Content, War in Iraq

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A- The Americans
On June 7, 200, an American soldier was killed in an attack near Tikrit in Iraq.

A contractor for Halliburton's subsidiary KBR died from injuries sustained during a mortar attack in Iraq, the company has announced. Vernon O'Neal Richerson, 61, of Willis north of Houston, died on July 2, 2004, more than two weeks after the June 16 attack, the company said. He was the 42nd Halliburton worker to die in Iraq and Kuwait.

Insurgent violence against American troops started again on July 6, 2004. Four US Marines were killed in western Iraq. The attacks, aimed at undermining Iraq's new government, led interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his supporters to declare war against the guerrillas, who also have sabotaged pipelines and electricity-generating plants.

On July 9, 2004, another United States soldier was killed. The soldier was on patrol in Baghdad overnight when three Iraqis were caught preparing to launch mortars from a truck. The US patrol opened fire, the truck ignited and set off the mortar rounds triggering a series of explosions which rocked the Iraqi capital. But the patrol was attacked by a second group of insurgents with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades. The soldier later succumbed to bullet wounds. The death raised to 650 the number of American soldiers killed in combat since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

On July 17, 2004, a US soldier was killed and another injured by a roadside blast.

On July 21, 2004, violence went on around the country: American troops battled insurgents overnight in the Sunni Muslim city of Samarra, killing six attackers. Five people were also killed in clashes with American soldiers in Ramadi. In Baghdad, a rocket hit a hospital, killing four patients, and a car exploded on a narrow street, killing another four people. Since the beginning of the war and until now 900 US soldiers died in Iraq.

In a gun battle in Ramadi on July 22, 2004, the US Marines shot dead 25 Iraqis, wounded 17 others and arrested 25 suspects. Also the one hundred attackers wounded 14 American soldiers.

On July 23, 2004, a roadside bombing south of Samara killed two US soldiers and wounded another. The American deaths raised the US toll in Iraq since the beginning of the war to 902.

On August 18 and 19, 2004, US forces have made a major advance into a mainly Shia area in Baghdad that is a stronghold of the radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr. Residents of Sadr City told the BBC there was fierce fighting overnight between the Americans and Shia militia. An explosion hit the Green Zone in Baghdad, as the US military operation in Sadr City was "ongoing".

On August 22, 2004, five US soldiers were killed and another wounded in a series of attacks and a road accident. One soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the northern city of Mosul, three US marines were killed in separate attacks in the western province of Al-Anbar -one in action and two died from wounds received in separate attacks- and another marine died in a road. In Al-Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, two people were killed and at least eight wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a parked car as the deputy provincial governor's convoy drove past. One Indonesian and two Iraqis were also killed and a Filipino wounded when their convoy was ambushed in Mosul.

A US soldier with the 13th Corps Support Command died on August 24, 2004, after a vehicle accident near Falluja. His death brought to 965 the toll of military personnel since the Iraq war began.

On August 25, 2004, a US soldier was killed in a truck accident north of the Iraqi capital on Wednesday. The soldier was killed when a truck overturned on a bridge near Tikrit. As of Tuesday, 962 US service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003.

Deadly clashes between US troops and Shia militants erupted on August 28, 2004, in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City and an attack on an oil pipeline in southern Iraq. US forces also said that they had killed two Iraqi gunmen in separate incidents in northern Iraq, near Mosul. Sadr loyalists had clashed with US forces in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, leaving at least seven people dead. The US military said eight mortar bombs fired at one of their positions had damaged an electricity sub-station and cut power supplies. Militants later fired two mortar shells into a group of civilians.

On August 30, 2004, the US military held consultations with Sadr officials to defuse clashes with his militia in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City. According to the district's police chief Colonel Maaruf Alami, Iraq's National Security Adviser Muwafaq Al Rubaie handed a 10-point proposal to Sadr officials. But the rebel militia refused to hand over its weapons. The document calls for a seven-day truce, for US troops to stop cracking down on Sadr's militia and to enter the sprawling neighbourhood, for reconstruction purposes only. Security would be the responsibility of Iraqi police.

On September 5, 2004, a mortar attack on a US base near Baghdad has killed two American soldiers and wounded 16. One of those wounded in the attack was in critical condition. The attack brought to at least 732 the number of US troops killed in action since the start of the war in Iraq last year.

On September 6, 2004, the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq rose to at least 985 since the US-led forces invaded the country in March 2003. About 1,100 soldiers and marines are thought to have been wounded in August, the highest since the war began. The number of fatalities among US troops was 66, the highest since May, but considerably lower than the 135 combat deaths recorded in April. There are no official figures available for the number of Iraqi insurgents and civilians killed or hurt. Following this latest car bomb attack, the total number of American dead since the US invasion of Iraq in March last year close to 1,000.

On September 7, 2004, fighting between US forces and Shia insurgents across Baghdad's Sadr City suburb has left at least 34 dead and injured at least 170 Iraqis, health officials said. One US soldier is among the dead and several were wounded. The American soldier killed in Sadr City was shot when militants attacked troops carrying out routine patrols. Another US soldier was killed by small arms fire in another part of Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon. Separate roadside bombs in Baghdad a day earlier killed three American soldiers. A fourth soldier died in a blast near Mosul. The latest attacks bring the number of Americans killed in Iraq on Monday and Tuesday September 6 and 7 to 13 and the total number since the March 2003 invasion to nearly 1,000.

US forces attacked the rebel bastion of Samara on September 9, 2004, and sought to re-establish Iraqi government control. Aircraft also bombed suspected guerrilla positions in two other insurgent strongholds: Fallujah in the west and Tal Afar in the north. The show of strenght shows the military's determination to exert control over the vast country in the months leading up to the elections scheduled to be held by the end of January. The robust strikes came during a week in which nearly 20 US troops were killed - pushing the US military death toll in the Iraq campaign to more than 1,000. About 150 soldiers converged on Samara backed by tanks, armored personnel carriers and air support. They met no resistance. But commanders acknowledge that up to 500 insurgents remain in Samara. The guerrillas' strike at smaller US or Iraqi units. They tend to hide their weapons and blend in among city residents when faced with larger forces. The US troops pulled out at the end of the day for lack of a secure base to spend the night. The fiercest fighting of the day was reported in Tal Afar, a city of 220,000 on a main road to the Syrian border. US officials said the city has become a smuggling depot for weapons and foreign fighters from Syria. Sporadic fighting in recent days has forced hundreds from their homes.

The US moves against three insurgent centres on September 9, 2004, aims to dispel the perception that growing parts of Iraq have become a "no-go" zone for US troops. US and Iraqi government troops are not in full control of several cities and areas in Iraq, besides Samara in the north: Fallujah and Ramadi in the west, and the largely Shiite neighborhood known as Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, where a Shiite militia holds sway. Many other cities and towns, such as Tal Afar in the far northwest, have become guerrilla bastions where the US-backed Iraqi government exerts limited control.

In September 2004, in Falluja and other Iraqi cities not controlled by American forces, the military is turning increasingly to air power to target suspected insurgent hideouts. The tactic is effective but it has raised Iraqi anger over civilian casualties. The counterinsurgency led by US forces has been fought mainly on the ground against a resilient enemy. But air power is taking a more prominent role because it is the most effective military tool in places like Fallujah, where US ground troops are not present. Air Force F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, as well as Navy F/A-18s flying off the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf, have been used in the recent attacks. Air Force AC-130 gunships, with side-firing 105mm artillery guns, also have seen action lately.

On September 17, 2004 the US army announced the death of one American Marine by the bullets of gunmen in al-Anbar province to the west of Iraq. The number of US soldiers killed increased to 1028 since the beginning of the war against Iraq in March 2003.

In September 2004, American troops in between missions are gathering around screens to view an unlikely choice from the US box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11," Michael Moore's controversial documentary attacking the commander-in-chief. "Everyone's watching it," says a Marine corporal at an outpost in Ramadi that is mortared by insurgents daily. "It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush. The film's success is one sign of a discernible countercurrent among US troops in Iraq -those who blame President Bush for entangling them in what they see as a misguided war. Conventional wisdom holds that the troops are staunchly pro-Bush, and many are. But bitterness over long, dangerous deployments is producing, at a minimum, pockets of support for Democratic candidate Senator John Kerry, in part because he's seen as likely to withdraw American forces from Iraq more quickly."For 9 out of 10 of the people, it wouldn't matter who ran against Bush -they'd vote for them," said a US soldier in the southern city of Najaf. "People are so fed up with Iraq, and fed up with Bush."

US warplanes fired on insurgent targets in the east Baghdad slum of Sadr City on Thursday September 23, 2004. Iraqi doctors said one person was killed and 12 were injured, many of them children. The US military said they launched an operation overnight aiming to "disband and disarm" militia loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and open way for reconstruction projects in the city. The attacks followed a day of fierce clashes between American troops and fighters loyal to al-Sadr. An American Bradley fighting vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and caught fire. It was not clear if there were any casualties.

Four US Marines were killed in three separate incidents west of Baghdad on September 25, 2004. The four were killed while conducting security operations in Anbar province. As of yesterday, 1042 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. Of those, 792 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include three military civilians.

Four US Marines were killed in three separate incidents west of Baghdad on September 25, 2004. The four were killed while conducting security operations in Anbar province. As of yesterday, 1042 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. Of those, 792 died as a result of hostile action. The figures include three military civilians.

On September 29, 2004, US forces fired a howitzer, a rarely used heavy weapon in Baghdad, to kill at least three mortar crewmen who had unleashed a barrage against one of their camps in an eastern neighbourhood of the capital. The 155-millimetre artillery piece fired a single round which struck a vehicle the insurgents had used as a platform for their mortar. Soldiers found three bodies of the attackers and other body parts were strewn around the area. The US fire came after 21 mortar rounds landed in or around War Eagle, a base of the 1st Cavalry Division on the edge of Sadr City. No US or Iraqi civilian casualties were reported.

US Marines arrested two Syrians and a Palestinian during a raid on their alleged safe house near the Syrian border on October 4, 2004. The three were captured along with "other local anti-Iraqi militants" during a raid on a house near the town of Al-Qaim. Separately, the military said it seized about 600,000 American dollars and other currency from 15 countries as well as foreign passports at a US checkpoint near the restive city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. "Foreign fighters are often paid with the large caches of money, much like that found by the checkpoint."

The US military said 17 suspected insurgents were captured Wednesday October 6, 2004, in the towns of Haswah and Iskandariyah, immediately south of Baghdad, during joint raids with Iraqi forces. The arrests brought to 60 the number of those detained since Tuesday's start of an operation dubbed "Phantom Fury". More than 1,300 marines and soldiers, and 800 Iraqi military and police personnel, were involved in the operation. Four marines, three Iraqi national guardsmen and three civilians have been wounded in the fighting so far. A US soldier was killed and his interpreter wounded in a roadside bomb attack Thursday near the northern oil refinery town of Baiji, after another soldier was killed and two wounded late Wednesday in a bomb attack on their convoy near Fallujah. An official with US-funded Iraqi television was gunned down in the main northern city of Mosul on Thursday. Meanwhile, an Internet statement purported to be from a militant group accused of links with al-Qaida has claimed the kidnapping of a "Kurdish spy" and the recent killing of a police chief in the town of Baladruz, northeast of Baghdad.

On October 8, 2004, we were told that the Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified roughly 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be brought under control before elections can be held there in January 2005, and have devised detailed ways of deciding which ones should be early priorities, according to senior administration and military officials. Recent military operations to quell the Iraqi insurgency in Tal Afar, Samara and south of Baghdad are the first and most visible signs of the new strategy for Iraq.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Saturday October 9, 2004, that some 40,000 new Iraqi recruits might join the country's security forces ahead of January elections. Rumsfeld, who met with defence chiefs from 18 nations aboard a US aircraft carrier in the central Gulf on Saturday, also said it was possible that the Pentagon would also increase the number of US troops in Iraq ahead of the polls.

During an unannounced visit to Iraq on October 10, 2004, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the United States faces a "test of wills" with insurgents in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld met with Marines fighting in al Anbar province. Mr. Rumsfeld told the Marines that extremists in Iraq are fighting US morale and struggling to control the perceptions of the conflict. The secretary said he did not expect US troop levels could be reduced before January, but said he hoped the American troops would eventually be relieved by newly trained Iraqi security forces. Mr. Rumsfeld later flew to Baghdad to meet with senior US and Iraqi leaders, including interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Two members of the US forces in Iraq were killed in separate incidents on October 10, 2004. A soldier died of injuries sustained in a car bombing that targeted a military convoy in the east of the Iraqi capital. A Marine was killed in action in al-Anbar province, west of Baghdad, yesterday during ``security and stability operations.'' The deaths add to the 809 US military members killed in action in Iraq since the invasion that began in March 2003. Of those, 700 were killed since US President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1, 2003. The US may start pulling troops out of Iraq after the Iraqi national elections in January, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today during a surprise visit to the west of the country, the Associated Press reported.

American troops stationed along Iraq's border with Syria are coming under increasing mortar attack from shells fired from Syrian territory, but it's unclear who's responsible, US officers said Thursday October 14, 2004. The 82 mm mortar rounds have been fired at US and Iraqi positions in and around Husaybah. There has been no evidence linking the Syrian military to the attacks. However, the Syrian military has the capability to determine who is launching the mortars and act against them.

On October 15, 2004, the US Army is investigating reports that several members of a reservist supply unit in Iraq refused to go on a convoy mission. Relatives of the soldiers said the troops considered the mission "too dangerous." According to press reports, a platoon of 17 troops refused to go on a fuel supply mission Wednesday because their vehicles were in poor condition and they did not have a capable armed escort.

Two US Army helicopters crashed after colliding late Saturday October 16, 2004, in Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and wounding two others. Also Saturday, the US command said four more American troops and an Iraqi interpreter were killed the day before by car bombs in the west and north of the country. The Army helicopters went down in southwestern Baghdad. The cause of the crashes had not been determined yet. The US military has lost at least 27 helicopters in Iraq since May 2003, many of them to hostile fire.

The US military said on Saturday October 16, 2004, that reports that Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been detained in Iraq were not credible. An Iraqi defense ministry spokesman also denied the report.

On October 16, 2004, the US army is investigating allegations that members of a reserve US military unit refused to carry out a convoy mission in Iraq. Over 19 soldiers from the unit- stationed near Talil in southern Iraq- allegedly failed to carry out their orders. The Platoon is part of the 343rd Quartermaster Company, and is responsible for delivering food, water and fuel on trucks for US occupations forces in combat zones. Families of the US soldiers being investigated have said that the forces considered the mission too dangerous.

Army commanders were busy on Sunday October 17, 2004, to address a rare and serious case of a US military unit defying orders in a combat zone, seeking to check a disciplinary breakdown while addressing safety concerns common among troops tested daily in ambushes on the roads of Iraq. Eighteen soldiers of a South Carolina Reserve unit are under formal investigation, five of whom have been suspended from duty and temporarily reassigned to other units, for allegedly refusing a risky mission to deliver fuel last week, according to military officials. The incident, unfolding amid an escalation of violence and troop deaths and following other disciplinary crises such as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, comes at a sensitive political juncture as the war in Iraq continues to dominate the US presidential campaign. Above all, the case casts a stark light on problems faced by US ground troops in Iraq: Shortages of armoured protection, overtaxed National Guard and Reserve units, and increasingly sophisticated attacks by insurgents on supply convoys manned by logistics soldiers with relatively little combat training.

The US military said Monday October 18, 2004, that no decision had been made on whether to discipline Army reservists who refused a supply mission last week, despite statements from their relatives that the soldiers would be discharged.

On October 20, 2004, eleven American soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were wounded when two car bombs exploded in Samara, a city that US and Iraqi forces have hailed as a success story since taking it from insurgents last month. An Iraqi child was killed and a civilian was wounded. Four children died in a wave of car bombings.

In Ramadi on November 1, 2004, the US soldiers clashed with Sunni insurgent. A freelance Iraqi television cameraman was killed; a woman was also killed and her two children wounded. The day before a US Marine was killed and four wounded in a bomb attack also in Ramadi.

