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/ 2 February 2008
Remote-controlled explosives were strapped to two women with Down’s syndrome and detonated in coordinated attacks on two Friday-morning markets in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 73 people and wounding nearly 150. The first targeted shoppers at a pet market in the al-Ghazl area, killing 46 people and injuring 100.
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/ 1 February 2008
A female suicide bomber killed 45 people when she blew herself up at a popular pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, police said, in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital in six months. Another 82 were wounded in the blast at the crowded Ghazil market, one of Baghdad’s most popular gathering places, which has been bombed at least three times in the past year.
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/ 29 January 2008
United States soldiers are lampooned, police officers are shown as buffoons and Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is irreverently cheered by penguins … Iraqis are turning more and more to YouTube to express their dark-edged humour. The main butt of send-ups posted by Iraqis on the popular internet video site is, as one might expect, the US military.
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/ 24 January 2008
The police chief of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was killed in a suicide bomb attack on Thursday as he toured the scene of a blast a day earlier in which at least 20 people died. Rescuers were still digging through the rubble of Wednesday’s explosion when an attacker in a police uniform blew himself up.
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/ 21 January 2008
The United States military said on Sunday there had been a dramatic drop in the number of Iranian weapons being used in Iraq but no let-up in Tehran’s training and financing of Iraqi militias. Washington has accused Tehran of supplying Shi’ite militias in Iraq with sophisticated weapons, including armour-piercing bombs.
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/ 14 January 2008
The United States military said on Monday it had killed 60 militants during a week-long, US-led offensive in northern Iraq against al-Qaeda, a resilient foe that has resisted previous attempts to drive it from the region. The US military, which has declared al-Qaeda the single greatest threat to Iraq’s security, launched the offensive on January 8.
A suicide bomber killed nine people during celebrations to mark Army Day in the eastern Baghdad suburb of Karrada on Sunday, the latest in an upsurge of suicide bombings in Iraq. The blast took place outside the offices of an NGO called the Iraqi Unity Gathering, which had been hosting an event for army officers and tribal leaders from both of Iraq’s religious sects.
A suicide bomber killed at least 30 people and wounded 38 at a funeral in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday as the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital for months cast a pall over New Year celebrations. Baghdadis had greeted 2008 at family gatherings and parties impossible just months ago when travel across the capital at night was too dangerous.
Despite a drop in United States casualties in the past six months, 2007 has proved the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq since the invasion, with at least 896 soldiers killed, according to a tally based on Pentagon figures. The previous most lethal year for the American military since the US-led invasion of March 2003 was in 2004, when 846 soldiers died.
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/ 29 December 2007
Bringing Saddam Hussein to book for the crimes of his regime was supposed to symbolise the restoration of the rule of law after decades of tyranny in Iraq, but instead his hanging a year ago on Sunday drew accusations of victors’ justice. Footage captured on a cellphone of his executioners taunting him before putting him to death sparked criticism.
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/ 28 December 2007
A car bomb exploded in a busy market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 11 people and wounding 66, medics in the capital’s two hospitals said. The attack occurred at about 1pm local time in the Iraqi capital’s Bab al-Sharji market, which is popular for trading food and clothes, security officials said.
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/ 20 December 2007
A suicide bomber wearing a belt packed with explosives struck a recruiting station for neighbourhood patrols in Iraq’s restive Diyala province, killing 12 volunteers and wounding 10 on Thursday. Iraqi police said United States forces may have also been among the casualties in the strike that took place in the town of Kanaan.
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/ 18 December 2007
A suicide bomber killed 14 people when he detonated a vest rigged with explosives in a Shi’ite Muslim village north of Baghdad on Tuesday. Suicide bombers, gunmen and car bombs also killed 14 other people across the country. The violence coincided with a visit by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
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/ 9 December 2007
I knew it would be fine when Isam, my perfume man, wanted for a bottle of J’Adore. I had thought I would find him dead. The wooden sign with the name of his shop was in splinters and the front window had been blown out the night before by the worst bombing in Baghdad in more than two months.
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/ 7 December 2007
A female suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 15 people in a town north-east of Baghdad on Friday. Police said the attack targeted members of the 1920s Revolutionary Brigades, a Sunni Islamist insurgency group which has recently begun working alongside security forces against al-Qaeda.
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/ 6 December 2007
Al-Qaeda Sunni Arab militants remain a dangerous foe in Iraq despite a decline in violence, the commander of United States forces said on Thursday, a day after the deadliest bombing in Baghdad since September. ”We have to be careful not to get feeling too successful,” General David Petraeus told reporters.
