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/ 24 January 2005
The United States’s most-wanted militant in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Sunday declared he would wage a ”bitter war” against elections this week in a mounting campaign of intimidation and violence. The warning came as coalition forces and Iraqi officials prepared for the countdown to Sunday’s poll by fine tuning details of the effective ”lockdown” of the country.
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/ 13 January 2005
It is Baghdad on a winter morning chilled by yet another power cut and parents are dropping off their children for school. A vast generator rumbles so loudly in the street that it shakes the pink swings and blue roundabouts in the small grass playground outside.
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/ 17 December 2004
One of Saddam Hussein’s most feared lieutenants, known as Chemical Ali for ordering gas attacks on Kurdish villages, will appear in court in Baghdad within days, an Iraqi minister said this week. According to Hazem Shaalan, the Defence Minister, Ali Hassan al-Majid will be in the dock next week to answer a string of charges for crimes against humanity. ”He will be the first to be tried,” he said.
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/ 10 December 2004
It has been nine months since Najim Abdullah Hamid was shot dead as he drove up to a United States military checkpoint on his way home. Despite repeated requests by his relatives, no one from the Iraqi or US military authorities has agreed to investigate or accept responsibility. His death, on March 7, has gone unnoticed save in the family’s small apartment in Saydiya in south Baghdad.
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/ 9 December 2004
The scale of killings has been obscured by the United States military’s refusal to collect data. According to Brigadier General Vince Brooks, the deputy director of operations at US central command, ”…If we are going to be honourable about our warfare, we are not out there trying to count up bodies. This is not the appropriate way for us to go”.
Dozens of children were killed on Thursday when three car bombs exploded in a coordinated attack in Baghdad that left 44 people dead and more than 200 injured.
Health ministry officials said at least 34 of those killed were children. Dozens more were injured. Many suffered shrapnel wounds; others had limbs amputated.
The insurgency in Iraq appears to be more widespread and deadly than Iraqi leaders are prepared to admit, according to military figures and a report by a private security firm. There have been 2 300 attacks in the past month, Iraq insurgency is outpacing coalition attempts to restore peace.
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/ 24 September 2004
A Turkish construction firm joined the growing list of companies to halt operations in Iraq last week in order to win the release of 10 of its staff held hostage by militants. Since militant groups began seizing foreigners in Iraq six months ago, they have made a significant impact on the operation of the United States-led military coalition. Many lives have been saved in Iraq by yielding to captors’ demands.
A top American general has predicted that anti-government insurgency in Iraq may never end. Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, the second most senior American officer in Iraq and the force’s tactical operations commander, said: ”I think there is enough turmoil in this part of the world that there will be some element out there that will be opposed to the government and will be violent and lethal.”
Up to 30 000 Iraqi police officers are to be sacked for being incompetent and unreliable and will be given a -million payoff before the United States hands over to an Iraqi government, say senior British military sources. Many officers either deserted to the insurgents or simply stayed at home during the recent uprisings in Falluja and across the south.