Bomb planted on minibus kills 2 in Baghdad Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/07/bomb-planted-on-minibus-kills-2-in-baghdad/#ixzz1uJ8otpaO

Iraqi officials say a bomb left inside a minibus has killed two commuters and wounded nine others in Baghdad.

A police officer says the bomb exploded when the bus reached the northern Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah around 10:30 a.m. on Monday.

Two revered Shiite Imams are buried in Kazimiyah and Shiite pilgrims converge from inside and outside Iraq to the site. The area's big market also attracts thousands of shoppers every day.

A health official at a nearby hospital confirmed the causality figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to release the information.

Violence has ebbed in Iraq in recent years but militants still launch deadly attacks around the country.

Baghdad takes aim at stray dogs

Baghdad officials said Saturday that 58,000 stray dogs have been killed in and around the Iraqi capital over the past three months as part of a campaign to curb an increasing number of strays blamed for attacks on residents.

A statement released from the Baghdad provincial government said 20 teams, made up of police shooters and veterinarians, had been moving around Baghdad and the outer-lying regions daily looking for and putting down the strays. The operation, which was first announced in 2008, truly took off in April after funds were allocated.

The surge in strays — estimated by provincial officials to have reached 1.25 million — is ironically linked to what officials say is an improvement in some elements of daily life in Baghdad, a city that for seven years has been struggling to return to normalcy after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Officials with the provincial veterinary directorate said the dogs are eating more and having bigger litters.

Figures for the number of attacks by packs of stray dogs were not available Saturday, the last day of the weekend in Iraq.

But officials said resident complaints have increased steadily in tandem with the rise in the stray population. In the capital, dogs have attacked children, in some cases killing them.

Efforts since the campaign was first announced in 2008 met with limited success because of a lack of funding and follow-through. There are not believed to be any dog shelters in Baghdad.

The teams begin their work daily at 6 a.m., and coordinate with relevant security forces in the area — ostensibly to ensure that their presence does not draw retaliatory fire by security forces who may mistake them for insurgents.

Provincial officials said before the teams move into an area, residents are also notified, and warned to not pick up meat they find on the ground because it could be the poisoned food used to lure and kill the dogs.

Under Saddam Hussein's regime, stray dogs were routinely shot. But their numbers grew steadily following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when a host of more serious security issues sidelined efforts to deal with the dogs.

Attacks in Iraq kill at least 41, most of them pilgrims

The relentless violence intensified Wednesday evening, with at least 41 people killed by bomb attacks in the capital, an Interior Ministry official said. Another 174 people were wounded, the official said. The vast majority of the victims were Shiite pilgrims.

In the latest attacks, which occurred despite heightened security, a roadside bomb detonated in western Baghdad Wednesday evening, killing at least six pilgrims and wounding 30 others.

Another bombing, in central Baghdad's Haifa street, wounded nine pilgrims on Wednesday evening.

A suicide bomber struck at pilgrims in northern Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Adhamiya district as they were walking toward neighboring Kadhimiya, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had gathered to mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Musa al-Kadhim. Twenty-eight were killed and 81 were wounded, the official said.

Two roadside bombs left at least five pilgrims dead and 36 wounded in eastern Baghdad's mostly Shiite districts of New Baghdad and al-Fudhailiya, the official said.

A roadside bomb targeting pilgrims exploded in al-Bayaa, in southeastern Baghdad, wounding at least six. In central Baghdad, another five pilgrims were wounded in a roadside bomb blast.

Earlier Wednesday, soldiers at an army checkpoint west of Baghdad fired upon a vehicle driven by a suicide attacker when he refused to stop, Interior Ministry officials told CNN. The vehicle exploded, leaving one civilian dead and four Iraqi army soldiers and police wounded. It was unclear whether the attacker detonated the bomb or if shots fired at the vehicle triggered the explosion.

In another incident, a roadside bomb targeting an army patrol exploded in the Al-Jamia neighborhood of western Baghdad, wounding three soldiers.

A bomb attached to a police officer's car went off Wednesday as he was driving in the Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad. The officer was killed, officials said.

The attacks came a day after bombings left at least nine dead and 43 wounded. Pilgrims have been targeted since Friday.

The capital is under tight security for the pilgrimage, with many roads blocked and a ban on motorcycles and bicycles in place.

Security measures include: Vehicles to transport pilgrims; thousands of deployed troops; security cameras in and around the shrine; aerial surveillance; and 500 personnel to combat the threat of female suicide bombers.

The Kadhimiya shrine is one of the holiest to Shiite Muslims around the world. The imam died more than 1,200 years ago.

At least 7 killed in Baghdad on last day of Shiite holiday

At least seven people were killed by bombs across the Iraqi capital Thursday, the last day of a Shiite religious pilgrimage. In addition, four pilgrims walking back from the ceremony were sprayed with gunfire outside the northern city of Kirkuk. One died; three were injured.


The bloody morning follows a series of blasts on Wednesday that killed more than 50 people and wounded more than 250 in the city and surrounding areas. The most deadly was a suicide bombing in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiyah that killed more than 28 and wounded at least 136 people. Casualties in the attacks rose overnight, police said.

