President George Bush on Thursday announced a suspension of United States troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer to allow the military to reassess the security situation. The announcement came amid a spike in violence in Iraq in recent weeks.
United States air strikes killed 10 people in the eastern Baghdad militia stronghold of Sadr City, Iraqi police said on Thursday, but street fighting eased after four days of clashes that have killed close to 90 people. The Sadr City slum has since Sunday been the focal point of battles between black-masked Mehdi Army militiamen and security forces.
Militants loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr clashed with Iraqi security forces throughout Iraq’s southern oil hub of Basra for a second day on Wednesday. A health official said 40 people had been killed and 200 wounded in the first day of the clashes, including civilians, gunmen and Iraqi security forces.
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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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/ 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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/ 4 September 2007
An Iraqi appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence against Saddam Hussein’s cousin, widely known as Chemical Ali, for masterminding a genocide campaign against Iraq’s Kurds in the 1980s. ”The nine appeal judges have upheld the death sentence against Ali Hassan al-Majeed,” the chief prosecutor in the trial, Munkith al-Fatlawi, said.