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/ 1 December 2007
Iraq’s main Sunni bloc pulled out of Parliament on Saturday in protest at a crackdown on their leader Adnan al-Dulaimi, throwing the country’s political process into new turmoil. ”We announce our boycott of the Parliament until Adnan al-Dulaimi returns to the assembly today [Saturday] or tomorrow,” Abdul Karim al-Samarraie of the National Concord Front said in Parliament.
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/ 30 November 2007
Authorities arrested more people on Friday after car bombs were found near the offices of Iraqi politician Adnan al-Dulaimi. Dulaimi said United States and Iraqi troops held 43 people in raids on his Baghdad office and home after discovering two primed car bombs nearby.
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/ 22 November 2007
A suicide car bomber blasted a police checkpoint outside the courthouse in Ramadi on Wednesday, killing up to six people and wounding as many as 22 in the first such attack in months in the former Sunni insurgent stronghold.
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/ 18 November 2007
At least 17 people were killed by explosions in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities on Sunday, Iraqi police and officials said. Nine people were killed and at least 20 others were also wounded in one of the worst attacks in the Iraqi capital in several weeks, which police said targeted Iraqi Finance Ministry adviser Salman al-Mugotar.
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/ 14 November 2007
A roadside bomb killed one civilian and wounded two on Wednesday just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone compound in Baghdad that houses the United States embassy and government ministries, police said. They said the bomb targeted a passing US military convoy.
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/ 14 November 2007
A loud explosion rocked central Baghdad on Wednesday, shaking buildings inside the heavily fortified Green Zone compound that houses the United States embassy and Iraqi government ministries, witnesses said. Some witnesses said a car bomb had exploded near a police station not far from the Green Zone.
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/ 1 November 2007
At least 887 Iraqis were killed in Iraq in October, ministry data showed on Thursday, slightly higher than September, which saw a total of 840 people killed across the nation. Data from Iraq’s interior, defence and health ministries showed that 758 civilians, 116 policemen and 13 soldiers were killed in attacks across Iraq in October.
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/ 1 November 2007
At least 554 Iraqis were killed in the month of October in insurgent and sectarian attacks, according to the latest figures from Iraq’s three ministries. The data from the Interior, Defence and Health Ministries indicate that the death toll in October is one of the lowest since an attack on a Shi’ite shrine in February last year.
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/ 29 October 2007
A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed 28 Iraqi police officers doing their morning exercises at a base north of Baghdad on Monday in one of the deadliest strikes on security forces in months. The attack was a reminder that despite a United States-led crackdown, groups such as al-Qaeda are determined to carry on fighting.
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/ 23 October 2007
Turkey reassured Iraq on Tuesday that it wants a diplomatic solution to the problem of Kurdish rebel rear-bases but rejected a conditional ceasefire offer made by the guerrillas. ”Politics, dialogue, diplomacy, culture and economy are the measures to deal with this crisis,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan told a news conference in Baghdad.
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/ 22 October 2007
A bomb attack on a bus and a series of roadside bomb blasts in Baghdad on Monday left at least six people dead and dozens wounded, police and medics said. The bus was carrying civilians to work in central Baghdad’s Karrada neighbourhood when the blast occurred, killing three people, the security officials said.
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/ 21 October 2007
United States forces killed 49 ”criminals” in fierce fighting with militants in Baghdad’s Shi’ite stronghold of Sadr City on Sunday during a raid targeting an Iranian-linked insurgent. Medics at four hospitals confirmed 17 dead, including a boy and a girl, but US military spokesperson Major Winfield Danielson said there were no civilian casualties and no reports of American losses.
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/ 21 October 2007
United States air strikes killed at least 13 people and wounded 52 early on Sunday in the north-eastern Baghdad district of Sadr city, a stronghold for Shi’ite militants, police sources said. The US military said it was ”targeting criminals believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of coalition soldiers in November 2006 and May 2007”.
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/ 12 October 2007
A bomb hidden in a cart of toys killed two children and wounded 17 others in a playground in northern Iraq on Friday, the first day of a national holiday to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The attack came the day after United States forces killed nine children and six women in an air strike north-west of Baghdad.
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/ 11 October 2007
Iraq’s humanitarian crisis is worsening and the plight of millions of displaced Iraqis is critical, says a grim United Nations report on human rights in the war-torn country that was released on Thursday. ”Daily life for the average Iraqi civilian remains extremely precarious,” said the human rights report of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq.
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/ 11 October 2007
Thirteen suspected insurgents, including three members of al-Qaeda in Iraq responsible for the assassination of a Sunni Arab preacher, were killed in a United States air strike. The strike on Wednesday west of Baghdad came hours after the imam, identified as Abu Bilal and who had been preaching against Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda, was killed.