Also on November 5, 2004, US Cobra helicopters fired on insurgents operating an illegal checkpoint south of Baghdad. An "unknown" number of insurgents were killed or wounded.

On November 16, 2004, the US and Iraqi troops recaptured bridges and police stations in Mosul that had been taken over by insurgents. They found little resistance. Thousand of Kurdish militiamen have entered the city at the request of the local provincial governor. They are not welcome to the local population.

A US soldier was killed and one wounded north of Baghdad on November 16, 2004, when a bomb was detonated near their convoy.

On December 29, 2004, insurgents tried to overrun a US combat outpost near Mosul and about 25 attackers were killed and 15 US soldiers wounded.

On December 31, 2004, a US soldier was killed and another one wounded in a roadside explosion north of Baghdad.

Iraq, February 19, 2005:
- A US soldier was killed in Baghdad when American troops responded to calls for assistance from Iraqi forces unable to cope with various attacks.
- A US soldier was killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle during a combat patrol near Balad.
- A soldier was killed and two others wounded Friday by a bomb that detonated near their patrol 19 miles north of Diwaniyah.
- One soldier was shot and killed in Mosul in a small-arms attack.
- A soldier was killed and another was wounded when a roadside bomb exploded while they were on patrol in Tal Afar.
- A car bomb attack in Mosul on Wednesday took the life of a US soldier. Three other soldiers were wounded.

Four US soldiers were killed in Iraq on February 21, 2005:
- Three of them were hit by a roadside bomb detonated as they were evacuating a colleague who had been injured when his convoy collided with a civilian vehicle. Eight soldiers were also wounded when the bomb exploded.
- A fourth US soldier was killed by small arms fire in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Saturday February 19.

Three US soldiers were killed in Iraq on Saturday March 26, 2005, and security forces said they had arrested 120 suspects on suspicion of planning attacks on the country's Shiite majority ahead of a major religious holiday. A suicide bomber blew himself up beside a US patrol in southwest Baghdad, killing two American soldiers and wounding two others and a US Marine was killed in action in Iraq's restive Anbar province.

A booby-trapped tanker has exploded on April 21, 2005, near a US army base in central Ramadi, followed by a fierce barrage of mortar rounds targeting the governorate building being used as a barracks by US troops. Sporadic clashes also erupted between armed fighters and US troops in other parts of Ramadi on Wednesday, but no details about casualties or losses were available.

B- The British
On August 9, 2004, a British soldier was killed and five wounded in a street battle in Basra. Two Land Rovers were set on fire and the militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades at the patrol but the situation is coming gradually under control.

A British soldier was killed and one wounded by a roadside bomb in Basra on August 12, 2004. The dead soldier is Marc Ferns and the wounded one, Kevin Stacey. This is the second British soldier killed this week bringing the total of British soldiers dead in Iraq to 64 since March 2003.

On August 12, 2004, in the southern city of Basra, a UK journalist was abducted from his hotel by militants demanding that the Americans withdraw from Najaf. The kidnappers have threatened to kill James Brandon, a freelance reporter for the Sunday Telegraph, unless their demands are met within the next 24 hours.

On August 13, 2004, Iraqi militants have threatened to kill a British journalist kidnapped in Basra unless US forces pull out of Najaf. James Brandon, 23, a freelance reporter for the Sunday Telegraph, was kidnapped after 30 masked gunmen stormed into his hotel at 2300 (1900 GMT) on Thursday. Hours later a videotape was released showing a hooded militant standing next to Mr Brandon, threatening to kill him.

On August 14, 2004, militants in the southern Iraqi city of Basra released a British journalist they kidnapped and threatened to kill, after aides to militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded he be freed. The journalist, James Brandon, was brought to the Basra office of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. He was later handed over to the British consulate by Brigadier Mohammed Kadhem al-Ali, the head of Basra police.

On August 17, 2004, the British troops in Basra suffered another blow with the death of the third soldier in the city this month. British forces in Iraq's second city have enjoyed a positive relationship with its inhabitants. When United States President George Bush announced the end of formal combat, British troops made a point of patrolling the streets of southern Iraq wearing berets rather than helmets.

On August 24, 2005, Al Mahdi militants took to the streets in the southern city of Basra to protest after the British army appealed to local police to disarm the militia.

The British Ministry of Defence confirmed on Saturday September 11, 2004, that a British soldier, Fusilier Stephen Jones, has been killed in a road accident near Al Amarah in southern Iraq, bringing the total number of British soldiers killed in Iraq since the war to 65. Britain, which sent about 45,000 troops to join the US-led war against Iraq in last March, is now positioning more than 9,000 soldiers in southern Iraq to be part of the US-led multinational forces in the country.

Britain may send extra troops to Iraq to boost security during elections scheduled for January, Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said on September 17, 2004. Mr Hoon stressed the importance of sticking to the election timetable, despite fears that the violence around the country could make it impossible to hold a vote. Britain currently has 9,000 troops serving with the coalition in Iraq, and that number is due to drop to 8,500 for the next rotation scheduled for November.

On September 17, 2004, the British forces controlled the headquarters of al-Shaheed al-Sader office in Basra city to the south of Iraq following violent clashes with the fighters of al-Mahdi army of the Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

Coalition forces are embroiled in a fresh conflict with Iraq as they battle to quash global terrorism for ever, says Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, on September 21, 2004. Sixteen months after the United States President, George Bush, declared that combat operations were over with his "Mission accomplished" boast, Mr Blair used a joint news conference with Iraq's interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, to say that the coalition was engaged in a "new conflict" now the "first conflict" to remove Saddam Hussein was over. But the battleground of the new fight was global terrorism versus "the side of democracy and liberty". "Whatever the disagreements about the first conflict in Iraq to remove Saddam, in this conflict now taking place in Iraq, this is the crucible in which the future of this global terrorism will be decided," he said.

Two British soldiers have been killed in an ambush near Basra in southern Iraq on Tuesday September 27, 2004. Soldiers came under fire as they tried to rescue others from an armoured Land Rover that had been hit by a rocket propelled grenade. Two soldiers later died at the British military hospital in Shaibah. At least two Iraqi bystanders were also injured in the ambush.

A British soldier has been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on May 2, 2005. Anthony Wakefield, a 24-year-old Coldstream Guard, from Newcastle, had been serving with the 12th Mechanised Brigade in the southeast of Iraq. The married father-of-three was on patrol in an armoured car when the bomb exploded near Al-Amarah on Sunday. He died of his injuries the following day. His death takes the number of UK servicemen who have died in the Iraq conflict to 87.

C. The Insurgents, Iraqis and Others
On July 2, 2004, the insurgents fired three rockets in Baghdad. One of the rockets hit the 10th floor of the Sheraton hotel used by journalists and contractors while the second rocket landed in the parking of the Baghdad hotel. Afterwards the rudimentary rocket launcher fell and caught fire in the van carrying it. The last one was aimed at the Marjan hotel. Nobody was injured. In Yarmouk, still another rocket hit the front gate of the building of the main Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic party. On July 1, a senior official of the finance ministry, Ehsan Karim, was injured when a roadside bomb hit his car. He later died in hospital as well as his bodyguard and his driver.

An Islamist militant group denied on July 4, 2004, that it had beheaded a US marine missing in Iraq. Fears for Lebanese-born Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun had risen after a statement appeared on two Islamist websites on Saturday saying the Army of Ansar al-Sunna had decapitated him. However the Ansar al-Sunna denied that they killed the Marine. The US military, the Lebanese foreign ministry and Hassoun's family said they had no evidence he was dead. Wassef Ali Hassoun has been absent from his unit since June 21. Ansar al-Sunna said Hassoun had been kidnapped after a love affair with an Arab woman lured him from his base. Curbing kidnapping is among the many challenges facing Iraq's new interim government.

On July 6, 2004, the deadliest car bombing since Iraq regained sovereignty exploded in Khales killing at least nine people and wounding 37, while an attack on a northern gas pipeline threatened power supplies. The suicide car bomber detonated near a house in Khales where a memorial service was being held for two Iraqis killed in an attack on Sunday in the nearby town of Baquba. On the same day an armed group threatened to kill Islamic militant Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi -blamed by US and Iraqi officials for a series of attacks- if he did not quit Iraq.

On July 7, 2004, a four-year-old boy was killed and another child was wounded when a vehicle attempted to run a US checkpoint in western Baghdad. The man driving the vehicle tried to pass by other waiting cars and didn't obey an order to stop. The man, once he was apprehended, said the brakes on his car weren't working. US soldiers then tested the car and found the brakes worked well.

On July 7, 2004, there was a full scale battle in central Baghdad between insurgents and the Iraqi police and US troops. Four people were killed. Also in Baghdad four mortar shells were launched against the prime minister's party headquarters (the Iraqi national Accord) and a house he uses regularly near the green zone. Six people were injured.

On July 10, 2004, coalition forces battled insurgents in the so-called Sunni triangle. Meanwhile, west of Baghdad Saturday, US Marines came under fire from insurgents in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Three of the attackers were reported to have been killed and five others wounded. North of the Iraqi capital in Baqouba, militants blew up three liquor stores and a taxi driver was killed. Islamic religious extremists are being blamed for the attacks. In the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, insurgents attacked a natural gas pipeline, causing a huge explosion and fire that closed it.

On July 11, 2004, the guerrillas struck in northern Iraq, killing a US soldier with a roadside bomb attack on a convoy south of Mosul.

On July 16, 2004, after two days of violence including deadly car bombings and attacks on Iraqi officials and oil installations, Iraq's interim prime minister on Thursday announced the creation of a new security service to target insurgents. The new service, the General Security Directorate, "will annihilate those terrorists groups, God willing," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said.

On July 19, 2004, a suicide truck bomber killed 10 Iraqis -2 policemen and 10 civilians- and injured 60 more outside a heavily guarded police station in south Baghdad. Many of the victims were employees and customers in garages near the station.

On July 24, 2004, a van crashed into a US tank in northern Baghdad, killing nine Iraqis on board and injuring 10.

On July 25, 2004, Iraq's police and National Guard killed 13 suspected militants in heavy clashes near Baghdad in one of the fiercest battles the fledgling security forces have faced since the handover of sovereignty. The police and National Guard were attacked by rebel mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades as they provided security to US forces conducting raids near the rebellious town of Buhriz, 55 km north of Baghdad. During the fighting, which lasted around an hour, US warplanes patrolled the skies and US artillery guns opened fire to suppress the insurgents' mortar positions.

On July 26, 2004, gunmen killed two women and injured two others. They were waiting to travel to work as cleaners at the British military base in Basra airport. In Baghdad a senior interior ministry official, Mussel al-Awed, and two bodyguards were gunned down as they left his house. In Mosul airport a suicide car bomber killed a woman and her child, one security guard, and the bomber. And they were other attacks where nobody was killed but a few Iraqis were wounded. And all this in one day!

On July 27, 2004, a Baghdad mortar barrage killed an Iraqi garbage collector and injured 14 coalition soldiers. Gunmen also killed a hospital official south of the capital.

On July 28, 2004, some battles took place in many other cities. In Suwariya, seven Iraqi soldiers were killed fighting with coalition troops were killed; 35 insurgents were also killed in the same battle. Some shooting took place in Ramali, Kirkuk and central Baghdad where a rocket hit a busy street, killing two people and wounding four, including three children. In western Iraq two foreign soldiers were killed and two planes had to make an emergency landing after coming under fire.

On August 2, 2004. A suicide car bomb blast at a checkpoint outside the town of Baquba killed six Iraqi national guardsmen and wounded six others. Two American soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb blast overnight on Baghdad's western outskirts and two US Marines were killed in action in the violent Anbar province in the country's west. The four deaths raise to 681 the number of American troops killed in action since the start of the war to oust Saddam Hussein in March last year. A roadside bomb in Baghdad's upscale Mansour district killed Colonel Moayad Mahmoud Bashar, chief of the Mamoun police station and wounded two of his bodyguards, police said.

On August 4, 2004, the Iraqi police shot dead eight armed insurgents part of a larger group raiding a bank in Mosul. Four local people died in the crossfire bringing the total amount of dead to 12 with 26 other being wounded. The police said that they had arrested 22 insurgents and two officers were wounded.

Small clashes also broke out in the Baghdad Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City on August 10, 2004, despite a nighttime curfew imposed Monday. Al-Mahdi Army militants have been targeting US patrols with gunfire and they have tried to set up roadblocks in the neighbourhood, but US forces tore them down. While US and Iraqi forces were trying to quell the eruption of Shiite violence, attacks by Sunni Muslim militants persisted. A roadside bomb detonated as a US military vehicle drove on a street in central Baghdad, slightly injuring two soldiers. On August 9, a suicide car bombing targeting a deputy governor killed six people, and a roadside bomb hit a bus, killing four passengers.

The uprising began to affect Iraq's crucial oil industry, as pumping to the southern port of Basra was halted because of militant threats to infrastructure. About 1.8 million barrels per day, or 90 percent of Iraq's exports, move through Basra, and any shutdown in the flow of Iraq's main money earner would badly hamper reconstruction efforts.

On August 11. 2004, at least four Iraqis were killed and 10 more were injured when a bomb was detonated at a market in Khan Bani Saad, a village north of Baghdad.

On August 14, 2004, air strikes by US planes on the largely Sunni Iraqi city of Samara have killed at least 13 people and injured 84, a hospital official in the city said. The US military said it had killed "about 50 insurgents" in strikes. Reports speak of at least 13 deaths overnight in the Shia city of Hilla and unrest has affected oil exports. A spokesman added that troops had detained three suspected weapons suppliers and seized a number of weapons. Dr Abdul Hamid al-Samarai told AFP news agency at the main hospital that most of the casualties were women and children. At least 43 buildings and homes were destroyed in the city which also came under attack from the ground as US forces searched for weapons before the bombing.

On August 15, 2004:
- One US soldier is killed by a roadside bomb blast in northern Baghdad.
- One Dutch soldier is killed and several wounded overnight in clashes with insurgents at an undisclosed location in southern Iraq.
- Najaf's police chief, Ghaleb al-Jazaeri, orders journalists to leave the city.

On August 18, 2004, at least six people have been killed and more than 30 wounded in a mortar attack blast in central Baghdad. The explosion happened in the crowded al-Rashid street in the heart of the city's business district. At least one building and five cars were badly damaged in the attack.

On August 18, 2004, one US soldier was killed and several others were wounded in clashes with Iraqi Shia militiamen in a Baghdad suburb, an unmanned US spy plane crashed north of the Iraqi capital, and a senior Iraqi police officer, deputy police chief Iyad Kharadan, was killed in Ramadi, but Sunni militants denied any responsibility in his murder.

Iraq, August 20, 2004:
- Two US Marines died in separate incidents in the al-Anbar province, west of Baghdad.
- US warplanes twice strike targets in Falluja, west of Baghdad, killing at least two people.
- The US embassy in Iraq was hit by mortar fire, slightly injuring two employees.

Iraq, August 21, 2004:
- Soldiers from the multinational force supporting the interim Iraq government have come under attack.
- One Polish soldier was killed and six others injured in a roadside blast apparently targeting their convoy near Hilla, southern Iraq.
- A US soldier was killed and two others wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade in Baghdad hit their vehicle.
- Another blast near Falluja in the restive Sunni triangle area is reported to have killed some US marines.

On August 24, 2004 scores of armed Shia stage demonstrations in the southern city of Basra, demanding that the US-led forces leave Najaf.

Iraq, August 28, 2004:
- Gunmen shoot dead a senior woman academic in the northern city of Mosul. Iman Abdul Moneam Younis was head of translation at Mosul University's College of Art.
- A US air strike on the restive Sunni city of Falluja kills at least three civilians and injures 11, local doctors say.

On August 30, 2004, four Iraqis were killed and five wounded in a US air raid near the hotspot Sunni Muslim bastion of Samara, where US troops have conducted other deadly offensive operations this month.

On September 1, 2004, in the Iraqi capital, mortar fire hit the heavily-fortified zone where the first meeting of Iraq's interim parliament was due to be held. One Iraqi was wounded in the attack. Members of the 100-seat assembly had gathered inside the Green Zone compound ahead of the four-day session. An hour later, delegates inside the chamber heard a second series of explosions. Members are expected to elect a president, two vice-presidents and other officials. The members are to advise the interim government as it prepares for elections early next year. Late on August 31, gunmen killed three Iraqi women who worked at a US military base in Mosul.

