window in the prison’s bathroom Wednesday night, the source said, adding that four of the prisoners were linked to Al Qaeda and faced a death sentence.

Only one prisoner has been recaptured, while police are still searching for the others.

One high-ranking officer in the anti-terrorism department in Salah al-Din police was sacked after the prisoners escaped, the source said.

Baghdad, September 17: The U.S. military on Thursday closed down its largest detention centre in Iraq as it continued to release or hand to Iraqi authorities the thousands of people it has held since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The closure of Camp Bucca, a sprawling prison complex in Iraq’s southern desert near Kuwait, was agreed to under the bilateral security pact signed last year obliging U.S. forces to wind down their massive detention programme in Iraq.

Baghdad, September 16: The American military says U.S.-Iraqi forces arrested three militants suspected of firing rockets at Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where visiting Vice President Joe Biden was spending the night.

The military statement Wednesday says a joint rapid-reaction force raided the launch site after three 170mm rockets hit in the Green Zone Tuesday evening. Two Iraqi civilians were killed in the attack.

It says the troops came under small arms fire from a nearby house but were able to arrest three people and seize three rocket rails used in the attack.

Baghdad, September 16: U.S. and Iraqi forces have arrested three Iraqi men suspected of launching rockets on Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone district during a trip by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the U.S. military said on Wednesday.

Militants pounded the Green Zone with rockets and mortars on Tuesday shortly after Biden flew in for talks with Iraqi politicians on reconciliation. A mortar landed on an apartment block, killing two Iraqis and wounding five, police said.