Content, War in Iraq

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A. The Americans

A bomb has killed five US marines near the western Iraqi town of Ramadi on June 15, 2005. The device went off on Wednesday as the marines' vehicle passed. In a separate attack, a US sailor attached to the marines was shot dead in the town. More than 1,700 US military personnel have died in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.

Also Tuesday July 5, 2005, a US soldier was killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb northeast of Baghdad. At least 1,745 members of the US military had died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

A US soldier was killed on Saturday August 20, 2005 when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Three more US soldiers died on Saturday November 12, 2005. Two Marines were killed by a bomb west of Baghdad and a soldier died in a vehicle accident in Western Iraq.

In their offensive in western Iraq near the Syrian border, the US and Iraq forces killed 50 insurgents on November 14, 2005. Two US Marines were killed and at least seven wounded in the operation in the town of Obeidi.

On Monday November 21, 2005, US soldiers fired on a civilian vehicle killing at least three people -five according to the Iraqis- including a child. This happened near a US base in Baquba.

On November 23, 2005, the Bush Administration said that they could reduce their troops in Iraq as more and more Iraqis are trained as policemen and soldiers. Now there are about 155,000 US soldiers in Iraq and they hope to reduce their number to about 138,000 after the December 15 election and then down to about 100,000 in 2006. This is the administration answer to strong bipartisan criticism in the Congress and a sharp drop in support for the war among American people.

A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed two US soldiers on December 23, 2005. Another one was also killed the day before.

Two US pilots died on December 27, 2005, when their helicopter crashed in western Baghdad.

And in Iraq the Americans are at it again, killing people. On January 3, 2006, they bombed a house near Beiji 150 miles north of Baghdad killing nine members of an Iraqi family including women and small children. The American's excuse, as always, was that they "knew" that it was an insurgents' safe house! As we said in 1945 the Americans are right to shout loud and clear: "Yankees, go home!"

Concerned about escalating violence as Iraq struggles to form a new government, the US military has sent several hundred troops with tanks and other armour from Kuwait to the Baghdad area around March 10, 2006. It is the first time extra troops have been sent since December's parliamentary election.

A man wearing the uniform of an Iraqi soldier shot and killed two U.S. soldiers Saturday May 2, 2009, in an ambush south of Mosul. Police said the gunman was in the Iraqi military, identifying him as Hassan Dulaimi, and said he got away after the shooting. U.S. authorities said the man was killed after the attack, which also left three U.S. soldiers wounded.

In Iraq, only 150 Americans lost their lives in 2009, half as many as the year before. December 2009 was also the first month since the U.S.-led war in Iraq began in March 2003 without a U.S. combat death. The three U.S. casualties in Iraq last month were the result of non-combat-related incidents.

The United States has completed its drawdown of its forces to Iraq to 50,000 on August 18, 2010 ahead of the scheduled August 31 date.The killing on Friday April 29, 2011, of an American soldier made April the deadliest month for US forces in Iraq since 2009. The soldier "was killed April 29 while conducting operations in southern Iraq. The death brought to 11 the number of US troops to die in Iraq in April. Of April's 11 killed, six died in "non-hostile" incidents, two were killed by a roadside bomb in Numaniyah, Wasit province, and two died in separate mortar attacks in Baghdad and Babil provinces.

On Friday January 4, 2013, the White House is not considering any option that would leave more than 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.
 
-Former president George W. Bush, in a rare interview published Sunday April 14, 2013, in the Dallas Morning News, defended his economic record against recent presidents and says he remains “comfortable” with his decision to go to war in Iraq. At least he is happy to be in a minority of one.ay 6, 2005:

- A court-martial got under way Monday April 29, 2013, for the first female U.S. Army soldier to flee to Canada to avoid a second tour of duty in the Iraq war. Army Pfc. Kimberly Rivera is charged with desertion and could face up to five years in prison and a dishonorable discharge if convicted. Rivera was assigned to Fort Carson’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team and served in Iraq in 2006. She has said that, while there, she became disillusioned with the U.S. mission in Iraq. During a two-week leave in the U.S. in 2007, Rivera crossed the Canadian border after she was ordered to serve another tour in Iraq. She applied for refugee status but was denied. Rivera then applied for permanent residency, but Canadian immigration officials rejected that application, too. Authorities also rejected her requests to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. Rivera was first ordered to leave Canada or face deportation in 2009, but she appealed that decision. The mother of four faced another deportation order issued in 2012. ---

President Barack Obama promised Thursday June 12, 2014, to send more military aid to Iraq to help beat back a fast-moving insurgency as the US evacuated a major air base in the nation’s north where it had been training Iraqi security forces. The Iraqi government has been asking for more than a year for surveillance and armed drones to combat a Sunni insurgency that has gained strength from battlefield successes in neighbouring Syria.

President Barack Obama said on Thursday June 19, 2014, he was sending up to 300 U.S. military advisers to Iraq but stressed the need for a political solution to the Iraqi crisis. Obama said he was prepared to take "targeted" military action later if deemed necessary, thus delaying but still keeping open the prospect of airstrikes to fend off a militant insurgency. But he insisted that U.S. troops would not return to combat in Iraq. Obama also delivered a stern message to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on the need to take urgent steps to heal Iraq's sectarian rift, something U.S. officials say the Shi'ite leader has failed to do and which an al Qaeda splinter group leading the Sunni revolt has exploited.

President Obama announced Thursday night August 7, 2014, in a televised address that he has authorized the U.S. military to conduct airstrikes "if necessary" against Islamist militants in Iraq, and the military has conducted a mission to drop humanitarian aid there to help religious minorities stranded amid the violence. Obama said the U.S. military is authorized to launch targeted airstrikes if Islamist militants advance toward American personnel in northern Iraq. Declaring that "America is coming to help," he also said that the U.S. decided to conduct the drops to the 50,000 or so religious minorities stranded on a mountaintop in the country's north, who have been forced to flee their homes as the militants advanced. Obama said the religious minorities are under the threat of genocide from militants from the Islamic State (IS), the group formerly known as ISIS, and are stranded on the mountain without food or water. Airstrikes could also be used to help protect those civilians. ---

The 475 additional U.S. military personnel headed to Iraq this week will assist Iraqi security forces as they take the offensive against ISIS fighters. They will be posted at Iraqi military headquarters to help coordinate military planning but will not see front-line action. The new deployment to Iraq announced by President Obama Wednesday night will increase the number of U.S. military forces in that country to about 1,600.  The U.S. first began sending U.S. military personnel to Iraq in June shortly after ISIS militants seized control of Mosul and large areas of northern Iraq. The new troops will arrive over the coming week to carry out a three-part mission:

• Advising and assisting Iraq’s security forces
• Supporting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance flights from Erbil in northern Iraq
• Staffing a headquarters to coordinate U.S. military activities throughout Iraq.

What will they do:

• 150 advisors and support personnel will form a dozen teams that will embed with Iraqi security forces at the brigade level and above.  They will not be involved in frontline combat situations.
• Another 125 personnel will support the operation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance flights from Erbil in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.  Kirby said the aircrews and military personnel being sent there will support “manned and armed ISR platforms” that will fly from a base in Erbil.
• An additional 200 personnel will augment the headquarters elements operating in Baghdad and Erbil.
• A senior defines official said that the U.S. military stands ready to conduct “direct action” against ISIS targets inside Syria.

American ground troops may be needed to battle Islamic State forces in the Middle East if President Barack Obama's current strategy fails, the nation's top military officer said Tuesday September 16, 2014, as Congress plunged into an election-year debate of Obama's plan to expand airstrikes and train Syrian rebels. A White House spokesman said quickly the president "will not" send ground forces into combat, but General Martin Dempsey said Obama had personally told him to come back on a "case by case basis" if the military situation changed. ---

Outgoing US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel authorized the deployment of up to 1,300 American troops to Iraq early next year to assist and advise Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) we were told on Friday December 19, 2014. Their mission will be to train, advice and assist Iraqi security forces. This deployment is part of the additional 1,500 troops that the president authorized in November. The announcement of the additional deployment will put the number of US troops at around 4,000 who will serve in Iraq and Kurdistan Region on non-combat mission. The new deployment will mainly be in the troubled province of Anbar where ISIS controls over 70 percent of the territory.

On Wednesday February 11, 2015, we were told that since the beginning of the war against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, US-led coalition jets have destroyed more than 1,000 IS military vehicles, and as part of its ongoing military aid, the US has donated 250 Abrams tanks to the federal government of Iraq.

Tehran and Washington share an interest in re-establishing state authority in Iraq, but in Yemen their agendas diverge. In Iraq on Wednesday March 25, 2015, U.S. warplanes began providing air cover to Iranian-backed militias in Tikrit. On the same day, 1,200 miles to the south in Yemen, the U.S. was providing guidance to Saudi pilots bombing Shia insurgents who are supported by Iran. So the U.S. was bombing Iran’s enemies in one country, and helping to bomb Iran’s allies in another.

Former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, one of the staunchest defenders of the Iraq war, said on Monday June 8, 2015, that his boss, former President George W. Bush, was wrong to try to create democracy onto Iraq. “The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words,” Rumsfeld said, adding, “I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories.”

The White House announced Wednesday June 10, 2015, that President Obama has approved sending up to 450 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, in a bid to boost local forces fighting the Islamic State's advances. The troops will be sent to help train, advice and assist Iraqi security forces, at a base in eastern Anbar province. The President made this decision after a request from Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi and upon the recommendation of top U.S. military officials. ---

Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday October 27, 2015, that the U.S. will begin "direct action on the ground" against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive.

Defence Secretary Ashton Carter on Tuesday October 27, 2015, said the United States will ramp up attacks on Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq, with additional air strikes and even direct action on the ground. He expects more actions like the one last week that freed dozens of captives but left an American commando dead in Iraq. However, the U.S. military might have a hard time getting these additional raids and air strikes approved by the Iraqi government, as they just aren't very into the idea of rekindling a bigger relationship with the USA right now, ISIS or no. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said, "This is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the U.S. Department of Defence to be involved in direct operations. We have enough soldiers on the ground."  He added that Iraq wasn't trying to get rid of the U.S. completely, as its efforts concerning "arming and training our forces" were still extremely useful. The Irai government said earlier this month that they would be interested in maybe getting more help from Russia, which recently began conducting air strikes in Syria —although the U.S. and its allies might argue that this involvement may not be too helpful when it comes to fighting ISIS.

The Pentagon conceded Wednesday October 28, 2015, that U.S. troops are in combat in Iraq. The comments came after Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler was killed last week in a raid to free hostages held by ISIS. They are in stark contrast to President Barack Obama's insistence last summer that "American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq" while announcing the decision to assist Iraqis fighting ISIS. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter also acknowledged that "there are American troops in combat every day" in Iraq, but he hedged his statement by saying that the overall U.S. role in Iraq is not to carry out a combat mission. Rather, he said, the U.S. mission to train and support local forces that does involve a combat aspect.

The US finally admitted that an air strike aimed at an IS checkpoint killed four civilians, possibly including a child. On Friday November 20, 2015, the military released the findings of an investigation into the incident, which took place in March 2015. Investigators concluded the checkpoint was a valid target and the attack did not violate international laws. The US has rarely acknowledged civilian deaths in the fight against IS and the announcement brings the total to six.

The US is to deploy a specialised force to Iraq to build pressure on Islamic State militants we were told Tuesday December 1, 2015. In full co-ordination with the government of Iraq the US will deploy a specialised expeditionary targeting force to assist Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces. The operators would carry out raids, free hostages and capture IS leaders. They would also conduct "unilateral operations" in Syria.

Iraqi Shiite groups and militias have said they will fight against a proposed deployment of US Special Forces troops to Iraq to fight ISIS.  Iraqi Shiite militants of Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Badr Organization and Asaib Ahl al-Haq on Tuesday December 1, 2015, pledged to fight US troops. Up to 3,500 US troops are currently advising and assisting Iraqi forces, including Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. ---

With help from US Special Forces Iraqi troops have surrounded Islamic State (ISIS) militants in the area of Hussaibiyah in eastern Ramadi we were told on Friday January 22, 2016. A special US force has arrived at the Ayn al-Asad Airbase in western Anbar to do their part in retaking areas still held by ISIS. The force's main duty is to protect Iraq’s borders with Syria and Jordan from ISIS militant infiltration. The US force should support the Iraqi soldiers and prevent ISIS from sending reinforcements to retake Rawa, Qaim and Ana in western Anbar.

Three American citizens kidnapped on January 16 in the Iraqi capital Baghdad were released on Tuesday February 16, 2016. They were released in an area near Yousifiya, south of Baghdad. They were kidnapped from their apartment in Baghdad. They were believed to have been kidnapped by a Shiite militia backed by Iran. They worked for a small company which was doing work for the General Dynamics Corp.

The U.S. has set up a small Marine artillery outpost in northern Iraq to protect a nearby Iraqi military base, expanding the number and the combat exposure of American troops in the country as Iraqi security forces plan and prepare for a counteroffensive against the Islamic State in Mosul. It is the first such base established by the U.S. since it returned forces to Iraq in 2014 in response to the Islamic State's takeover of Mosul and other areas of northern and western Iraq we were told Monday March 21, 2016. It is not a combat outpost because it is located behind the front lines and is not initiating combat with the militants. Their primary mission is to protect Americans. It did not take Islamic State fighters long to notice the additional Marines. On Saturday, they fired two rockets at the site, killing one Marine.

The US may be sending more troops to Iraq soon we were told Friday March 26, 2016, following reports that there are already some 5,000 American soldiers in Iraq on a regular basis. This statement came a day after US Marines provided artillery support to an Iraqi Army operation to liberate several villages outside Mosul, which has been the Islamic State’s (ISIS or ISIL) stronghold in Iraq since the group seized the city in June 2014. It is expected that there will be an increase to the US forces in Iraq in the coming weeks. ---

A Singapore man accused of illegally exporting U.S. parts found in explosives in Iraq, through Iran, has been extradited to the USA to face charges on Monday April 4, 2016. Lim Yong Nam, 42, was indicted in 2010 for sending radio frequency modules from Minnesota to Iran between 2007 and 2008, violating a U.S. trade embargo. The parts were later found in unexploded improvised explosive devices (IED) in Iraq by U.S. coalition forces. The devices caused the majority of the casualties against Americans fighting in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Indictment. Lim had been detained in Indonesia since October 2014.

The US is to send 200 extra troops to Iraq to help fight Islamic State (IS. The deployment will increase the number of US personnel in Iraq to about 4,100. Alongside the additional troops, Apache attack helicopters will be deployed for the first time against IS in Iraq. US Defence Secretary Ash Carter made the announcement during an unannounced visit to Baghdad, where he met with US military officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. The US also plans to give Kurdish Peshmerga forces, which are fighting IS on the ground, more than $400m in assistance. Co-operation between the two forces was evident on Monday when Kurdish officials said they had killed a senior IS commander in the south of Mosul in a joint raid with US Special Forces.

US President Barack Obama has acknowledged that three American troops who recently died in Iraq were killed in combat despite claims that US forces deployed to Iraq and Syria are on a mission to support, train and equip local forces. On Friday May 27, 2016, Obama said that the three US servicemen, Charles Keating, Joshua Wheeler and Louis Cardin lost their lives in combat. Keating was killed in May while Cardin was killed in March. Wheeler was killed in October 2015.

