Iraq

Baghdad, July 21:Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki left for the United States Tuesday, in his first official visit since US President Barack Obama came to office, a spokesman said.

“Al-Maliki was accompanied by a large delegation to meet with US President Barack Obama and Secretary General of the United Nations (Ban Ki-Moon),” a spokesman from the prime minister’s office confirmed.

The prime minister “will discuss the latest developments in Iraq, US-Iraqi relations and investment opportunities for US companies in Iraqi reconstruction projects,” the spokesman said.

Baghdad, July 20: In war-torn Iraq, where women are being harassed and even attacked for not toeing the line on their attire, fashion is very alive but completely hidden from foreign eyes.
“I’m always keen to buy the latest in fashion and try to go to the market as soon as the new season arrives,” Ruba Khais al-Beidhan, a Baghdad resident, told IslamOnlione.net, dressed in a large, black abaya.

The 25-year government employee says that, just like many Iraqi women, she sports fashionable clothing under the abaya.

New Iraq…Oppressed Women

Baghdad, July 18: Iraqi officials outraged by the abuse of prisoners at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison are trying to contain a scandal of their own as allegations continue to surface of mistreatment inside Iraqi jails.

Accounts of Iraqis being beaten with clubs, blindfolded and coerced into signing false confessions are attracting increased attention partly because the United States is getting out of the prison business in Iraq. Since a security agreement took effect Jan. 1, the U.S. has transferred 841 detainees into Iraq’s crowded prison system and more are on the way.

Tehran, July 17: Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a rival of re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will lead weekly prayers in Tehran on Friday for the first time since last month’s disputed Presidential Election.

Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, the election runner-up, plans to attend the same prayers at Tehran University in his first official public appearance since the June 12 vote that provoked mass protests by his pro-reform supporters.

Baghdad, July 15: Seven people were killed and at least 15 wounded Wednesday when a man detonated explosives packed in his car in central Iraqi city of Ramadi, police said.

“A suicide bomber blew up his car,” police spokesman for al-Anbar Province Rahim Zubn told Baghdad’s Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

The bomber and two policemen were among those killed when the car bomb exploded as a police patrol passed the Great Mosque of Ramadi, about 110 km west of Baghdad, Zubn said.

Baghdad, July 14: Hundreds of people demonstrated in the Iraqi city of Falluja on Tuesday to protest the arrest of the city’s former police chief on charges of working with al-Qaeda.

More than 200 people gathered in the city to demand the interior ministry release the city’s former police chief, Colonel Faisal Ismail, and his deputy, Eissa al-Sari, witnesses told the German Press Agency dpa.

Police in Falluja told dpa they arrested the two on charges of working with al-Qaeda over the past three years and of involvement in several murders and illegal detentions during the same period.

Baghdad, July 13: Iraqi authorities have imposed vehicle bans in two mostly Christian towns and are increasing security around churches in Baghdad after attacks there that targeted the Christian minority.

The measures follow a series of bombings in or near churches that killed at least four people Sunday. One attack happened as worshippers were leaving Mass in eastern Baghdad.

Fearing car bombs, authorities on Monday imposed vehicle bans in the towns of Tilkaif and Hamdaniyah, predominantly Christian towns near the northern city of Mosul.

Baghdad, July 11: Four civilians were killed and 35 injured Saturday when a parked car bomb exploded in a residential district of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police sources said.

Mosul, 500 km north of Baghdad, has been the scene of near-daily bomb attacks since US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities and towns June 30.

On Thursday, 35 people were killed and 63 injured – most of them women and children – in two consecutive suicide bombings in Mosul.

—Agencies

Baghdad, July 11: The US military in Iraq says a soldier shot and killed a truck driver who did not respond to warnings to stop on a highway north of Baghdad.

The military says the incident happened at around 2:15 a.m. on Friday when the truck approached a US logistics convoy that had stopped because one of its vehicles had broken down.

In a statement on Saturday, the military said soldiers flashed vehicle lights and shouted for the truck to stop, but it continued to accelerate. The military says a soldier thought the convoy was under attack and fired on the truck.

Baghadad, July 09: At least 16 people were killed and over 24 injured when car bombs exploded in two Shiite villages on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul , authorities said Thursday.

Officials said the motive for the attacks is not immediately clear. Their strength diminished, some Sunni insurgents still seek to re-ignite sectarian violence with the majority Shiites and reverse Iraq’s security gains in the past two years.

Ethnic tensions among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs are also high in the disputed region; mostly Shiite Turkmen live in the villages that were struck.

Baghdad, July 09: At least 20 people have been killed and 60 others wounded in two bomb explosions in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, police say.

The first blast occurred when a bomber detonated an explosive vest in the town, 420 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

The second attack followed as people gathered at the scene of the first blast, Reuters reported.

The blasts came a day after two car bombs went off within minutes of each other in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing 12 and injuring dozens.

Police say the death toll is expected to rise further.