No one has claimed responsibility for any of the attacks in the past few days.

On Thursday, more than 4 million people had gathered in the city to commemorate the death of the revered Shiite figure Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. Pilgrims had walked from all across the country to reach the Shiite shrine, despite attacks in the previous days. The attackers hit as tens of thousands of security forces patrolled the streets and most roads were blocked to allow pedestrians.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who was visitingLebanon on Thursday, condemned the blasts in Baghdad of the past two days, the Associated Press reported.

"Those who benefit from such acts are the enemies of humanity, the enemies of democracy," he said.

Militants have struck a heavy blow against the Shiite community in a bid to destabilize the nation in the midst of political uncertainty. The attacks come as Iraqi politicians remain deadlocked on the formation of a new government, four months after national elections.

Violence has dropped significantly since the height of the sectarian fighting that erupted in 2006, but some worry it will increase as the U.S. military draws down to 50,000 troops in the country by Sept. 1.

Also Thursday, four people were killed and five were injured in bomb attacks on officers' homes in western Ramadi; the dead included a woman and child. A farmer also was killed in a bomb attack in Kirkuk, police said.

Shiite pilgrims stream into Baghdad

Tens of thousands of Shiite worshippers streamed into the Iraqi capital on Wednesday amid heightened security for a major pilgrimage, a day after six people were killed in a string of attacks.

Around 25 people were also wounded in Tuesday's mortar and bomb attacks as they travelled to the mausoleum of Musa Kadhim, the seventh of the 12 revered imams in Shiite Islam, in Kadhimiyah, a district named in his honour.

Hundreds of tents have been erected to feed people as they pour into the city for the event, which reaches a climax on Wednesday night and early Thursday. The mausoleum has previously been targeted by bombers.

Traffic was banned on Tuesday on several bridges spanning the Tigris River, increasing already bad congestion in the capital, where traffic control is already complicated by hundreds of security checkpoints.

"Everything is going very well today," Major General Qassim Atta, a Baghdad security forces spokesman, told AFP, referring to special safety measures such as road closures put in place to protect worshippers.

"We continue to organise transport for pilgrims and air surveillance for their benefit," he said.

"The movement of motorcycles, bicycles and carts is banned throughout the city until further notice," Atta added, to reduce the risk of small vehicle-borne attacks.

The Shiite majority in Iraq have been a main target of Sunni armed groups in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

The shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim has not been spared. In April 2009, two female suicide bombers detonated their payloads near the shrine, killing 65 people, including 20 Iranian pilgrims, and wounding 120 others.

The threat of violence did not dent the enthusiasm of worshippers who spoke to AFP, some of whom were planning to pray for a breakthrough to the political hiatus that has blocked a new government taking office after elections.

"I will pray at the mausoleum for (Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki and (Iyad) Allawi to find an agreement so that our situation gets better," said Umm Amir, 40, who was wearing a black abaya and had travelled from Mahmudiyah, 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Baghdad.

"Because our lives are very difficult," she said, accompanied by her neighbour Umm Sajjad on the journey and carrying a plastic bad filled with water and an orange for sustenance.

Hamid Taleb, 47, an unemployed man travelling with friends and relatives from Babil, a majority Shiite city south of Baghdad, said nothing would stop him from making the annual journey.

"Even in the time of Saddam I came across the fields despite it being forbidden to travel to attend," he said.

"I would make the pilgrimage whatever the situation is."

Car bomb hits police patrol in Baghdad, 5 wounded

A car bomb went off near a police patrol in western Baghdad on Wednesday and wounded five people, an Interior Ministry source said.

The attack took place shortly before sunset when a booby- trapped car parked near the intersection of Adel neighborhood exploded, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast damaged one of the patrol's police vehicles, wounding two policemen aboard, along with several nearby civilian cars, the source said, adding that three civilians were also wounded by the blast.

Sporadic attacks are still common in Iraq as part of recent deterioration in security which shaped a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi government to restore normalcy in the country just a few weeks before the March general elections.

Ex-Saddam general shot dead in Baghdad

A former Iraqi general under Saddam Hussein turned defence ministry advisor was shot dead in broad daylight in central Baghdad on Friday security sources said.

Gunmen assaulted Abdelamir Hassan Abbas as he was driving his car in the neighbourhood of Zayona, pumping bullets into him with a silenced firearm, the security official with the interior ministry said.

"They killed him immediately," he added. The incident was confirmed by Iraqi military sources. Abbas, a Shiite brigadier general in executed dictator Saddam Hussein's army, went to work as a civilian consultant for Iraq's defence ministry several months ago.

Excuse us for eavesdropping, Prime Minister Maliki

Sometimes, Baghdad's Green Zone, the walled-off axis of American and Iraqi power, is akin to a spy novel. Concertina wire, endless soot-stained gray concrete walls, the speeding convoys of armored vehicles give the enclave a conspiratorial atmosphere. According to legend, key words like Al Qaeda or the Mahdi Army in a phone conversation ensure that your call will be monitored by some intelligence agency somewhere. On one occasion, a western official cautioned that a U.S. advisor to an Iraqi minister wasn’t advising his client, but spying on him.

