Killings and attacks in Baghdad have slumped significantly since the launch of a security plan one month ago, United States officials said on Wednesday, even as car bombs claimed more lives in the capital. ”There has been an over 50% reduction in murders and executions” since Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law) began, Major General William Caldwell said.
Iraq signalled that world powers and neighbouring states, including Washington and its adversaries Iran and Syria, had agreed in Baghdad it was in everyone’s interest to stop sectarian violence spreading in the region. But while the United States is increasing its number of troops in Iraq, Iran called for the withdrawal of all US forces on grounds they fuelled violence.
Iraq urged its neighbours, including Iran and Syria, to halt their alleged support for violent extremists on Saturday as insurgent attacks slaughtered at least 35 more Iraqis. The urgency of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s appeal was underlined when, in a suspected insurgent attack, three mortar rounds detonated next to the Foreign Ministry while peace talks took place inside.
Envoys from the United States and its arch foes Iran and Syria were to sit together to discuss the crisis in Iraq for the first time on Saturday at talks called by the Iraqi prime minister. Diplomats from Iraq’s neighbours and from the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council were expected at the Foreign Ministry in war-torn Baghdad.
Iraqi insurgents killed nine more Shi’ite pilgrims on Wednesday as the toll from the previous day’s suicide attack rose to 117 amid fears that a backlash could undermine the United States-led Baghdad security plan. At least two suicide bombers detonated explosive vests on Tuesday in a crowd of Shi’ites marching through the central town of Hilla.
At least 118 Shi’ite pilgrims were slaughtered in attacks across Iraq on Tuesday, sparking fears of reprisals that could frustrate efforts by Iraqi and United States forces to quell sectarian violence. The deadliest single attack was in Hilla, south of the capital, where two suicide bombers triggered explosives amid a packed crowd of worshippers.
A car bomb ripped through Baghdad’s booksellers’ district on Monday, killing 26 people and setting shops and cars ablaze on the street and sending out choking black smoke that hampered rescue efforts. Iraqi and US forces are in the third week of a major security crackdown in Baghdad aimed at stemming sectarian violence.
More than 1 000 United States and Iraqi troops launched a pivotal incursion into a Shi’ite militia bastion in Baghdad on Sunday, meeting no resistance as they searched homes for illegal weapons and carried out patrols. A US military statement said 600 American and 550 Iraqi security forces backed by American Stryker armoured vehicles took part in the operation.
At least 14 Iraqi police officers have gone missing and an al Qaeda-linked group on Friday showed pictures of 18 men it said had been kidnapped to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month. The al Qaeda-linked group said in an internet statement it had kidnapped 18 men working for the Interior Ministry in Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
Iraqi security forces killed dozens of al-Qaeda militants who attacked a village in western Anbar province on Wednesday, during fierce clashes that lasted much of the day, police officials said on Thursday. Sunni tribal leaders are involved in an escalating power struggle with Sunni al-Qaeda for control of Anbar.
The number of Iraqi civilian deaths in February was the lowest for four months as a security plan was launched in Baghdad midway through the month, figures from Iraq’s interior, defence and health ministries showed on Thursday. But at 1 645 civilian deaths, the figures provided by ministry officials are still far above the 545 civilian deaths recorded a year ago.
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/ 27 February 2007
A car bomb exploded next to a football pitch in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Tuesday, killing 18 children aged between 10 and 15, an Iraqi defence official told the media. The car was parked near the pitch and detonated as the youngsters played nearby, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity a day after a suicide car-bomb attack blamed on al-Qaeda killed 15 people in the same city.
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/ 26 February 2007
A suicide bomber who triggered an explosive device outside a Baghdad business school and slaughtered at least 40 people was a woman, a security official said Monday. An attacker on Sunday detonated a bomb packed with ball bearings amid a crowd of mainly-Shi’ite students and guards.
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/ 26 February 2007
Iraq’s vice-president and its public works minister were both slightly hurt on Monday when a bomb hidden in the ceiling of a ministry building exploded, a lawmaker in their party said. Four other people were killed in the attack, medics said. The senior Shi’ite officials were quickly released from a United States military hospital.
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/ 26 February 2007
United States troops in Iraq have found a huge haul of deadly armour-piercing bombs of a type Tehran has allegedly smuggled to Shi’ite militias, US officers said Monday. Displaying the trove of bomb parts and mortar shells, the commanders said it was impossible to tie the shipment directly to the Tehran government, but said many of the weapons were clearly Iranian-made.
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/ 26 February 2007
Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani is suffering from extreme exhaustion and dehydration but is in high spirits and his life is not in danger, his office said Monday. Talabani, Iraq’s 74-year-old Kurdish leader, was flown from his home town in northern Iraq to the Jordanian capital Amman on Sunday after falling ill.
