Demands for the government to resign have led to deadly clashes since October 1
Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad’s International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the clubhouse and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel.
The United States military fired rockets at a target near a hospital in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, wounding 20 people. No patients were wounded at the hospital in the Sadr City stronghold of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, but 20 people at the scene of the blasts were wounded.
Two suicide bombers killed 30 people and wounded 65 others when they detonated explosive vests in a busy market in a town north-east of Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi police said. Police said the second bomber struck as crowds rushed to evacuate the wounded from the first attack.
More than 900 people have been killed in clashes between militiamen and security forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City, which broke out last month, a senior Iraqi official told reporters on Wednesday. ”There were 925 martyrs in Sadr City and 2 605 others have been wounded”, said Tehseen Sheikhly, a spokesperson for the government’s Baghdad security plan.
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr pulled back from confrontation with the government on Friday, asking his followers to continue to observe a shaky ceasefire and not to battle government troops. Sadr said his recent threat of ”open war” was directed only at United States forces, not the Iraqi government.
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday threatened an ”open war” against the Iraqi government unless it halted a crackdown by Iraqi and United States security forces on his followers. The spectre of a full-scale uprising by Sadr sharply raises the stakes in his confrontation with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Iraq on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s iron-fisted regime with the nation still in turmoil, the capital under curfew and a surge of deadly violence in the Shi’ite bastion of Sadr City. Iraqi officials said three mortar rounds slammed into Sadr City, killing at least seven people and wounding 24 others.
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened on Tuesday to end a truce he imposed on his militia last year, raising the prospect of worsening violence in Iraq just hours before top US officials testified on Iraq in Washington. Al-Sadr urged his Mehdi Army to ”continue your jihad and resistance” against US forces.
The top United States general and diplomat in Iraq testify in politically charged hearings in Congress on Tuesday, and face a grilling from three senators vying to inherit the war as the next US president. General David Petraeus and ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker will appear to update progress in the war.
The United States confirmed on Sunday that US special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in an air strike.
Followers of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr staged noisy protests on Thursday against a crackdown on Shi’ite fighters in Basra as the southern oil hub was rocked by a third straight day of fighting. Demonstrations were held in Sadr City and Kadhimiyah, two Baghdad bastions of Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.
Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, on Wednesday gave Shi’ite militia and other gunmen a 72-hour deadline to surrender their weapons as his forces engaged in fierce street battles in the southern city of Basra for the second day running. The violence in Basra and Baghdad has killed more than 70 people, according to Iraqi officials and news agency reports.
Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to stage sit-ins and threatened a countrywide ”civil revolt” if attacks by United States and Iraqi security forces continue against his followers. ”We call upon all Iraqis to stage sit-ins all over Iraq as a first step,” Sadr said in a statement read out by senior aide Hazem al-Araji.
Iraqi security forces fought raging battles with gunmen from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Shi’ite militia in Basra on Tuesday amid a crackdown on armed groups in the southern city. British military officials said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in Basra to personally oversee the major security force sweep in Iraq’s second largest city.
A wave of attacks across Iraq on Sunday killed 51 people, while insurgents fired a barrage of mortars at Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, sending United States embassy staff scurrying into bunkers. The deadliest attack was in the city of Mosul where a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden truck into an Iraqi army base.
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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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/ 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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/ 10 January 2008
An estimated 151 000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the violence that has engulfed the country from the time of the United States-led invasion until June 2006, according to the latest and largest study of deaths officially accepted by the Iraqi government.
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/ 30 December 2007
Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden warned Sunni Muslims in Iraq not to take up arms against the terror network and promised the "liberation of Palestine" in a new online message. In the 56-minute tape released late on Saturday, the Western world’s most wanted man also accused the United States of seeking to control the region through the Iraqi government.
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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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/ 17 December 2007
The full scale of the chaos left behind by British forces in Basra was revealed on Sunday as the city’s police chief described a province in the grip of well-armed militias strong enough to overpower security forces and brutal enough to behead women considered not sufficiently Islamic.
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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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/ 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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/ 4 November 2007
Eight Turkish soldiers, kidnapped last month in an ambush by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, were released in northern Iraq, a PKK official said on Sunday. The release of the soldiers came a day after the Iraqi government vowed to hunt down Kurdish guerrilla leaders responsible for cross-border raids into Turkey.
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/ 3 November 2007
Turkey stepped up pressure on the United States to help curb attacks by Kurdish rebels from northern Iraq as a conference on Saturday of Iraq’s neighbours and major powers sought to lower cross-border tensions. The ”neighbours’ conference”, hosted by Turkey, was meant to focus on security inside Iraq but instead it is overshadowed by tensions between Turkey and Iraq.
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/ 25 October 2007
President Abdullah Gul warned Kurdish rebels on Thursday that Turkey’s patience is running out after Turkish forces said they repelled a guerrilla attack near the Iraqi border. Ankara has massed up to 100 000 troops along the mountainous border before a possible cross-border operation.
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/ 24 October 2007
Turkey has carried out air sorties and shelling against Kurdish positions inside northern Iraq. Reuters said Turkish war planes flew as deep as 20km into Iraqi territory and about 300 ground troops advanced about 10km, killing 34 fighters from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers party.
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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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/ 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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/ 15 October 2007
Authorities have ordered the deportation of two Americans working for a security firm that was trying to recruit Namibians to work as guards at United States facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Namibian Cabinet also recommended the closure of the local branch of the Las Vegas-based security firm, Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group.
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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.