At least 11 dead in Iraq attacks

At least 11 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Tuesday, including three by a device which blew up in a mock coffin during a demonstration, security officials said.

Dozens of people took part in the protest in Khales, 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad, to demand stiff penalties for the perpetrators of anti-Shiite attacks in the city, the local security operations command said.

The demonstrators were carrying a mock coffin when a booby-trapped device exploded inside the box, killing three people and wounding seven, an official at the centre told AFP.

Sectarian tensions remain high in Khales, a city which in 2006-2007 was a battleground between Sunni insurgents of Al-Qaeda and Shiite militias.

At the end of May, a car bombing in a Khales marketplace killed 30 people, two months after another 42 people perished in a double bomb attack near a coffeeshop and a restaurant.

In Yusifiyah, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, gunmen on Tuesday killed a leader of the Sahwa militia, which has sided with US forces against Al-Qaeda, and four family members in their home, an interior ministry official said.

In the capital itself, two bombs exploded near a petrol station in the central district of Muhandicin, killing two and wounding five others, the capital's police said.

And a man was killed in the western city of Fallujah when a "sticky bomb" attached to his car blew up, a local police official said.

Although overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen markedly since their peak in 2006 and 2007, deadly attacks against civilians and security forces take place on a daily basis.

Iraq has only a caretaker government more than four months after a general election in which no clear winner emerged.

Amid threat, U.S. heightens security at its Iraq bases

The U.S. military has beefed up security at some of its bases after a threat that an Iranian-backed militant group was planning to attack, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq said Tuesday.


Men from Kataib Hezbollah, a Shiite group that U.S. officials say is trained and funded by Iran'sRevolutionary Guard Corps, crossed into Iran for training and returned to conduct attacks just as U.S. troop levels plummet over the summer, Gen. Ray Odierno said. By September, only 50,000 U.S. troops will remain in Iraq.

"In the last couple weeks there's been an increased threat," Odierno said in a briefing to reporters. "We've increased our security on some of our bases. We've also increased activity with the Iraqi Security Forces. This is another attempt by Iran and others to influence the U.S. role here inside Iraq."

So far the threat has not manifested, he said.

Odierno said the Iranian-backed militant groups seem focused primarily on attacking U.S. troops, and don't pose a long-term threat to the Iraqi government.

The Kataib Hezbollah group is plotting to use powerful rocket-propelled bombs called Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs, Odierno said. The short-range projectiles are propane tanks packed with explosives and launched with 107 mm rockets, often off the back of pickup trucks.

In the past seven years there have been a total of 16 attacks on U.S. bases with IRAMS, including five in the past year, the U.S. officials said. With the U.S. military moving from smaller bases to larger, more densely populated bases as part of the ongoing drawdown, the IRAMs could be particularly lethal.

"There is a very consistent threat from Iranian surrogates operating in Iraq," Odierno said. "Whether it's connected directly to the Iranian government? We can argue about that. But it's clearly connected to" the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.






Iran has been an influential and sometimes nefarious neighbor to Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. Iraqi officials often fly to neighboring Tehran for consultation, and the Islamic republic is a top trade partner for Iraq.

U.S. officials say Iran still funnels weaponry to Shiite militia groups in Iraq, although it does so much less frequently than it did in years past. Overall, Iran is pursuing more of a "soft power" approach in Iraq, Odierno said, trying to exert influence through economic investment and political pressure so as not to alienate the Iraqi people.

"The Iranian-supported surrogates have always been a larger threat to U.S. forces" than to Iraqi security forces," Odierno said. "They target specifically U.S. forces. In my mind they are not a threat to the government of Iraq or the formation of the government of Iraq."

Odierno reaffirmed that the U.S. troop withdrawal remains on track even though Iraq has yet to form a new government, more than four months after the national election. There are currently about 74,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. At the height of the U.S. military surge there were more than 165,000.

Iraq doesn't need more troops now, Odierno said; it needs political and economic support.