On September 3, 2004, a suicide car bomb attack in northern Iraq has left at least 17 people dead (14 policemen and three civilians) and more than 20 wounded, police say. The car exploded near a police training academy in the city of Kirkuk, as recruits were leaving for the day. There were other military operations the same day:
- US-led forces launched an operation against insurgents near another northern city, Mosul. Heavy fighting left at least 11 people there dead and 40 wounded, according to local doctors. Most of the casualties were civilians.
- A big security operation at Latifiya, near Baghdad, rounded up about 200 suspects, but left 12 police officers dead.
- Several mortar rounds landed in Baghdad near the compound housing the interim Iraqi government as politicians were gathering for a meeting.
- The US military launched an operation to root out militants in Tal Afar - described by the US military as "a hotbed of anti-Iraq activity". During intense fighting, the US said, four insurgents were killed, and a US helicopter was brought down, injuring two crew members. Local doctors said a number of civilians, including woman and children, were among the dead and injured.

Fighting between US soldiers and al-Sadr's militiamen erupted on September 7, 2004, when US officials said the cleric's gunmen fired on Americans carrying out patrols in the Sadr City district of Baghdad. Two Americans died in the fighting. A senior Iraqi Health Ministry official, Saad al-Amili, said 35 Iraqis were killed and 203 wounded in the Sadr City clashes. An al-Sadr spokesman, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed "intrusive" American patrolling for provoking the fighting.

Heavy bombardments of suspected insurgent positions took dozens of lives on Thursday September 9, 2004. An offensive by US and Iraqi forces in the northern town of Tal Afar killed as many as 57 insurgents. Hospital sources said that 45 bodies had been admitted, plus 80 wounded, including the deputy mayor.

Three NOC security guards were wounded on September 11, 2004, one of them seriously, when attackers opened fire on them near the village of Hatin, 30 kilometres north of Kirkuk. The security men returned fire and may have hit one of their attackers.

On September 11, 2004, a car bomb exploded near the US embassy office in the southern Iraqi city of Basra killing two people and wounding three, but no Americans were injured. A spokeswoman for the British forces deployed in Basra said the blast was caused by a car bomb. The compound also houses offices attached to British diplomatic offices.

At least 45 people died in a wave of bombings and battles between US troops and insurgents on September 12, 2004, and Iraq's prime minister said more than 3,000 Iraqis had been killed in the many terririst actioms over the country. Sunday's unrest in Sunni Muslim troublespots came one day after US troops commemorated the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks, blamed on al-Qaida. Loyalists of alleged al-Qaida chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily fortified central Baghdad compound housing the government and the US embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. At least 13 people were killed, including two children, and 55 wounded during intense fighting around central Baghdad's Haifa Street, considered a bastion of Saddam loyalists, said the health ministry. The US military said six soldiers were also wounded. Mazen al-Tomaisi, a Palestinian working for Saudi and Al-Arabiya television, died as he reported live from Baghdad during the clashes. Heavy machine gun and assault rifle fire reverberated across Haifa Street for three hours and a tank was deployed to support US troops in an area that is perfect sniper territory with high-rise apartment blocks all around. A car bomb exploded near the tank, setting it ablaze and an angry mob pelted it with stones and danced around it. One man climbed on top, waving a black flag emblazoned with the name of Zarqawi's Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group. US helicopters then swooped down over the neighbourhood and fired missiles and heavy machine gun fire into the crowd, killing at least five people. The US military said the tank was destroyed from the air "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people". At least three explosions rang out in the area late Sunday, after a US military convoy announced a night-time curfew via loudspeaker. Two drivers were shot dead trying to ram cars rigged with explosives into two high-profile targets. One was the high-security Green Zone and the other, to the west of the capital, the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

On Sunday September 12, 2004, fighting across Iraq between militants and US-led forces has left some 70 people dead. Baghdad saw some of the heaviest clashes for weeks as mortars fell in the Green Zone government quarter, and US helicopters fired missiles. More than 30 people died during hours of gun battles on Sunday. As well as in Baghdad, clashes erupted in the west, north and south areas. In Ramadi, west of the capital, 10 people died in clashes between Iraqi fighters and US soldiers. Two months into the handover of power, neither Iraqi nor US forces seem able to exert control in the capital.

At least 45 people died in Iraq in a wave of bombings and battles between US troops and rebels on Sunday September 12, 2004, as the United States expressed confidence the violence would not halt the elections. Loyalists of alleged al-Qaida chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily fortified central Baghdad compound housing the government and the US Embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

On September 14, 2004, a car bomb has ripped through a busy market near a Baghdad police headquarters where Iraqis were waiting to apply for jobs on the force, and gunmen opened fire on a van carrying police home from work in Baqouba, killing at least 59 people in total (47 in Baghdad, 12 in Baquba)and wounding at least 114. An al-Qaida-linked group headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the car bomb, which exploded by a bustling row of shops and cafes and left a gaping three-metre crater. The blast devastated buildings and gutted cars near the western Baghdad police headquarters on Haifa street, an insurgent enclave that has been the scene of fierce clashes with US troops. Though the attack apparently targeted police, many of the 47 dead were people who had been shopping or having a morning meal.

Three unidentified beheaded bodies have been found on September 15, 2004, on a road north of Baghdad. They were discovered by members of the Iraqi National Guard, dumped in nylon bags near Dijiel, about 40km from the capital. There are conflicting reports as to whether the male corpses are those of Arabs or foreigners.

US soldiers discovered the decapitated bodies of three men believed to be Iraqis on Wednesday September 15, 2004, along a highway north of Baghdad, and a suicide car bomb exploded at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint in Suwayrah, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, killing two men and wounding 10 others. A police patrol in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, was also hit Wednesday by an explosive device that wounded four policemen and a civilian.

A suicide attacker detonated a car packed with explosives in downtown Baghdad on September 17, 2004, as a police convoy drove by, killing five people. Six police cars were driving toward the central Rasheed Street when a car coming from Haifa Street drew up to them and exploded.

Up to 23 people were killed killed and another 53 people wounded in a suicide bombing on September 18, 2004 , capping a week of violence in Iraq as al-Qaida linked militants threatened to kill two American and a British hostage in 48 hours. More than 400 Iraqis have died in a wave of bombings and fighting since the start of the month, exacerbating fears over security. In the latest attack, a suicide bomber smashed through the security barriers outside the Iraqi national guard headquarters in Kirkuk. The vehicle passed through three barriers before it reached the outer gate of the building and exploded, sending shrapnel flying into a crowd of national guard recruits lined up outside. Ambulances raced to the scene and police fired warning shots in the air.

A suicide car bomb attack on the Iraqi National Guard headquarters in Kirkuk on September 18, 2004, has killed 23 people. The victims in the northern city were queuing to apply for jobs. Elsewhere, there were repeated attacks on US soldiers near Baghdad airport and US planes carried out fresh strikes on the restive city of Falluja. The attacks came on the day Iraqi Airways flew its first international flight into Baghdad airport for 14 years. It is not clear if there was any connection.

Two US Marines were killed in clashes in two separate incidents in restive Al-Anbar province in western Iraq on September 20, 2004. One Marine was killed in action and another died of wounds received in action, while conducting security and stability operations in the al-Anbar Province. Al-Anbar province includes the city of Falluja and its capital, Ramadi, has been rocked by daily clashes between militants and coalition troops. The latest deaths bring to 1035 the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Two car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 11 people and injured some 50 others on September 22, 2004. The first car bomb targeted men applying to join the new Iraqi security forces. The second car bomb exploded near a US checkpoint. In addition US forces clashed with supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad's al-Sadr City neighborhood, reportedly killing 15 people. US troops were also engaged in fighting north of Baghdad in the city of Samara.

On September 22, 2004, a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb in west Baghdad killing 11 people, some of whom were about to apply to join the Iraqi security forces. Hours later another blast shook the Mansour district of Baghdad. No deaths are reported, but at least three people were hurt and two US military vehicles were destroyed. Meanwhile, fighting raged in north-east Baghdad after US forces launched a major operation against militants loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. At least 15 people are reported to have died in the clashes in the Sadr City suburb.

On Friday September 24, 2004, mortars exploded near the Italian Embassy in Baghdad, slightly wounding three Iraqis. The mortars were fired shortly after 6 a.m. when the embassy offices were closed.

As in a sign of continuing insurgent strength on September 28, 2004, dozens of militants -some waving banners of al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group- drove freely through the streets of Samara, where US and Iraqi commanders had claimed success weeks ago in suppressing the insurgency. The gunmen waved automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, stopping cars and taking music tapes from passengers - giving them tapes with Koranic recitations in exchange.

Clashes erupted in Baghdad's centre between US forces and Iraqi militants on September 27, 2004, after overnight US raids on Sadr City. Residents said dozens of tanks roamed the streets of the suburb, which is a stronghold of Shia militiamen.

Over September 2004, more than 2,300 attacks have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants. The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces in the northwest to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggest a more widespread resistance than the isolated pockets of insurgency described by Iraqi government officials. The type of attacks ran the gamut: car bombs, time bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, small-arms fire, mortar attacks and land mines.

At least 46 people were killed and 137 injured by explosions in Baghdad on September 30, 2004. Most casualties occurred in three coordinated car bombings. Two US-led coalition soldiers and two Iraqi police were killed in two earlier attacks in the city. The car bombings killed 35 children at the opening of a new sewage plant -some attracted by US soldiers handing out candy. The US military said 10 soldiers were injured.

On October 1, 2004, US and Iraqi forces have carried out a major offensive in the northern Iraqi town of Samara to try to retake control from insurgents. US troops say around 109 militants were killed, but doctors at the main hospital spoke of 80 dead and more than 100 hurt, among them civilians. An Iraqi minister said 37 insurgents had been captured in the assault; US and Iraqi troops were now in control of about 80% of the mainly Sunni town.

On October 2, 2004, the city of Samara is now largely under the control of US and Iraqi forces after days of fighting. The operation there is part of a broader move to wrest control of insurgent strongholds.

On October 2, 2004, US and Iraqi forces say they have tightened their grip on Samara after an operation that reportedly left over 125 rebels dead. "It is over in Samara," Iraq's defence minister said in an interview with Arab television network al-Arabiya.

US and Iraqi government forces declared on October 3, 2004, that they had 'pacified' the rebel stronghold of Samara, and stated that other 'no-go' enclaves like Fallujah would be recaptured before national elections due in January. The Americans insisted that the estimated 125 killed in the storming of the city were all insurgents. However, doctors and local people reported women, children and the elderly among the dead, and that bodies were still being brought into hospitals. There also appeared to have been discord over the military action between members of the US sponsored Iraqi interim government. Interior Minister Falah Naqib echoed the American line that no civilians had been killed and only "bad guys and terrorists" had suffered. But the Human Rights Ministry, in a letter to the Iraqi Red Crescent, described what happened in the city as a "tragedy" and called for urgent emergency assistance. Local people in Samara claimed that many of the 1,000 insurgents the Americans had targeted had escaped before the attack began, and the civilian population had borne the brunt of the casualties. Families trying to bury the dead found the road to the cemetery blocked off by American soldiers. One man, Abu Qa'qa, claimed he had seen dogs picking at corpses in the street.

On October 4, 2004, a series of car bomb blasts have torn through Baghdad and the northern Iraq city of Mosul, killing at least 21 people and wounding scores. In the first blast in western Baghdad, a car blew up near one of the entrances to the heavily fortified Green Zone, close to an Iraqi security forces recruitment post, killing at least 10 people and wounding 70. No American troops were killed or wounded in the attack. A second car bomb exploded about an hour later as a US military convoy was passing along Baghdad's Sadoun Street. The blast destroyed several cars, shattered dozens of shop windows and sprayed wreckage across the street. At least four people were killed and a dozen wounded. The US military said no soldiers were killed or wounded. In a third attack, a car bomb exploded outside a primary school in the northern city of Mosul, killing seven people, including two children. Eleven people were wounded. The car, driven by two men, may have exploded prematurely, as there was no obvious target in the area, a quiet district in the south of the city. US forces kept up operations against rebel-held towns elsewhere aimed at establishing control throughout the country ahead of January elections. Air strikes were launched against suspected militants in Falluja.

On October 5, 2004, US aircraft have bombed suspected rebel positions in the Shia area of Sadr City in Baghdad. American forces have staged regular attacks on the suburb, a stronghold of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said large-scale assaults would wrest trouble spots from the militants. Falluja - a centre of Sunni militancy west of Baghdad - and Sadr City may also be on the target list.

On October 5, 2004, insurgents unleashed two car bombs near the Green Zone, where the US Embassy, key government offices and hotels occupied by hundreds of foreigners are located. Two other explosions brought the day's bombing toll to at least 24 dead and more than 100 wounded. The day's violence also included assassinations of three Iraqis, and US attacks against targets in insurgent-held Fallujah. The first car bombing yesterday occurred near an Iraqi security-services recruiting station at the western entrance of the Green Zone. Soon after, across the Tigris River, a pickup packed with dates and explosives plowed into a three-vehicle convoy as it left a parking lot shared by several hotels housing hundreds of foreign contractors and journalists. Two more car bombs exploded in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. One blast killed a civilian bystander and two people believed to be transporting explosives. The second bomb targeted a US Army convoy, wounding one US soldier. Last night, US warplanes attacked the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, and skirmishes were continuing between US troops and rebels in the area, a spokesman for the insurgents said. More than 36 car bombings since the beginning of September illustrate the insurgents' seeming ability to strike at will despite recent pledges by the United States and Iraq to intensify the suppression of insurgents.

On October 6, 2004, a suicide car bomb ripped through a queue of young national guard recruits western Iraq. In a rare car bombing in the barren western plains, a suicide attacker rammed his vehicle into a group of people signing up with the national guard at a military base in Anah, some 260 kilometres west of Baghdad. Sixteen people among a group of youngsters signing up with the national guard were killed and 24 others were wounded in the suicide attack, which took place in front of the national guard headquarters. September saw the highest number of suicide car bombs, increasingly the weapon of choice among insurgents, since the overthrow of president Saddam Hussein last year. The US military announced overnight a massive push in Babil province, south of Baghdad, in a bid to dismantle insurgent cells there and cut off the western rebel enclave from some of its rear bases.

On Suday October 10, 2004, at least 10 people have been killed in two suicide bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The deadliest explosion left a big crater near a police academy and the oil ministry building, a frequent target for militants.

An Islamic militant group said On October 12, 2004, that it had beheaded an Iraqi Shi'ite and follower of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr because he had been spying for US forces. The statement by Army of Ansar al-Sunna group said Alaa al-Maliki was a member of Sadr's movement and "one of the most dangerous spies working for the American forces in Iraq against Sunnis".

On October 12, 2004, US and Iraqi government forces have raided seven mosques in the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi. They detained a prominent cleric, Sheikh Abdul Aleim Sadi, the provincial leader of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars. The mosques were targeted for allegedly supporting rebels in a range of activities in the mainly Sunni town. The raids followed a US air strike on a target in the restive neighbouring town of Falluja. Two people were killed in the attack, which flattened the Haji Hussein kebab shop. US officials said the attack was targeting supporters of Abu Musab Zarqawi. Local residents said it had no connection with the Jordanian militant.

Six American soldiers were killed in roadside bombings on Wednesday October 13, 2004, as US and Iraqi troops stepped up pressure on insurgents before this week's start of the holy month of Ramada. The dead included two soldiers killed in the northern city of Mosul when a suicide driver plowed into a US convoy and blew up his car. The other four were killed in separate attacks late Tuesday and early Wednesday in Baghdad. Five soldiers were also injured in the Mosul attack, the second suicide operation against American forces there in the past three days.