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/ 22 February 2007
As a joint operation by United States and Iraqi troops to win control of Baghdad made more progress on Thursday, their insurgent foes were fighting back with deadly new tactics, including poison-gas attacks. Iraqi medics were treating dozens of patients poisoned by chlorine after militants targeted civilian areas with trucks rigged up as ‘dirty bombs’.
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/ 19 February 2007
Bombs detonated across central Iraq on Monday, adding 40 more bloodied corpses to the grim toll of Iraqi dead as rebel groups mount a savage challenge to the latest United States and Iraqi security plan. The attacks will in the main be blamed on Sunni insurgents and appear to have been timed to embarrass US and Iraqi commanders.
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/ 18 February 2007
Two car bombs tore through a shopping area of a mainly Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Sunday, killing 56 people and wounding scores as militants defied a military offensive by United States and Iraqi troops. The blasts came two days after Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki trumpeted what he called the ”brilliant success” of Operation Imposing Law in quelling sectarian violence.
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/ 16 February 2007
United States and Iraqi forces are meeting little resistance as they sweep through Baghdad, a US officer said on Friday, a day after Iraq’s president said a Shi’ite militia had ordered its leaders to leave the country. The head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was wounded on Thursday, an Interior Ministry source said.
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/ 15 February 2007
Iraq closed its borders with Iran and Syria as United States and Iraqi troops tightened their grip on Baghdad on Thursday, setting up more checkpoints that stopped and searched even official convoys for weapons. Residents of Sadr City, stronghold of the Mehdi Army of anti-American Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, reported seeing fewer militiamen on the streets.
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/ 13 February 2007
Iraq’s government said on Tuesday it would close its borders with Syria and Iran and extend the hours of a night curfew in Baghdad under a United States-backed security plan to rein in violence in the capital. The measures were announced on state television by Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander who is leading the security offensive in Baghdad.
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/ 13 February 2007
A suicide truck bomber blew up near a Baghdad college on Tuesday, killing 18 people and wounding 40. The small truck exploded in a parking lot between the College of Economic Sciences, a private university in western Baghdad’s residential Iskan district, and a large foodstuff warehouse belonging to the Trade Ministry
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/ 12 February 2007
Three bomb attacks at markets in central Baghdad killed at least 76 people on Monday as Iraqis marked the first anniversary of a Shi’ite shrine bombing that pitched the country to the brink of civil war. In the deadliest attack, twin car bombings exploded in quick succession in the Shorja wholesale market, killing at least 71 people.
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/ 12 February 2007
The Iraqi High Court ruled on Monday that Saddam Hussein’s former vice-president should follow him to the gallows, despite appeals from United Nations officials and international human rights groups for his life to be spared. ”God knows I didn’t do anything wrong,” Taha Yassin Ramadan said shortly before judge Ali al-Kahachi sentenced him to death by hanging.
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/ 8 February 2007
United States-backed Iraqi troops arrested the Iraq Health Ministry’s second highest official on Thursday, charging that he murdered opponents and funnelled million of dollars to rogue Shi’ite militia groups.
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/ 6 February 2007
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered Iraq’s military commanders on Tuesday to speed up preparations for a United States-backed crackdown in Baghdad after a string of attacks killed hundreds of people in recent days. Addressing Iraqi generals, Maliki said: ”I call on you to quickly finish the preparations so that we don’t disappoint people.”
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/ 5 February 2007
Violence raked Baghdad on Monday as an Iraqi general took charge of the security operation in the capital and Iraqi police and soldiers manned new roadblocks — initial steps indicating the start of the long-anticipated joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed. But bombers, gunmen and mortar teams appeared undaunted.
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/ 5 February 2007
Mortar bombs killed 15 people in a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad on Sunday in fresh violence after a truck bomb killed 135 people in a Shi’ite area in the worst single bombing since the United States-led 2003 invasion. The spiralling sectarian bloodshed threw the spotlight on Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s planned crackdown in Baghdad.
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/ 5 February 2007
Iraqi and United States forces killed a top official of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s organisation in a raid on his home north of Baghdad on Sunday. An official in al-Sadr’s office, Abdul-Mehdi al-Matiri, called the killing of Khadim al-Maliki in the village of Huweidar near Baquba an ”assassination”.
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/ 5 February 2007
Like many of his colleagues, Abu Zaid was issued an Austrian-made Glock pistol when he joined the new United States-trained and equipped Iraqi police force. But after narrowly escaping death twice, including being shot at near a polling station in Baghdad during national elections in December 2005, he decided to quit, he said.
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/ 4 February 2007
Iraq’s government renewed its pledge to crack down on militants after a massive suicide truck bomb killed 135 people in a mainly Shi’ite area of Baghdad. Saturday’s attack was the deadliest single bombing since the United States-led invasion in 2003.