Two American troops were injured over the weekend in separate attacks by Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, the first time the U.S. military has publicly disclosed a casualty among troops deployed to Syria. Both soldiers were injured by indirect fire while conducting train-advise-and-assist missions. In both cases, the US said, these were people operating behind the forward line of troops. They were not on the front lines; they were not engaged in active combat.

The United States will send 560 more troops to Iraq to transform a freshly retaken air base into a staging hub for the long-awaited battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State militants we were told Monday July 11, 2016. The new American forces should arrive in the coming weeks. Most of the engineers, logistics personnel, security and communications forces will concentrate on building up Qayara air base, about 40 kilometres south of Mosul.  They will assist Iraqi forces planning to encircle and eventually retake the biggest city anywhere that has fallen under ISIS' control. The extremist group captured Mosul in the summer of 2014. It has used the city as a main headquarters since.

Iraqi troops are inching closer to the town of Qayara east of Mosul two days after they captured an important air base. Retreating ISIS militants have set oil wells on fire to hide from air strikes in the thick smoke. ISIS snipers have taken position inside the town's main hospital to prevent ground troops from entering the town. ---

The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called U.S. President Barack Obama and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton "founders" of Islamic State on Thursday August 11, 2016, igniting fresh criticism of his inflammatory campaign style. Previously he attacked Obama and Clinton for how the United States pulled out of Iraq after the war, saying it helped create the militant Islamist group that has seized swaths of Iraq and Syria. "I call President Obama and Hillary Clinton the founders of ISIS. They're the founders," he said. The idea that a sitting U.S. president created a militant group determined to kill Americans and other Westerners took that line of attack to a new level. Trump first made the assertion in a speech Wednesday night in Florida. He repeated it in an interview Thursday morning with CNBC. His remarks followed a troubled week for the Republican candidate. Party leaders urged Trump to focus on the campaign to beat Clinton after he drew strong criticism for a persistent confrontation with the family of Muslim American soldier who died in Iraq and for his initial refusal to support prominent Republican congressional candidates in their primary races. Recent opinion polls have shown Trump losing ground to Clinton, a former U.S. senator and first lady, in the race for the November 8 election. An average of polls has Clinton 7.7 percentage points ahead, at 48 percent to his 40.3 percent. The Americans seem to wake up to the fact that Trump is a dangerous and stupid imbecile.

Hundreds of US troops have landed at an air base south of Mosul we were told Saturday September 17, 2016. The troops arrived at an airbase in the town of Qayyarah, which was recaptured from ISIS by the Iraqi army last month. The American forces operating there will mainly provide logistics, supplies and support for the Iraqi offensive on Mosul. The move brings US personnel closer to the battle and ISIS' defensive lines. The facility, about 65 kilometres south of Mosul is strategically important because of its proximity to the ISIS stronghold in Iraq: it is expected to be rebuilt to allow US and coalition aircraft to operate from there.

One of the recurring themes of Donald Trump’s national security strategy is his plan to “take the oil” in Iraq and from areas controlled by Islamic State (Isis) extremists. It would drain Isis’s coffers and reimburse the US for the costs of its military commitments in the Middle East, the candidate insists. Trump suggested oil seizure would have been a way to pay for the Iraq war, saying: “We go in, we spend $3tn, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then … what happens is we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils.” He added: “One of the benefits we would have had if we took the oil is Isis would not have been able to take oil and use that oil to fuel themselves.”

The U.S. military is testing to see if a chemical agent may have been used in a rocket attack in Iraq by Islamic State that came within hundreds meters of U.S. forces but injured no one. The rocket fell on Tuesday in an unpopulated area near the Qayyara West base, where hundreds of U.S. forces are working to prepare an airfield ahead of Iraq's offensive to retake the city of Mosul. U.S. forces inspected the fragments afterwards and took a small sample of a suspicious "tar-like, black, oily" substance, which initially tested positive for mustard agent but then tested negative in a subsequent examination. Further tests were underway. As a precaution, they underwent routine decontamination procedures, including showers, but did not display symptoms that would typically show up within 12 hours of exposure. ---

On Saturday September 24, 2016, we were told that the US forces are using white phosphorus munitions against Islamist militants in Iraq, despite widespread perception of the weapon as indiscriminate and able to cause horrific injuries to civilians.

US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter confirmed that the US deployment of 600 US troops to the Qayyara West airbase south of Mosul is to support Iraqi troops attacking Mosul. On Wednesday September 28, 2016, we were told that their role will be advising and assisting the Iraqis and building out the infrastructure there.

• The Trump administration has signed a new executive order that temporarily bans people from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. The new executive order, effective next week, officially revokes and replaces the controversial order President Trump signed in late January that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked last month.
• The new order has been crafted to attempt to withstand legal challenge, exempting permanent legal residents and applying only to future visa applicants, not those who already hold valid visas.
• The new order also narrows the list of counties; it’s now six majority-Muslim countries instead of seven. Iraq has been removed from the original list at the urging of the Pentagon and State Department. The countries that remain on the list are Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Sudan.

 

B. The British
On November 20, 2005, a roadside bomb in Basra killed a British soldier.

The Ministry of Defence is inquiring why an Army helicopter accidentally fired on July 10, 2008, on UK paratroops in Afghanistan, wounding nine. The Apache attack helicopter was called in by ground troops battling with Taliban fighters, and it successfully engaged the insurgents a first time. But in a second attack, a British position was mistaken for the enemy, and three soldiers were seriously hurt. Six of the wounded have returned to duty. Two are stable in a field hospital. One is being flown back to the UK for treatment.

UK combat operations in Iraq ended on Thursday April 30, 2009, as 20th Armoured Brigade took part in a flag-lowering ceremony with a US brigade. In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said a new chapter in relations between the two countries had begun. Earlier, a memorial service attended by Defence Secretary John Hutton took place in Basra for the 234 UK and foreign troops and civilians who have died during the conflict. The end of combat operations came a month ahead of schedule.

The final decision to order the rescue of kidnapped journalist Stephen Farrell was taken by the foreign and defence secretaries, Downing Street has said on September 10, 2009. Gordon Brown was consulted, but David Miliband and Bob Ainsworth sanctioned it.

Cherie Blair said the decision to invade Iraq was a close call however convincingly her husband might have presented it otherwise we were told on Sunday October 11, 2009. The decision was likely "51-49" in favour of joining the 2003 US-led invasion, though her husband would have been very adept at making it seem "70-30", Cherie Blair was quoted as saying Saturday during an appearance at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. The comments came a day after her husband was berated for having "blood on his hands" by a father who lost his son at the start of the military campaign.

On Saturday December 13, 2014, we were told that hundreds more British troops are being sent to Iraq next month to bolster the fight against Islamic State (Isis) militants. The defence secretary, Michael Fallon announced an additional deployment of British combat-ready troops numbering “in the low hundreds” to help train local forces battling Isis forces, who control vast swathes of northern Syria and neighbouring Iraq. This will include a small contingent of combat-ready British soldiers at four US-led “safe” centres, one in Kurdistan and three near the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The move represents a significant increase of the 50-strong British force currently helping Iraqi and Kurdish fighters prepare to retake territory seized by the jihadist movement over the past year.

On Monday December 15, 2014, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has insisted British combat troops are not returning to Iraq despite the UK considering sending more personnel. Mr. Fallon told MPs that the UK was weighing up a "relatively small-scale" contribution of extra troops, on top of the 60 already training Iraqi forces.

Allegations of murder and torture made against British soldiers by Iraqi detainees were "deliberate lies", a five-year public inquiry has ruled. The Al-Sweady Inquiry found claims that up to 20 Iraqis were killed and mutilated after a 2004 battle were "reckless speculation". The murder allegations were withdrawn from the inquiry earlier this year. The report also found British soldiers mistreated nine Iraqi detainees, but it was not deliberate ill treatment. ---

A teenage British soldier currently on leave has said he plans to join the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) we were told on Thursday February 19, 2015. The 19-year-old, who has not been named, reportedly traveled to the region through Dubai, telling friends and relatives he planned to spend a year in the Middle East. He joined the army at the age of 16 and has been learning Arabic, which he noted as a skill he could put to use fighting against ISIS, in a text message to his family. Although the soldier received permission to take leave, he could face charges if he does not return by the time his approved leave ends. A number of Westerners have joined Kurdish forces combating ISIS in Iraq as well as Syria, but their numbers are small compared to the thousands of foreign fighters who have joined ISIS. The group now has an estimated 20,000 foreign recruits, 3,400 of whom are believed to have come from Western countries.

 

C. The Insurgents, Iraqis and Others
Iraq, Tuesday May 3, 2005:
- Clashes in the Iraqi city of Ramadi have left 12 insurgents, two Iraqi civilians and one Iraqi soldier dead. The fighting between US and Iraqi forces and insurgents started when a checkpoint manned by US marines came under attack.
- The US forces killed 12 insurgents in a clash on Monday near the Syrian border. Nine were killed when US forces stopped a suspect truck. Three more died in a subsequent air strike. A number of people were reported to have been wounded in the operation, including a six-year-old girl and six coalition soldiers. The US military said the 12 men killed near the Syrian border were suspected members of al-Qaida's wing in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
- On Monday. At least 12 people were killed in car bombings in Baghdad and Mosul.

Iraq, May 5, 2005:
- Suicide bombings at an army recruitment centre and outside an interior ministry official's home left 13 National Guards and a police guard dead. The bomber walked into the centre before detonating explosives strapped to his body.
- Gunmen killed nine police officers in attacks on patrol cars. The gunmen ambushed police sitting in their cars at two junctions in different parts of the city, killing nine and setting fire to their vehicles.
- A suicide car bomber, who killed a police guard, attacked the senior interior ministry official's home.
- Another suicide car bomb was directed at an US military patrol. A Humvee vehicle was reported to have been set on fire.
- At least 23 people have been killed in several attacks targeting security forces in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad
- The bodies of 14 men, the victims of execution-style killings, were found in Baghdad. They were in shallow graves, blindfolded with their arms bound and with bullet wounds to the head, possible victims of revenge killings.
- At least eight police officers died in a bombing near the northern city of Tikrit and several more were injured. The incident took place at an army and police checkpoint north of the city. The wounded include at least five police officers and two civilians. Most of the casualties were believed to be on board aboard a minibus transporting policemen, which had stopped at a checkpoint.
- At least 16 people were killed and more than 40 injured in a suicide car bomb south of Baghdad. The blast happened in a market in Suwayra, 60km (40 miles) south of the capital.

Seventeen people, including 13 Iraqis and four American security contractors, have been killed in a suicide bomb attack in central Baghdad on May 7, 2005. More than 33 were injured in the explosion targeting an armoured convoy used by Western contractors in Tahrir Square. Some of the wounded were girls from a nearby school.

Iraq May 8, 2005:
- A senior civil servant from the transport ministry, Zobaa Yassin, had been shot dead in his car with his driver.
- US-led forces killed six and arrested 54 suspected insurgents near the Syrian border. The US military said they had received intelligence suggesting that key followers of the militant leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, were located in the region. The statement said car bombs, bomb-making material and two buildings containing large weapons caches had been destroyed during the operation, near the town of al-Qaim.
- Three US soldiers were killed in separate attacks Sunday May 8, 2005, in central Iraq. One soldier was killed and another wounded during an attack on their combat logistics patrol near Samara, 60 miles north of Baghdad. The wounded soldier was evacuated to a military medical facility. Both soldiers were assigned to One Task Force Liberty.
- Two soldiers also died during combat operations in an explosion near Khaldiyah, 75 miles west of Baghdad.
- Iraqi security forces captured Amar al-Zubaydi, a key aide to the al Qaida leader in Iraq, Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Zubaydi, also known as Abu Abbas, was captured three days ago in Baghdad. He helped plan attacks on Abu Ghraib prison in April that wounded US troops and several inmates as well as a string of car bomb attacks in Baghdad.
- Two suicide car bombers ploughed into a foreign security company convoy in the heart of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 22 people including two Americans in an attack that left a busy traffic circle strewn with burning vehicles, mutilated bodies and bloodied school children.

Iraq, Sunday May 9, 2005:
- The US military killed 75 insurgents, including foreign fighters, in a desert region close to the border with Syria. The operation, in Anbar province, involved air and ground forces.
- A day earlier, the US said it had killed six insurgents and detained 54 suspects in raids in the area.
- In the capital Baghdad, at least three people, two police officers and a civilian, were killed in a suicide car bomb at a police checkpoint. About nine people were wounded when the bomber -who also died- drove into two police cars at a checkpoint in southern al-Darwish district.
- Two US Marines were killed and one on Monday.
- The militants claimed in a Web posting they took a Japanese man, Akihito Saito, hostage after ambushing a group of foreigners and Iraqi troops in western Iraq.

Iraq Tuesday May 10, 2005:
- Two car bombs have exploded in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least six people and injuring 47 more. The dead were thought to be civilians, killed by the first blast. Six policemen were injured in the second blast at an Iraqi river police station.
- A US marine was killed in a bombing in Iraq. The marine died on Monday of wounds inflicted during combat operations in Nasser Wa Salaam near Falluja.
- Gunmen, who demanded the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, kidnapped the region's governor, Raja Nawaf Farhan, today. Farhan was abducted as he drove from Qaim to the provincial capital of Ramadi, according to the Associated Press.
- The US military confirmed the deaths of three Marines in separate incidents near the capital city. Two were killed by indirect fire in Karmah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, while the third was killed in an explosion in Nasser Wa Salaam, 25 miles west of Baghdad.

Iraq, Thursday May 12, 2005:
- A car bomb exploded in a market in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 12 people. The blast in the Jadida district market on Thursday damaged several houses and destroyed cars, stalls and a bus carrying passengers. It sent a thick black plume of smoke over the city.
- Gunmen also killed an Iraqi army general and a police colonel as they drove to work in the capital. Gunmen shot dead Brigadier General Iyad Imad Mahdi and Colonel Fadil Muhammad Mubarak in separate attacks as they were on their way to work at the defence and interior ministries.
- Two car bombs exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, one targeting a police station, leaving at least one dead.
- The US military says two marines were killed and 14 wounded when their armoured vehicle drove over a mine during an offensive against insurgents in northwest Iraq on Wednesday.

Iraq May 13, 2005:
- Iraqi fighters settled through the rubble-strewn streets of Qaim on the Syrian border, setting up checkpoints and preparing to do battle despite a major US offensive aimed at rooting out followers of Iraq's most-wanted militant. The six-day-old US offensive in the area was launched in Qaim and is aimed at supporters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
- An American soldier was killed and four others wounded when a car bomb exploded in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad.
- The new interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, extended Iraq's state of emergency for another 30 days yesterday, effective from May 3.
- At least nine more Iraqis were killed and 19 wounded in a series of bombings, ambushes and other attacks. They included Iraqi army Major Murtadha Younis Hwesh, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad.
- Snipers fired on the motorcade of Interior Ministry under-secretary, Major General Hikmat Moussa Hussein, killing one of his guards and wounding three others. Hussein escaped unharmed.
- An exchange of gunfire with coalition forces in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, left five Iraqi civilians and three suspected insurgents dead.