Stepping up raids before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, US forces traded fire with insurgents in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi on Thursday October 14, 2004, while troops detained 10 people, including two suspected insurgent leaders, in a sweep of Baqouba. Later, two explosions rocked Green Zone, the heavily fortified section in Baghdad, and killed eight people. He said six had died in one location and two died at another; all the victims were civilians. Four American contractors providing security for the US Embassy were among at least 10 people killed, prompting the US-led military coalition to strengthen security within the fortified compound and at the city's airport. Three employees of Reston, Virginia-based DynCorp Inc. were killed, one is missing and two were hurt. The group run by Iraq's most wanted man, the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said it had carried out the bombings.

On October 14, 2004, Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings on Baghdad's fortified Green Zone that killed 10 people, including four Americans.

On Thursday October 15, 2004, suicide bombers have now hit Baghdad's Green Zone for the first time. Penetrating Iraq's most heavily fortified area, they killed five people sending a chilling message to US and British diplomats who thought they were safe inside the fortress-like compound on the west bank of the Tigris. The United States' enemy number one in Iraq keeps running circles around thousands of troops despite a massive manhunt, air strikes and a $25 million bounty on his head.

Seven people are now known to have died and more than 20 injured when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a Baghdad cafe popular with Iraqi police on October 18, 2004. The blast happened near the Australian embassy in a diplomatic quarter of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Another device went off in the same area shortly afterwards leaving one dead and two injured.

Four Iraqis and a US contractor were killed and 87 people injured in two mortar attacks on security posts in Iraq on October 19, 2004. In the first attack, four Iraqis were killed and 80 wounded when mortar rounds hit an Iraqi National Guard base near Taji, north of Baghdad. In the second, a mortar hit a US Army compound in central Baghdad, leaving the contractor dead and seven people injured, including a soldier. The contractor worked for Kellogg Brown and Root, a unit of Houston- based Halliburton Co., bringing the number of deaths suffered by Halliburton in Iraq to 54.

Four Iraqi national guards have been killed and at least 80 injured on October 19, 2004, in a major attack on their headquarters north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi officials and the US military said insurgents fired several mortar rounds at the building in Mushahida, 40km from the Iraqi capital. US helicopters helped ferry the injured to two military field hospitals. Iraq's security forces are a frequent target for militants opposed to the US-backed government.

Two attacks on vehicles carrying Iraqi women to their jobs Thursday October 21, 2004, claimed the lives of six women and one man and severely wounded more than a dozen people. Four of the women were killed when gunmen opened fire from a minivan that had pulled alongside a bus filled mostly with female employees of Iraqi Airways and the Civil Aviation Ministry on their way to work at Baghdad International Airport. One woman, a member of an airport cleaning crew, died at the scene and three others died after being rushed to a nearby hospital. In the second attack, two female secretaries and a male colleague driving to their jobs in the office of the interim president, Ghazi Yawar, were killed when gunmen fired at their car. Yawar's press secretary, who was also in the vehicle, was seriously wounded.

At least eight Iraqis, mostly women and children, were killed in a double car bombing in Samara on Wednesday October 20, 2004. The two suicide attackers reportedly exploded the bombs in the path of a US army convoy near a nursery school. The US military said 11 soldiers were wounded in the blasts. It was the first major attack since control of the city was seized from insurgents by US and Iraqi interim government forces early in October.

On October 23, 2004, a suicide bomb attack outside the gate of a US Marines compound in western Iraq killed at least 16 Iraqi police officers and wounding 40 others.

On October 24, 2004, guerrillas dressed as policemen ambushed and killed about 50 newly trained Iraqi soldiers in remote eastern Iraq. The soldiers were on their way home for a period of leave: they were not armed. They were forced to lie down and then shot in the head. The insurgents must have had inside information on the soldiers' travel plan. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility.

Thirty Iraqis were also killed on October 30 but nobody in the USA really cares about them. Among them, in Baghdad, a bomb destroyed in part the offices of an Arabic television also killing at least 7 people and wounding 19 others.

On October 31, 2004 an explosion hit a hotel in Tikrit killing 15 Iraqis and wounding 8 others.

On November 2, 2004, car bombs killed at least 12 people in Iraq. In Baghdad 8 people were killed in a bomb attack against the Education Ministry and ten others were wounded. In Mosul a car bomb exploded near a convoy carrying Major General Rashid Feleih, killing four civilians and wounding at least seven soldiers.

On Wednesday October 3, 2004, an US soldier was killed and one wounded by a road bomb attack south of Baghdad. A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at a checkpoint near Baghdad airport injuring nine Iraqis.

On November 6, 2004, the insurgents detonated four car bombs in Samara, a town that was declared pacified by the Americans one month ago. They also attacked three police stations in the surrounding province. At least 18 Iraq policemen were killed in the Samara attacks. A roadside bomb exploded in Kufa, south of Baghdad, aimed at Abdul al-Muslim al-Kufa, the head of a security team in Najaf. He was wounded together with four men of his escort. Around Falluja a police car carrying a bomb exploded near a convoy and 16 American soldiers were wounded. In another car bomb attack near Baghdad wounding three other American soldiers. Rockets, probably launched by US planes, hit a new hospital in Falluja destroying it before its inauguration. The other hospitals there are now understaffed as nurses and doctors are leaving the city.

On November 13, 2004, the insurgents were quite active outside Falluja:
- Two US Marines were killed outside Falluja.
- Quain near the Syrian borders, Hit and Ramadi saw military activities.
- Baghdad was the theatre of many explosions. The Green zone was in alert, a car bomb exploded on the road to the airport and there was some fighting near the Education Ministry.
- Insurgents attacked a military base outside Baghdad killing a coalition soldier (nationality unknown to us) and wounding three others.
- Baghdad International Airport was closed for another day to civilian traffic.
- Four people were killed and 29 wounded in an air strike on rebels and clashes near the Abu Ghraib suburb.
- One Iraqi was killed and 10 wounded in fighting in Tal Afar.
- The insurgents are controlling the town of Taji since a few days.
- Four Sunni clerics who showed sympathy to the insurgents were arrested.
- Moqtada al-Sadr, as a result of the assault on Falluja, said that he will not be a candidate in the fore coming elections as "long as any Iraqi City is under attack".

The battles went on full steam through northern Iraq on November 14, 2004:
- In Mosul, insurgents still control most of the town. They attacked security forces including those guarding bridges. After taking over a police station, they fought with Iraqi commandos wounding at least twenty of them. The commandos had to ask help from US soldiers.
- Thousand of Kurdish militiamen were requested by the local governor to help restore control.
- It is believed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has moved to Mosul from Falluja where he was not found during the assault.
- Guerrillas were also active in Tal Afar near the Syrian border as well as in Beiji where six Iraqis were killed and twenty wounded.
- Heavy explosions were heard in central Baghdad near the Palestine and Sheraton hotels as well as in the green zone.
- Insurgents attacked the Polish Embassy in Baghdad.
- A dozen explosions were heard in an American base in Ramadi.

In other parts of Iraq the US forces and the insurgents were quite busy on Monday November 15, 2004:
- Some police stations were attacked in Baquba and its twin city Buhriz.
- Police Colonel Qassim Mohammed was shot dead in Burriz.
- On the road between Falluja and Ramadi a car bomb rammed into a US convoy wounding four US soldiers.
- In Mosul where an uprising started last week a suicide car bomber rammed also in a convoy wounding five US soldiers.
- Four US soldiers were wounded when their car detonated a land mine in Beiji, northern Iraq.
- Explosions rocked the Green Zone.
- Insurgents attacked a police station and a National Guard headquarters in Suwayrah south of Baghdad killing seven policemen and soldiers.

A rocket hit a commercial district in Kirkuk killing one civilian and wounding three others on November 16, 2004.

November 17, 2004, was a day of normal and usual administration in Iraq especially in the central and northern regions. Ramada, Beiji and Kirkuk were the theatre of insurgent attacks. On the other hand, Mosul was quiet as the guerrillas stayed hidden. In Beiji a suicide car bomb exploded near a US Bradley vehicle wounding three US soldiers. However 10 Iraqis at least were killed and twenty wounded. In Ramadi 15 Iraqis were killed and 15 wounded in clashes with American troops. In Iskandariyah south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two Iraqi National Guard soldiers and wounded three others. Saboteurs set an oil pipeline and oil wells on fire near Kirkuk.

On November 18, 2004, fighting went on in Mosul and in other towns in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad. In Mosul alone, 2,500 US soldiers are involved in the cleaning of the city. Insurgents attacked the governor's office killing a bodyguard and mortars were fired at a US base. Bombing in Kirkuk and Beiji killed six Iraqis and clashed erupted again in Ramadi. In Baghdad a car bomb directed at an American convoy killed two people; 104 suspects were also arrested including several foreigners. Insurgents in Shuhada have attacked the US troops with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

November 19, 2004, was again a normal day in Iraq with some insurgent attacks and killings. Iraqi and US soldiers raided the revered Sunni Mosque Abu Hanifa in Baghdad. Three people were killed and dozens arrested. This was in fact targeting religious clerics that support the insurgents and try to disrupt the incoming elections. Now Iraqi laws equate support for insurgency with the insurgent actions. Popular outrage was evident on the streets of Baghdad after the raid as the Mosque is also the tomb of a medieval scholar who founded one of the faith's best-known law schools. No weapon wee found but all the same the US soldiers killed three Iraqis showing again that their life is worth nothing. A suicide car bomber run into a police patrol in Baghdad killing a policeman and five civilians. Another suicide bomber hit a police station in Hillah but the only victim was the driver. Mosul was quiet but mortar hit a US base nearby wounding a soldier. Moreover the decapitated bodies of two National Guards were found on a main street. Fighting went on in Hawija for the 9th day. Also in Baghdad a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint killing one Iraqi policeman and wounding ten others.

The situation did not improve on November 20, 2004. Street battles went on in Baghdad and the insurgents killed three Iraqi officials and their driver. An American soldier was killed and nine wounded in an early attack on their patrol. They also detonated bombs. In northern Iraq the US soldiers discovered the bodies of nine slain Iraqi soldiers.

Violence went on in Iraq on Sunday November 21, 2004. Falluja is not yet under full control as snipers are still active. In Ramadi insurgents ambushed an Iraqi National Guard Patrol killing eight guardsmen and wounding 18. Also in Ramadi, US soldiers fired at a bus that did not stop when required Three Iraqi civilians died. In Haqlaniyah, US forces tried to capture an aide to Abu Musa al-Zarqawi. Six people were arrested but it was not clear if the wanted man was among them. In Latifiyah, insurgents attacked a convoy of Iraqi National Guards wounding several guardsmen. Two more bodies were recovered in Mosul. In Baghdad four explosions took place in the Green Zone. There were no casualties.

Violence was still going on in Iraq on November 22, 2004. A bomb was found on a commercial flight inside Iraq but no other details were given. A Sunni cleric, Sheik Faidh Mohamed Armin al-Faidh, was killed by gunfire. In Mosul Iraqi security forces recovered 12 bodies, five decapitated, south of Baghdad. One, at least, was a member of the Iraqi National Guard. A US soldiers wounded the day before in Baghdad died.

November 24, 2004, was a quite day in Iraq. However three people died in Baghdad and five corpses were found in Mosul. The three dead were the result of a car bomb exploding on the road to Baghdad airport. In Mosul until now, 20 corpses have been found left on the road. In an audiotape from the insurgent leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi condemned the "silence" of Muslim religious leaders during the recent battles with the US forces. They "left us down" they said. Two religious Sunni clerics from the influential Association of Muslim Scholars were killed this week.

On November 26, 2004, 17 more corpses of Iraqi men have been found in the streets of Mosul bringing the total to more than 60. A rocket in the Green Zone in Baghdad has killed four employees of a British security company, Global Risk Strategy, and 15 other people were wounded. The four employees are thought to be Nepalese.

On November 28, 2004, the situation in Iraq remains at best the same, and that is, bad:
- Two US soldiers were wounded in an attack on the road to Baghdad's airport, and another died in a traffic accident.
- US an Iraqi troops killed 17 so-called insurgents in actions south of Baghdad.
- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed that his group killed 17 members of the security forces and a Kurdish militiaman in Mosul. The US has put a ransom of $25m on Zarqawi's head or capture.
- A car bomb killed six people and injured five in Samara.
- US, British and Iraqi troops killed 17 suspected insurgents in Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah.
- Iraqi police arrested 11 suspects in Musayyib.
- Gunmen opened fire on a police station and a National Guard checkpoint in Jabella, south of Baghdad. Two policemen and two guardsmen were injured.
- Five Polish soldiers were injured in a car accident near Hillah, central Iraq.

On November 29, fighting in Iraq went on:
- In a suicide bombing attack against a police check point in Baghdali, northwest of Baghdad seven Iraqi policemen and guardsmen were killed and nine were wounded.
- Thirteen Marines were wounded in a mortar attack south of Baghdad.
- Gunmen stormed a police station west of Samara looted the armoury, stole police car and fled. He did not meet any resistance. Later the US soldiers moved in and arrested 24 suspects.
- Two US soldiers were killed and three wounded in a roadside road bomb explosion in northwestern Baghdad.
- One US soldier died and two were injured in a traffic accident near Kut in eastern Iraq.
- Two US Marines were killed in bombing south of Baghdad while trying to clear the "Triangle of Death". A bomb exploded near a British light tank but no injuries were reported.
- In Mosul, the top US commander said that if the elections were taking place now, it would not be possible to hold them in part of the city. He hopes to clear these zones before January 30, 2005.

On November 30, 2004, violence went on in Iraq especially in the Sunni region.
- West of Falluja insurgents took over and briefly held nine police stations and highway checkpoints destroying two buildings. They also took control of sections of the highway leading west from Baghdad.
- Bombing against US military convoys occurred in a few places. The worst was in Beiji where a car bomb killed seven civilians and wounded at least 15 people including two American soldiers. Also in Beiji, a rocked-propelled grenade hit a US tank wounding a US soldier.
- In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber wounded five US soldiers on the road to the airport.
- One US soldier was killed when an explosion hit his patrol car north of Baghdad.
- Insurgents took over six checkpoints west of Ramadi as well as other checkpoints and police stations near Bagdad killing a policeman.

The scenario in Iraq on December 1, 2004, is not changing:
- Suicide bombers targeted US and Iraqi soldiers on the road to Baghdad airport as well as near a bridge south of the capital.
- US soldiers fought a gun battle with the insurgents in Mosul. One US soldiers was wounded. More battles took place in Samara wounding three Iraqi soldiers and two civilians.
- The insurgents claimed to have killed three Iraqis working for the US Marines in Ramadi.

On December 2, 2004, we had the same story from Iraq:
- Mortar exploded in five places in central Baghdad killing two Iraqis and wounding 14.
- In Mosul a US soldiers was killed in a gun battle. Fourteen corpses were found in the streets including those of four Iraqi National Guards. This brings the total of the bodies found in Mosul in the last few weeks to 90.
- In Beiji, a car bomb explosion at a National Guard checkpoint wounded two US and two Iraqi soldiers.
- In Balad Ruz, central Iraq, three Iraqi civilians were killed by gunfire.

December 3, 2004, was a day of ordinary administration -and death- in Iraq:
- A police station on the road from Baghdad to the airport was attacked and the gunmen killed16 police officers. They took weapons and freed 35 prisoners.
- In Azamiyah, a car bomb exploded at a Shiite Mosque killing 14 people and wounding 19.
- In Mosul, American and Iraqi troops battled with insurgents killing 11 of them. A policeman was also killed.
- An American soldier was killed and two wounded in a bomb attack near Kirkuk.

December 4, 2004's story was bloody too:
- Roadside bombs in Baghdad and in Baquba killed two US soldiers. And two others died in a suicide bombing of their post near the Jordanian border.
- In Baghdad two car bombs detonated together near an Iraqi police station killed at least three Iraqi policemen and wounded dozens of others.
- A suicide car bomber hit a minibus carrying Kurdish militiamen in Mosul killing 18 of them.
- Shiite and Sunni insurgents fought each others in Latifiyah. The Shiites are accused the Sunnis to have killed some Shiite pilgrims on their way to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. The Shiites could have had 16 dead according to the Sunnis. The Sunni group also admitted loosing seven men. The US soldiers moved in and killed 19 more Sunnis including a Jordanian and two Kuwaitis.

