Iraq

Baghdad, August 17: Bombs hidden in plastic bags near a falafel stand exploded at a market in a mainly Shiite area in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least eight civilians and wounding 19, Iraqi officials said. It was the latest in a series of bombings targeting Shiites and minorities in the capital and northern Iraq.

The U.S. military has said insurgents are trying to re-ignite sectarian bloodshed that pushed the country to the brink of civil war but Shiites so far have shown restraint.

West Bengal, August 16: Three of families were among seven people killed in landslides triggered by heavy rains in the West Bengal hills Sunday. More casualties are feared, an official said.

The landslides also injured three in the hilly Kurseong and Kalimpong sub-divisions of Darjeeling district. Five of the deaths occurred in Kurseong, two perished in Kalimpong, the official said.

Baghdad, August 16: Nur Abdel-Rassoul was counting the days to embark on hajj, the ultimate spiritual journey for which she has been saving for years to afford.
Then came the swine flu pandemic and ruined the Iraq woman’s longtime dream.

“I was saving dinar by dinar to realize my dream, and then I was told I will not be able to make it,” Rassoul, 47, told IslamOnline.net.

Baghdad, August 10: A series of bombings across Iraq Monday killed at least 55 people and injured more than 300, police and witnesses said.

In the deadliest of the early morning attacks, 30 people were killed and at least 155 wounded when two trucks packed with explosives detonated in a village in the district of Hamdania, near the northern city of Mosul, witnesses told DPA.

The blasts destroyed dozens of homes in the village inhabited mostly by members of Iraq’s predominantly Shia Shabback minority.

Baghdad, August 10: A double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern city of Mosul, while blasts in Baghdad Monday also targeted Shiites in a wave of violence that killed at least 45 people and wounded more than 200, Iraqi officials said.

The attacks provided a grim example of U.S. military warnings that insurgents are targeting Shiites in an effort to re-ignite the kind of sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.

Baghdad, August 08: A bomb hidden in a motorcycle killed six people and wounded 35 in a market in western Baghdad on Friday, police said.

The attack took place in the mostly Sunni Muslim district of al-Khadhraa, they said.

Earlier on Friday, a series of bombs in Baghdad killed six Shi’ite pilgrims. In Mosul, a suicide car bomber also killed 38 people as they left a Shi’ite Muslim mosque near the restive city of Mosul, police said.

Iraq, August 07: A series of bomb attacks aimed at Shia pilgrims have claimed the lives of four people and left 18 others wounded in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

According to an Iraqi interior ministry official, a roadside bomb at the entrance to Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City ripped through a bus, killing three and injuring eight pilgrims returning from the shrine city of Karbala in central Iraq, AFP reported on Friday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, further added that the incident took place around 9:00 am (0600 GMT).

Baghdad, August 05: Five policemen were killed and three injured Wednesday when a bomb targeted their patrol in southern Baghdad, a police source said.

The bomb was planted on a road in al-Athouriyeen neighbourhood in al-Doura, Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.

Security forces sealed off the area and the wounded were taken to a nearby hospital.

Meanwhile, at least 11 Iraqi passengers are kidnapped when their bus was seized on the road from Baghdad to the southern city of Hilla, police sources told DPA.

Hilla is some 40 km to the south of Baghdad.

Baghdad, August 03: More than 21,000 Iraqi soldiers will provide security for Shia Muslims gathering in the city of Karbala in the coming days, a senior military officer said Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims are expected to converge on the tomb of Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed’s grandson, who was killed in battle in Karbala in the year 680.

In contrast to previous years, US forces will not help maintain security for the pilgrimage, Lieutenant-General Othmanal-Ghanemi, head of security for the city, said.

Baghdad, August 03: The remains of the first American lost in the Gulf War have been found in Iraq, the military said on Sunday, after struggling for nearly two decades with the question of whether he was dead or alive.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has positively identified the remains of Captain Michael “Scott” Speicher, whose disappearance has bedeviled investigators since his jet was shot down over the Iraq desert on the first night of the 1991 war.

The top Navy officer said the discovery illustrates the military’s commitment to bring its troops home.

Baghdad, August 03: Iraq’s top court on Sunday jailed former deputy premier Tareq Aziz and Saddam Hussein’s hatchet-man ‘Chemical Ali’ Hassan Al Majid for seven years each for expelling Kurds

from northern Iraq almost three decades ago, state television said.

Aziz and Majid were among eight people on trial in Iraq’s High Tribunal for chasing the Fayli — Shia Kurds — out of the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala in 1980.

Baghdad, July 29: Iraq’s cabinet has approved a draft law setting up a new National Oil Company, a spokesman said on Wednesday, but the company will not be able to operate until a package of delayed energy laws was passed.

The long-awaited creation of a new National Oil Company, which would revive a company originally established in the 1960s and merged into the Iraqi Oil Ministry in 1987, is a central plank of Iraq’s plan to turn around its struggling oil sector and more effectively take advantage of its vast mineral wealth.