Iraq May 14, 2005:
- At least four people have died in a suicide car bomb attack targeting a police convoy in central Baghdad. At least 10 more people, including two policemen, were also hurt. The attack took place in front of the concrete blast walls surrounding the former ministry of education.
- A roadside bomb in Baghdad's southern district of Dura kills three civilians, believed to be street cleaners
- A suicide bombing against an Iraqi-US patrol in the northern city of Mosul kills two and injures a policeman
- Four US marines died of wounds sustained after their vehicle hit a bomb in a weeklong operation in western Iraq. The latest casualties bring the US death toll from Operation Matador in western Iraq to 9, and the total across the country to 25 over the last week. US commanders say that at least 100 insurgents and foreign fighters have been killed in Operation Matador. The operation was launched to crack down on militants active in the rebellious Anbar province, from where they are believed to plot suicide bombings and attacks carried out in other parts of the country. The US believes they cross into Iraq from Syria, but Damascus denies the accusations.
- In Baghdad, gunmen assassinated a top Iraqi Foreign Ministry official, Jassim Mohammed Ghani, the ministry's director-general, Saturday evening in a drive-by shooting while he stood outside his Baghdad home.

Iraq, Sunday May 15, 2005:
- The bodies of 13 blindfolded and bound men were found shot multiple times in the head execution style in Baghdad's Sadr City.
- Eleven others bodies were found in Iskandariya, just south of Baghdad.
- A senior Industry Ministry official and his driver were killed in a drive-by shootings in Baghdad. Colonel Jassam Muhammed al-Lahibi, a former intelligence officer who worked as an assistant director in the Industry Ministry in charge of government-owned buildings.
- In another drive-by shooting, unidentified attackers killed Shiite cleric, Sheik Qassim al-Gharawi, an aide to Iraq's top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and his nephew in the capital's New Baghdad neighbourhood.
- Four people are killed and at least 15 injured when two suicide bombers attack the convoy of Raed Rashid, governor of Diyala province, in the town of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad; he escapes unharmed.

Iraq Monday May 16, 2005:
- A roadside bomb attack has killed four Iraqi soldiers, and injured for people, at Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad. They were attacked as they arrived at the town's fire station after it had come under mortar fire.
- In Baghdad itself, a bomb exploded as an Iraqi army convoy passed through the Saydia district - killing two civilians and injured four other people.
- Two Iraqi journalists working for a Kuwaiti TV station and their driver have been found dead south of Baghdad. The two journalists, Ali Jasim al-Rumi and Naji Abd Khudayir, were intercepted in the town of Latifiya while on their way to Karbala on Sunday.

Iraq Thursday May 19, 2005:
- An Iraqi politician said eight of his bodyguards have been killed during a gun battle with insurgents and helicopter-backed US forces. The politician, Fawaz al-Jarba, a Sunni Muslim member of Iraq's National Assembly, told the BBC seven of his men died at the hands of the US troops. The troops arrived at his house in the northern city of Mosul after one guard was killed by gunmen. The US military has confirmed the number of deaths, saying that "three terrorists" were among the dead.
- An oil ministry official, Ali Hameed, was shot dead by insurgents outside his home in Baghdad.
- In the Sadr City area of the capital, hundreds of people attended the funeral of the senior Shia cleric, Muhammad Allaq, an aide to the country's leading Shia cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who was killed on Wednesday.
- At least two people were killed in a car bomb near a Shia mosque in Baghdad.
- A suicide bomber killed one Iraqi soldier at an army checkpoint, while two police officers were killed in a roadside bomb in Baquba, 60km (40 miles) north of the capital.
- Ayatollah Sistani hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi in the city of Najaf. Both men have called for calm and for Iraq's Shiittes to resist provocation by the mainly Sunni-inspired insurgency.
- Wednesday, an Iraqi general was killed in a drive- by shooting in Baghdad.

Iraq, May 22, 2005:
- In Baghdad, US and Iraqi troops have arrested nearly 300 insurgents.
- Car and suicide bombings killed at least 16 people and injured more than 100.
- A car bomb exploded outside a Shia mosque in Mahmoudiya, a town south of Baghdad. At least five people were killed and more than a dozen injured.
- Earlier in the day, another car bomb went off outside a popular restaurant in the Shia-dominated Talibiya area of Baghdad. Four people were killed in the blast and about 100 injured.
- In Tuz Khurmatu in northern Iraq, a car bomb exploded killing five and wounding 13 others.
- In Samara in central Iraq, an attack by three suicide bombers on a US military base appears to have been thwarted, but two Iraqis were killed and nine people injured, including three US soldiers. Two suicide bombers detonated car bombs outside the base in the centre of Samara while a third attacker approached the base carrying explosives and was shot by soldiers.

Iraq May 24, 2005:
- A car bomb blast killed three US soldiers in central Baghdad. In Baghdad, the bomb rigged to a parked car exploded next to an American convoy as it was patrolling central.
- Four US soldiers had been killed the day before by an improvised explosive device in Haswa.
- A homemade bomb destroyed a Bradley fighting vehicle in Ramadi, injuring three US soldiers, two of whom returned to duty, while the third remained in a military clinic.
- In Arbil, Kurdistan 35 people were killed and 25 wounded in a double suicide car bombing late on Monday in Tal Afar.
- In Central Baghdad a car bomb exploded near a girls' school in Withaq Square, killing six people and injuring three others. Three civilians and one policeman were also injured.
- Another car bomb blast killed two Iraqis in a crowded street in Baghdad as a police patrol was passing injuring eight people.
- Iraqi and US forces detained 143 suspected insurgents, taking the number of people rounded up in a two-day offensive in western Baghdad to 428.
- Al Qaida's group in Iraq said its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been wounded and urged Muslims to pray for him, according to a Web posting.

The mutilated bodies of 10 Iraqi Shia Muslim pilgrims have been found in the desert near the town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border on May 28, 2005. They are thought to have been killed as they travelled back from Syria. The murdered pilgrims had apparently been blindfolded, tied up and shot in the head, police said. The corpses bore marks of torture. In other violence, seven people died in two suicide bombings in the northern town of Sinjar.

On Saturday May 28, 2005, near the Syrian border, two suicide car bombers detonated their vehicles close to a base manned by US and Iraqi troops near Sinjar, killing at least five Iraqis and wounding dozens.

On May 30, 2005, a double suicide attack in Hillah killed at least 27 people in Iraq and wounded more than one hundred. On the other hand, the American soldiers arrested a Sunnite political leader in Baghdad. They freed him a few hours later saying that his arrest was a mistake. In fact this could increase the religious divide in the country increasing the risk of civil war.

Iraq, Tuesday May 31, 2005:
- Four American military personnel were killed in an aircraft crash.
- An Iraqi plane crashed near the village of Jalula, about 130km northeast of Baghdad. The four Americans killed were all US air force members.
- Iraq's prime minister condemned the arrest of a top Sunni political leader by United States troops. Monday's 12-hour detention of Iraqi Islamic Party leader Mohsen Abdul-Hamid did little to help American efforts to entice Iraq's once-dominant Sunni community back into the political fold.
- Iraq's insurgency, which has killed more than 760 people since the new Shiite-led government was announced April 28, is believed to be strongly backed by radical Sunni extremists.

On June 1, 2005, four Iraqis, including three children, have been killed during a mortar attack in Baghdad. Fifteen other people were wounded. 672 Iraqis have been killed and 1174 wounded in May, 19% more that in April.

Iraq, June 2, 2005:
- A series of bomb attacks in Iraq has left at least 24 people dead and injured scores of others.
- One attack on a convoy in Baquba killed at least four people, including the deputy head of a local council. The car bomb exploded as Hussein Alwan al-Tamimi, deputy leader of the Diyala provincial council, was passing in a convoy, killing him and three of his bodyguards.
- Twelve people died in Tuz Khurmatu, 90km from Kirkuk and 37 were wounded. A child was among several reported killed in a suicide attack in Kirkuk. A number of others were injured. Bodyguards of Deputy Prime Minister Rowsch Shways were killed while eating. The Army of Ansar al-Sunna later claims responsibility.
- At least five were killed by bombs attached to motorcycles in the city of Mosul. The attack involving two bombs attached to motorcycles killed an Iraqi policeman and at least four others. The blasts happened outside a cafe near a police station. About 12 others were injured in the blasts.
- A roadside bomb near the western town of Ramadi had killed one Marine. More than 700 Iraqis and 70 US soldiers have been killed in the last month.

Iraq June 3, 2004:
- Ten followers of the mystic Islamic Sufi movement were killed last night in a suicide bombing. The crowd of Sufi worshippers was attacked by a suicide car bomber in the village of Saud, near the town of Balad, about 425 miles north of Baghdad. Sufi mystics are a target of Islamic extremists, who dispute their interpretation of the Koran. Twelve people were also injured in the explosion.
- On Friday, four Iraqis, including an army Brigadier, are reported to have been killed as government security forces and the US military continued their operations to clear insurgents from Baghdad. Brigadier Sabah Qara Alton, a Turkman member of the Kirkuk City Council, after he left a mosque in the northern city.
- The bombing brought Thursday's death toll to 49, of whom more than 30 were killed in four suicide bombings in the north of Iraq. A Shia cleric was also shot in the southern city of Basra.
- Two Iraqis, including a child, died when their car collided with a U.S military Bradley fighting vehicle.
- Today's casualties bring the number of people killed, including US forces, to more than 825 since Iraq's new Shia-led government was announced on April 28.
- In the southern city of Basra, gunmen shot and killed Ali Abdul-Hussein, leader of a Shiite mosque, as he stood outside his house.

Iraq June 3, 2005:
- Another Shiite Mullah, Ali Abdel Hussein, has been shot dead in Basra.
- In Kirkuk, a Turkoman official of the Taamim province, General Sabah Bahloul Goralton, has also been killed.
- In Baghdad hundred of Sunnite manifested against the continuous presence of US troops in the country.
- The Iraqi military operation in Baghdad is seen as a success by ... the Iraqi government. The number of attacks has decreased, about 700 "terrorists" have been arrested and 28 killed. Many arms have been found. About 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen helped by the US Army are involved. They have installed 675 checkpoints.
- On June 2, a suicide attack in a village in the north of the country killed at least ten people and wounded twelve.
- A roadside bomb near Kirkuk hit an American military convoy. There were quite a few wounded people but it is not known if there were American victims.
- In Samara two people -including one child- were killed in a gun battle between policemen and insurgents.

June 4, 2005 in Iraq:
- US and Iraqi soldiers have arrested at least 108 suspected insurgents in a series of raids south of Baghdad on June 5, 2005. The raids were undertaken as part of Operation Lightning, a series of security operations around the capital.
- Officials in Iraq also say they have arrested a militant leader suspected of involvement in many violent attacks. The man, known as Mullah Mahdi, was captured during a raid in the northern city of Mosul. Five others were arrested in the same operation, including Mullah Mahdi's brother. Mullah Mahdi was suspected of being a leader of the militant Islamist group, the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.
- A suicide car bomb killed two policemen and wounded at least seven others at a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul.
- US and Iraqi troops recovered dozens of artefacts of "historical importance" taken from Baghdad's National Museum following the US-led invasion, the AFP news agency reported.
- US Marines said they had discovered 50 weapons and ammunitions caches over the past four days in the restive Anbar province. The find included a recently used "insurgent lair" in a massive underground bunker complex that included air-conditioned living quarters and high tech military equipment, including night vision goggles.

Iraq June 7, 2005:
- At least 18 people have been killed in a series of bomb blasts around Hawija near Tikrit in northern Iraq. Four devices exploded within minutes of each other, three of them suicide bombs near army checkpoints. Some victims were Iraqi soldiers.
- A suicide bomb attack took place near a police patrol in the Shula district of northern Baghdad. At least 27 people were injured in the blast, many of them passers-by, although it is not thought anyone apart from the bomber was killed.
- Two marines had been killed since Sunday in roadside bombs near the western city of Falluja.
- Almost 900 suspected militants had been arrested in the past two weeks as part of a drive to reduce attacks in Baghdad.

On June 8, 2005, at least 14 Iraqis were killed in a few attacks and by the explosion of a car loaded wit explosives in and around Baghdad. Among the dead are two bodyguards of the Kurdish member of the Parliament, Freidoun Abdel Kader, who were shot dead in their car at the south entrance of Baghdad. Moreover 22 Shiite soldiers have been kidnapped in Rawa, 250 km west of Baghdad after leaving their base in the al-Anbar Sunnite province.

Iraq, June 11, 2005:
- A suicide bomber has killed three members of the elite Iraqi police unit in which he reportedly once served after walking into its Baghdad base on June 11, 2005. The government described it as a failed bid to assassinate the prominent head of the Wolf Brigade commando unit, Abul Waleed, who escaped the blast unhurt.
- Gunmen also killed 10 labourers on a minibus travelling towards Baghdad. Two cars pulled up and militants inside opened fire on the bus, which was coming from the town of Jbala, 70km south of the capital. Another three workers were injured in the attack.

On June 11, 2005, violence is still as bad as ever in Iraq:
- At least 11 people -including a nine months pregnant woman- were killed when a car exploded while they were leaving the hospital after seeing the doctor.
- The US army boasted that they killed at least 40 so-called insurgents in western Iraq. Planes dropped their bombs on a group of Iraqi men. Were they terrorists, who knows.
- A suicide bomber entered the headquarters of a local para-military militia in Baghdad. His bomb killed at least three militias and wounded an officer.
- In another suicide attack in front of the Slovak embassy in Baghdad, four security guards and an unknown number of civilians were wounded.
- Ten civilians travelling in a bus between Hilla and Baghdad have been shot dead by militants travelling in a car.

The bodies of 20 men killed execution-style were found on Sunday June 12, 2005, near Nahrawan, southeast of Baghdad. The bodies, bound, blindfolded and shot in the head, were found on Friday, days after they were dumped and became decomposed. Iraq's main Sunni organization, the Muslim Scholars Association, said on its website that a total of 30 bodies had been found around the execution area and one of them was identified as belonging to a Sunni Arab.

Iraq, June 13, 2005:
- Five Iraqi policemen and soldiers were killed in two suicide attacks north of Baghdad. At least seven other Iraqis were also killed in other attacks.
- The police found the bodies of six people shot dead also in Baghdad. This brings to 26 the number of people killed this way in four days in Baghdad alone. Most of the victims are Sunni.
- The Iraqi government has put a price of $50,000 on the head of a presumed terrorist, Ibrahim Youssef Turki al-Joubouri believed to be responsible for many attacks against policemen in Mosul.
- The police have arrested a member of the Ansar al-Sunna terrorist group. This man is accused of many murders in Baghdad.

Iraq, June 14, 2005:
- At least 20 people were killed in a suicide attack in Kirkuk.
- Ten other people were killed when a car exploded in Southern Iraq.
- Massoud Barzani had become the first president of the autonomous Kurdish region.
- The Iraqi police have arrested Jassem Hassan Hammadi al-Bazi (also known as Abu Ahmad) believed to be a terrorist linked to al-Qaida. He is accused to be a bomb maker.

On Tuesday, June 14, 2005, at least 22 people were killed in a suicide bombing in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Most of the dead were civil servants lining up outside a government-owned bank to get their salaries or pensions. They believe the bomber walked up to the queue with up to 30kg of explosives hidden under his clothes. Among the 50 people wounded were 10 children, who had small stalls on the side of the road.

At least 33 Iraqi security personnel were killed on June 15, 2005, in two separate suicide bombings. A bomber dressed as an Iraqi soldier blew himself up at an army canteen in the town of Khales, 60km north of Baghdad, killing 25 soldiers as they gathered for lunch. Hours later, a suicide car bomber slammed into a police patrol in southern Baghdad, killing at least eight.