Chronicle of December 5, 2004:
- Militants surrounded and shot at a bus carrying unarmed civilians contractors working for the US Army in Tikrit. At least 17 passengers were killed and twenty wounded. In the last three days at least 80 people Iraqi civilians were killed by the insurgents, mainly people working for the occupants seen as collaborating with the enemies.
- Near Beiji, a car loaded with explosives drove into a National Guard checkpoint and detonated. More insurgents fired small arms killing three guardsmen and wounding 18.
- A joint US- coalition patrol was ambushed in Latifiyah and attacked national guards in Samara. Two Iraqis were killed and ten wounded.
- South of Mosul, a roadside bomb killed three Turkish lorry drivers.

December 6, 2004's Iraqi chronicle:
- A heavy gunfire took place near the Green Zone in Baghdad.
- An Iraqi working for the coalition was killed in central Baghdad.
- Three US soldier were killed December 5 and two more the day before in the al-Anbar province that includes the towns of Falluja and Ramadi.

On December 7, 2004, a US soldier was killed by gunfire in Baghdad while in patrol and a Marine died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad. In Mosul militants bombed two churches wounding three people.

Iraq, December 8, 2004:
- Insurgents attacked the home of the city police chief in Samara.
- They detonated a car bomb outside an American base.
- They attacked a US patrol car, and fired rocket-propelled grenades at American troops.
- An Iraqi civilian was killed by the car bomb.
- Two Iraqi drivers were killed by US soldiers for not stopping fast enough at a checkpoint.

Saturday December 11, 2004, Iraqi's chronicle is usual:
- A US Marine was killed in action in the al-Anbar province.
- In separate attacks in northern Iraq, 14 US soldiers were wounded: 8 by a car bomb and ambush in Mosul; two by a suicide car bomber in Beiji; two in a car bomb blast near Kirkuk; two by roadside bomb outside Hawija near Kirkuk.
- Police Colonel Najeeb al-Joubouri was gunned down on his way to work in Beiji.
- Two more police commanders, Brigadier General Razzaq Karim Mahmood and Colonel Karim Farhan were shot dead in Baghdad.
- Gunmen shot and killed a Shiite cleric, Salim al-Yaqoubi, in Baghdad.

On December 12, 2004, seven US Marines were killed in two separate incidents in Iraq's al-Anbar province. We were not told where exactly the deaths occurred but it could be in Falluja or they could be linked to Falluja. All we know is that they died in "security and stabilisation operations."

On December 13, 2004:
- A car suicide bomber detonated his explosives close to the Green Zone western gate. Nine Iraqis, at least, were killed and 19 wounded. They were mainly workers queuing to enter into the zone. The Abu Musan al-Zarqawi group claimed responsibility.
- Another bomb exploded in northern Baghdad wounding three US soldiers and an Iraqi civilian.
- Two US Marines were killed in the Baghdad area.
- In Mosul a car bomb hit a military convoy. It is not known if there were any victims.
- South of Baghdad Marines and Iraqi security forces arrested 72 suspects.

December 14, 2004's chronicle:
- A car bomb -the second in two days- was detonated near an entrance to the Green Zone. Two Iraqis were killed, one a National Guard, and seven wounded.
- In Mosul US troops discovered eight more bodies bringing the total since November 10, to 150. Many are members of the security forces.
- Fighting has gone on in Baghdad, Falluja and Ramadi and 10 Marines have been killed in the last three days. In particular fighting is still going on in Falluja.

One US Marine was killed on December 16, 2004, while doing "Security and stabilisation" operations in the al-Anbar province west of Baghdad. Insurgents killed 10 people, including a government official -Qassim Mehavi, deputy head of the Communication ministry- in Baghdad (eight of his bodyguards were wounded) and three refugees in northern Iraq. A roadside bomb explosion followed by a gunfire battle killed a foreigner and wounded two others in Baghdad. Also in western Baghdad, a roadside bomb explosion killed three Iraqi national guards and injured six others.

December 17, 2004, chronicles of life in Iraq:
- Gunmen attacked a car in Mosul and killed four male passengers, three are foreigners.
- Again in Mosul, four bodies were found in the streets, one was nearly beheaded and one was partly burned. The day before six bodies of unidentified Iraqis were similarly found.
- The day before another person was killed when seven mortar rounds fell near the government offices.
- The bodies of two dead Iraqis were found in the streets of Hamdaniyah.
- Militants set fire to an oil pipeline near Baghdad.
- Insurgents hit an Australian compound with rocket-propelled grenades inside the Green Zone. There were no casualties.

On December 18, 2004, insurgents fired mortars on an election centre in Dujail north of Baghdad killing one person. In Mosul a child was killed and 8 wounded when a roadside bomb missed its target a US patrol, hitting a school bus instead. In the northern town of Beiji, four American munitions-disposal contractors were wounded by another roadside bomb.

In Baghdad, on December 19, 2004, about 30 insurgents armed with grenades and machine guns pulled three election officials out of their car and killed them on the busy street.

On December 22, 2004, a car bomb killed nine Iraqis and wounded 13 others at an Iraqi checkpoint at the entrance of Latifiya.

On December 25, 2004, a car bomb killed three civilians near a US military convoy south of Baghdad. A truck bomb killed six more when it exploded near the Jordanian embassy.

On December 24, 2004, a fuel tanker exploded causing the collapse of a nearby house in Baghdad. Seven members of the same family were killed.

On December 26, 2004, a road bomb attack hit a US convoy in Mosul wounding three US soldiers.

On December 28 2004 the insurgents launched a series of coordinated attacks against the security forces killing at least 26 police officers and national guardsmen -13 during an attack that destroyed a Tikrit police station, 5 by a car bomb in Baquba, one policeman shot in Mosul- and wounding 43. Most attacks at checkpoints, police stations and at convoy took place in the Sunni triangle, near Tikrit.

On January 1, 2005, a video showed some insurgents executing five Iraqi Security officers in the streets possibly of Ramadi, in front of many passer-by. The responsibility most probably is with the Iraqi al-Qaida branch that described them as "American dogs" and threatened again to kill all the Iraqis working for the occupants.

On January 2, 2005, insurgents killed at least 22 Iraqi National Guards and their driver in a suicide attack in Balad 50 miles north of Baghdad. Another National Guard was killed south of Kirkuk.

On January 2, 2005, 10 Iraqis were killed in separate attacks. Four policemen on patrol were killed in Samara, the deputy governor of the Easter Diyala province was shot dead, the police chief of Jebala was also killed, a police officer was killed in Basra and another police officer and a Muslim cleric were killed in Baghdad.

At least 20 people were killed in Iraq on January 3, 2005:
- A car bomb exploded outside the headquarters of interim Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi's political party, the Iraqi National Accord, Three police officers and the bomber were killed. Allawi was not there at the time.
- Another car bomber killed himself and four Iraqi National Guardsmen at a checkpoint in Dijail.
- A third car bomber detonated his explosives near a gate to the Green Zone. At least three people were killed. They were working for the US Security firm Kroll Inc.
- The insurgent booby-trapped the decapitated body of a civilian in the city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul. When the police removed it, it exploded killing an officer and wounding two.
- Roadside bombs in Tikrit killed six National Guardsmen.
- In Beiji, between Mosul and Baghdad, a police major and a captain were killed by gunfire.
- In Baquba, gunmen killed a city council member.

Other actions on January 4, 2005:
- A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers in Baghdad and wounded two others.
- A roadside bomb killed one other US soldier near Balad and wounded another.
- A US Marine was killed in action in al-Anbar province.
- A truck packed with explosives blew up near the Interior Ministry headquarters in Baghdad killing ten people -eight Iraqi commandos and two civilians- and wounding 60.
- A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi guardsmen and wounded two near Baquba.
- A car bomb near the Green Zone in Baghdad killed three Britons and an American working for US Security firms.

January 5, 2005, was again a bad day in Iraq:
- A suicide car bomb exploded outside a police academy in Hilla during a graduation ceremony. At least 20 people were killed including 10 policemen. The number of wounded was unknown but among them were at least 41 policemen.
- A previous car bomb explosion killed two Iraqis in Baghdad.
- In Baquba, a suicide attacker drove his car in a police/Iraqi National Guard checkpoint. Five policemen were killed and eight other Iraqis were wounded.
- In Baghdad a suicide car bomber targeted a joint Iraqi/US convoy. He killed two Iraqi civilians and wounded 10 others.
- In Baquba, gunmen killed the Iraqi police Colonel Khalifa Hassan and his driver.
- A US soldier was killed and two wounded in Tal Afar by gunmen.

January 6, 2005, was again a messy day in Iraq:
- A roadside bomb killed seven US soldiers in Baghdad.
- Two Marines were also killed in the al-Anbar province, western Iraq.
- Two burned and beheaded bodies were found in Basra in a house used by election officials. They are the bodies of two policemen.
- The bodies of 18 young Shiites who disappeared last month were found near Mosul. They were searching for work at a US base.

On January 7, 2005:
- A Marine was killed in a non-hostile vehicle accident in the al-Anbar province.
- A police captain was killed in a shooting in Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.
- An Iraqi policeman was also shot dead in Mosul.
- In Samara, a roadside bomb exploded near a US base killing an Iraqi civilian.

The chronicle of January 9, 2005, is bloody as usual:
- South of Baghdad insurgents kidnapped and killed a Sunni Muslim official, the head of the provincial council of the Salahuddin province, Ali Ghalib, on his way back from a meeting to try to convince the Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to support the postponement of the elections.
- In the village of Mahaweel, a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi roadblock. Four people were killed and 19 wounded.

January 9, 2005, in Iraq:
- US troops opened fire near a checkpoint south of Baghdad after a roadside bomb hit their convoy. At least eight innocent civilians were killed (including two policemen) and 12 wounded for no reason.
- A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a US soldier.
- A Marine was also killed in action in the al-Anbar province.
- Seven Ukrainian soldiers and one from Kazakhstan were killed in an accidental explosion at an ammunition dump near Baghdad.
- The US admitted that the 500lb bomb hit the wrong house in Aitha a few days ago. However it is not clear how many people were killed (five according to the US Army; 14, including seven children according to the owner). Moreover local residents said that the owner was a killer of Iraqi police officers.

Iraq chronicle of January 10, 2005:
- A roadside bomb killed two US soldiers and wounding four others.
- Insurgents in Baghdad shot and assassinated the local deputy police chief, Brigadier Amer Ali Nayef, and his son, Lieutenant Khalid Amer, also a policeman. Al Qaida claimed responsibility.
- A suicide attacker detonated his car loaded with explosives in a police station courtyard in Baghdad killing at least four officers and wounding ten.
- A roadside bombing killed three Iraqi national guards and wounded six during a patrol in Mosul.

Iraq's chronicle of January 11, 2005@
- An US soldier was killed in the Anbar province. No details were given.
- A roadside bomb explosion hit a minibus killing seven Iraqis in Yussifiyah, south of Baghdad.
- A suicide car bomber targeted a police headquarters in Tikrit killed six people and wounded 12 others.
- Gunmen stopped three trucks carrying new Iraqi coins south of Baghdad. They killed the drivers, stole the money and set the trucks on fire.

Iraq's chronicle of January 14, 2005:
- Insurgents kidnapped 15 Iraqi soldiers west of Baghdad. Their bus was hit by rocket-propelled grenades and got on fire. No body was found.
- Two US Marines and one soldier were killed on different battles.
- Iraqi policemen shot at some gunmen in a Sunni part of Baghdad. Seven men were killed.
- Three officials of a Kurdish party were killed in northern Iraq.
- Gunmen killed an Iraqi election official, Abdul Karim Jassen al-Ubeidi,
- Sunni militants took responsibility for the killing of the Shiite cleric, Sheik Mahmoud Finjan, a few days before in western Baghdad.
- In Baghdad, two rockets were fired near the Sadeer Hotel (used by western contractors) and one near the Ministry of Education.
- A rocket-propelled grenade was fired at an Iraqi police patrol in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad.
- Three explosions were heard on the road from Baghdad to the airport. An Iraqi bus collided with a US tank killing six passengers and wounding eight.
- Twenty-eight Iraqi prisoners escaped as they were transported from the Abu Ghraib prison to another one. At first 38 got away but ten were caught soon after.

January 15, 2005, Iraq's chronicle;
- A US helicopter had to make an emergency landing after being fired at in Mosul.
- A US Marine was killed just south of Baghdad.
- Exchange of fire between insurgents and US troops took place in Mosul.

Iraq's Day, January 16, 2005:
- US troops made a series of raids in Mosul and northern and central Iraq arresting many suspects -or not.
- Salama al-Khafaji, a prominent female candidate to the elections, was ambushed in central Baghdad. She escaped unhurt after her bodyguards responded the insurgents' firing. She is running on the list created by the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
- Near Kut, three Iraqi police officers were killed by shooting and three National Guard Officers were killed by hand grenades in another attack.
- As mourners gathered for the burying of the policemen, a suicide bomber blew his car killing himself and seven other people.
- Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi translator working for a Philippine company near Kut.
- In Mosul insurgents shot dead a member of a local government council. They also set off explosives while a US convoy passed by. There were no victims. A mortar damaged a school in Mosul to be used as a polling place.
- Four mortar shells hit schools to be used as polling stations in Basra.
- In central Baghdad insurgents attacked an Iraqi National Guards patrol before escaping in the crowd.
- An American soldier died in a vehicle accident in western Baghdad.

Iraq, January 17, 2005:
- In Buhriz, 35 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen attacked an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint killing eight soldiers and wounding four.
- In Beiji, a suicide bomber hit a police station killing seven police officers and wounding 25 people.
- The US Marines suffered an undisclosed number of casualties in a suicide car bombing in Ramadi. However it is believed that two Marines died.
- In Ramadi the bodies of five civilians and one Iraqi soldier were found along the street. All had on them a hand written note declaring them collaborators. Four were shot in the head and two beheaded.
- A car loaded with explosives was found in the Shiite city of Karbala.

January 18, 2005, day in Iraq:
- A car bomb exploded outside the offices of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party close to Iran. One or perhaps three people died.
- In the last three days, three election candidates have been killed, two in Basra and one in Baghdad.

The day in Iraq, January 19, 2005:
- Four car bombs killed at least 16 people -including five policemen- and wounding about 20 others in Baghdad; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for three of them. The attacks took place outside the Australian embassy, outside a police station, near an Iraqi military garrison and the last near the airport. Luckily the attackers were stopped before they reached their objectives reducing the number of victims
- A video showed two Iraqis working for an American firm being shot dead.
- Near Beiji three men were assassinated and another taken hostage in an ambush. Two of the dead were foreigners.
- An Iraqi police officer was killed in Hillah.
- A Kurdish election worker was killed in Baghdad.
- In the unsuccessful attempt to kill the head of the police academy in Irbil, a civilian was killed.
- Fighting between insurgents and Iraqi and US forces took place in Mosul and Baqubah. Here a woman and a teenage boy were wounded.

Iraq's day, January 20, 2005:
- US troops killed five suspected insurgents in Mosul.
- Iraqi forces sealed most important routes into Baghdad.
- In Basra, an explosion at the entrance of a British base injured several people including an unknown number of British soldiers.

January 21, 2005,was the usual bad day in Iraq:
- In an attack on the Shiite Shuhada al-Afaf mosque in Baghdad at least 4 people died and 40 were wounded. The bomb went off as the people were leaving the mosque on the second day of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday.
- In Yusufiya south of Baghdad a wedding party was hit by a car bomb. Many people died and at least16 were wounded.
- An Iraqi soldier was decapitated bin the Sunni town of Ramadi. His body was left in a street with a note warning Iraqis to eave the security forces.
- Since January 5, Iraqi and US forces have detained 199 suspects and confiscated weapons and ammunitions.
- A US soldier was killed and another wounded north of Baghdad.

January 22, 2005, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army said that they have killed 15 Iraqi Guardsmen taken of a bus this month in Hit.