"For us it's about eliminating the environment that allows extremism to exist. We haven't eliminated that environment. That environment will get eliminated through economic and political progress," Odierno said. "We're not leaving tomorrow. We're going to have 50,000 American soldiers on the ground here. . . . We're not abandoning Iraq. We're changing our commitment from military-dominated to one that is civilian-led."

Police Targeted in Iraq Attacks

Gunmen in Iraq attacked a local police chief's convoy Saturday, wounding him and two others.

The police chief was traveling near Mosul when militants fired on the motorcade.

The attack sparked a clash between police and militants that left one officer dead and at least one other person wounded.

Another policeman was killed and at least two others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol outside Fallujah.

Latest Baghdad bomb blasts kill 7

Bomb blasts across the capital killed at least seven people yesterday, the last day of a Shi’ite 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 Wednesday that killed at least 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.

More than 4 million people had gathered yesterday in the city to commemorate the death of the revered Shi’ite figure Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. Pilgrims had walked from across the country to reach the Shi’ite shrine, despite attacks in the previous days.

Also yesterday, four people were killed and five were injured in bomb attacks on officers’ homes in western Ramad, and a farmer was killed in a bomb attack in Kirkuk, police said.

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.

Al-Qaida in Iraq Confirms Death of 2 Leaders

Al-Qaida in Iraq has confirmed that two of its leaders were killed one week ago in a joint operation by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

A statement posted Sunday on Islamist websites says Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi were attending a meeting when U.S. and Iraqi troops engaged them in a battle and launched an air strike.

The statement quotes a senior figure in the Islamic State of Iraq militant group as saying the two al-Qaida commanders were steadfast in the pursuit of jihad, or holy war. The militant also urges the group's followers to keep fighting and transform the leaders' blood into "light and fire."

U.S. and Iraqi officials say Masri and Baghdadi were killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on a hideout near the northern city of Tikrit on April 18.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called the deaths a "potentially devastating blow" to al-Qaida in Iraq.

Militants carried out a wave of bombings Friday in apparent retaliation for the raid, killing at least 69 people in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the bombings on al-Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni Muslim group. No group has claimed responsibility.

6 killed by blasts in western Baghdad

Iraqi police say six people were killed when three bombs hidden in plastic bags exploded in western Baghdad.

The officials say another 19 people were wounded in the blasts.

The bombings struck late Saturday in an area where young people were playing billiards in a mixed, Sunni-Shiite neighborhood.

The blasts came one day after a series of bombings focused in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad killed more than 70 people, raising fears that insurgent groups are trying to re-ignite sectarian violence.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Iraq factory explosion kills 5, cause unknown

Police and hospital officials say an explosion at an iron factory on the outskirts of a northern Iraqi city has killed five workers and wounded 15.

Police Chief Abdul-Khaliq Talaat said the cause of the Sunday explosion just outside the city of Irbil was not immediately known.

Irbil is located in Iraq's self-rule Kurdish region about 217 miles (350 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

An Irbil hospital worker confirmed the deaths.

 An al-Qaida front group in Iraq declared in a statement posted on the Internet Sunday that its two top figures have been killed.

The statement by the Islamic State of Iraq provided the first confirmation from the terror network of the April 19 claim by the Iraqi and U.S. governments that the two men were killed in a joint operation while hiding at a safe house near the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has described the death Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri as a "potentially devastating blow" to al-Qaida in Iraq. Their deaths also have provided Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with a boost in his efforts to keep his job after his coalition finished second in parliamentary elections held March 7.

Sunday's statement said the death of al-Baghdadi and al-Masri would not affect the group's operations in Iraq after new members have joined the group recently. It also poured lavish praise on the two men.

"After a long journey filled with sacrifices and fighting falsehood and its representatives, two knights have dismounted to join the group of martyrs," the statement said. "We announce that the Muslim nation has lost two of the leaders of jihad, and two of its men, who are only known as heroes on the path of jihad."

The statement was posted two days after bombings mostly targeting Shiite places of worship killed 72 people in Iraq's bloodiest day so far this year. The bombings were seen as an apparent backlash by the Sunni-led insurgency after the slaying of the two al-Qaida leaders.