At least three Iraqi civilians died and 11 were hurt in a mortar attack on June 16, 2005 in the town of Tal Afar. The mounting insurgent violence came as Iraqi politicians tried to move toward writing a constitution. In Baghdad, six policemen were killed today and 25 injured when a suicide car bomb exploded near their convoy, Agence France- Presse reported, citing the Interior Ministry.

On June 19, 2005, a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people by blowing himself up in a restaurant in Baghdad used by policemen. The Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's group linked to al-Qaida claimed responsibility later on. At the same time the American and Iraqi military authorities claimed that the operation Thunder aiming to eliminate all the terrorists in Baghdad was a success!

Iraq, June 20, 2005:
- At least 31 people have been killed and more than 130 injured in a series of attacks by insurgents across Iraq.
- In the biggest attack, a suicide car bomber killed at least 13 Iraqi police officers and wounded more than 100 in the northern city of Irbil. The kamikaze dressed in police uniform entered the ground where 160 policemen were present.
- In the nearby city of Kirkuk, four Iraqi troops died when a suicide bomber rammed his car into their checkpoint.
- At least 14 people were killed in other attacks, which included several car bombings in the capital, Baghdad.
- In another attack in the Kurdish region, a security chief in the town of Halabja and his three bodyguards were killed in a suicide car bombing.

Iraq, June 23, 2005:
- More than 30 people have been killed in a series of car bombings in Baghdad. Three early morning blasts in the Karrada commercial district left at least 15 dead and 50 wounded. The attacks targeted a Shia mosque and a police patrol, killing at least three officers. The third blast took place outside a public bathhouse, or hamam.
- More than 1,000 Iraqis have been killed in the two months since a Shia-led government was formed.
- US and Iraqi troops battled insurgents linked to Al Qaida in Iraq holed up in a Baghdad house, killing at least five of them.
- The leader of Al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, said that one of Saudi Arabia's most wanted terrorism suspects had been killed during fighting near the town of Qaim in northwest Iraq. The posting did not say when Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al-Rashoud was killed.

Iraq, June 25, 2005:
- At least 23 people have been killed during a series of insurgent attacks on the security forces across Iraq.
- Eleven people died during bomb attacks outside the home of a policeman in the restive northern city of Samara. Two attackers were killed, apparently while planting a second bomb intended to kill emergency services workers arriving at the scene.
- In Mosul, at least four policemen died in a suicide car bombing.
- The blasts followed the discovery of the bodies of eight policemen who died in an attack by gunmen in the western city of Ramadi. The eight policemen had been manning a checkpoint on the road between the western city of Ramadi and the Syrian border. They were apparently ambushed.
- There were also reports of clashes between US-backed Iraqi forces and insurgents at Tal Afar, near Mosul.

Iraq, June 26, 2005:
- At least 35 people have been killed in three separate suicide attacks in and around the northern city of Mosul.
- 15 people were killed in an attack on a police station in the central area of the Iraqi town.
- Another 15 died when a bomber-attacked people queuing outside a military base near the city -most of the dead are thought to be civilian labourers.
- Five policemen died in an attack on a hospital, where some of the casualties from the other bombings had been taken.
- A deputy police chief was shot dead on his way to work in Baghdad. A US soldier is killed and two injured in a roadside bomb in the city.
- A woman and two children are killed by mortar rounds in a residential area of eastern Baghdad.
- Four Iraqi police are injured in a bomb attack at a checkpoint near the northern city of Kirkuk.

Iraq, June 28, 2005:
- A suicide bomber has killed a senior member of the Iraqi parliament. Dhari al-Fayadh, 87 -a Shia who was Iraq's oldest MP- died with his son and three bodyguards when the car bomb hit their convoy in northern Baghdad. He is the second MP to die in renewed violence following the installation of an elected government in April. Dhari al-Fayadh, a tribal leader who had presided over the first session of parliament before a speaker was elected, was on his way to a meeting of the assembly when his attacker struck.
- A bomber killed himself and three others at a police guard station in a hospital in Musayyib, 70km south of Baghdad.
- In the northern city of Kirkuk, a car bomb kills two bodyguards in a failed attempt to assassinate the chief of traffic police.
- About 1,000 US marines backed by Iraqi troops launch Operation Sword between the towns of Hit and Hadith -the third big offensive this month against insurgents in the west of the country.
- The government calls for an end to a UN programme through which Iraq pays compensation for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War.
- Hours before Bush was to speak to the nation and the world, two US soldiers were killed in separate suicide car bomb attacks on patrols. Their deaths brought to 885 the number of US troops who have died in Iraq in the year since sovereignty was granted, more than the 856 who died in the 15 months of the invasion and formal occupation that preceded it.

Iraq, Friday July 1, 2005:
- A top aide to Iraq's Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was among 18 people killed in insurgent attacks across the country, including a bombing near an office of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's party. Sistani's senior adviser Sheikh Kamaleddin al-Ghuraifi was shot dead with two others in Baghdad on his way to Friday prayers.
- A suicide car bomber also blew himself up near an office of Jaafari's Islamic Dawa Party in western Baghdad, killing one and wounding another.
- Other attacks in Baghdad and in and around the restive city of Samara further north killed 14 police and soldiers and wounded at least seven, police and army sources said.

A suicide bomber has killed 20 people outside an elite police-recruiting centre in the Iraqi capital on July 2, 2005. The attacker wore an explosive-laden belt and blew himself up in the Yarmouk neighbourhood. Most of those killed were recruits for the commando force.

Iraq, July 5, 2005:
- Bahrain's top envoy to Iraq has been shot and wounded by gunmen who attacked his car in Baghdad. Gunmen ambushed Hassan Malallah al-Ansari as he made his way to work in the upscale Mansour district. Mr Ansari was hit by one bullet in his arm and is in a stable condition. The attack follows the kidnapping of Egypt's envoy to Iraq three days ago.
- Four women employees at Baghdad airport have been killed in an ambush on their minibus on July 5, 2005. Two groups of gunman in two cars ambushed the vehicle as it was taking passengers to work along the dangerous airport road. Four men were also injured in the attack.
- A bomb has exploded near the Iranian mission in Baghdad, but police said it targeted a US military patrol, rather than Iranian diplomats. A civilian guard was wounded in the blast.

Iraq July 8, 2005:
- Iraq appealed to its partners yesterday to defy al-Qaida's "blackmail" and keep their diplomats in Baghdad despite the reported slaying of Egypt's top envoy and threats against those who support the US-backed administration.
- One US soldier was killed and six were wounded in separate insurgent attacks north and south of the Iraqi capital.
- At the G8 summit in Scotland, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi reiterated that his government would begin withdrawing about 300 troops from Iraq in September.
- Violent incidents in the Iraqi capital are declining since Iraq's US-backed forces launched an operation against insurgents in the city six weeks ago. Car bombings had dropped from between 14 and 21 a week in May to about seven or eight a week now.
- Pakistan's Ambassador Mohammed Younis Khan left the country after his convoy was fired upon in a kidnap attempt.
- Bahrain's top envoy, Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, was expected to leave soon after he was slightly wounded in a separate attempt.
- The country's most feared terror group said it wanted to seize "as many ambassadors as we can" to punish governments that support Iraq's Shiite-dominated government.

Iraq, Saturday July 9, 2005:
- Eleven Iraqis- including two soldiers and a police officer- were shot dead throughout the city of Mosul in separate attacks on Friday. In the worst attack, four civilians travelling from Baghdad were dragged out of their car and shot in the south of the city.
- A family of four were shot dead on Saturday in the northern town of Beiji when gunmen stormed their house at dawn and killed a husband, wife and their children, five and two years old. Residents said the man may have worked for a foreign company.
- An Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb 8 km east of Baquba while driving an old white pick-up truck on the road. No military targets were nearby at the time of the blast.
- Police killed three insurgents driving a car packed with explosives in western Baghdad's Ghazaliya district on Thursday evening. The car was stopped at a routine police checkpoint but attempted to escape before police shot dead the occupants.

Iraq, July 10, 2005:
- A suicide bomber has killed more than 20 people who were queuing outside an army-recruiting centre in Baghdad. The attacker walked into a crowd of young men who were waiting to be signed up by the military and blew himself up.
- Gunmen killed at least eight members of a family as they slept in their home in Baghdad. Neighbours of the Tarash family found the bodies on Sunday and informed the father, who had spent the night elsewhere. They said the mother and her children - the youngest of whom was two years old - had been shot in the head in their sleep. The father, Hussein Tarash, said he had no enemies and it was a sectarian attack on his family, which is Shia.
- In Kirkuk a suicide bombing saw three people killed and at least 10 others injured when the attacker detonated explosives in his car outside municipal buildings.
- In Mosul, at least four policemen were killed and three were wounded when a suicide bomber in a car rammed the motorcade of a district police chief.

Gunmen have attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint north of Baghdad on July 11, 2005, killing at least nine soldiers. Three people were injured in the half-hour gun battle that ensued, including a civilian. The attack happened at dawn in the town of Khalis, near Baquba. As reinforcements were sent to the scene a car bomb exploded causing casualties among both soldiers and civilians.

A suicide car bombing in southeastern Baghdad on Wednesday July 13, 2005 has killed at least 26 Iraqis, almost all of them children. A US soldier has died in the blast and three have been injured. A car drove up to a US army vehicle and blew up as troops gave sweets to the children.

Thursday July 14, 2005, in Iraq:
- Two homicide bombers struck near the Green Zone in central Baghdad, but a third was wounded and captured by US and Iraqi security forces. At least nine people were wounded in the blasts. It was a coordinated attacks by a homicide car bomber and another man wearing a vest with explosives. The attacks took place at a checkpoint near the Green Zone where the US Embassy and Iraqi government offices are located.
- Security forces discovered the bodies of 10 men handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head. The bodies of the men aged between 25 and 35 were found Wednesday night in the Maamel area on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad.
- On Wednesday, the Sunni association accused Iraqi security forces of detaining, torturing and killing 11 Sunni Arab men, including a cleric.
- Sunni groups also accused security forces of allowing at least nine Sunnis detained last weekend to suffocate after locking them for hours in a van without ventilation as temperatures soared to 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Two bands of gunmen in western Baghdad and near the northern city of Kirkuk killed three policemen each.
- Another group of assailants killed police Captain Manhal Salim, an expert in defusing bombs, shortly before midnight in the capital.
- The body of another policeman with gunshots to the head was found late Wednesday, also in western Baghdad.
- More than 1,600 people have been killed in violence since April 28, when al-Jaafari announced his Shiite-led government in a country trying to crush an insurgency whose foundation is made up of Sunnis.

Iraq, Friday July 15, 2005:
- Eight suicide bombings carried out across the capital on Friday, killed at least 11 Iraqis, mostly soldiers, and wounded scores. The US military said three suicide car bombs killed 15 civilians and five soldiers. Al Qaida claimed responsibility for five suicide car bomb attacks in the capital.
- A US tank was hit in New Baghdad district to the east of the capital.
- A US patrol was hit by a car bomb in eastern Baghdad.
- 19 Iraqis were wounded in a suicide car bomb explosion near former Ministry of Defence in northern Baghdad's Bab al-Mu'adham district.
- Two Marines were killed by a roadside bomb near the Jordanian border in the town of Trebil on Thursday.
- Two Iraqi policemen were killed and a third was critically injured when anonymous gunmen attacked their checkpoint south of Baquba in the town of Buhriz.
- A suicide bomber blown himself while a policeman shot at him in an attempt to target a Shiite mosque in Jamila area. Three civilians and two policemen were injured.

Iraq, July 16, 2005:
- A suicide bomber in a fuel truck killed at least 60 people in a town south of Baghdad. The bomb, which police said exploded near a Shiite mosque and market, also wounded 82 people. It followed several attacks that killed at least 16 people, including three British soldiers, on Saturday.
- A suicide bomber in a car hit the Doura district in south Baghdad, killing three civilians and two policemen.
- In Mosul a suicide bomber strapped with explosives attacked a police station, killing four policemen.

Iraq. July 17, 2005:
- Bombs in the Iraqi capital have killed at least eight people. Most of the victims of Sunday's four blasts were policemen - three from an elite commando unit. Many were injured, including a number of civilians.
- On Sunday, a car bomb in southern Baghdad killed two police commandos and a civilian and injured 13, including nine policemen.
- Another bomb in the west of the city killed a commando and wounded three civilians.
- Four more policemen died in another two bomb attacks in the city.
- The death toll reached 98 in a suicide fuel truck bombing overnight in the town of Musayyib south of Baghdad, making it the deadliest incident since the government took power in April. A suicide bomber exploded a fuel truck near a crowded market outside a Shiite mosque.
- Five members of the election commission were killed in a suicide car bomb attack outside one of its headquarters in southeast Baghdad. Earlier, a police source said that three policemen were killed and two civilians were wounded in the attack.
- The headquarters of a political party representing the Turkmen ethnic group, in the Kafa'at District north of city Mosul, was destroyed by fire after a raid by Iraqi troops, the party said. Witnesses said troops had earlier been fired at from near the building and one soldier was killed.
- Bodies of two Iraqi contractors working with the US Army were found dead by a police patrol.
- One person was killed and two were injured when gunmen fired on a funeral procession driving from Mahmudiya to Najaf on the express highway south of Baghdad, one of the injured told Reuters at a hospital in Baghdad.
- US forces disclose the death of a soldier from wounds sustained in a car bomb in Iskandariya on the highway south of Baghdad on Friday.

Iraq, July 18, 2005:
- Insurgents killed 18 police and government workers in a series of shootings across central Iraq but the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday the recent wave of suicide bombings won't derail progress toward democracy.
- Insurgents killed eight policemen in a gun battle in the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Khadra. It was not clear if any insurgents were killed.
- Gunmen also killed six police officers, including a colonel, in five attacks in Baghdad.
- Another policeman died in a shootout between insurgents and security forces in Taji, just north of Baghdad.
- A police colonel was fatally shot while driving his car in Samara.
- Insurgents also attacked government employees Monday, killing a worker for the Iraqi Trade Minister in the southern neighbourhood of Dora.
- A municipal worker was also killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting on a highway between the cities of Samara and Balad north of Baghdad.
- US forces said Monday they killed four insurgents preparing to launch mortars in the northern city of Tal Afar. A fifth suspected insurgent in the same area was killed by US troops during a raid.
- US and Iraqi forces seized a large weapons cache Monday in western Mosul, including more than 1,000 mortar rounds, 450 rocket-propelled grenade rounds, and 150 rockets.
- In Jordan, Iraq's planning minister criticized the massive shortfall in donations pledged by foreign countries to rebuild his country, telling a global reconstruction conference that most aid had been spent on security. Barham Salih said of $32 billion in loans and grants pledged two years ago, Iraq has received only $7 billion.
- Al-Qaida in Iraq reported Monday that one of its "field commanders" had been killed by coalition forces in western Iraq. The statement did not say when the man, Abi Salih al-Ansar, was killed.
- The government said Monday a stolen fuel tanker was used in a suicide attack last week that killed over 90 people in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad.
- In southern Baghdad, Iraqi police found the body of an unidentified man with multiple gunshot wounds dumped on a highway.
- Iraq's most powerful Shiite clergyman, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is deeply upset by the upsurge in suicide attacks.
- The military said a US Marine died in a non-hostile incident at a US base in Ramadi. The death is under investigation.

