Sulaimaniyah, April 20: A senior politician in Iraqi Kurdistan has criticised missing freedoms in the autonomous region and offered to step down from the party leadership, as new rallies Tuesday left seven hurt.
Near daily demonstrations in Sulaimaniyah province and the eponymous provincial capital, the region’s second largest city, have been calling for an end to official corruption and the resignation of the regional government.
Baghdad, April 20 :Goran Kurdish Change Movement said on Monday that the USA is responsible for the people’s blood in Suleimaniah and Irbil in Kurdistan. Change Movement pointed that the region’s authorities are dealing in a hysteric way with the protesters.
Change Movement MP Saradar Abdullah told Alsumarianews that the “movement holds USA and its embassy in Baghdad responsible for the violence acts that are taking place in the streets especially that US troops are deployed in Suleimaniyah and Irbil.”
Baghdad, April 20: A number of student protesters are being held captive within an Iraqi Kurdistan governate, Ekklesia has heard from peace workers in the area.
Following 62 days of continuous protest in Suleimaniya, Iraq, against corruption and tribal rule within the Kurdistan Regional Government, legal permission for the protest has been revoked.
A source within the armed Peshmerga Forces has now said that they have been given orders to shoot to kill any demonstrators.
Sulaimaniyah, April 20: Authorities in the Iraqi province of Sulaimaniyah slapped a ban on unauthorised protests from Tuesday, after dozens of injuries and deaths in near-daily rallies over the past two months.
Demonstrators in Sulaimaniyah and the eponymous provincial capital that is the second-largest city in the autonomous northern Kurdistan region, have been calling for an end to official corruption and the resignation of the regional government.
They also want an investigation into the deaths of three young demonstrators in clashes with security forces in February.
Baghdad, April 19: Some Iraqi soldiers are now expressing an eagerness to see U.S. troops stay past a Dec. 31 deadline. Underscoring their belief that security concerns warrant the extension, at least 17 Iraqis were killed dead and 148 more were wounded across the country. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, secret memos are revealing to the public a link between oil companies and British officials in the months leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Arbil, April 19: At least 90 people were wounded in a second straight day of clashes between protesters and security forces in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya on Monday, police and medical sources said.
Popular discontent in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region has been directed at a regional government dominated for decades by two political parties whose former guerrilla armies have been converted into security forces.
Baghdad, April 19: SUICIDE bombers yesterday detonated two explosives-packed cars outside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, killing at least nine people and wounding 23, officials said.
The blasts follow a visit to Baghdad by US house Speaker John Boehner, who hailed Iraq’s march toward self-governance by year’s end, praising it as “a different country” from the violent recent past.
Besmaya, April 19: Some Iraqi soldiers are worried about the U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Iraq at the end of the year and say the country’s security forces need more training to use the modern tanks and jets it has bought.
The U.S. military moved into an advisory and assistance role to Iraq’s 660,000-strong police and military after ending combat operations last August. But the readiness of Iraqi troops to fend off a still-potent insurgency remains a concern among many.
Baghdad, April 19: At least four civilians have been killed and five others, including three policemen, wounded in separate attacks across Iraqi cities, police have said.
Three women were killed after gunmen stormed a house in the northern city of Kirkuk late Monday.
Two of the victims were sisters — a teacher and a lawyer — and the third woman was a relative, Col. Sherzad Mofaly was quoted as saying by the media.
In a bomb explosion on Tuesday, senior Education Ministry official, Abdul-Amir Hussein, was killed in Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.
Baghdad, April 18: Iraq-based Iranian rebels who lost 34 members in a clash with the Iraqi army this month were barred from burying the dead at a cemetery inside their base, spokesmen for both sides said on Sunday.
The People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) wanted to bury the bodies at a graveyard within Camp Ashraf, which houses around 3,500 opponents of the clerical regime in Tehran, but were prevented from doing so by Iraqi soldiers responsible for securing the camp.
Baghdad, April 18: Iraq-based Iranian rebels who lost 34 members in a clash with the Iraqi army this month were barred from burying the dead at a cemetery inside their base, spokesmen for both sides said on Sunday.
The People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI) wanted to bury the bodies at a graveyard within Camp Ashraf, which houses around 3,500 opponents of the clerical regime in Tehran, but were prevented from doing so by Iraqi soldiers responsible for securing the camp.
Sulaimaniyah, April 18: Iraqi police opened fire Sunday on stone-throwing crowds protesting government corruption in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. At least 35 people were wounded, some of them by gunfire, a doctor said.
It was the latest protest to turn violent in Sulaimaniyah, a city in the normally peaceful Kurdish region where demonstrations calling for political and economic reforms have been held nearly every day over the last several months.
Baghdad, April 18: Military police and investigators are examining footage that appears to show British soldiers beating an Iraqi civilian.
The film shows men dressed in British Army desert-combat fatigues punching and kicking a man, who appears to be distressed. The Mail on Sunday said it had received the footage from an Army source who claimed it was from 2003.