The latest episode in Baghdad’s annals of cloak-and-dagger escapades came Friday with a Washington Post report that the U.S. government had been spying on Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. The information comes from a new book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008," by famed journalist and Washington insider Bob Woodward. “We know everything he [Maliki] says,” one source bragged to Woodward, according to the Post.

The allegations were mentioned in January 2007 by Newsweek magazine. Then the magazine quoted unnamed White House officials as saying that Maliki’s conversations had been monitored because the United States wanted to make sure the prime minister was not saying one thing to them and another thing in private.

The magazine reported that the spying had reassured U.S. officials about Maliki.

However, the Iraqi government found nothing comforting in Woodward’s latest opus. "If it is true, if it is a fact, it reflects that there is no trust and it reflects also that the institutions in the United States are used to spy on their friends and their enemies in the same way," said Ali Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman, in an e-mailed statement.

He warned that the news could imperil future relations with the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. “We will raise this with the American side and we will ask for an explanation," he said.

Others took a more blasé approach, as if they expected the Americans would be listening in on Iraqi officials. Sheik Jalaluddin Saghir, a senior Shiite politician, thought it might “make things turbid” between the two countries. Other than that, he said, “It’s not a surprise.”

US soldier dies in Baghdad

The US military has confirmed the death of one American combat soldier of injuries sustained in a non-combat related incident in Baghdad.

The US military central command in Iraq said the soldier died on Friday but failed to offer any further details.

According to an AFP count, his death brings to 4,155 the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

Deadly fighting in Baghdad as Iraq marks Saddam's fall

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 Shiite bastion of Sadr City.

Iraqi officials said three mortar rounds slammed into Sadr City, the eastern Baghdad stronghold of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, killing at least seven people and wounding 24 others.

One mortar round struck the rooftop of a house where a family was having breakfast, killing three members of a family, including two children.

Another mortar struck a nearby tent set up for a condolence service for a person killed earlier in the week, while a third fell on an empty plot.

Clashes in the sprawling Shiite district in the early hours killed another six people and wounded at least 15, a medical official said.

Sadr City has been wracked by fighting since Sunday between Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and US and Iraqi forces in which at least 55 people have died and scores have been wounded.

The US military says it is chasing "criminals" firing rockets into Baghdad and the heavily fortified Green Zone where the Iraqi government and US embassy are sited.

Sadr had last week called for a million-strong anti-American demonstration in Baghdad to mark the anniversary of Saddam's ouster by US invading forces but cancelled it on Tuesday "to save Iraqi blood."

Baghdad's streets were empty of cars and trucks after the authorities declared a 5:00 am to midnight (0200 GMT to 2100 GMT) vehicle curfew to prevent car bomb attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Saddam's hometown of Tikrit was also under a day-long curfew, an AFP correspondent said.

It took US invading forces just three weeks to defeat Saddam's forces and topple his regime on April 9, 2003.

On that day, US Marines put a rope around the neck of a giant statue of Saddam in Baghdad's Firdoos Square, pulling it down in an act that symbolised the fall of the dictator's brutal regime.

A jubilant Iraqi crowd "insulted" the fallen statue by smacking its face with their shoes.

But five years later the American military and Baghdad's new Shiite-led regime are still battling to curb the bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than four million.

Fears of an uptick in the violence are running deep after hardline Sadr, angered by attacks on his militiamen, threatened on Tuesday to end the truce his feared Mahdi Army militia has been observing since August.

US commanders acknowledge that the ceasefire was one of the factors behind a sharp drop in violence across Iraq in the second half of last year.

Although US President George W. Bush insisted in March that toppling Saddam was the "right decision", his commanders are finding it difficult to bring stability to Iraq despite last year's "surge" strategy of deploying an extra 30,000 troops.

The top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, urged in testimony to the US Congress on Tuesday that further troop withdrawals should be held off for at least 45 days after completing the pullout of the "surge" forces by July.

Petraeus said the surge had helped make "significant but uneven" progress in Iraq, while Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker warned that those achievements were "reversible."

For Iraqis, the five years since the ouster of Saddam has been a period of turmoil and bloodletting.

"When I saw the American tanks roll into Baghdad, I was happy and full of dreams... dreams of a prosperous Iraq, a developed Iraq. But since then it has become a nightmare of suffering and destruction," said Sarah Yussef, 25.

The war has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians since the US-led invasion. Between 104,000 and 223,000 people died from March 2003 to June 2006 alone, according to the World Health Organisation.

The songs of joy that greeted the American tanks when they reached Baghdad have long since become cries of hatred.

Majeed Hameed, a gift shop owner in Baghdad's northern Antar Square, said the American tanks rolling on the streets of Baghdad are now seen as "enemy" forces.

"We can't describe how savage these barbarians are whose promises were false and full of lies. They came to occupy and cause destruction. We got nothing but disaster," said Hameed.

Basim Atia, an unemployed man living in Karrada district of central Baghdad, described the toppling of Saddam as a "black day" in the history of Iraq.

"On that day, all our values were turned upside down. Today we see only killing and sectarianism, and scientists and doctors are fleeing the country."