At least 13 people have died on July 19, 2005, in an ambush on a minibus carrying workers to a US base in Baquba. Gunmen in two cars targeted the bus as it travelled to al-Faris airbase, 60km northeast of Baghdad. Ten people were killed by gunfire, and another three died when the bus careered into another car - possibly one of those used by the gunmen. There are also reports of a roadside bombing targeting a police patrol in Kirkuk that killed two people. One of the dead was a policeman and the other a member of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.

Iraq, Tuesday July 19, 2005:
- At least 31 people were killed on Tuesday in Iraq violence, including 13 slaughtered when insurgents ambushed a bus carrying workers to a United States army base.
- In Baquba, ten workers were killed when a bus came under heavy gunfire from the attackers.
- Another three civilians in a passing car were killed when the bus was out of control and slammed into the vehicle.
- In Baghdad, three Sunni Arab members of the constitutional panel were gunned down hours after President Jalal Talabani said that the new post-Saddam Hussein constitution of Iraq might be ready by the end of July.
- In Kirkuk, two people were killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb in the northern oil centre hit an Iraqi police patrol. One of the dead was a policeman, while the other was a member of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the political party of President Jalal Talabani.
- A police major was killed when an explosive planted outside the university gates in Saddam Hussein's hometown exploded.
- Three civilians were killed and four injured when a mortar round exploded in Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border.
- Two insurgents were also killed and five civilians injured in clashes between insurgents and the Iraqi army.
- In Tal Afar, one civilian was killed and four injured when Iraqi police clashed with insurgents.
- Police also found two unidentified bodies in Tal Afar, while a businessman's body was found in Beiji.
- Four Iraqi soldiers and four civilians were killed in separate attacks in Baghdad. The army said the attacks also left eight others wounded, seven of them soldiers.

A suicide bomber has killed at least eight people and wounded many others at an army recruitment centre in Baghdad on July 20, 2005. The attacker apparently mingled with the recruits before detonating his explosives belt at Muthanna airbase used as an army recruitment centre.

At least eight Iraqis have died in a series of attacks by Iraqi insurgents in and around Baghdad on July 20, 2005. A suicide car bomber attacked an army patrol in Mahmoudiya, 30km south of Baghdad, killing five soldiers and wounding nine. A policeman was killed and eight others wounded by a car bomb in the capital, and two civilians died in a separate attack, also in the capital. A series of attacks across Iraq killed six others.

Iraq July 25, 2005:
- In Baghdad, two suicide bombers attacked police checkpoints in central Baghdad, killing at least eight people.
- At least six people died when the first bomber blew up a minibus close to the Sadeer hotel, sending clouds of black smoke into the sky. The hotel, which has been attacked in the past, once housed US contractors.
- A second bomber struck near an entrance to Baghdad's government and diplomatic compound, killing two policemen.
- A suicide bomber killed at least 25 people and wounded 33 when he blew up a lorry at a police station in the Iraqi capital, injuring more than 30.

Iraq, July 29, 2005:
- A suicide bomber blew himself up among a group of Iraqi army recruits in northern Iraq, killing 48 people and wounding 58. Ten Iraqi civilians were killed in the attack. The attack occurred outside a municipal building in Rabia, a town 50 miles northwest of Mosul, Iraq's third largest city. The al-Qaida group in Iraq said it carried out the attack.
- Separately, American and Iraqi forces killed nine guerrillas, five of them Syrians, in a small village northwest of the capital. The guerrillas had fired rocket-propelled grenades and small arms at a joint US and Iraqi patrol, prompting US forces to respond with an air strike.
- Hours after the blast in Rabia, a car bomb intended for a police patrol killed two Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.
- A car bomb attack on a US military patrol in Mosul killed a child and wounded 11 civilians.

Iraq, July 30, 2005:
- Insurgents in Iraq kidnapped an Iraqi government official at gunpoint. Four gunmen in two cars stormed Razaq's home in the Mansour neighbourhood and took her during the early afternoon. Eman Naji Abdul Razaq is the Health Ministry's director general of the projects department.
- Near the Iraqi National Theatre a suicide car bomb killed six people, including three police officers, and wounded 26 others.
- In Baghdad, an American soldier and an Iraqi civilian were killed in a roadside bombing. The soldier died and two others were wounded in the southwestern neighbourhood of Doura. The US military death toll in the war is 1,787.
- The bodies of three Baghdad International Airport employees were found together on a road leading into the al-Amil neighbourhood of southwestern Baghdad. The three, who had been kidnapped earlier this week, had had their throats cut and their bodies showed signs of torture, a police official said.
- A roadside bomb wounded a US soldier in a convoy in northern Baghdad Saturday.

Iraq, July 31, 2005:
- A car bomb exploded at an Iraqi police checkpoint killing seven civilians and wounding 12 others. The attack occurred near the town of Haswa. The explosives-packed vehicle had been left by the side of the road, near the checkpoint, and was detonated remotely.
- Gunmen ambushed a convoy from Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party, killing one security guard and wounding three. A large convoy carrying an international delegation was attacked as it drove through the town of Mahawil on the way to the southern city of Kerbala. Chalabi was not in the convoy.
- Gunmen opened fire on a group of cooks leaving a military base in Baquba, killing one and wounding three.
- An Iraqi translator for the US military was shot dead by gunmen as he was leaving his house in Kirkuk.
- Insurgents attacked a minibus transporting Iraqi civilians working at an American base, killing three and critically wounding three in Beiji.
- Gunmen opened fire on the convoy of Ibrahim Issawi, senior adviser to the environment minister, killing one of his security guards and wounding three on Saturday in the southern Shiite town of Kufa.

Iraq, August 1, 2005:
- Interior ministry official Brigadier Salam Lutfi was killed and two of his guards were wounded when gunmen attacked his car on a highway in eastern Baghdad.
- One Iraqi soldier was killed and six injured when a roadside bomb struck near their patrol in Tuz Khurmatu, 60 km south of Kirkuk.
- Two bomb attacks on Sunday killed five US soldiers during patrols in Baghdad neighbourhoods.
- One soldier was killed and two soldiers were wounded when their patrol hit a landmine in al-Doura, south of Baghdad.
- Four more soldiers were killed when their patrol struck a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad.
- The bodies of 20 people, one of them beheaded, some of them shot and others with their hands bound behind their backs with plastic straps, were found dumped in southwest Baghdad.

Iraq, August 7, 2005:
- At least five people were killed when a suicide bomber exploded a truck outside a police base in Tikrit. Fifteen other people were injured in the blast.
- In two separate incidents in Baghdad, unidentified gunmen shot dead three Iraqi soldiers and two oil ministry workers.
- A roadside bomb near Samara, north of Baghdad, killed two US soldiers.

Six Iraqis were killed in scattered ambushes Monday August 8, 2005, in Baghdad. US forces also clashed with insurgents in the volatile city of Ramadi, 70 miles, west of Baghdad, but no casualties were reported.

Three Iraqi civilians have been killed in a suicide car bombing in central Baghdad on August 9, 2005. The vehicle was detonated near a US convoy in Tayaran Square.

Iraq, August 10, 2005:
- A US soldier was killed and two were wounded in a suicide car bombing in central Baghdad.
- At least 28 Iraqis died and 66 others were hurt in attacks across the country.
- In five separate attacks in Baghdad today, nine policemen died and five were injured.
- A Marine was killed in action yesterday by small-arms fire in Ramadi.
- In Baquba, about 40 miles north of the capital, a policeman was killed and another was wounded.
- Also north of Baghdad, four Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bombing in the city of Samara.
- Five civilians died and eight were hurt by gunmen near Baquba.

Iraq, August 10, 2005:
- A car bomb explosion in west Baghdad on August 10, 2005, has killed seven people and wounded at least 16 others including US troops. The bomb blew up in front of a police patrol in the Ghazaliya district and at least three officers were among the dead. Five US soldiers were wounded.
- Four American soldiers were killed in an attack on Tuesday evening near the northern oil-refining town of Baiji.
- A US patrol was ambushed in the oil-producing town of Beiji, some 155 miles north of Baghdad. Two US Humvee vehicles and a large armoured patrol car were burned out by the attack.

Iraq, August 12, 2005:
- A US Apache helicopter crashed in northern Iraq, injuring two American troops. The two injured service members were evacuated in the area of Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed a US soldier in the central city of Tikrit.
- A US Marine died of wounds sustained in an August 10 bomb attack in Ramadi.
- An Iraqi special police unit in Mosul killed an associate of the al Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A Mosul police spokesman said Mohammed Salih, also known as Abu Zubair, was shot dead while in a car.

Iraq, Friday August 12, 2005:
- A blast near a mosque west of Baghdad killed four people, three of them were children, and injured at least 19 others. The blast occurred near the town of Nasaf near Ramadi. Hospital official Ali Taleb said the deaths and injuries occurred when a US armoured vehicle fired near the Ibn al-Jawzi mosque after worshippers had left the building following Friday prayers.
- An US soldier assigned to Task Force Liberty was killed in a roadside bombing while on patrol in Tikrit, 130 kilometres north of Baghdad.
- Two American service members were injured when their Apache helicopter crashed near Kirkuk, 290 kilometres north of Baghdad. The US command gave no reason for the crash, but Iraqi police said the cause was believed to be mechanical and not hostile fire.
- Two truck drivers were missing after gunmen ambushed their vehicles that were delivering supplies to an US base west of Ramadi. The nationalities of the drivers were unknown
- In Mosul, Iraqi troops killed three insurgents who were trying to break into a polling station to be used for the October constitution referendum. One of the insurgents was wearing a belt loaded with explosives.
- In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol in the southern part of the capital, injuring four people, police Col Asad al-Ghreiri said.

Iraq, Sunday August 14, 2005:
- Captured insurgents in Iraq led authorities to a mass grave in Baghdad containing 30 bodies. It was unclear who was in the two-week-old grave or how they died, but at least two women were among the dead.
- Iraqi forces killed one insurgent in a raid and captured 13 others, some of whom confessed to dumping bodies in the grave. The detained included an Egyptian and a Sudanese man.
- Insurgents killed five US soldiers with roadside bombs. One blast at Tuz in northern Iraq killed three US soldiers.

Iraq Thursday August 18, 2005:
- A roadside bomb in the town of Samara killed four US soldiers, 100 km north of Baghdad.
- Three civilians were shot dead after a raid on their house by US and Iraqi troops in the Amariya district, western Baghdad.
- Gunmen burst into Ramadi's main mosque where a group of prominent Sunni Muslim clerics were meeting with the provincial governor of Anbar province, 110 km west of Baghdad.
- The governor and the head of the Muslim Clerics Association in Ramadi, Thamir al-Dulaimi, escaped injury but Dhahir al- Obeidi, head of the Sunni Endowment organisation, was wounded along with his deputy.
- A magistrate at Karkh Appeal Court, Jassim Whayib, was killed by gunmen in the Doura southern district of Baghdad. His driver was also killed in the attack.

Masked gunmen killed three Sunni Arabs in front of horrified witnesses outside a mosque in Mosul on Friday August 19, 2005, after grabbing them as they hung posters urging fellow Sunnis to vote in a referendum on the new constitution. The three members of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, were seized in a Mosul neighbourhood and they were driven to another neighbourhood, shoved against a wall near the Dhi al-Nourein mosque and shot dead while more masked gunmen blocked off a major street. The gunmen then fled in three cars, leaving the bodies behind.

Iraq, August 19, 2005:
- A roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed four American soldiers. The roadside bomb blast occurred in the tense, religiously mixed city of Samara, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
- Insurgents threw a hand grenade at an Iraqi patrol in central Falluja, wounding two troops. The attack came one day after a car bombing killed three people in the city.

The insurgents killed 10 people in Baghdad on Monday August 22, 2005. Eight policemen were among those killed as their mini-van was riddled with bullets north of the capital.

On Wednesday August 24, 2005, seven people died in an attack on Mr Sadr's office in Najaf, leading to unrest in other cities. Radical Iraqi Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has appealed for calm and an end to clashes between rival Shia factions. It is not clear what lies behind the violence. Mr Sadr has sided with Sunni leaders in opposing the federalist tone of the draft constitution, warning that this could lead to the break-up of Iraq.

On Thursday August 25, 2005, police reported the discovery of the bodies of 36 men dumped in a shallow river near the eastern Iraqi town of Kut. They were partially clothed, had been handcuffed and all had been shot in the head in an execution style.

Iraq, September 2, 2005:
- A young girl has died in Baghdad in a gun battle between Sunnis and Shia near the scene of Wednesday's stampede in which nearly 1,000 pilgrims died. As Shia marched on the al-Aima bridge Iraqi soldiers guarding the bridge fired in the air. Believing they were under attack, Sunnis on the other side of the river opened fire. The 12-year-old girl was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire. A number of people were also injured in the gun battle in northern Baghdad.
- One person dies and at least four others are injured in a drive-by shooting outside two Sunni mosques in Basra.
- Two separate blasts - targeting a US convoy and a private security convoy - rock central Baghdad, injuring one person.
- Two of its soldiers were killed while on patrol in Baghdad on Thursday, and one soldier died south of the capital on Wednesday.

Iraq on Friday, September 2, 2005:
- One person was killed when gunmen in a car fired on Friday worshippers at two Sunni mosques in the mainly Shiite southern city of Basra. In all, five people were wounded in the two incidents.
- A police source said one policeman was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb on a highway struck their car to Mahaweel, 85 km south of Baghdad.
- Two US soldiers were killed by a bomb while on patrol in Baghdad on Thursday.
- A US soldier was shot dead in the northern town of Tal Afar on Monday.
- Gunmen shot dead a US soldier near Iskandariya, 40 km south of Baghdad, on Wednesday.
- A foreign security contractor was killed and another seriously wounded when a roadside bomb blasted their vehicle in central Baghdad. Their nationalities were not known. A white sport utility vehicle was ablaze. It followed a similar attack against US troops nearby.
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Iraq on Saturday, September 3, 2005:
- One insurgent was killed and another wounded when the roadside bomb they were assembling exploded in Duluiyah, 40 km north of Baghdad, on Thursday.
- Gunmen at a checkpoint killed four Iraqi soldiers 30 km north of Baquba.
- In a separate incident, armed gunmen at a checkpoint in central Baquba killed six Iraqi police.
- Seven Iraqi policemen and two soldiers were killed and two policemen wounded by gunmen in a joint checkpoint manned by Iraqi police and army 4 km south of Baquba.
- Five Iraqi soldiers were killed and nine wounded by a roadside bomb in Baiji, 180 km north of Baghdad, on Friday.

Iraq on Sunday, September 4, 2005:
- US and Iraqi forces are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shiite and Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.
- An Iraqi army lieutenant was shot dead by gunmen in central Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad, on Saturday. His wife was badly wounded.
- The Muslim Clerics Association said it discovered the bodies of two Sunni clerics and three other men in a morgue in Baghdad, three days after being arrested by interior ministry troops

A suicide bomber detonated his booby-trapped car in western Iraq Monday September 5, 2005, killing 11 people, including three Iraqi soldiers. Three terrorists were also killed in the attack that targeted a base for the multinational forces in the city of Heet in the province of Anbar. Police seized and dismantled another booby-trapped car in Baquba, 60 kilometres east of Baghdad. Nine arms caches were also discovered in the Sunni regions of Hassiba, Ramadi, Bild, Falluja, Tel Afar and Mosul. They comprised mortars, anti-aircraft rockets, tank shells, explosives and heavy gun shells.