Baghdad, July 29: Eight people have been killed and more than 455 injured in clashes between Iraqi security forces and an armed Iranian rebel group in northwesten Iraq, authorities said Wednesday.

Abdel-Nasser al-Mahdawi, Governor of Iraq’s northeastern Diyala province, told reporters that eight members of the People’s Mujahidin of Iran (PMOI) organisation were killed and at least 425 others were injured Tuesday in clashes between the group and Iraqi policemen at Camp Ashraf, the group’s base in Iraq.

Baquba, July 29: Iraqi soldiers and riot police stormed a camp housing Iran’s main exiled opposition on Tuesday, triggering violent clashes that left at least 260 people wounded.

The seizure of Camp Ashraf, which was disarmed by the United States in 2003 and surrounded by American forces until recently, comes after months of a tense stand-off at the base north of Baghdad.

Baquba, July 29: The Iraqi army seized control on Tuesday of the main base for Iran’s main armed opposition in exile after months of a tense standoff, military officials said.

The storming of Camp Ashraf, which was disarmed by the United States in 2003 and surrounded by American forces until recently, coincided with a visit to Iraq by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

The offensive, which one police source said left 15 people wounded, came after the People’s Mujahedeen said it was ready to return to Iran if the authorities there would guarantee its members would not be abused.

Baghdad, July 29: For three long years, Mohammad Zoba impatiently awaited his return to his home in Fallujah city to pick up the shattered pieces of his life and start over.
“We have returned two weeks ago and have found our home totally destroyed, with only few walls standing,” he told IslamOnline.net.

“We were forced to camp inside our home, with open ceilings and no electricity,” he added.

“I found myself displaced inside my own home.”

Zoba could not get back his job to provide for his family.

Baghdad, July 28: Britain will withdraw its remaining forces from Iraq to Kuwait by the end of the month because the Iraqi parliament failed to pass a deal allowing them to stay to protect oil platforms and provide training, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Britain already has withdrawn its combat forces according to a previous agreement. The British Ministry of Defense said the new announcement related to between 100 and 150 mostly navy personnel left to train the Iraqi navy. U.S. troops would be standing in for the British while they were out of the country, according to the ministry.

Baghdad, July 28: U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad for meetings Tuesday with Iraq’s political leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as well as Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander there.

Gates flew to the capital after a stop in southern Iraq, where he got a firsthand look Tuesday at the future of the U.S. military mission.

Arbil (Iraq), July 26: Voter turnout was high in parliamentary and presidential elections in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region Saturday, with authorities allowing an additional two hours for voting before polls closed at 8 p.m. (1600 GMT).

Preliminary estimates showed that some 70 percent of the region’s 2.5 million eligible voters were expected to cast their ballots in the election, officials from the Independent High Electoral Commission said on television.

Official results are not expected until early next week.

Baghdad, July 25: Two bomb attacks in Iraq’s western Anbar province killed one person and wounded 27 others on Saturday, police said.

The first bomb exploded in a truck parked near offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party office, an influential Sunni Arab political group, in the city of Falluja, followed by a second bomb that went off in a car parked on a road leading from the party offices to a local hospital, police said.

Baghdad, July 25: Iraq criticized the United States on Friday for holding talks with Iraqis that Baghdad describes as terrorists, delivering a rebuke to Washington during a visit by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to the U.S. capital.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said U.S. officials, as part of efforts to end the insurgency in Iraq, had met with envoys from armed groups without notifying Iraqi authorities.

New Delhi, July 23: Days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani met in Egypt, the head of the Inter-Services Intelligence floated a suggestion that India deal not just with Pakistan’s civilian government but also directly with its Army and intelligence agency.

Lt. Gen. Shuja Pasha made the out-of-the-box overture during a meeting earlier this month with the three Indian defence advisers representing the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force attached to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, The Hindu has learnt.

Baghdad, July 21: A roadside bomb apparently targeting casual labourers in Baghdad’s crowded Sadr City slum killed at least two people and wounded 30 on Tuesday, police said.

They said the death toll was likely to rise.

U.S. troops pulled out of Iraqi cities and towns on June 30, vacating a number of urban posts, including Sadr City, which lies in the capital’s east. Officials say they expect militants to step up attacks to test Iraqi security forces ahead of national elections scheduled for January.

Baghdad, July 21: Iraq’s western city of Ramadi has declared a state of emergency and imposed a vehicle ban after two bomb attacks on Tuesday, police said.

A suicide bomber in a moving car and a bomb in a parked car detonated near-simultaneously near a group of restaurants in Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province, killing three people and wounding 13 others, police said. Another police source said one person was killed, but 18 were wounded.

Baghdad, July 21: After three fruitless years of looking for a job, Ahmed was advised by his cousin to pay a visit to a “job dealer” who would easily land him a government job.
“After many useless tries, I realized that the best way to get a decent job was to pay for it,” he told IslamOnline.net.

“So, I sold our marriage rings and raised the necessary money to become a government employee.”

Iraq Invasion (Special Coverage)

Ahmed, a 32-year-old father of four, paid the “job dealer” US $300 to get a government job.