Sunday January 23, 2005, in Iraq:
- A US soldier was killed January 22 on a security patrol in Mosul where heavy explosions and gunfire were also heard on January 23.
- A pooling station was blown-up near Hillah
- The insurgents stormed a police station in Ramadi.
- In an audiotape shown on a website, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of a group linked to al-Qaida, repeated that the incoming elections are a "farce" and described the candidates as "demi-idols" and that those who will vote are "infidels."

January 25, 2005 in Iraq:
- Five American soldiers died in a vehicle accident near Khan Bani Saad north east of Baghdad. Their Bradley fighting vehicle rolled into a canal. Two other soldiers were wounded.
- Another US soldier died of injuries he received when his patrol with a roadside bomb in Baghdad.
- Four Iraqi police officers died and three were wounded in an ambush at a polling station in Baghdad.
- A senior judge, Qais Hashim Shameri, secretary general of the ministry's judge council, was gunned down.

January 26, 2005, in Iraq:
- Insurgents set off at least eight car bombs that killed 13 people and wounded 40 including 11 Americans.
- Four US Marines were killed in fighting in the Anbar province when insurgents ambushed a US convoy leaving the town of Haditha, northwest of Baghdad hitting a vehicle with a rocket propelled grenade.
- Insurgents attacked a US Army patrol near Dulluiyah killing one US soldier and wounding two others.
- In Baghdad a roadside bomb killed another US soldier and wounded two.
- Several schools to be used as polling stations were bombed.
- A suicide bomber detonated a fuel tanker at the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Sinjar, southwest of Mosul. Five people were killed and at least 20 injured.
- Gunmen fired machine guns of the local headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the communist party in the city of Haqubah, north of Baghdad. A policeman was killed.
- Insurgents set off three car bombs in Riyadh, north of Baghdad killing at least five people including three policemen.
- Four American soldiers were injured in a car bombing in Tikrit.
- Another car bomb targeted a multinational convoy on the road to Baghdad airport. Four soldiers were injured. Later on another bomb hit the same road.
- A bomb detonated prematurely in Mashahda north of Baghdad killing the two insurgents inside.

Thursday January 27, 2005, in Iraq:
- The group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi posted a videotape on the Internet showing the killing of a candidate from the party of the interim Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi.
- One US Marine was killed and five others wounded by mortar fire on their base near Iskandariyah in Babil province, 30 miles south of Baghdad.
- Three Iraqis were killed and seven wounded when a roadside bomb missed a US convoy in Mahmudiyah also in Babil province.
- Many attacks took place in the Salahuddin province. Three Iraqi civilians were killed in Samara where a polling station and a school were also bombed.

January 28, 2005, in Iraq:
- American and Iraqi soldiers blocked off road, put up barriers at voting centres and made final preparations for Sunday's elections.
- The interim government said it had captured three more top aides to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
- In Samara insurgents blew up two more schools that would have been used as polling stations. This brings to four the number of schools there blown up in two days.
- In Kirkuk, insurgents have attacked eight schools in the last few days.
- Five US soldiers were killed in Baghdad. A roadside bomb that hit a patrol killed three others. Another bombing killed one soldier and another was shot dead.
- An US Army helicopter OH-58 Kiowa crashed in southwest Baghdad but it is not believed that it was shot down by the insurgents. Nothing is known about the people aboard.

Saturday January 29, 2005, in Iraq:
- A rocket strike on the American embassy in the Green Zone killed a US soldier and an American woman working there. Five other American people were wounded. Seven Iraqis were arrested after the attack.
- Nine Iraqis were killed in the Kurdish city of Khanaquin near the Iranian border when a man wearing an explosive west blew himself up near a joint Iraqi-American post.

Twelve Iraqi soldiers have been killed in an ambush near the northern oil city of Kirkuk on February 2, 2005. Five gunmen shot the soldiers in the head after stopping their bus on a road leading to Kirkuk. Two soldiers survived and fled to a nearby village. Most of the soldiers were on their way back from a holiday in the nearby city of Mosul when they were stopped near the village of Zab.

Chronicle of Saturday February 5,2005, in Iraq:
- Strong detonations rumbled through Baghdad at sunset on Saturday, and police said insurgents fired mortar shells near Baghdad's international airport.
- Two American soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing Friday night near the town of Beiji.
- A roadside bomb killed four Iraqi National Guardsmen in Basra.
- Gunmen stormed a police station in the northern city of Mosul, killing five officers.
- The brother of Mosul's police chief was kidnapped Saturday, three days after the official, General Mohammed Ahmed al-Jubouri, threatened to destroy rebel sanctuaries if insurgents did not surrender their weapons within two weeks. Al-Jubouri said late Saturday that his brother was freed in a raid that netted nine of the kidnappers.
- Insurgents assassinated a member of the Baghdad city council, Abbas Hasan Waheed, and a member of Iraq's intelligence service in two separate drive-by shootings.
- Bombs and clashes killed seven Iraqis in Samara and Tal Afar, north of Baghdad, and in Ramadi, to the west.
- Eight bodies were found Saturday in Anbar province - five in Ramadi and three in the town of Baghdadi; they were believed to be Iraqis who worked for the Americans or Iraqi security services.
- The Ansar al-Sunnah Army rebel group posted a video on an Islamist website Saturday showing seven people being shot. The group said the seven were Iraqi National Guardsmen captured two days ago in an ambush west of Baghdad.

February 7, 2005, in Iraq:
- At least 25 people have been killed in two separate insurgent bombing attacks in Iraq targeting the police force.
- In Mosul, policemen were waiting to collect their wages at a hospital when a suicide bomber detonated his bomb. At least 12 people were killed in the blast and four wounded.
- Fifteen police recruits died in a bomb attack in Baquba and 17 were wounded.
- One US soldier was killed and two others were wounded in a roadside bomb attack in northern Baghdad.
- Insurgents shelled a police station in Mosul, killing at least one civilian and wounding three others.

February 8, 2005, in Iraq:
- At least 21 people have been killed and 27 others injured after a suicide bomber wearing a belt of explosives blew himself up in a crowd of Iraqis queuing up to enlist in the Iraqi army outside an army recruitment centre in Baghdad. The al-Qaida wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack.
- Also in Baghdad, gunmen ambushed a car carrying politician Mithal al-Alusi, who heads the Nation party. He was unhurt but two of his sons were killed in the attack.
- Insurgents shelled the old Muthana airfield in the heart of the capital, home to an Iraqi National Guard headquarters where Iraqis were signing up to join the country's security forces. The mortar attack killed up to 14 people.
- Violence erupted elsewhere in Baghdad on Tuesday, as militants battled Iraqi security troops and explosions sounded over the city, leaving at least five other Iraqis dead.
- Three police officers were killed in clashes that broke out in Baghdad's western Ghazaliya neighbourhood.

Wednesday February 9, 2004, in Iraq:
- At least nine people have been killed in another day of violence in Iraq.
- A correspondent for a US-funded Arabic TV station, the al-Hurra channel, set up by the US in 2004 to compete with pan-Arab stations, was killed in Basra with his son. They are Abdul Hussein Khazal, 40, and his three-year-old son, Muhammad. The al-Hurra network, set up with a $62m grant from US Congress to rival stations like al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya, was launched with the aim of promoting democracy and winning over public opinion in the Arab world to the US point of view. But some Muslim clerics have denounced its output as propaganda. An unconfirmed report suggested a previously unknown militant group, the Imam al-Hassan al-Basri Brigades, had claimed the killing of Khazal and his son in a statement posted on a website.
- In a separate incident on Wednesday, a director in the ministry of culture and housing was shot dead as he drove through the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
- Gunmen also abducted a senior interior ministry official, named as Colonel Riyadh Katei Aliwi, as he drove through the south of the capital.
- Two other people are said to have been killed in a shooting in one of Baghdad's most troubled neighbourhoods, near Haifa Street.
- An American soldier was killed and another wounded in an ambush north of the capital.
- Two other American soldiers died earlier in the week, the command said Wednesday.
- Gunmen ambushed a convoy of Kurdish party officials in Baghdad, killing one and wounding four.

February 10, 2005, in Iraq:
- At least eight Iraqi police were killed and more than 60 wounded when rebels attacked a police station in Salman Pak south of Baghdad. Police said the attack in Salman Pak began when a car bomb exploded in the morning. A police convoy, which went in search of the insurgents, was then attacked with mortars and rockets in a fierce gun battle.
- Three people also died in a car bomb in the capital.
- The bodies of 20 truck drivers in their burnt out vehicles were found south of Baghdad. It is thought their convoy, carrying sugar to food warehouses, was attacked at least two days ago.
- An Iraqi was also killed in Baquba, north of Baghdad.
- Iraq will seal its borders between February 17 and February 22, to prevent Shiite pilgrims flooding into the country. The borders will be closed in a move designed to coincide with the climax of Ashura, a major Shiite religious ceremony.

February 11, 2005, in Iraq:
- A suicide car bomber killed 13 people and 40 were wounded in Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad when a suicide car bomb exploded outside a Shia mosque. Four of the dead were soldiers, and children were among the wounded.
- Gunmen shot dead nine people in a bakery in the capital in the latest sectarian attacks after the January 30 polls.
- At least 18 people have been killed by two car bombs.
- A senior judge has been shot dead by gunmen. The prominent Iraqi judge was on his way to work in the southern city of Basra.
- A blast outside a hospital killed at least 17 people and injured about 25 more in the town of Musayyib, about 70 km south of Baghdad.

February 13, 2005, in Iraq:
- Insurgents attacked a US convoy and a government building near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, leaving at least four people dead.
- Two Iraqi National Guard troops were also killed while trying to defuse a roadside bomb.
- Gunmen assassinated an Iraqi general and two companions in a Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad. The attack occurred as Brigadier General Jadaan Farhan and his companions were travelling through Baghdad's Kazimiyah district.

February 14, 2005, in Iraq -Not Saint Valentine for all:
- Roadside bombs killed a US soldier and three Iraqi National Guard troops. Three more American soldiers were wounded Monday when a bomb detonated near their patrol near the town of Baquba. The three Iraqi troops were also killed by a bomb as their convoy passed. Three other Iraqi soldiers were wounded.
- Insurgents killed two senior police officers in Baghdad.
- An insurgent mortar attack in Samara, 95 kilometres north of Baghdad, killed a woman and a two-year-old girl, and injured seven others.
- Insurgents fired six mortars at a police station in central Baghdad, injuring three.

February 17, 2005, in Iraq:
- A bomb detonated as a convoy of US troops and Iraqi National Guardsmen moved on a road in Hawija, wounding seven Iraqi troops.
- Gunmen opened fire on patrolling Iraqi National Guardsmen in Hillah. A shootout killed two armed men and wounded three Guardsmen.

February 18, 2005, in Iraq:
- A string of suicide bombs and attacks against mainly Shia Muslim targets have killed at least 29 people. The attacks came on the eve of Ashura, the holiest day of the Shia calendar. Iraq's borders have been closed and security tightened for Ashura as a result of last year's bomb attacks against Shia worshippers in Baghdad and Karbala that killed at least 181 people.
- Bombers struck two Shia mosques in Baghdad, killing 16.
- Three people died in an explosion near a Shia procession also in Baghdad.
- In the evening, a car bomb killed seven people outside a Shia mosque in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad.
- Three people also died in a suicide bomb in a Sunni area of Baghdad. That attack took place at an Iraqi police and National Guard checkpoint in the north of the city.
- Five US soldiers were killed in separate guerrilla attacks in Iraq, three in or near the northern city of Mosul, one north of Baghdad and the fifth south of the capital.
- One soldier was killed and two were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a US military base north of the town of Diwaniya, about 180 km south of Baghdad.
- A car bomb exploded next to a US army patrol in Mosul, killing one soldier and wounding three.
- Another soldier was shot dead in an exchange of fire with guerrillas in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed a soldier and wounded another in an attack near Tal Afar west of Mosul.

Iraq, February 19, 2005:
- At least 10 people have been killed in a series of attack targeting Iraq's Shia as they mark their holiest day of the year, the commemoration of Ashura.
- A number of mortars were fired at pilgrims as they made their way to a shrine in Baghdad, killing up to five.
- A suicide bomber got among a crowd of mourners at a funeral in west Baghdad, killing three people.
- There were more deaths after an explosion on a public bus in a northern part of the capital.
- Security has been tight to avoid last year's bloodshed when more than 180 were killed during the festival. The main celebration of Ashura is in the city of Karbala, south of Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands of Shia have gathered there.

February 23, 2005, in Iraq:
- At least 12 people are reported killed and 25 injured by a suicide bomb at a police station in Tikrit. The bomber drove into the car park of the police station and blew up his vehicle.
- Two policemen were killed in Kirkuk and two were also injured in the attack, which apparently targeted the local police chief.
- Two US soldiers were killed north of Baghdad.

Friday February 25, 2005, in Iraq:
- A roadside bomb killed three US soldiers and wounded nine others north of Baghdad.
- The government announced the capture of three figures associated with Iraq's insurgency.
- Three US soldiers were killed Thursday in separate attacks.
- Ten Iraqis died in other attacks.
- Nine other US soldiers were wounded, five of them "very seriously", when the Task Force Baghdad troops were hit by a roadside bomb while on patrol near the town of Tarmiya.
- The US military death toll until February 25, 2005, in Iraq to at least 1,489, since the war began in March 2003.

Iraq, February 26, 2005:
- In the capital, a roadside bomb killed two people.
- The US military also said a soldier died during a sweep for insurgents west of Baghdad.
- kilometres away. Repairs would take at least four days.
- In Baghdad, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb in the west of the city, killing two civilians.
- Three Iraqis died and 15 were wounded in clashes between gunmen and US Marines in Ramadi, west of Baghdad.
- Three Iraqi women died when mortar rounds struck homes near Dulluiyah.
- A Turkish driver burnt to death in the cab of his lorry hit by an anti-tank rocket.
- An Iraqi soldier died and five were wounded at Mussaieb, south of Baghdad in a car bomb attack.
- Near Hilla, also south of the capital, a journalist with a US-funded Arabic language television station, Al-Hurra, was seriously wounded and his driver killed.
- Eleven people, including four women, a policeman and two civil servants, have been kidnapped in a string of abductions since Friday in the area south of Baghdad. Gunmen snatched the four women in four separate incidents in the towns of Latifiyah and Mahmudiyah on Friday.

Sunday 27, 2005, in Iraq:
- Insurgents ambushed a US patrol, killing three soldiers and wounding nine. The attack took place in Tarmiyah, about 20 miles north of the capital.
- A bomb exploded in Hammam Alil, near the city of Mosul - reportedly inside the town hall or the police headquarters. The dead include several Iraqi security guards and a number of civilians, and at least two people were injured. The US military put the number of victims killed as high as eight.

March 2, 2005, in Iraq:
- In two separate car bomb attacks, at least 13 people were killed and more than 30 others injured in the Iraqi capital.
- A judge on the special Iraq tribunal set up to try former President Saddam Hussein has been killed in Baghdad on March 2, 2005. Barwiz Mahmoud Marwani and his son - who was also working at the tribunal - were gunned down outside their home. This is the first known murder of any of about 20 judges on the tribunal.
- Six people were killed and over 20 injured when a car bomb exploded outside an army base in the capital where people had lined up for recruitment.

Iraq, Thursday March 3, 2005:
- Two car bombs have exploded near the Iraqi interior ministry in Baghdad, killing five policemen, witnesses say. The attacks reportedly targeted a main police checkpoint outside the ministry in the east of the Iraqi capital.
- In Baquba, north of Baghdad, one civilian was killed and 14 wounded in a car bomb attack on a local police base.
- A US marine was killed in Iraq on Wednesday in Babil province, south of Baghdad.
- On Wednesday two similar bombs killed 12 Iraqi troops in the capital.
- On Wednesday, a car explosion that killed eight soldiers at an Iraqi army base was followed an hour later by a second blast that killed four more at a checkpoint.