Nobody claimed responsibility for Friday's attacks, but Iraqi officials were quick to blame al-Qaida, which often targets Shiite mosques and religious processions in a bid to stoke new sectarian bloodshed.

Al-Maliki said the insurgents were fighting back after the deaths of their two leaders.

Blast Strikes Shiite Pilgrims in Iraq

At least two explosions tore through crowds marching to the burial place of Shiite Islam’s most revered martyr Friday in the culmination of ritual mourning that has drawn millions to the holy city of Karbala in one of the world’s largest pilgrimages. At least 27 people were killed and dozens more were wounded.

There was a sense of fatalism to the attacks, one of dozens this week on pilgrims that the Shiite-led government grimly predicted but was powerless to stop. The killings have underlined the meaning of the pilgrimage: a religious ceremony to commemorate Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad whose death in the battlefield in Karbala in 680 gave Shiite Muslims an ethos of suffering, martyrdom and resistance.

“They think these explosions can stop us from marching,” said Muhaned Shaker, a 27-year-old pilgrim, “but if I die today in an explosion that will be a gift from God.”

Interior Ministry officials said a suicide car bomb had detonated at the Peace Bridge a few miles east of the city, tearing through a crowd so tight that people were standing shoulder to shoulder. Moments later, a mortar shell exploded nearby, killing and wounding more pilgrims as they frantically fled the scene. In the chaotic aftermath, officials said the crowds rendered rescuers almost helpless to treat the wounded.

The attacks came amid a stubborn crisis over the disqualifications of hundreds of candidates from Iraq’s parliamentary elections in March for ties to the Baath Party of former President Saddam Hussein.

An appeals court decided Wednesday to delay their appeals until after the vote, effectively restoring their candidacies. But since then, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and other Shiite leaders have called the court’s decision illegal and insisted that the disqualifications go forward, casting politics into more tumult.

The dispute has taken a personal turn, with Mr. Maliki complaining in a statement late Thursday of intervention in the crisis by the United States ambassador, Christopher R. Hill. He said his government would not allow Mr. Hill “to exceed his diplomatic duties.”

Philip Frayne, an American Embassy spokesman, defended Mr. Hill’s role as appropriate. “Ambassador Hill has been doing what any diplomat normally does, offering his government’s views on issues that could affect American interests,” Mr. Frayne said. “That is not going beyond the bounds of acceptable diplomacy.”

American officials and the United Nations have played a crucial role in trying to solve the complicated dispute over the candidacies.

The issue of Baathists has become incendiary in the campaign for the March 7 vote, with religious Shiite candidates competing with one another in proving their anti-Baathist credentials to a constituency that suffered dearly under Mr. Hussein’s rule. Iraqi law has also proved unhelpful in ending the dispute, as there is no precedence for resolving who has the final say on candidate disqualifications.

In the attacks near Karbala, the Interior Ministry said 27 people were killed and 75 wounded. Officials in Karbala put the toll at 40 killed and more than 150 wounded, although they acknowledged the difficulty in determining precise numbers amid the chaos.

Friday was the observance of Arbaeen, the 40th day after Imam Hussein’s death. Banned under Mr. Hussein’s government, the pilgrimage has flourished in the years since the American-led invasion in 2003. This year, city officials estimated that 10 million people journeyed to the gold-domed shrine in Karbala. Security officials put the number higher, at 11 million, and clerics insisted it was even more.

By custom, pilgrims walk to the shrine, carrying green, red and black flags and sometimes traveling hundreds of miles over days. Occasionally, pilgrims choose to walk barefoot. The sheer numbers have given the region around Karbala a cinematic quality, as people clamber through date groves and surge through the streets in one of the world’s largest voluntary movements of people.

Along the way, volunteers have set up tents for the weary, offering a dish known as hareesa, a stew of lamb and beans, bananas, oranges, cakes, cookies, tea, juice and soda. According to tradition, residents open their houses to travelers to rest and sleep.

Security officials have banned most vehicles from the city, and witnesses reported that crowds were lined up for miles beyond Karbala’s three entrances.