Iraq, September 6. 2005:
- US jets struck targets near the Syrian border where al-Qaida has expanded its presence, and civilians fled fighting in the northern city of Tal Afar, complaining they were running short of food and water. The air strikes took place near Karabilah, about 185 miles west of Baghdad and one of a cluster of towns near the Syrian border used by foreign fighters to slip into Iraq.
- Four more Americans have been killed in action. One US soldier was killed Monday in Tal Afar, two others died Tuesday in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, and another was killed the day before near Ramadi west of Baghdad.
- Iraqi civilians reported a suicide bomber struck a checkpoint in Haditha, 60 miles east of Karabilah. There were no reports of casualties.
- Iraqi officials and residents say al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took over parts of Qaim after residents fled fighting between tribes supporting and opposing the insurgents.
- Thousands of civilians fled Tal Afar, a predominantly ethnic Turkmen city 260 miles northwest of Baghdad where US and Iraqi soldiers are trying to wrest control from insurgents.

US forces have carried out overnight bombing raids on the Iraqi town of Talafar, near Syria, on September 8, 2005. The Americans say foreign fighters crossing into Iraq from Syria are using the town as a staging post.

The international airport in the capital Baghdad was closed on Friday September 8, 2005. The British company providing security suspended operations because of a dispute over payment with Iraq's Ministry of Transport. A statement by the company, London-based Global Strategies Group, said the ministry has not paid the company for the services it has rendered for seven months. Iraqi officials say the firm is demanding too much money for security, and, if necessary, Iraqi soldiers will replace the private security guards.

Iraq on Friday, September 9, 2005:
- One civilian was killed and two wounded when a car bomb exploded targeting a US military patrol in southern Baghdad.
- Two Iraqi guards from Facility Protection Service, a government-run security force, were seriously wounded when gunmen fired on them in southwestern Baghdad.
- Three policemen and one civilian were killed in a roadside bombing in Saydeyah district in Baghdad, which wounded nine other policemen.
- One policeman was killed and five wounded when unknown gunmen fired on their patrol in western Baghdad.
- Two civilians were killed and four wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol between Yusufiya and Mahmudiya south of Baghdad.
- Two special force policemen were shot dead by gunmen in an open market in the town of Baquba, 65 km north of Baghdad.
- One civilian was injured when a roadside bomb exploded targeting a Shiite mosque in southern Baghdad on Thursday.

US and Iraqi troops hunted rebels and foreign fighters in a town close to the Syrian border on Sunday September 11, 2005, as, on the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, al Qaida's leader in Iraq swore he would defeat them. The US-backed government, which closed the Syrian border in a bid to keep out Islamist guerrillas, continued to promote the offensive against insurgents in the northern city of Tal Afar as a showpiece for its new army but US generals made clear, though, that American firepower was also vital to the operation.

Iraq on Sunday, September 11, 2005:
- Major General Adnan Abdul Rahman of the Interior Ministry's paramilitary forces was shot dead outside his house by gunmen in Baghdad. The Islamic Army in Iraq claimed the attack in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site.
- The bodies of four Iraqis including one in an army uniform were found shot dead with their hands bound in the town of Qa'im, an insurgent stronghold near the Syrian border.
- One British soldier was killed and three injured in an incident near Iraq's second largest city of Basra. A little known Iraqi insurgency group, the Imam Hussein Brigades, claimed the attack.
- A US soldier was killed and two others injured after a roadside bomb detonated at dawn next to a military vehicle patrolling near the northern Iraqi town of Samara.
- A bomb blew up near a police patrol guarding a main bus station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk wounding two policemen.

Iraqi forces launched a new offensive against insurgents in the town of Tal Afar near the Syrian border on Monday September 12, 2005, and Washington said its patience with Damascus was running out over guerrilla infiltrations. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari visited the area. Commanders said about 200 insurgents had been killed since the joint Iraqi-US operation began on Saturday. Iraq's Third Army Brigade said it had killed 40 insurgents in Tal Afar on Monday, bringing the guerrilla death toll since Saturday to around 200. An estimated 350-500 insurgents were in the town when Iraqi forces, backed by US troops, began the offensive. Twenty-one "terrorist emirs", or senior insurgent leaders, have been captured as well as a cache of heavy weaponry, including mortars, artillery, explosives, TNT, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades. Abdelaziz Jasim, the defence ministry official in charge of operations in Tal Afar, said his forces were nearly in control of western areas of the town. The Iraqi army lost its first soldier in the Tal Afar fighting on Monday and six civilians had also died. The city should be clear and safe."

Iraq on Monday, September 12, 2005:
- Seven unidentified bodies were found in the town of Rustumiya, southeast of Baghdad. Their hands were tied and they had been shot in the head.
- Six civilians were killed and another two wounded when gunmen attacked an estate agent's office in the Shu'la district of western Baghdad.
- Two policemen were killed and three civilians wounded by gunmen in the downtown Wasiti district of Kirkuk. The dead, a father and his son, were in charge of guarding the city governor's office.
- At least six Iraqi soldiers were killed or wounded by a roadside bomb that hit their convoy in Falluja.
- A senior judge from the northern Iraqi town of al-Dawr was assassinated with his brother by gunmen in the nearby town of Is'haqi on Sunday.
- Iraqi police found the bodies of two Iraqis in the Tigris river running through the town of Ballad, 65km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.
- An Iraqi contractor working for the US military was found dead 75 km south of Baghdad. He had been blindfolded and handcuffed.
- Approximately 2,300 people were detained in August on suspicion of supporting or conducting attacks against US and Iraqi forces. 1,085 were released the same month as around 50 percent of all suspects detained are freed after investigations find there is insufficient evidence to hold them.

A huge car bomb has exploded outside a popular restaurant in Baghdad, killing at least two and injuring about 15 on September 13, 2005. The explosion happened in a busy shopping area near the Saa restaurant, in the exclusive Mansour neighbourhood. Most of the victims were women.

US forces along the Euphrates River attacked the insurgent stronghold of Haditha on September 13, 2005, capturing a militant with ties to al-Qaida in Iraq and killing four others. The assault on Haditha followed a recent offensive to retake Tal Afar. In southern Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near a convoy of Iraqi security guards and foreign contract workers outside Basra, killing four people. While one Iraqi official said the four dead were Americans, US officials were unable to confirm the report.

Iraq, September 14, 2005:
- 108 people were killed and 160 injured when a car bomb exploded in Baghdad's mainly Shia district of Kadhimiya.
- Gunmen killed 17 people in the nearby town of Taji after dragging them from their homes.
- Three Iraqi soldiers are killed when a car bomb targets their patrol in the Al-Adel district of western Baghdad.
- A bomb explodes by an Iraqi National Guard convoy in the northern Baghdad district of Shula, killing at least four people and wounding 22.
- Two US soldiers are wounded as a suicide bomber rams a vehicle packed with explosives into their Humvee in east Baghdad.
- A suicide car bomber attacks a US convoy close to the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone; it is not yet known if there were any other casualties.
- A suicide bomber blows himself up in Baghdad without causing any other casualties.

Iraq Thursday September 15, 2005:
- Baghdad has been hit by a series of blasts killing at least 29 people. In the first attack, at least 16 police commandos were killed when their patrol was struck in southern Doura district. Hours later, 10 more policemen died in the same area following two more bomb attacks and ensuing gun battles.
- The bodies of at least six men shot dead are found in various parts of Baghdad
- A Shia cleric is killed and three other people are wounded in a bomb attack near a mosque in the northern city of Mosul
- A policeman is killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad
- Three Shia pilgrims are killed in a drive-by shooting on their way to the holy city of Karbala
- Two police officers are killed and two wounded in the northern city of Kirkuk
- Three civilians are killed in an attack on a ministry of industry bus in east Baghdad.

Iraq, September 16, 2005:
- At least 10 people have been killed and more than 20 wounded in a suicide bomb attack outside a Shia mosque in the town of Tuz Khurmatu in central Iraq. A suicide car bomber blew himself up as worshippers were leaving Friday prayers.
- At least 12 other people died in attacks across the country.
- Gunmen opened fire on a crowd of labourers gathered in the eastern New Baghdad area to look for work, killing at least two and wounding 13.

Clerics on both sides of Iraq's Sunni-Shiite divide scrambled to calm believers on the Muslim holy day on September 16, 2005, amid ongoing violence that left at least 25 more people dead. Eleven people were killed in a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Tuz Khurmatu. Three laborers were gunned down while waiting for jobs in the capital and a Shiite cleric was assassinated in the Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. A Marine had been killed Thursday in an explosion near Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

A car bomb blew up in the market town of Nahrwan, some 45 km east of Baghdad on Saturday September 17, 2005, killing 30 people and wounding 38 at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks in and around the Iraqi capital since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

On Saturday September 17, 2005, a car bomb explosion at a busy market in Baghdad killed at least 30 people. The security forces are on high alert as thousands of Shia pilgrims converge on Karbala, south of the capital, for a religious festival due to start on Monday.

The bodies of 20 people who had been killed and dumped in a river in the town of Balad just north of Baghdad have been found on September 18, 2005, the latest grisly killings that have deepened fears of a sectarian civil war.

Iraq, September 22, 2005:
- Gunmen killed 10 people and wounded five others in several attacks Thursday in central Iraq.
- In Baghdad, gunmen dressed as Iraqi police and driving Iraqi police vehicles stormed the home of Mohsin Agash -the owner of a tile-making factory in Mada'en. The attackers killed Agash, two of his sons and his daughter-in-law. Another of his sons was kidnapped.
- In the capital's New Baghdad neighborhood, gunmen opened fire on a Nissan pickup truck that was carrying six security guards for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration. Four of the guards were killed in the attack and two others were wounded.
- In another drive-by shooting Thursday, gunmen killed an engineer in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of al-Dora.
- About 25 miles west of the city, gunmen killed Baquba Police Colonel Fadel Mahmoud in a drive-by shooting Thursday as he was traveling to work. His driver was wounded.
- In Baquba, two Iraqi police officers were wounded when their convoy came under rocket attack on the city's western outskirts Thursday.
- On Wednesday, four bodies were found about 100 yards off a major highway near Samarra. All victims had been shot in the head, execution-style.

Iraq, Friday September 23, 2005:
- Heavy fighting surged in the Euphrates River city of Ramadi, resulting in the deaths of two more US soldiers.
- In Baghdad, a suicide bomber on a public minibus set off an explosives belt as the vehicle approached a busy terminal Friday, killing at least five people and wounding eight.
- In the capital, gunmen killed a member of the commission charged with ensuring former members of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime are banned from the Iraqi government. Thirteen commission members have been killed since it was created two years ago.

Suicide car bombers killed five Iraqis in and near the capital on September 24, 2005, and the U.S. military said a soldier died in a roadside bombing Friday night in southeast Baghdad.

Iraq, September 25, 2005:
- Four militiamen loyal to Iraq's radical Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, have been killed in clashes with US forces in Baghdad overnight.
- At least nine (or perhaps as many as 13) police commandos have been killed in a bomb attack on police in Baghdad. Al-Qaida claimd responsibility.
- Two people died in a market bomb in Hilla.
- At least six people were killed by a bomb at a Shia mosque in Musayyib, some 60 km south of Baghdad. The blast happened as people were arriving at a mosque for prayers.
- A U.S. soldier was killed and two others were hurt in an accident at Trebil, near the border with Jordan when their vehicle rolled over during a patrol.

Iraq, September 26, 2005:
- Gunmen dressed as policemen shot dead five Shiite teachers and a driver in their school south of Baghdad.
- A suicide bomber killed 10 people and wounding 30 when he rammed a bus full of Oil Ministry employees.

Iraq September 27, 2005:
- At least 10 people died in an attack on police recruits and at least 26 people were injured in the suicide blast in Baquba.
- The bodies of 22 men, blindfolded and shot, are found in the countryside near the Iranian border
- Gunmen fire on a police convoy taking detainees to Abu Ghraib jail, killing two people and wounding at least eight
- Five civilians are injured as a car bomb explodes in central Baghdad
- A police officer dies in a bomb attack in Kirkuk

Iraq, Wednesday September 28:
- At least seven people were killed and 37 wounded when a female suicide bomber attacked a large crowd of people outside an army recruiting centre in the town of Tal Afar west of Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad.
- Seven bodies of people who had been shot dead were found in Taji, 20 km north of Baghdad. They were bound and blindfolded.
- A U.S. soldier and an airman were killed and another soldier wounded when their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb near Safwan, in southeast Iraq near the Kuwait border.
- Gunmen attacked two vehicles belonging to the Jordanian embassy on the Abu Ghraib highway, west of Baghdad, as they headed to the Jordanian hospital in Falluja. There were no casualties.
- One policeman was killed by gunmen in northeastern Baghdad while heading to work.
- Men wearing commando uniforms detained six people on Tuesday in the northwestern Huriya district of the capital. They were found shot dead in Baghdad's morgue.
- Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol on the Doura highway in southern Baghdad.

Iraq, September 29, 2005:
- Sixty people were killed when three car bombs exploded in a town north of Baghdad, 70 were injured. The attacks hit a bank, a vegetable market and a police station in downtown Balad, in a Shia part of the city about 90 kilometres north of Baghdad.
- Shootings and other attacks in Baghdad killed 16 Iraqis.
- U.S. forces raided the homes of two officials from a prominent Sunni Arab organization, arresting bodyguards and confiscating weapons.

Iraq, Friday September 30, 2005:
- At least 12 Iraqis were killed in a car bomb explosion. The bomb exploded in a crowded marketplace in the southern town of Hilla and 47 people were also wounded in the attack.
- Five American soldiers were also killed Thursday in one of the deadliest bombings on the US military in weeks, near Ramadi.
- The leader of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings.

A US soldier was killed in a roadside bomb blast near his vehicle on Saturday October 1, 2005. The soldier was killed when a land mine exploded near his vehicle while patrolling an area near the town of Beiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad. A second soldier was also killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle while patrolling an area in central Baghdad. Over 1,920 US servicemen have been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Iraq Wednesday October 4, 2005:
- US Marines in western Iraq have launched a new offensive against what they say are al-Qaida fighters. The offensive, in towns along the Euphrates valley, Haditha, Haqlaniya and Barwana, has been named Operation River Gate. About 2,500 US troops, as well as Iraqi forces, are taking part, backed up by helicopters and war planes.
- Three US soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in Haqlaniya on Monday.
- A Marine, was killed on the Syrian border.
- In Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded at a main entrance into the Green Zone, which houses Iraq's parliament as well as the US embassy. Three Iraqis -at least two of them police officers- were killed and around six people wounded.
- US and Iraqi forces, backed by armoured vehicles and helicopters, clash with some 40 rebels near Yusufiyah, south of Baghdad.
- Iraq's Central Criminal Court sentences 28 people, including two Saudis, a Yemeni and an Algerian, to prison terms for carrying out terrorist crimes in Iraq.
- A fifth soldier died of gunshots wounds near Taqaddum.
- Five civilian Defence Department employees have also been killed.