Baghdad, April 16: Protesters took to the streets of Iraq again today, demanding the same reforms that have become common cause across the Arab world. But while most nations have chosen violence or empty promises (both of which the Maliki government has dabbled in) to answer these demands, Iraq is also taking a very American idea.
On Wednesday the government announced a ban on protests in the capital city of Baghdad, saying that street vendors had complained it was hurting business. The answer was to sequester protesters into specially designated free speech zones.
Diala, April 16: One soldier was killed and another one was wounded by a sniper fire on Friday in the city of Baaquba, a security source said.
“A sniper opened fire on a military control tower on the road between Diala and Kirkuk in al-Aadim district in Khales, northern Baaquba, killing a soldier from the 5th division of the Iraqi army and injuring another one,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
“”Security forces started a crackdown campaign to arrest the sniper,” he added.
Baaquba, the capital of Diala, lies 57 km northeast of Baghdad.
–Agencies
Baghdad, April 14: Iranian dissidents wounded in last week’s in clashes with Iraqi soldiers have been forcibly removed from their hospital beds and returned to their camp, two hospital workers said Wednesday.
At least 17 patients, some of whom were described by a doctor as in critical condition at Baqouba public hospital, were taken back to Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province late Tuesday by security forces.
Baghdad, April 14: A top, albeit anonymous, US military official insisted that it was vital for the Obama Administration to keep some troops in Iraq past the December deadline. The current Status of Forces Agreement requires all troops to be out by year’s end.
The official insisted that continuing the over eight year long presence was the “best for Iraq,” and that Iraq’s military is unable to “ward off threats” from its neighbors. A number of other officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have openly advocated keeping troops in Iraq for years.
Baghdad, April 12: Ahmed Chalabi, shown in May 2010, says Iraq should lead the way toward democratic change in the region. But some say he may be playing a dangerous game.
The revolutionary fervor sweeping the Arab world is opening a new door for a familiar but controversial figure in Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi, the man who helped persuade the United States to topple Saddam Hussein, is now taking up the cause of freedom fighters around the Arab world.
Chalabi says Iraq should lead the way toward democratic change in the region. But Chalabi might have other motives as well.
Baghdad, April 12: On Monday morning, the Iraqi foreign minister stood in a marble rotunda of Saddam Hussein’s old Republican Palace, once the heart of the American occupation, and noted that this was where the United States held sway when it “was trying to help us run our country.”
A journalist stood in the central hall of Baghdad’s Republican Palace during a press tour. The palace will be the site of an Arab League meeting next month.
How did that go? “Badly,” he said.
Baghdad, April 07: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has arrived in Baghdad to meet with Iraq’s high ranking officials during an unannounced visit to the war-torn country.
The Pentagon chief arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday. He is scheduled to meet with President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Gates is also expected to travel to northern Iraq for talks with President of the autonomous Kurdish region Massoud Barzani.
Baghdad, April 05: Nine people have been killed in separate attacks in the Iraqi capital and the country’s restive north while a bombing in the south has left two injured.
Two policemen were killed on Monday in the northern province of Nineveh, Aswat al-Iraq news agency quoted a security source as saying.
Gunmen using guns fitted with silencers killed two policemen near a police checkpoint in al-Seha neighborhood in the western part of the provincial capital of Mosul.
Baghdad. March 29: At least 20 people were killed and 75 injured Tuesday when Iraqi security forces stormed the provincial council headquarters in Tikrit to free hostages taken by gunmen, security sources said.
The gunmen had set off two car bombs outside the provincial council’s headquarters before storming it and taking an unknown number of people hostage.
Among those killed in the aftermath were four generals of the military police and a number of local officials and civilians, police said.
Baghdad, March 28: At least nine people, including an army officer, have lost their lives and 16 others have been wounded in separate attacks in different parts of Iraq.
Gunmen killed six women, aged between 20 and 40, and a man in the northern city of Mosul, medical sources confirmed on Monday.
The incident happened when unidentified gunmen entered a house in the impoverished neighborhood of al-Tanak in Mosul.
Iraqi security forces sealed off the scene and launched an investigation into the assault.
New Delhi, March 25: Tea has long been a thing of addiction, a reason for roadside revelry and the lowest common denominator among beverages in India. But it also has exotic avatars that denote refinement and royalty and the Hilton Hotel here is offering 18 such types.
The Chynna Gold restaurant at the hotel comes with an exclusive tea lounge that oozes aromas ranging from chocolate to jasmine to strawberries to mushrooms.
Each of these rare tea types come with a rich history, an elaborate method of preparation, and like the good old wine – food types to go with it.
Baghdad, March 24: Iraqi security forces have arrested a senior militant leader with alleged links to the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq network in the western province of al-Anbar.
The unnamed self-styled leader of the militant group was caught on Wednesday in the city of Fallujah, located some 69 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital Baghdad after police received a tip off on his whereabouts, an Iraqi army source told the Aswat al-Iraq news agency on condition of anonymity.