United States military officials said as of Thursday, insurgents had carried out 35 attacks against pilgrims, fewer than the 54 last year and far below the more than 180 in 2007. But as in past bombings, survivors directed their anger at the police and soldiers for failing to stop the attacks and blamed the election crisis for diverting politicians’ attention.

“The explosions are just for the elections so they can say that this party or that party failed to protect the people,” said one pilgrim, Abbas Nasser. “We know the game.”

About 30,000 troops and police officers have been deployed to protect the pilgrims, who in past years have been the object of attacks by insurgents bent on sowing sectarian strife. On Monday, a female suicide bomber with explosives hidden under her garment killed at least 38 people on the outskirts of Baghdad, many of them marching to Karbala. Another bombing Wednesday, just miles from the shrine, killed at least 20 people.

Three Iraqi policemen killed in S Iraq

Three Iraqi policemen were killed by a collected bomb in a southern city, sources with Iraqi police said on Friday.

The Iraqi police found a group of explosive devices in different parts of Diwaniyah city, 180 kilometers south of Baghdad Thursday. While being transported to a car to the U.S. base, one of the explosive devices exploded, killing 3 policemen and wounding 16 others, the source added.

The explosion occurred at the headquarter of the Diwaniyah police.

Some of the wounded were seriously affected and shifted to the nearest hospital, according to the source.

Iraq politician Ahmad Chalabi survives assassination attempt

A suicide bomber tried to assassinate politician Ahmad Chalabi on Friday night, killing six of his guards when he rammed his car into the Shiite Muslim politician's speeding convoy, Chalabi's spokesman said.

Chalabi, who has survived at least three previous attempts on his life, was returning to his home in the west Baghdad district of Mansour when the bomber in a sport utility vehicle struck, spokesman Iyad Kadhim Sabti said. At least 17 people were wounded, including nine of Chalabi's guards, police said. Chalabi was unharmed.

It was not clear who was behind the attack, Sabti added. The blast, not far from the politician's compound, was heard across the capital.

Chalabi, a former exile who returned to Iraq during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, travels around Baghdad regularly in heavily protected convoys. Until last month, he headed a committee on public services for the capital, and had served during parts of 2005 and 2006 as deputy prime minister and acting oil minister.

A longtime darling of Washington neoconservatives in and out of the Bush administration, Chalabi provided much of the faulty intelligence on the late dictator Saddam Hussein's weapons program that President Bush used to justify the invasion. His relationship with the White House faltered after U.S. forces failed to find any evidence that Hussein had an active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons program and the information Chalabi supplied was discredited.

Chalabi ran for election on his own slate in Iraq's last national balloting but failed to win a seat in parliament. He has managed to remain a player in Iraq's political arena because of his chairmanship of the country's de-Baathification commission, which purged members of Hussein's regime from state jobs, and his ability to juggle disparate alliances. Chalabi has forged relationships with anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's populist movement, as well as some members of the largely Sunni Arab, U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq paramilitary program.

Despite a drop in violence in the last year, assassination attempts targeting civil servants and prominent individuals continue to occur routinely in Baghdad. Earlier Friday, gunmen with silencers killed a civilian advisor to the Defense Ministry, Abdul Amir Hassan Abbas, as he drove through east Baghdad, police said.

Also Friday, the government said it would question U.S. officials about allegations, in a new book by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, that America has been spying on Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

"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," government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said 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.

The allegations were first reported by the Washington Post on Friday in an article about Woodward's book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History, 2006-2008."

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.

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.

Bomb in Baghdad strikes Shiite pilgrims, kills 3

Iraqi police and hospital officials say a car bombing targeting Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad has killed three people and wounded nine others.

The officials say the parked car exploded at about 9 a.m. Saturday near minibuses assembled to pick up pilgrims in the city's mainly Shiite district of Shaab.

The officials gave the casualty toll for the bombing on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.

Several bombings in recent days have targeted Shiites heading to Karbala for a major religious festival. U.S. and Iraqi troops have stepped up security measures for the pilgrimage but the hundreds of thousands of travelers remain vulnerable on the road.