Iraq, October 5, 2005:
- A suicide car bomber drove at a mosque south of Baghdad as Shiites were marking the start of the holy month of Ramadan and brought part of the structure crashing down, killing at least 26, police said. Some still believed trapped in rubble.
- An Iraqi insurgent group posted a video on the Internet showing the apparent beheading of two Iraqis it said had spied for the U.S. military.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded 10 people, including three policemen, in the northern town of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed a police brigadier and his daughter.
- Gunmen killed Kareem Sattar, a lieutenant colonel in the Interior Ministry, as he drove his car.
- Iraqi and U.S. troops, including helicopters, killed at least 29 insurgents on Tuesday in a fierce battle near Mahmudiya, just south of Baghdad. A further 12 were captured. Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and three wounded.
- Two civilians were killed and three wounded during a battle between Iraqi forces and insurgents in Yusufiya and Rashid, just south of Baghdad.
- A car bomb attack critically wounded six security guards for the North Oil Company, about 100 km south of the northern city of Kirkuk.
- Five members of the same family were wounded, including a woman and child seriously, when a bomb exploded near their house on Tuesday in Najaf.

Iraq, Thursday October 6, 2005:
- Insurgents using suicide and roadside bombs killed at least 21 people, including a US soldier in the latest of a series of attacks aimed at wrecking Iraq's constitutional referendum next week.
- A man wearing an explosives belt got onto a minibus carrying students, workers and policemen heading to the police academy, and detonated his payload. The bomber, who sat next to the driver, struck as the bus passed a police patrol at the intersection where the academy is located, about 400 yards from the Oil Ministry. At least nine people were killed and nine others wounded. The bus was left a burned-out husk.
- In Karrada, another part of eastern Baghdad, a suicide car bomb exploded near a convoy of private security contractors, killing three bystanders and wounding six others. None of the foreigners in them was hurt.
- In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit a US Army patrol in northern Baghdad, killing one soldier.
- Four other U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded when a car bomb hit their patrol in central Baghdad, setting off fighting with small-arms fire and US helicopters.
- About 20 miles south of the capital, a roadside bomb hit a police patrol on a highway, killing five policemen and wounding two.
- A shooting and a roadside bomb in the towns of Taji and Udaim, north of Baghdad, killed two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman.
- An 43-year-old detainee died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at US Camp Bucca. About 12,300 Iraqi and foreign detainees are being held there and at other US detention centers in Iraq, such as the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Bomb blasts killed six US Marines in western Iraq, and US forces killed dozens of militants on Friday October 7, 2005. The Pentagon said the military in Iraq had intercepted a letter from the second in command of al Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahri, to al-Zarqawi, urging him not to bomb mosques and slaughter hostages to avoid alienating the masses. This week, the US military was waging three large offensives in western Iraq - Operations Iron Fist, River Gate and Mountaineers - to oust al Qaida in Iraqi militants from half a dozen towns along the Euphrates River valley. On Thursday, the last of the six-day Iron Fist, two US Marines were killed by a roadside bomb that hit their patrol outside the town of Qaim. The two US deaths brought to six the number of American troops killed in Iron Fist and in River Gate, which was launched on Tuesday in the towns of Haditha, Haqlaniyah and Parwana. The Mountaineers offensive by 500 US and 400 Iraqi forces was taking place in and around the city of Ramadi.

A car bomb exploded outside a building housing members of a Shiite militia associated with the Iraqi government on Sunday October 9, 2005, killing a child. The blast also wounded six people in the southern city of Basra. The explosion left a large crater and damaged a building housing members of the Badr movement, which is linked to one of the main Shi'ite parties in the U.S.-backed-government. The Iranian-trained Badr movement recently clashed with militiamen loyal to nationalist Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in several cities.

A suicide car bomb killed a US soldier October 10, 2005, at a checkpoint outside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone, where Iraq's parliament and the US Embassy are located. An Iraqi army soldier, an interpreter and an Iraqi civilian were wounded in the attacks

Iraq, Tuesday October 11, 2005:
- A suicide car bomber has killed at least 30 people in a crowded market in Tal Afar in north-west Iraq.
- Another suicide attacker has killed at least seven people at an army checkpoint in western Baghdad in the Amiriya area. Most of the victims were Iraqi soldiers.

Iraq October 12, 2005:
- A suicide attacker set off explosives hidden beneath his clothing outside an Iraqi army recruitment centre, killing at-least 30 Iraqis and wounding 35. The blast occurred near the first of two checkpoints outside the center in Tal Afar, where men were gathering to apply for jobs.

Iraq, Saturday October 15, 2005:
- The US military killed 12 insurgents and detained another 24 on Friday during a series of raids on suspected safe houses near Ramadi.
- U.S. soldiers detained 11 people suspected of planning an attack on voters at a checkpoint in Yusufiya, south of Baghdad.
- A bomb disposal expert was wounded while defusing a roadside bomb placed near al-Wathba square in the town of Baquba.
- Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and three wounded when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb near the Iranian border, 80 km east of Baquba.
- Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded when mortars landed overnight on their checkpoint near Latifiya, south of Baghdad.
- Four civilians were wounded when police opened fire near a referendum polling centre in the southwestern Amil district of Baghdad. The police units had fired on each other.
- A woman was wounded when Iraqi soldiers shot at a car in the western Ghazaliya district of Baghdad. They had suspected the car was carrying militants.
- Another civilian was seriously wounded when a gunman shot him near a polling centre in Ghazaliya.
- Three roadside bombs, which targeted a police patrol, exploded in the western Amiriya district of the capital, wounding one policeman.
- Three mortars fell on a referendum polling centre in western Baghdad. There were no casualties from the attack.
- Clashes involving mortars, rockets and machinegun fire were ongoing between U.S. and Iraqi army with insurgents in parts of Ramadi province, 110km west of Baghdad. There were no reports of casualties.
- Police found and defused a car bomb with 12 mortar rounds in Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad.

U.S. planes bombed areas in the east of the city of Ramadi on Sunday October 16, 2005, killing at least 25 people and wounding 8.

Helicopters and warplanes bombed two villages near Ramadi in western Iraq on Sunday October 16, 2005, killing about 70 people. The Americans said all the dead were militants, although eyewitnesses are quoted saying that many were civilians. One of the air strikes hit the same spot where five US soldiers had died on Saturday in a roadside bombing. The US statement said a group of insurgents was about to place another bomb, although local people deny this. An F-15 warplane fired a precision guided bomb at the group, killing about 20 militants, the US statement said. Several witnesses said they were civilians who had gathered near the wrecked US vehicle and 25 had died. In a separate incident, the US military said it had killed a group of gunmen who had opened fire on a Cobra attack helicopter from the village of al-Bu Faraj. An F/A-18 warplane bombed a building where they were hiding, and 40 insurgents were killed. Witnesses said at least 14 of the dead were civilians.

Iraq, October 19, 2005:
- Sunni-led insurgents killed 26 people, including six Shiites who were lined up at a materials factory and gunned down in front of their fellow workers in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad.
- A bomb destroyed the famous monument honoring the 8th-century founder of Baghdad, Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour, to whom Saddam often compared himself. The blast caused no injuries.
- In Kirkuk, a vehicle carrying Kurdish tribal leader Sheik Anwar Khalifa is hit by a car bomb. He escaped but a passer-by is killed.
- Four US soldiers have been killed and more were injured in two separate bomb attacks north of the Iraqi capital on Thursday October 20, 2005. Three soldiers were also killed and another was injured in a blast late on Wednesday near Balad, 80km north of Baghdad. The attack happened a few hours after a US soldier was killed and four were wounded in a roadside bomb near Tikrit.

Iraq, October 22, 2005:
- U.S. soldiers and warplanes killed 20 insurgents and destroyed five "safe houses" during an operation against militants who shelter foreign fighters for al-Qaida in Iraq near the Syrian border.
- Three U.S. Marines and an Army soldier were killed in three different areas of Iraq earlier this week.
- One Marine died in an explosion near Haqlaniyah on Friday.
- Following the incident, Marines killed four insurgents and destroyed a bunker adjacent to their position with an unknown number of militants firing from inside.
- Two Marines were killed Friday by a roadside bomb during combat operations near Amiriyah, 25 miles west of Baghdad.
- On Thursday, a U.S. Army soldier died of a "non-hostile gunshot wound" in central Baghdad.

Iraq, Monday October 24, 2005:
- Three powerful explosions have killed at least 17 people outside Baghdad hotels used by foreign media and contractors on October 24, 2005. Suicide bombers are believed to have driven vehicles into barriers outside the Palestine and Sheraton hotels where the attacks were caught on camera. The dead were mainly security guards, hotel employees and passers-by. At least nine people were injured. A US armoured vehicle was destroyed in one of the blasts but it was empty at the time.
- A suicide bomber detonated a car laden with explosives near a police checkpoint in the town of Mussayyib, south of Baghdad, wounding one police officer and one civilian.
- A US Marine was killed by small arms fire during combat operations in Ramadi on Sunday.
- A policeman was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- A suicide car bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad, killing two bystanders. The bomber was also killed in the blast.
- A Kurdistan Democratic Party official was wounded when a roadside bomb struck his motorcade in the northern Arafa district of Kirkuk, 250 km north of Baghdad. One bodyguard was killed and one wounded in the attack.
- Iraqi police found the bodies of six Iraqis, three of them women, bound and blindfolded, with gunshot wounds in their heads and chests, near Latifiya, just south of Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed 12 Iraqi construction workers who were building a police station in the town of Mussayyib, south of Baghdad. The attackers, who arrived in two cars, also kidnapped the contractor who had hired the workers.

There have been several bomb explosions in the largely-Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah in northeastern Iraq on October 25, 2005. One bomb exploded outside a building housing the provincial security ministry in charge of the Kurdish militia groups, the peshmerga. Nine people were killed -six peshmerga and three civilians- and four injured -two Kurdish militiamen and two civilians- by the explosion. Two suicide car bombers attacked the convoy of a senior Kurdish politician on a highway west of Sulaymaniyah. Mullah Bakhtiar, a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), survived the explosions, but two of his guards were injured.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility Tuesday October 25, 2005, for the triple suicide bombings of Baghdad hotels that killed as many as 17 people. The claim said the attack targeted the "dirty harbor of intelligence agents and private American, British and Australian security companies."

Insurgent attacks continued Wednesday October 26, 2005. Four militants hiding behind a mosque shot and killed a government official as he drove to work, and an Internet statement claimed Al-Qaida in Iraq has abducted two Moroccan embassy employees. Suspected insurgents also gunned down two Iraqi policemen in the western city of Ramadi and two Iraqi soldiers in Tarmiyah, 30 miles north of the capital.

Iraq, October 27, 2005:
- Insurgents killed 19 people -17 militia members and two police officers - in in the town of Khazaliya south of Baghdad in a battle with Shiite militia members and Iraqi police. Members of the Mehdi Army militia asked police to help them free a kidnapped member.
- A suicide car bomb exploded near a US military convoy in the south-central part of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding four others. The explosion took place outside the National Theater building.
- Two local police officers were killed in Baquba in separate incidents.
- An Iraqi police officer was shot and killed Thursday driving to work in southern Baghdad's Dora neighborhood.
- Three U.S. soldiers also were killed in separate attacks. A soldier was killed and four others wounded near Ashraf when insurgents attacked their patrol with a bomb and small-arms fire. A roadside bomb hit a convoy in east Baghdad, killing two Task Force Baghdad soldiers.
- The number of U.S. troops to die in the Iraq war stands at 2,004.
- A car bomb killed at least 25 people and 40 wounded in the blast in the Shiite town of Howaider, north of the provincial capital Baquba on Saturday October 29, 2005.

Iraq, October 30, 2005:
- A brother of one of Iraq's two vice presidents was shot and killed on his way to work in Baghdad. Ghalib Abdul-Mahdi, brother of Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, was gunned down along with his driver this morning while travelling to work at the office of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari
- Nine Iraqi civilians died in a series of insurgent attacks in Baghdad and other areas.
- In another part of Baghdad, four gunmen ambushed a convoy carrying acting Trade Minister Qais Dawood Hasan after it left his office in the upmarket Mansour neighbourhood. Hasan was wounded, two of his guards killed, and six other people injured, five guards and an Iraqi passer-by.
- A roadside bomb destroyed one of several oil tanker trucks driving on a main road in south Baghdad, sending a fire ball up over the area and killing the two men inside. Four civilian passers-by were wounded.
- In Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed a farmer on his tractor and seriously wounded two other civilians.
- US troops backed by helicopters and a jet plane attacked insurgents planning an ambush near the Taji air base about 12 miles north of Baghdad, killing six militants and wounding and capturing five others.
- A bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates exploded in the centre of the Shiite farming village of Huweder, about 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing 26 people and injuring at least 45.

A US military air raid in western Iraq on October 31, 2005 has caused many deaths. The US military targeted what it called an al-Qaeda cell leader in an air strike near Karabilah, on the border with Syria. Also on Monday, the US military reported that six US soldiers were killed in two separate incidents. Four US servicemen died when their patrol hit an improvised explosive device in Yusufiya, in the southwest of Baghdad. Later on, an improvised bomb north of the capital killed two other soldiers. A car exploded near a restaurant in Basra's bustling Algiers Street area, which was packed with festive crowds enjoying the evening cool on one of the last evenings of the holy month of Ramadan. 20 people were killed and 45 wounded. Several buildings were devastated and rescue workers picked body parts from the street.

Six Iraqi police have died and another 10 were wounded as insurgents attacked a checkpoint in Buhriz, near the central Iraqi city of Baquba on November 4, 2005. Another officer at the scene said the number of dead could be as high as nine, with 12 injured.

Five Iraqi police commandos were killed Saturday November 5, 2005, and three wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in northern Baghdad.

Iraq, November 7, 2005:
- Four U.S. soldiers from Task Force Baghdad were killed when a car bomber attacked their checkpoint on a road south of Baghdad.
- A U.S. soldier had been killed and two more wounded by a makeshift bomb while on patrol near Tikrit on Sunday.
- Another suicide car bomber killed six Iraqi policemen and three civilians in Baghdad's southern Dora district.
- At least two more Iraqi soldiers were killed and 13 injured when a suicide car bomber hit them as they guarded oil pipelines in Thibban north of Baghdad.
- At least four Iraqi policemen were killed and nine others wounded by a suicide bomb attack near the Iraqi city of Baquba on November 9, 2005. A car bomber hit the police patrol as it entered Tawila, 65km north of the capital Baghdad.

Iraq, November 9, 2005:
- A suicide bomber killed seven people, including four Iraqi police officers, in an attack on a police patrol. The car bomb attack in Baquba also wounded four people.
- An official with the Iraqi Education Ministry was shot to death in a Baghdad neighbourhood.
- An administrative attaché for the Sudanese Embassy was shot in Baghdad while driving his car.
- A Marine injured from a roadside bomb attack this week in Anbar province has died from his wounds, pushing the Iraq war US troop casualty count to 2,058.

More than 30 people have been killed and at least 20 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack on a restaurant in Baghdad on November 10, 2005. Al-Qaeda in Iraq said in an Internet posting that it was responsible. Meanwhile police said they had found the bodies of 27 people, who had apparently been tied up and shot, near the border with Iran.

In Baghdad on November 14, 2005, a car bomb exploded near the main gate to the Green Zone killing two South Africans and wounding three other people. The victims worked for the American Security firm DynCorp International.