March 4, 2005, in Iraq:
- Two suicide car bombs exploded minutes apart outside the main gate of the heavily fortified Interior Ministry here early Thursday morning, killing five police officers and wounding at least seven.
- Two US soldiers were killed in central Baghdad on Wednesday evening when their convoy struck a roadside bomb. A third US soldier was killed in Babil Province, south of the capital.
- Also on Thursday, a car bomb detonated near a police patrol outside the main police station in Baquba. One civilian was killed and 16 people were wounded, including five police officers.
- In the Doura neighbourhood of Baghdad, the police discovered three bodies on Thursday with their hands tied and blindfolds over their eyes. There were signs of torture on the bodies, and each had been shot in the head with a single bullet.
- Four US soldiers were killed Friday west of the capital in the Anbar province where American troops launched a massive sweep two weeks ago to root out insurgents.
- Opposition to the insurgency apparently boiled over into bloodshed as the townsmen of Wihda attacked militants thought to be planning a raid on the town and killed seven. Iraqis have grown tired of two years of insecurity, and some are directing their wrath at those behind the bombings and attacks.

On March 5, 2005, a roadside bomb killed three Iraqi army soldiers in Baghdad's Bab al-Mu'adam area. Another four soldiers were injured.

Iraq, March 7, 2005:
- A suicide car bomber blew himself up in Balad, killing at least 15 people and wounding many others.
- In Baquba, five soldiers were killed in an attack on an army checkpoint, and between five and ten other people died in a series of other bomb attacks in the town.
- A series of bomb attacks in the town of Baquba left at least five people dead.
- A car bomb exploded in a street in the al-Mualimeen area. Two policemen were killed.
- Further roadside bomb attacks killed three people - it was not clear whether they were security forces or civilians - and a mortar was fired into the centre of the town but failed to cause any injuries.
- Another car bomb exploded outside the home of Iraqi army Lt. Colonel Mohammed Abdul Mutaled in Balad, 50 miles north of Baghdad, killing 12 people and injuring 21 others.
- In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police and wounded a third in a drive-by shooting in the eastern slum of Sadr City.
- Two civilians were killed when a roadside bomb targeting a joint US-Iraqi military convoy exploded in the west Baghdad neighbourhood of Amiriyah. Another roadside bomb exploded in a southeastern Baghdad suburb, wounding several people on a bus.
- A Polish soldier was wounded in the hand when a bomb blew up next to his convoy north of Hillah in central Iraqi.
-
March 9, 2005, in Iraq:
- The bodies of 19 people who were shot dead have been found near the western Iraqi town of Qaim. The dead, discovered on Tuesday night, were all wearing civilian clothes.
- In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb attack has killed at least four people and injured about 40. Thirty American contractors are among 40 people wounded. The blast happened when the bomber drove a rubbish truck close to the ministry of agriculture and Sadeer hotel before detonating explosives. The ministry building caught fire but police said the main target might have been the hotel, which is used by Iraqi police and Western contractors.
- A policeman was killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra hit their patrol.
- The director of al-Furat hospital in Baghdad, Dr Adil Abd-al-Karim, was shot dead on his way to work.
- The son of a police officer, kidnapped on 1 March, was found shot dead on Tuesday in the northern city of Mosul.
- Interim Planning Minister Mahdi al-Hafidh escaped assassination after gunmen opened fire on his convoy in Baghdad. One of his guards was killed and two others were wounded, police said.
- A US soldier was killed and another was injured when a roadside bomb detonated as they were patrolling in the capital.
- South of Baghdad in Latifiya, Iraqi troops found 15 headless bodies in a building inside an abandoned former army base. The bodies included 10 men, three women and two children.
- Two other car bombings were also reported. One car bomber targeted an American checkpoint outside a base in Habaniyah, 80 km west of Baghdad. Another car bomb exploded near US troops close to a US base in Abu Ghraib, just west of the capital.
- Guerrillas struck a police patrol with a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra, killing one policeman and wounding three more.

March 10, 2005, in Iraq:
- A suicide bombing at a Shiite Muslim funeral procession killed at least 47 people in Mosul. The explosion also wounded at least 81 others. The funeral was for Hashim Mahmoud al-Aaraji, a professor at Mosul University.
- Insurgents killed two police officials and wounded a third in Baghdad. Colonel Hamad Ubeyis, chief of central Baghdad's al-Salihiya police station, was killed when gunmen opened fire on his marked police car. Two officers with Ubeyis were injured. Colonel Aiyad Abdul Razaq, chief deputy of Jisrdiala police station, was gunned down in southeastern Baghdad while driving to work.
- General Adbul Karim Raheem, a police official in the Iraqi Interior Ministry, was critically wounded in an attack on his car, also in southeast Baghdad.

Iraq March 14, 2005:
- Rebels killed 11 Iraqis and two US security contractors.
- Police made the gruesome discovery of 12 corpses south of Baghdad.
- Two Americans working for a company that provides security for the US Embassy were killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. The pair, and a third American contractor who was wounded in the blast, were attacked while riding in a car between Baghdad and Hilla.
- A US marine was killed on Monday in the western Anbar province.

A suspected suicide car bomb has exploded in Baghdad on March 15, 2005, killing a child and injuring four other people. The bomb went off near a Sunni mosque and several hospitals. Car bombings also killed five Iraqi civilians and one American soldier.

March 16, 2005, in Iraq:
- A series of mortar attacks near the venue in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone failed to disrupt the first meeting of the new parliament.
- A car bomb killed three Iraqi soldiers and wounded seven other people at an army checkpoint in the town of Baquba.

Iraq, March 19, 2005:
- At least three Iraqi policemen have been killed by a roadside bomb while mourning the death of a colleague. The bomb attack was in the northern city of Kirkuk, during a funeral procession for a policeman gunned down the day before. Seven other officers were wounded in the attack.
- There was also an attack on a US military convoy in the city of Ramadi. It is not clear at this stage if anyone was killed.

Iraq, March 20, 2005:
- In Mosul, a suicide bomber with a fake badge entered the provincial anti-corruption department building and blew himself up inside the office of its chief, General Walid Kachmoula, killing him and two guards.
- Attackers struck again hours later opening fire on the procession bearing Kachmoula's coffin as it made its way to the cemetery, killing two people and wounding 14.
- Two unidentified bodies shot in the chest and head were found in the city.
- Gunmen attacked a police station in Baquba killing at least four policemen and wounding two as a truck bomb exploded into the entrance of an Iraqi army barrack nearby wounding 17 people, 14 of them soldiers. Four insurgents were killed in an ensuing firefight, added the source.
- In Kirkuk, a US soldier was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol.
- In Beiji, west of Kirkuk, a Turkish driver travelling in a convoy escorted by the US military was killed by small arms fire.
- A policeman was killed and three others wounded in a similar attack in Samara, while the bodies of an Iraqi army officer and his cousin were found in the same area.
- In Basra a civilian was killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of a police patrol.
- A gun battle between Iraqi insurgents and US troops near Baghdad has left 24 rebels dead. Six soldiers and seven insurgents were also injured in the ambush, which took place about 20 miles from the Iraqi capital.

Monday March 21, 2005, in Iraq:
- Insurgent attacks across Iraq on Monday left seven civilians and three Iraqi soldiers dead, a day after US troops killed 26 militants in a clash.
- A roadside bomb killed four women and three children in Aziziyah, about 55 kilometres southeast of Baghdad.
- An Iraqi soldier was killed in Sherqat, 260 kilometres north of Baghdad, when a mortar shell landed on his camp.
- Another soldier died and four others were wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade in western Baghdad hit an Iraqi army vehicle, a Defence Ministry official said.
- In Baghdad's Amiriyah neighbourhood, gunmen in two speeding cars fired on an Iraq army foot patrol, killing another soldier and wounding another.
- The head of the Kazimiyah neighbourhood police force, Colonel Mou'yad Farhan, escaped unhurt when gunmen opened fire on his car. His driver, however, was seriously injured and hospitalized.
- In Samara, an explosives-laden pickup truck driven by a suicide bomber went off prematurely near a hospital, wounding about a dozen civilians and damaging homes.
- The director of the Iraqi army's legal department in northern Kirkuk, Lieutenant-Colonel Hawas al-Bayati, was shot and critically injured late Sunday outside his home.
- Troops killed two suspected terrorists and detained two others after they discovered the men digging holes along the road for hiding homemade bombs.
- Late Sunday, an American convoy was attacked with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, sparking the clash that killed 26 militants.
- Between 40 and 50 militants opened fire on military police and artillery units from the Kentucky National Guard as the Americans travelled along a road about 30 kilometres southeast of Baghdad that has seen a recent increase in violence. Six soldiers and seven militants were wounded, and one person was arrested. It was one of the largest battles since the Jan. 30 election.
- The US military reported the death of a soldier, who was killed Sunday during action in restive Anbar province, which contains the flashpoint cities of Falluja and Ramadi.

Tuesday March 22, 2005, in Iraq:
- Militants in the northern city of Mosul targeted a US patrol with a roadside bomb that killed four civilians.
- Officials in the south found the corpses of six Iraqi soldiers, their hands bound and their bodies riddled with bullets.
- Gun battles erupted out in the streets of the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, where militants wearing black hoods and riding in three cars opened fire on people shopping along a main thoroughfare. Shopkeepers and residents returned fire, killing three assailants. A man, woman and child were injured and taken to a hospital.
- Earlier, gunmen in the same quarter killed a policeman as he drove to work.
- The US military reported the death of a Marine assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. He was killed in action Monday in Anbar province, which contains the cities of Falluja and Ramadi.
- Six Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. Witnesses said about a dozen masked men grabbed the soldiers, who were dressed in civilian clothes, as they headed to a bus station.
- In Mosul, a convoy of security officials was ambushed late Monday, sparking a gun battle that killed 17 militants. No security forces were hurt, and 14 militants were detained. Among those in the convoy was top police chief Brigadier General Abu Al-Waled.
- Mosul residents said five mortar shells landed in a Kurdish enclave of the ethnically mixed city 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, injuring one person.
- Three rockets landed overnight on the town of Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, killing one child.
- In the eastern city of Kirkuk, the director of the Iraqi Army's legal department died Tuesday of wounds suffered late Sunday when gunmen shot him outside his home.

Iraq, Friday March 25, 2005:
- Eleven Iraqi special police commandos have been killed in a suicide car bombing at a joint US-Iraqi checkpoint in Ramadi. At least 14 other people, including two US soldiers, were injured in the attack on Thursday night in the east of the town, 110km from Baghdad.
- A suicide bomb in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, killed at least four Iraqi troops.
- Five women were shot also dead when their car came under fire in Baghdad. All five women -three of them sisters- worked at an American military base.
- In Baghdad, gunmen shot dead a senior Iraqi military official, Colonel Salman Muhammad Hassan, as he left a funeral service at a mosque.

March 30, 2005, in Iraq:
- In Tuz Khormato, 55 miles south of Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber blew himself up near Iraqi security officials guarding a shrine filled with Shiite pilgrims marking a major religious holiday. The blast killed two soldiers and three bystanders -including a small child; 16 others were injured.
- In Samara, north of Baghdad, another suicide car bomber attacked a joint US-Iraqi patrol in the city centre, 15 people were injured in the blast.
- Also in Samara, gunmen briefly attacked a police station with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire. No casualties were reported.
- Two US soldiers died in separate clashes on Thursday.
- One soldier died from injuries he sustained during a clash on Thursday in northern Mosul.

Iraq, April 1, 2005:
- Gunmen have killed a local chief of police in an ambush in Balad Ruz, north of Baghdad. Hatem Rashid Mohammad was killed along with another police officer as they visited a police stations.
- A third policeman died on Friday when police stormed a house they believed contained insurgents.
- A roadside bomb explosion intended for a military convoy killed three civilians and wounded eight in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Iraq, April 1, 2005:
- Insurgents gunned down an Iraqi police chief of the tense town of Balad Ruz northeast of Baghdad. Colonel Hatem Rashid, was killed by gunmen overnight.
- The top layer of the towering ninth-century spiral minaret of the Malwiyya Mosque in Samara, a national archaeological treasure, was damaged in a blast that occurred just two weeks after the departure US troops stationed there.
- In Samara, north of Baghdad, five gunmen, including four Syrians, were killed in clashes with US and Iraqi forces, and 12 suspects were captured and weapons seized.

On April 2, 2005, in Iraq:
- Four policemen and a passing driver were killed by a car bomb in the so-called Sunni triangle, a stronghold of the insurgency. The bomb in Khan Bani Saad, 20km northeast of Baghdad, exploded as police were checking it.
- In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire from a car, killing Hassib Zamil outside of the Education Ministry offices in the Sadr City neigbourhood.
- The Abu Ghraib prison came under attack. Plumes of smoke rose from the area. US military officials confirmed there was activity in the area, but refused to give further details.
- In the capital, insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade and shot at an armoured vehicle used to transport US troops on a road leading to the dangerous airport highway, the US military said. Two US soldiers were injured in the attack.
- A US Marine was killed by enemy fire yesterday while conducting security operations in Ramadi.

Tuesday April 5, 2005, in Iraq:
- An Iraqi general who commands a special armoured unit was kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad. Brigadier General Mohammad Jalal Saleh was pulled from his car along with his bodyguards in the west of the city. General Saleh commands a 1,600-strong interior ministry unit formed to deal with insurgents and criminal gangs.
- Two powerful car bombs exploded in Baghdad, killing at least one civilian and a US soldier.
- Different areas of Baghdad were rocked by two car bombs. The first in the southern Doura district targeted a US military convoy. A bomb hidden in a taxi exploded killing a US soldier and wounding four others. At least one injured Iraqi civilian was taken to Yarmouk hospital. The second blast in the western Amariyah district killed a civilian and wounded two others. Reports say it was aimed at an Iraqi army convoy carrying a high-ranking officer who escaped unhurt.
- The US military meanwhile confirmed that 12 Iraqis and four US prison guards were wounded in a riot at Camp Bucca near the southern town of Umm Qasr on Friday. It initially denied knowledge of the incident.
- The military also said two US soldiers and an Iraqi soldier were killed on Monday in an intense gun battle in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. An explosion in the western Anbar province on the same day killed a US marine, the military said.

Iraq, April 8, 2005:
- The corpses of 10 Iraqi civilians were found east of Baghdad on April 7, 2005 in Balad Ruz, 100 kilometres east of the capital.
- An unidentified attacker threw a hand grenade at US troops in Shurgat, in northern Iraq. Four soldiers were wounded in the overnight attack.
- Seven Turkish truck drivers were wounded in an ambush between Kirkuk and Arbil yesterday. Six trucks were reportedly set ablaze.
- Iraq's newly appointed Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, has promised to name the members of his new cabinet within two weeks.

Iraq, April 9, 2005:
- Insurgents have killed 15 Iraqi soldiers travelling in a convoy near the town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad. The violence came on the second anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to the US-led coalition.
- Tens of thousands of Iraqis joined an anti-US protest in Firdus Square, where Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled on 9 April 2003 as millions watched on TV. Chanting "No to America" and "No to the occupiers", they pulled down and burned effigies of Saddam Hussein, US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

At least two suicide car bombs have exploded on April 10, 2005, at the entrance to a US military base in Qaim, western Iraq. The blasts caused several casualties, but it is not known how many were American or Iraqi troops, or civilians. The first blast came after a car rammed a checkpoint outside the base but failed to breach its defences. US helicopters flew over the base after the attack and heavy exchanges of gunfire were heard as insurgents clashed with troops.

April 11, 2005, in Iraq:
- A pickup truck also exploded near a US convoy as it patrolled a crowded market in the troubled city of Samara, killing at least three people and injuring more than 20 others. The blast occurred near American soldiers who were patrolling the market.
- Three suicide bombers hit a Marine outpost in western Iraq, wounding three Marines and three civilians. Suicide bombers tried to crash two cars and a fire truck into Camp Gannon in the western desert, but they were stopped by forces manning the checkpoints.
- Insurgents also fired at the camp, which is in the town of Qaim near the Syrian border, and a US attack helicopter destroyed a car carrying a gunman. It was unclear how many insurgents and suicide bombers were killed in the assault. Al-Qaida in Iraq, which previously said 10 of its fighters were killed, attacking Abu Ghraib, also claimed to have carried out Monday's suicide bomb assault in Qaim.
- In Baghdad, about 500 members of Iraq's police and army swept through buildings in the central Rashid neighbourhood along with some 200 American soldiers; 65 suspected militants were detained. One Iraqi soldier was wounded, but no American casualties were reported in the largest joint US-Iraqi operation in Iraq's capital. One suspected insurgent also was being treated for wounds.
- In Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, demonstrators chanted anti-American slogans in a third day of protests demanding that US forces go home. Tens of thousands gathered Saturday in Baghdad, and a demonstration was held Sunday in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of the capital.

