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.
Fierce fighting raged on Tuesday as United States and Iraqi forces battled heavily armed Shi’ite militiamen in their Baghdad bastion of Sadr City for a third straight day, a correspondent and witnesses said. They said fierce clashes erupted soon after midnight as American tanks attempted to push into Sadr City.
Clashes between militiamen and United States forces in the Iraqi capital’s Shi’ite bastion of Sadr City killed at least 20 people and wounded 52 others on Sunday, Iraqi security and medical officials said. Officials from Iraq’s security and defence ministries said women and children were among the dead and wounded.
A top United Nations official warned on Friday of ”very grave” humanitarian problems in Iraq, including a lack of food and the internal displacement of more than two million people. ”There are very grave humanitarian problems. The most serious is the internal displacement of the Iraqis,” UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes said.
It’s the mecca of world-class distance running: Kenya’s Rift Valley. Everywhere I looked, knots of star runners jogged over the hills, disappeared into forests, sprinted toward the horizon. The glorious views and high altitude added to the intoxication.
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.
Mehdi Army fighters attacked police patrols in southern Baghdad, police said on Friday, further fraying a seven-month-old ceasefire called by Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to rein in his militia. The clashes in Baghdad’s Shurta district, which started late on Thursday and continued into Friday morning, follow outbreaks of violence in the southern Iraqi city of Kut.
George Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion on Wednesday with an uncompromising speech in which he described the war as noble, necessary and just and claimed there was now an unprecedented Arab uprising under way against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
United States President George Bush said on Wednesday he had no regrets about the unpopular war in Iraq despite the ”high cost in lives and treasure” and declared that the US was on track for victory. With less than 11 months left in office and his approval ratings near the lows of his presidency, Bush is trying to shore up support for the Iraq campaign.
President George Bush will acknowledge on Wednesday the Iraq war has been fought at a high cost but will insist a United States troop build-up has opened the door to a ”major strategic victory” against Islamic militants. ”The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable,” Bush will say in an upbeat assessment.
Five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, his memory lives on through wrist watches as people in his home town and birth village seek reminders of a time of safety, jobs and cheap living. In Saddam’s home town of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, watches featuring an image of the former Iraqi leader on the dial sell like hot cakes to a mostly older crowd.
Iraqi security forces found about 100 badly decomposed bodies in a mass grave north of Baghdad, the United States military said on Saturday, one of the largest such finds in the country for months. US and Iraqi security forces said it was not clear who was responsible for the grave near Khalis, 80km north of Baghdad, or when the victims had been killed.
The Kremlin is planning to falsify the results of Sunday’s presidential election by compelling millions of public-sector workers to vote and by fraudulently boosting the official turnout, a media report said. Governors, regional officials and even headteachers have been instructed to deliver a landslide majority for Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister.
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/ 29 February 2008
Iraq’s presidency council has cleared the way for the long-delayed execution of Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as ”Chemical Ali”, to be carried out, Iraqi officials said on Friday. The execution of Majeed has been delayed for months by a legal wrangle over who has the authority to green light the hangings.
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/ 24 February 2008
Western oil giants are poised to enter southern Iraq to tap the country’s vast reserves, despite the ongoing threat of violence, according to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s business emissary to the country. Basra has been described as ”the lung” of Iraq by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
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/ 24 February 2008
Turkish forces used jets and heavy artillery to pound the bases of Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq on Saturday, as a prelude to a major assault in the coming days. Turkish news agencies reported more troops moving towards the remote border area. Turkey is thought to have deployed 1 000 to 3 000 soldiers.
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/ 15 February 2008
United States President George Bush cited the London July 7 bombings in an interview broadcast on Thursday night to justify his support for waterboarding, an interrogation technique widely regarded as torture. In an interview with the BBC he said information obtained from alleged terrorists helped save lives
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/ 25 January 2008
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared ”final war” on al-Qaeda on Friday after dozens of people including a police chief were killed in bomb attacks blamed on the jihadists in Mosul city. Iraqi forces were moving towards Mosul, 370km north of Baghdad, for a major assault that would become a ”decisive battle”, Maliki told a gathering in the central shrine city of Karbala.
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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.
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/ 11 January 2008
United States President George Bush arrived in Kuwait on Friday to rally the support of Arab allies against what he calls the Iranian "threat" after making a bold prediction for Middle East peace. Bush flew in aboard <i>Air Force One</i> after his first presidential trip to the Holy Land, where he said he believed a peace treaty would be signed within a year.
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.
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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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/ 30 December 2007
Security forces were on alert on Sunday in the Sunni regions of Iraq where Saddam Hussein drew his most fervent support, as loyalists of the ousted dictator marked the first anniversary of his execution. Police and troops were patrolling the village of Awja, Saddam’s birthplace and where he now lies buried.
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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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/ 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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/ 16 December 2007
After four years, eight months and 11 days, after the deaths of unknown thousands of Iraqis, after 174 British fallen, and billions expended on reconstruction and the cost of a military mission, on Sunday the British mission in Iraq takes a large step towards being wound up.
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/ 8 December 2007
A series of six black-and-white prints on display in an unassuming corner of the New York Public Library have sparked controversy on the airwaves and blogosphere quite out of keeping with the dark, marble-lined corridor in which they are hung. The prints show the mugshots of main members of the Bush administration.
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/ 8 December 2007
The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. But pivotal to the United States investigation into Iran’s suspect nuclear-weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar.
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/ 25 November 2007
A Brazilian psychic who set officials in Indonesia scrambling after he predicted a huge quake would hit Sumatra island next month reaffirmed on Wednesday that the disaster is indeed coming. "The danger of this earthquake exists, there is no doubt," Jucelino Nobrega da Luz (45) said by telephone from his home in south-east Brazil.
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/ 20 November 2007
No prizes for guessing the least popular and most hassled men at Camp Striker near Baghdad. That would be the staff at Magic Island Technologies, who last week switched off the camp’s free wi-fi internet access. It may surprise to some to know that there is any internet access at an army camp inside a warzone.
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/ 14 November 2007
Chevron, the number-two United States oil company, has agreed to pay -million to resolve criminal and civil liabilities related to procurement of oil under the United Nations oil-for-food programme, US prosecutors said on Wednesday. Chevron will not be prosecuted and will continue to cooperate with investigators, they said.