Tag: Iraq

BAGHDAD - Iraq scrambled to head off further protests on Monday by cutting politicians' pay and ramping up support for the needy after a teenage demonstrator was killed at a rally in the country's north. Protests in recent weeks have taken place nationwide, in Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurd areas, railing against corruption, high levels of unemployment and poor provision of basic services such as clean water and electricity.
On Monday, the Iraqi government said it would postpone

BAGHDAD - Around $40 billion are "missing" from a post-Gulf War fund that Iraq maintains to protect the money from foreign claims, its parliamentary speaker said on Monday. "There is missing money, we do not know where it has gone," Osama al-Nujaifi said at a news conference in Baghdad.
"The money is around $40 billion in total. It may have been spent somewhere, but it does not appear in our accounts, so parliament will investigate where this money has gone." Nujaifi did not say

SAMARRA - A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a bus filled with Shiite pilgrims at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi city of Samarra on Saturday, killing at least 27 people, police sources said. "The suicide bomber quickly ran into the bus when it stopped at a checkpoint several kilometres (miles) outside Samarra, and detonated his vest inside the vehicle," the police official said.
"About 27 people were killed and about 20 were wounded," he said, giving a toll confirmed by

BAGHDAD - Iraq's government submitted a revised draft budget to MPs for approval on Sunday, raising projected public spending as oil prices have increased, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. The new spending programme estimates overall expenditure at $81.86 billion, or 96.6 trillion Iraqi dinars, while income will be $68.56 billion, leaving a shortfall of $13.3 billion- about a 16 percent budget deficit.
Sunday's submission is based on average oil prices of $76.5 per

KIRKUK - Gunmen fired on a top anti-terror official in northern Iraq, killing two of his sons and leaving the officer and another son wounded, police said Friday. Colonel Abbas Nuri had been exiting a shop late Thursday in Tuz Khurmatu and walking to his car, where his three teenage sons were waiting, when gunmen opened fire on the family and fled, the town's police chief Colonel Ali al-Hamdani said.
Two of Nuri's sons, aged 15 and 16, were killed, while his 18-year-old boy was

BAGHDAD - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told US diplomats in 2009 that neighbouring Iran and Syria were providing weapons to insurgent groups within Iraq, a leaked document showed on Thursday.
Maliki's comments to then-US ambassador to Baghdad Christopher Hill came in the midst of a year-long diplomatic row with Damascus that prompted both Iraq and Syria to withdraw their respective ambassadors, while US officials have long alleged that Iran backs militia groups operating inside

BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament speaker on Wednesday slammed a court ruling placing bodies like the central bank under ministerial control as a threat to democracy, and threatened to pass laws revamping the judiciary.
Osama al-Nujaifi's remarks came as an Iraqi media outlet published a 2006 letter that showed the country's top judge seeming to contradict last month's decision to tie several independent bodies to the cabinet, a ruling which has sparked widespread controversy and

BAGHDAD - France must act quickly to show its support for the Tunisian people following a series of misjudgments, the country's new envoy to Tunis said on Sunday.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's administration has been accused of moving slowly to condemn the violent repression of protests earlier this month that led to the downfall of Tunisia's longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
"We must very quickly show France's solidarity with the Tunisian people - and show we

KARBALA - Three car bombs ripped through crowds near Iraq's shrine city of Karbala on Monday, killing 12 people and wounding dozens in fresh attacks on pilgrims arriving for religious rituals. "There were three car bomb explosions, two at 8:30am (05:30 GMT) and another 30 minutes later," said Nusayef Jassem, the provincial vice chief.
"Twelve people were killed and 150 wounded in the attacks," he said. Dr Laith Sharifi, an official of the provincial health department, said

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police have arrested a Sunni anti-Qaeda militia leader and his aide over three car bombings outside the shrine city of Karbala that killed 45 people, a top general said on Friday. The two men, who were not identified, were arrested overnight in the village of Al-Hamiyah in Babil province south of Baghdad.
They are suspected of direct involvement in three car bombings, one of them by a suicide attacker, against Shiite Muslim pilgrims on their way to Karbala on

KARBALA - At least 50 people died in a spate of explosions across Iraq on Thursday, including 45 in twin suicide car bombs that rocked the holy city of Karbala, the third major attack in as many days. The attacks mostly targeted pilgrims marking the Shias mourning day of Arbaeen, and were the latest in a series of bombings that have shattered a relative calm in Iraq following the formation of a new government last month.
In Karbala, home to the shrines to two revered Shia imams,

BAQUBA - A suicide bomber rammed an ambulance packed with explosives into a security headquarters on Wednesday, killing 13 people in the second major attack against Iraqi forces in as many days.
Another suicide attack in a nearby town killed two others and wounded a top provincial official, shattering a relative calm in Iraq following the formation of a new government by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki last month.
"I was on my way to the market close to the building when I saw

GUJRANWALA - Internal Services Intelligence (ISI) former chief General (Retd) Hameed Gull said aggressions in Afghanistan and Iraq had met the worst defeats and the US must leave the two countries by admitting its defeats.
He was addressing a seminar organised by Gujranwala Wasif Khayal Sangat to commemorate Wasif Ali Wasif. Senator Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, Orya Maqbool Jan, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Zulfiquar Ahmad Cheema, Kh Qutb-ud-Din, Khurram Dastgir Khan, Abdur Rehman Kuaka,

BAGHDAD - Three American soldiers were killed and one wounded in separate incidents in central and northern Iraq on Saturday, the deadliest day for US forces here since July.
The deaths were a stark reminder that, despite Washington having declared combat operations over in August, its 50,000-odd troops still stationed here remain at risk. Saturday's worst incident saw two soldiers killed and one wounded "while conducting operations in northern Iraq," a statement said, without

BAGHDAD - Kuwait's prime minister arrived to a red carpet welcome in Baghdad on Wednesday in the first such visit since Saddam Hussein's forces invaded the oil-rich emirate in 1990. Television footage showed Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah being greeted at Baghdad airport by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and deputy foreign minister Labid Abbawi. The Kuwaiti national anthem played as Sheikh Nasser walked down a red carpet to the group of

MADRID - A Spanish judge will probe a raid by Iraqi police and soldiers on a camp for Iranian refugees in July 2009 that killed 11 people, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Tuesday.
A Spanish National Court ruling in favour of an investigation into the events at Camp Ashraf, near the Iraqi border with Iran, became effective Tuesday after a five-day waiting period for possible appeals, said a lawyer for victims' relatives.
In December 2009 National Court judge Fernando Andreu

BAGHDAD - Gun and bomb attacks killed three Iraqis and wounded 15 on Monday, security officials said, while the US military said two US soldiers had been killed, the first to die in Iraq this year. A suicide car bomb exploded on Monday morning outside a police intelligence office in Baquba north of the Iraqi capital, killing a man and wounding 15 other people, a security official and a doctor said.
The bombing targeted the office, located in a central market, at about 11:00 am