Iraq, April 12, 2005:
- At least five Iraqis are killed and three others injured in a car bomb attack on a US convoy in the northern city of Mosul.
- Insurgents in western Baghdad ambushed a convoy carrying a senior interior ministry official, killing a bodyguard and injuring three others.
- Dozens of insurgents were rounded up in a major raid by US and Iraqi forces in central and southern Baghdad.

Iraq, April 13, 2005:
- Attackers used a live bomb to kill at least nine Iraqi security force members dismantling an apparent decoy device near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The casualties, including at least three wounded, worked for the Northern Oil Company guard service. They included Colonel Natham Abdullah who was in charge of protecting the northern oil fields from sabotage. The security guards killed in the blast had been cordoning off an area containing a suspected decoy device when a second, live device blew up.
- Anti-US insurgents also launched a string of attacks in Baghdad. At least four roadside blasts have been reported in the Iraqi capital.

Iraq, April 14, 2005:
- A double suicide car bombing in central Baghdad has killed at least 18 people. The cars blew up nearly simultaneously amid heavy traffic in a street near a fortified interior ministry office. Police officers and several children were among the dead. More than 30 people were wounded. A statement on an Islamist website claimed that al-Qaida in Iraq, headed by Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, carried out the attacks. The claim could not be independently verified. American forces detonated a third explosive device near the scene.
- Three policemen and a civilian were killed in a drive-by shooting at a police station in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- There are also reports of attacks on Iraqi police and the US military in Baquba and Tikrit, north of Baghdad. One Iraqi officer died in the attack on a police patrol near Baquba, while a car bomb reportedly exploded outside a US military installation in Tikrit, injuring nine civilians.

Iraq, April 15, 2005, bombers in Baghdad attacked US and Iraqi convoys. A roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad exploded close to an Iraqi convoy killing one civilian and wounding five others were hurt. A suicide car bomber attacked a US convoy in the western suburb of Mansour, and a bomb exploded in an eastern area of the city. In Mansour, an affluent area in western Baghdad, a suicide bomb intended for a US convoy killed the bomber and injured at least three civilians.

Iraq, April 16, 2005:
- At least 13 Iraqis and one US soldier died in Baquba in insurgent attacks, including the bombing of a restaurant favoured by policemen.
- Sunni militants were holding dozens of Shiites hostage in the central Iraqi town of Madain and threatening to kill them unless all Shiites left the area. The crisis began when militants used explosives to severely damage a local mosque in the town 20 kilometres southeast of Baghdad. About 100 militants roamed the town in cars, capturing dozens of Shiites.
- Insurgents killed three members of Iraq's security forces by firing from speeding vehicles at army soldiers and policemen in the northern city of Kirkuk. The gunmen killed one policeman and two soldiers as they headed to work in two separate drive-by shootings.
- In Mosul, a car bomb damaged one vehicle in a US military convoy, but there were no reports of casualties.
- A Filipino contract worker, Francisco Luz, was shot and injured in Baghdad. It was unclear if Luz was targeted or whether he was caught in crossfire.
- Two Filipino workers were wounded Saturday in a mortar attack by suspected insurgents in Iraq while travelling on a road near Baghdad's airport. The workers, a male and a female, sustained minor injuries when their vehicle came under attack and both have been discharged from a hospital where they treated.
- Two US soldiers died in separate attacks in Iraq. One soldier, from the 42nd Military Police Brigade, was wounded and died when an explosive device near Taji hit his convoy, 12 miles north of Baghdad. The other died of injuries he sustained when a coalition military base was attacked by indirect fire near Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad.

Iraq April 17, 2005:
- Iraqi and US troops have launched an operation in the central Iraqi town of Madain, where Sunni rebels are holding an unknown number of Shia residents hostage. The rebels said they would kill them unless all Shiites left the town. Hundreds of Iraqi troops have surrounded the town and begun moving in vehicles, while US soldiers have cut off two key bridges leading into the area. The exact number of Shia hostages in unknown, ranging from as high as 150 to three or even none.
- Three American soldiers were killed when a Marine base came under indirect fire near Ramadi, west of the Baghdad. Seven service members were hurt in the night attack, three were evacuated for treatment.

Iraq, April 19. 2005:
- A suicide car bomb attack aimed at a US patrol in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has killed at least two Iraqi civilians, including a child. Five people were injured in the blast.
- In a second attack, on a police station in Baghdad's southern district of al-Doura, a bomb exploded in a parking area, damaging 20 vehicles.
- A nearby police patrol was the target of an explosion that injured three civilians.
- Late on Tuesday, two US soldiers were killed and four wounded by a bomb near the road to Baghdad airport.
- Insurgent attacks killed at least 12 people in Iraq on Tuesday as an increase in violence piled pressure on politicians struggling to form a government more than 11 weeks after elections.
- In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed four National Guardsmen in the Athamiya district, the police and hospital officials said. Thirty-eight people were wounded in the blast - the latest in a string of car bombings in the capital in the past week.
- West of the capital, insurgents opened fire on members of Iraq's National Guard in the restive town of Khaldiya, killing five people and wounding four.
- Near Haditha, US warplanes had bombed a suspected insurgent hideout. Two people had been killed and three wounded.
- Gunmen also killed a Baghdad University professor, Fouad al-Bayati, on Tuesday, riddling his car with bullets as he drove to work.

Iraq, Wednesday April 20, 2005: -
- The bodies of more than 50 people had been pulled from the Tigris River southeast of Baghdad. The bodies were believed to be those of Shiite hostages abducted by Sunni insurgents in the town of Madain. Shiite politicians last week claimed that Sunni insurgents in Madain were trying to drive Shiites from the ethnically mixed town and that one of their tactics was taking at least 50 Shiites hostage. But other politicians said the alleged abductions were fabrications to fuel sectarian tension. Iraqi security forces dispatched to Madain over the weekend said they found weapons caches and bomb-making facilities, but no evidence of widespread abductions. Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim at the time called the abduction claims "an exaggeration."
- Officials said 19 or 20 Iraqi National Guard soldiers in civilian clothing had been abducted and executed in a sports stadium.
- In Baghdad, attackers tried to assassinate former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on his way home from a meeting with a car bombing of a convoy he was riding in. Allawi wasn't injured. The explosion near the party headquarters injured others, al-Awadi said, but he added that he didn't know how many were injured or how seriously.
- Three suicide car bombers killed at least three people and wounded at least 11 in various attacks. A fourth attack with gunfire killed three people and wounded another.

Iraq on Thursday April 21, 2005:
- On April 20, outgoing Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has escaped unhurt after a suicide bomber blew up a car near his convoy in Baghdad. At least two policemen are said to have died in the blast. A statement posted on the Internet claimed al-Qaida was behind the attack. Mr Allawi himself has survived five assassination attempts so far.
- A roadside bomb hit vehicles carrying foreigners on the road to Baghdad airport, killing two of them.
- Three other foreigners - an American, a Canadian and an Australian - died in an attack on the same stretch of road on Wednesday.
- Insurgents brought down a Russian-made helicopter carrying 11 civilians with missile fire north of the capital and said they captured and shot to death the lone crewmember who survived. The dead from the crash included six American bodyguards for US diplomats. An Internet statement by the group "Islamic Army in Iraq" and a video showed the shooting of a man, one of the three Bulgarian crewmembers, and burning wreckage just before the shooting. Two Fijian helicopter security guards were also on board the flight. The video also showed two charred bodies near the burning wreckage, about 12 miles north of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb in Ramadi killed two US Marines Wednesday. More explosions and gunfire followed the attack Thursday in Ramadi and Baghdad that killed at least five people, including two foreign civilians.

Iraq, April 22, 2005:
- A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed responsibility for shooting down a Bulgarian commercial helicopter in the region of al-Taji, north of Baghdad, and killing all 11 people on board. Six Americans, three Bulgarian crew and two Fijian security staff died in the assault, which occurred on April 21. At least two gunmen are seen walking around the burnt- out fuselage of a helicopter and two charred bodies in the video. The group filmed a survivor whom they helped to stand before shooting him dead.
- A car bomb exploded today at the Shiite al-Subeih mosque in Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding several others.
- Further north, Iraqi police discovered the bodies of 19 executed Iraqi soldiers, kidnapped a few days ago at a rebel checkpoint and dumped near the oil refinery town of Beiji.
- Also in northern Iraq, a US soldier was killed early today and another was injured when a homemade bomb exploded near their vehicle.
- The Islamic Army in Iraq said that on April 20 it killed an Australian security contractor, an American and a Canadian, who were travelling to Baghdad's airport. The group has also claimed responsibility for killing hostages. It sent the Italian embassy in Baghdad a video in August showing the murder of Enzo Baldoni.
- Iraqi security forces raided a suspected terrorist safe house northeast of Baghdad yesterday, killing one and capturing nine, the Iraqi government said today in a statement. Four of the detainees are Saudi Arabian, it said.
- Several hundred kilograms of bomb-making material was found and destroyed. A man who died was the group's leader and a top aide to al-Zarqawi.

Iraq, April 23, 2005:
- Two suicide car bombs exploded inside a police academy compound in the town of Tikrit on Sunday, killing at least seven people and wounding and wounding 33, Iraqi police and doctors said.
- In Tikrit a suicide bomber drove into the compound and blew up his vehicle among a crowd of policemen, killing several. As police and passersby rushed to help those hit in the blast, a second car bomber entered the compound and detonated his vehicle. Seven bodies were brought in the hospital and as many as 26 people were wounded. All those killed were police, while both civilians and police were among the wounded.
- The US military said Saturday it has detained six men suspected of shooting down a Russian-made helicopter carrying 11 civilians - including six Americans - north of Baghdad two days earlier. An Iraqi civilian helped Task Force Baghdad soldiers locate the suspects, who were arrested at two houses Saturday afternoon.
- Insurgents attacked an Iraqi National Guard convoy at Abu Ghraib and killed nine troops in one of at least five car bombings on Saturday in an upsurge of violence as Iraq's political leaders bicker over a new government.
- An attack on a US patrol in western Baghdad killed two civilians, police said. Three American soldiers and seven Iraqi civilians were wounded.
- One Iraqi National Guardsman was killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb at Yusufiya, about 75 km south of Baghdad.
- Two suicide car bombers wounded seven Iraqis on a road 10 km south of the southern city of Basra.
- An American soldier was killed Saturday near Haswa when his convoy was hit by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad.

Iraq, April 24, 2005:
- At least 16 people have been killed in twin bombings in a market near a mosque in a Shia area of Baghdad. Some 50 more were wounded in the explosions near the Ahl al-Beit mosque in Shula.
- A similar double bombing occurred on a police academy in Tikrit in northern Iraq, which killed at least six people and wounded 33. The blasts came within 20 minutes of each other, police said. Police said about a metric ton of explosives was used in the attack. The dead included four police and two civilians. Most of the wounded were policemen.
- A gun battle between police and insurgents in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad wounded two policemen and one militant.
- More than 150,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped, and for the first time, the Iraqi army, police, and security forces outnumber US forces in Iraq.

Iraq, Friday April 29, 2005:
- At least 29 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a wave of car bomb attacks targeting Iraqi security forces in and around Baghdad, the deadliest of which took place in Baghdad's Adhamiya area.
- Four blasts rocked the Sunni-dominated neighbourhood of Adhamiya. The bombs went off within minutes of each other and targeted patrols of Iraqi police or national guards as well as a restaurant they frequent. Cars were destroyed, shops gutted and pools of blood stained the streets of a district where insurgents have been active.
- A bomb also exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed through the east of the city. At least one soldier was killed and eight wounded. As people gathered to investigate the blast, a second bomb exploded.
- Three devices also went off close to a military checkpoint, a hospital and a post office in the town of Madain, 30km south of Baghdad, killing troops and wounding civilians.
- A US convoy came under gunfire in Baghdad's southern Dura district. Nearby, a 10-year-old girl was wounded when a mortar shell landed on her home.
- A bomb disposal expert was killed and at least one civilian wounded in the Kurdish city of Arbil in northern Iraq.
- An Iraqi border patrol guard was killed and two wounded by a bomb attack in the southern city of Basra.
- A US soldier was killed and four others wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Hawija, 240km north of Baghdad on Thursday.

Iraq, Saturday April 30, 2005:
- Insurgents launched fresh attacks in Baghdad and northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least 11 Iraqis and wounding more than 40 in a second day of violence aimed at shaking the country's newly formed government.
- At least five car bombings occurred in the Baghdad area Saturday. They included a suicide attack that targeted a joint US military and Iraqi police patrol in western Baghdad, killing one Iraqi and wounding seven, including four policemen. Another suicide bomber hit a civilian convoy near the offices of the National Dialogue Council, a coalition of 10 Sunni Arab factions that had been negotiating for a stake in Iraq's new Shiite-dominated government. The blast killed at least one council guard and injured 18 other Iraqis. A third suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded near the Mohammad Rasoul Allah Mosque in eastern Baghdad, killing two Iraqi women and a girl, and seriously wounding four soldiers.
- Two Iraqis a policeman and a former official in Saddam Hussein's Baath Party also died in shootings Saturday in Baghdad.
- Insurgents also launched six strikes in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, including one that injured an American soldier. At least three Iraqis were killed and eight wounded in the attacks. The attacks included a suicide car bomb that exploded near a police patrol, killing a woman who was passing by and wounding four policemen.
- Another suicide bomber attacked a US Stryker vehicle, injuring an undetermined number of civilians and slightly wounding a US soldier. Elsewhere a roadside bomb missed its police patrol target, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding two others, and gunmen opened fire on a separate police patrol, wounding two officers.
- Two civilian bystanders were wounded when a roadside bomb aimed at a police patrol exploded south of Baquba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
- West of Baghdad, a young girl was killed and nine adults were wounded by mortar fire.
- An audiotape released Friday by Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, warned US President George W. Bush there was more bloodshed to come. An intelligence official said the tape appeared to be genuine. ''You, Bush, we will not rest until we avenge our dignity,'' the speaker said on the audiotape that was posted on the Internet. ''We will not rest while your army is here as long as there is a pulse in our veins.''
- In separate statements, posted on a Web site al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq group claimed responsibility for two of Friday's most deadly assaults four suicide car bombings in one Baghdad neighbourhood and four more bombings in Madain, south of the capital. The claims could not be verified.
- Two US soldiers were killed Friday when a Task Force Baghdad patrol struck a roadside bomb in the western part of Baghdad, raising the day's toll for US forces to five dead. The military detained nine suspects in a nearby house.
- The US military also said Saturday that four US soldiers were killed and two wounded Thursday when a roadside bomb in Tal Afar city hit a Task Force Freedom convoy, 90 miles east of the Syrian border. It did not explain the delay in announcing the casualties.
- Elsewhere, four US soldiers in a convoy were wounded when their Humvee rolled into a ditch late Friday night near Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad.

Iraq, Sunday May 1, 2005:
- A suicide attack targeting a Kurdish funeral in the northern town of Tal Afar, near Mosul, left at least 20 people dead and injured more than 30 others.
- Five policemen were killed when about 30 gunmen raided a checkpoint on a main road leading south out of Baghdad.
- A car bomb also exploded near a US convoy in the Zafaraniya area, killing four Iraqi civilians and wounding 12.

On May 2, 2005, in Iraq
- Insurgents went on with attacks that have left more than 100 people dead in the past week alone:
- A car bomb blew up in the centre of the capital, Baghdad, killing nine civilians and wounding another 10.
- A British soldier died after being injured in "hostile action."

D. Others
On September 12, 2004, three Polish soldiers were killed and three others injured in an attack on a convoy northeast Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad. The Polish patrol was attacked by gunshots and mortar rounds after they had been called to defuse an explosive. The number of the Polish killed in Iraq reached 17, four of which were civilians. ---