Baghdad, July 05: The Iraqi government is hoping that a second major auction of oil and gas fields later this year will help revive a struggling oil industry where a first auction this week fell short, a government spokesman said.

“We think that the first (bidding) round didn’t achieve the full objectives of the Ministry of Oil,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters on Saturday.

Baghdad, July 04: Iraqi army forces arrested a man on Saturday suspected of being behind two vehicle bombs in the northern city of Kirkuk that killed more than 100 people, an Iraqi army official said.

Iraqi troops backed by U.S. soldiers seized Mehdi Saleh in the town of Hawija, 210 km north of Baghdad, the senior official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. He gave no further details.

A truck bomb planted outside a mosque in Kirkuk on June 20 killed 73 people, many of them crushed under the rubble of their flattened clay brick homes. Some 250 were wounded.

Baghdad, July 04: Vice President Joe Biden pressed Iraqi leaders Friday to do more to foster national reconciliation and offered U.S. assistance in achieving that, as concerns grow that a lack of political progress is fueling violence in Iraq.

He stressed that America wanted to “build up” its partnership with Iraqi leaders even as it draws down its forces, starting with Tuesday’s deadline for pulling back combat troops from cities.

Baghdad, July 02: A roadside bomb blew up as an Iraqi army patrol passed by in Baghdad on Thursday, killing one soldier and wounding 10 two days after U.S. troops pulled out of cities and handed security to their local counterparts, police said.

The bomb was the first in Baghdad, police said, since Tuesday’s partial U.S. withdrawal, a day labeled “National Sovereignty Day” by Iraqi authorities elated at what they see as a major step to shaking off a foreign occupation.

Baghdad, July 02: At least 447 Iraqi civilians were killed in June, double the toll from the previous month, according to an Associated Press tally, as insurgents took aim at crowded areas to maximize the number of casualties.

Washington, July 01: US President Barack Obama hails the withdrawal of US forces from Iraqi towns and cities as a “milestone” but warns of the “difficult days” he believes are yet to come.

Obama late Tuesday touched on the US military success in meeting a June 30 deadline to complete its pullout from urban areas and hand over full control to local security forces ahead of its planned departure from Iraqi soil by 2012.

Baghdad, June 30: Iraqi leaders Tuesday called for vigilance and unity, as the country marked the planned withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities and towns.

‘Bless you. Bless you for your efforts to achieve this great success,’ Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the ministers of defence, interior and national security and associated officers from the security services, in remarks broadcast on state television.

Baghdad, June 30: Iraqi leaders Tuesday called for vigilance and unity, as the country marked the planned withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities and towns.

‘Bless you. Bless you for your efforts to achieve this great success,’ Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told the ministers of defence, interior and national security and associated officers from the security services, in remarks broadcast on state television.

Baghdad, June 30: Iraq opened up some of its massive oil and gas fields to foreign firms on Tuesday, kicking off a landmark licensing round it hopes will help fuel its postwar reconstruction efforts.

In a televised ceremony, international oil companies were invited to submit bids for six oil and two gas fields, a process that marked their return to the country over 30 years after Saddam Hussein nationalized the oil sector and expelled the foreign firms.

Baghdad, June 30: Four U.S. soldiers were killed in combat on the eve of the withdrawal of American troops from Baghdad and other Iraq cities, the U.S. military said, as Iraqi forces on Tuesday assumed control for security in urban areas.

The U.S. military said the four soldiers served with the Multi-National Division-Baghdad but did not provide further details pending notification of their families. It said they died as a “result of combat related injuries.”

Baghdad, June 30: Iraqi forces assumed formal control of Baghdad and other cities Tuesday after American troops handed over security in urban areas in a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country. A countdown clock broadcast on Iraqi TV ticked to zero as the midnight deadline passed for U.S. combat troops to finish their pullback to bases outside cities.

Baghdad, June 29: Iraq cancelled leave for all its police and put them on high alert on Sunday ahead of the withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraqi towns
and cities at the end of the month, an official said.

The US pullback from urban centres has been seen as a milestone on the country’s road to sovereignty six years after the US military invaded to topple Saddam Hussein. But a string of bombings in Baghdad and northern Iraq this week, including two of the bloodiest attacks for more than a year, have shaken the confidence of Iraqis in their own forces.

Baghdad, June 28: Iraq will this week unveil which foreign firms have won contracts to develop its oil and gas fields, nearly four decades after Saddam Hussein nationalised the country’s energy infrastructure.

The deals, likely to be announced live on television on June 29 and 30, will provide the government with much-needed revenue as it struggles to rebuild the country after three wars and 20 years of debilitating economic sanctions.

Baghdad, June 27: A key ally of the anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has been freed, his group said on Saturday, after more than two years in detention on suspicion of inciting murder and abduction.

“Iraqi and American forces released Sheikh Abdul Hadi al-Darraji and he went to his house in Sadr City,” in eastern Baghdad, said Sadr movement spokesman Salah al-Obaidi, in the holy city of Najaf south of the capital.