Five US Marines were killed and 11 wounded in fighting with insurgents in Obeidi, western Iraq, at the border with Syria, on November 16, 2005. Sixteen insurgents were killed. Another US soldier died of his wounds from a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Iraq, November 18, 2005:
- At least 90 people died when two suicide bombers detonated their explosives in two Shiite mosques in the city of Khanaqin, Diyala province, in the eastern part of the country.
- In Baghdad the Hamra Hotel was attacked twice but there was no victim in the hotel used by foreigners but at least 8 civilian Iraqis were killed outside.
- Insurgents attacked US Marines in Ramadi and about 32 were killed.
- A US soldier was killed and two wounded in a vehicle accident near Tal Afar.

Iraq, November 19, 2005:
- A suicide bomber detonated his car in a crowd of Shiite mourners in the village of Abu Saida, north of Baghdad killing at least 36 people and wounding many others, possibly 50.
- Five American soldiers died in roadside bombings.
- In Mosul American and Iraqi troops raided a suspected al-Qaida hideout and seven insurgents died, three of them committing suicide rather that surrendering. Four Iraqi policemen were killed and 11 US soldiers wounded.
- A car bomb exploded in an outdoor market in a suburb south of Baghdad killing 13 people and wounding about 20.
- In Karbala gunmen killed five members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.
- Three children were killed and one wounded by mortar aimed at a US base 50 miles south of Baghdad fell on a house.

Iraq, November 22, 2005:
- Insurgents staged a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk and when policemen arrived in force, two suicide bombers detonated their explosive killing 21 people. Half the dead were policemen. About 24 people were wounded.
- A mortar round fell about 300 yards from a ceremony held by the US Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad, and top US generals in Tikrit. The shell did not explode and there were no victim.
- Three more US servicemen died in various attacks bringing the total number of US personnel killed in Iraq to 2,100.
- A suicide bomber exploder his vehicle near an army checkpoint south of Kirkuk wounding three Iraqi Soldiers.

Iraq, November 24, 2005:
- A suicide bomber blew up his car outside a hospital in Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad killing about 30 people and wounding at least 40. Among them were 4 American soldiers who were giving candy and food to children. Three women and two children were among the dead.
- Two US soldiers died in another bombing near Baghdad following the death of four others the day before.
- At least 11 Iraqis were killed and 17 injured when a car bomb exploded in Hillah
- 2,103 US military personnel have died in Iraq.

Iraq, November 26, 2005:
- Car bombs killed 10 people. Six people were killed and 12 wounded by a suicide car bomber in Samara and four others were killed the same way in western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed an American soldier the day before in Hit, 85 miles west of Baghdad.
- Until now 2,105 US military personnel died in Iraq.
- Gunmen opened fire on people putting up posters for the incoming parliamentary elections. One man died and three were wounded.
- A top aide, Bital Mahmud, to the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed last month in Ramadi.

Iraq November 29, 2005:
- A roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed two American soldiers.
- A Sunni cleric was killed while leaving his Moshe.

Iraq, December 3, 2005:
- Insurgents killed 19 Iraqis soldiers and wounded 4 in an ambush in Adhaim 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. The insurgents used first a roadside bomb then rocket-propelled grenade and machine guns.
- Al-Jazeera television broadcasted videotape from the Islamic Army of Iraq showed an explosion hitting a US foot patrol near Falluja. It is not clear if it was the attack that killed 10 US Marines.
- The US base at the Mosul airport came under fire. Two US soldiers were wounded.

Iraq, December 4, 2005:
- An angry mob confronted Iraqi's former prime minister, Ayad Allawi at a Shia shrine in Najaf. He had to flee when stones and shoes were thrown at him. The protesters blocked him when he tried to enter the Imam Ali mosque. Allawi said that it was an attack on his life.
- The police discovered a plot to fire rockets at the courthouse when it reconvened on December 5.
- Gunmen killed a Shiite parliamentary candidate and an Iraq police commander in separate attacks.
- A bomb exploded as a police patrol passed by killing three civilians
- President Bush's National Security adviser, Stephen Hadley, refused to confirm the death of al-Qaida leader Hamza Rabia on December 4, 2005 or that he was killed by missile fired by a pilotless US plane.

Iraq, December 6, 2005:
- Two suicide bombers detonated explosives inside Baghdad's main police academy killing at least 43 people, mainly police recruits. Seventy were wounded. Al-Qaida Iraq claimed responsibility. Insurgents claimed to have kidnapped a US security consultant. A US soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad.
- Another suicide bomber hit a cafe in a Shiite neighbourhood killing three people and wounding 20.

Iraq, December 8, 2005:
- A suicide bomber detonated a bomb in a bus heading to Nasiriyah from Baghdad. Thirty-two people were killed and 44 wounded.
- An explosion near a military convoy killed a US soldier in Baghdad. The day before a Marine was also killed in Ramada.

Iraq, December 9, 2005:
- A former mayor in the southern Shiite holy city of Najaf survived an assassination attempt when a roadside bomb went off near his convoy.
- In Mosul, gunmen shot two members of another party as they put up election posters, killing one and wounding the other.
- Four U.S. soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in and around Baghdad as the capital braced for a rise in violence ahead of the parliamentary election.

Iraq December 18, 2005:
- At least 17 Iraqis were killed Sunday as violence flared after Sunni Arab and Shiite politicians appealed for unity and warned against sectarian divisions following the landmark election. Eleven security force personnel were among those shot dead or blown up in or north of the capital
- In Kirkuk, gunmen killed Dhiab Hamad al-Hamdani and his son Munah, the uncle and nephew of a leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.
- Ali Karim al-Assadi, a Shiite member of the Badr Organisation, the former military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was shot dead in Baghdad. SCIRI is the largest Shiite party and leads the main United Iraqi Alliance coalition, which should win a sweeping majority in the Shiite south.
- A woman was killed and 15 people wounded in a bombing outside a Shiite mosque in the capital.
- Elsewhere in Baghdad, a suicide bomber in a minibus blew himself up wounding one policeman.
- 11 police officers were wounded in a shootout with insurgents in the west of the capital.

Iraq, December 25, 2005:
- Two American soldiers were killed by bomb in Baghdad.
- A suicide car bomber killed five Iraqi policemen and wounded seven policemen and civilians also in Baghdad.
- Eleven more people were killed in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and Jbala.
- Shiite demonstrated in Sadr City to keep the elections' results as they are and elsewhere Sunni Muslims asked a repeat of the process.

Iraq, December 26, 2005:
- A suicide car bomber hit an Iraqi police patrol in Baghdad killing three dead.
- A suicide motorcycle bomber hit a funeral killing at least two people.
- A mortar killed two people also in Baghdad.
- Four car bombs killed at least two people north of Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed five policemen north of Baghdad.
- A rocket-propelled grenade in Baghdad killed a US soldier.
- Gunmen attacked a house in southern Baghdad killing three people.
- A Shiite cleric was shot down in Najaf and a man was also killed by gun in Mosul.
- A civilian driving his children to school and a professor were killed in Baghdad.
- A car bomb killed a bodyguard of the governor of Diyala province and a gunman killed a member of Diyala city council.

Iraq, December 29, 2005:
- Gunmen killed 12 members of an extended Shiite family near Latifiya, a mainly Sunni town 20 miles south of Baghdad.
- In Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed a police officer. Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi driver working for a French company and a drive-by shooting killed a university student.

At least 17 people were killed in Iraq on Friday December 30, 2005, in shooting, mortar attacks and a suicide car bombing in Baghdad.

Iraq, December 31, 2005:
- Bombing and shooting killed at least 20 Iraqis across the country.
- A US soldier died from previous wounds.
- Gunmen raided a house south of Baghdad killing five members of a Sunni family.
- A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed two policemen.
- A bomb killed five members of the Iraqi Islamic Party near their headquarters in Al-Khalis near Baqubah.
- Policemen found the bodies of six men who had been shot and dumped in a sewage plant in Baghdad.
- A mortar round killed a policeman in Baghdad.
- Gunmen shot dead the owner of a supermarket in Baghdad.

Iraq, Sunday January 1, 2006:
- At least 13 cars were blow up injuring more than 20 people.
- Insurgents killed about 13 Iraqis all over Iraq.
- Police killed two protesters in Irkud during a demonstration against the increase of the price of gasoline.

Iraq, January 4, 2006:
- A suicide bomber hit a Shiite funeral killing at least 32 mourners and wounding many others. This attack happened in Muqdadiyah 60 miles north of Baghdad. It was the funeral of a 14-year-old boy killed in a failed attempt to kill his uncle, Ahmed al-Bakka the director of the local hospital who was not present at the funeral. Bakka is the local leader of the Shiite Dawa party led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
- A car bomb exploded near an open-air market in Baghdad Dora district killing 7 people and wounding 15.
- Another car bomb killed 3 civilians and a policeman in north Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting a US military convoy in Kirkuk hit a civilian car killing 3 passengers.

January 5, 2006, horrible day in Iraq:
- A suicide bomber killed at least 54 people near the Imam Hussein shrine and wounded 120 in the holy city of Karbala.
- In Ramadi two suicide bombers targeted a police recruiting centre killing at least 30 recruits, mainly Sunni, and wounding 61.
- In Kirkuk a roadside bomb targeting a US patrol kills 3 civilians in a car.
- A roadside bomb kills a woman in Baqubah.
- A roadside bomb south of Karbala kills five US soldiers.
- A suicide bomber kills three Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed three people in Baghdad.
- A car bomb killed seven people and wounds 15 near a market in Baghdad.
- A car bomb kills 3 civilians and a policeman in Baghdad. Fifteen others are injured.
- Gunmen kill a former army captain in Baghdad.
- An oil minister and his son were also killed.

Iraq, January 8, 2006:
- Three Marines were killed by small arms in Fallujah.
- Roadside bombs killed two US Marines the day before.

Iraq, January 9, 2006:
- In addition to the killing of 29 Iraqis the following events took place:
- Gunmen killed an investigating judge in Kirkuk.
- The body of five Iraqis killed by insurgents were found in Baghdad.
- A car bomb killed two civilians near Baqubah.

In Baqubah on January 13, 2006, a car bomb killed two police officers and wounded 6 people.

Iraq, January 16, 2006:
- A US Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter crashed north of Baghdad killing the two pilots. It is not clear if it was an accident or if it was shot down.
- A bomb aimed at a convoy of American police advisers in Baghdad killed one person.
- A car bomb killed five police officers and a six-year old in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Iraq, January 18, 2006:
- The insurgents killed more than 40 people near the site of the latest helicopter crash last week. The Americans cordoned a large area around the crash closing the main roads. The Iraqis were obliged to use secondary roads on which the insurgents established checkpoints where they killed the car passengers.
- Gunmen opened fire on a convoy of the mobile telephone company Iraqna killing six security guards and three drivers in the Nafaq al-Shurta district of western Baghdad. Two Kenyans were seized.
- A roadside bombing in Basra killed two American civilians. They worked for the Texas-based security company DynCorp training Iraqi policemen. A third American was seriously wounded.

On January 19, 2006, two bombs targeted a Baghdad downtown coffee shop and a nearby restaurant. They exploded minutes from each other on the commercial Sasdoun Street killing between 13 and 25 people.

On January 27, 2006, the Iraqi police fought the insurgents near the road to Baghdad airport and in western Baghdad. Sixty suspects were arrested.

Iraq, January 28, 2006:
- At least 22 people were killed in violence all over the country.
- A road bomb in Baghdad killed a US soldier.
- 10 Iraqis were killed in a bombing of a candy store south of Baghdad.
- In central Baghdad gunmen shot dead a prominent professor, Abdul-Razzaq al-Nass, a Shiite who often appeared on television.

Iraq, January 29, 2006:
- Car bombs exploded near four Christian churches and the office of the Vatican's envoy.
- Three people were killed in Kirkuk and 9 were injured.
- A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed an American soldier.
- Bombings and ambushes killed 8 policemen and a medic in Baghdad, Baqubah and Beiji.
- A car bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers and wounded 6 more in Saddam Hussein's birthplace, Uja.
- A former general in Saddam Hussein's army, Lieutenant General Mahmoud Idham, was assassinated near Tikrit.
- US soldiers killed three men dressed in Iraqi police uniforms and captured a fourth during a gunfight in Kirkuk.

Iraq, February 6, 2006:
- Insurgents killed at least 11 people across Iraq.
- In Baghdad the police found the bullet-riddled bodies of two Sunni brothers who were kidnapped from their home late Sunday by men claiming to be Interior Ministry commandos.
- Angry Iraqis in the south threw stones and shot at Danish troops in response to the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. No one was hurt.
- Tensions are high this week because of the feast of Ashura, which marks the seventh-century death in battle of the revered Shiite saint Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet. Sunni extremists have targeted the past two Ashoura festivals. Last year, eight suicide bombers killed 55 Shiites. In 2004, at least 181 people died in bombings at Shiite shrines in Baghdad and Karbala. In Basra, policemen killed a man who fired a machine gun at a group of Shiites performing Ashoura ceremonies and threw a hand grenade at police forces. Two civilians and two policemen were wounded in the clash.
- An Iraqi soldier killed a member of a radical Shiite cleric's militia. Muqtada al-Sadr's militia was guarding a group of Shiites taking part in an Ashoura procession in northwestern Baghdad's Shula neighbourhood.
- Iraq's transport minister called for the closure of Basra International Airport, a move that threatens the economic recovery of the southern city.

Iraq February 7, 2006:
- At least seven people have been killed and 20 injured in twin bombings in a market in Baghdad. The first explosion outside a CD shop in the Bab al-Sharqi area killed three people. A second bomb exploded 10 minutes later, killing three civilians and a policeman standing in a crowd nearby.
- Four US Marines were killed in two separate roadside bombings in western Iraq in the past two days.
- A Marine from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit died from the wounds he sustained in Anbar Province on Sunday.
- A bomb in Hit killed tree Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Iraq, February 9, 2006:
- In Baghdad, gunmen shot dead Sunni tribal leader Rashid Safi and four of his relatives after they attended a family funeral on Tuesday. Relatives said their bodies were discovered in a garbage dump.
- Two bodies riddled with bullets were found dumped in an open area south of Baghdad.
- One man was killed and two wounded when gunmen in a car opened fire on a group of Shiites celebrating Ashura in al-Amiriya district west of Baghdad.
- Police pursued two men trying to plant a roadside bomb in Dura, south of Baghdad, shooting and wounding one. The second man shot himself after police surrounded a house where he had taken refuge.
- Eight people were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in al-Muqdadiya 45 km east of Baquba.
- A suicide car bomber at a checkpoint in western al-Anbar province killed three civilians and two Iraqi soldiers on Wednesday. Two Iraqi soldiers and a U.S. soldier were wounded.

Iraq, February 13, 2006:
- Masked insurgents in Balad killed eleven Iraqi farmers. One of the victims was identified as Sheikh Hussein Sarhan of the Hayalin tribe. Four others were wounded in the attack including two of Sarhan's sons.
- An Iraqi Army major and his son died today when terrorists fired on them in the al-Taji area, about 30 kilometres north of the capital. Their bodies were taken to the Kadhamiyah Hospital in northern Baghdad.
- In east Baghdad, five civilians were wounded in a bombing near the technology university that targeted an Iraqi police convoy.
- In the northern city of Tikrit, insurgents killed a 26-year-old contractor, who supplied food and water to the Iraqi army.

Iraq, February 16, 2006:
- Police found the bodies of a dozen men bound and shot in the head execution-style in Baghdad bringing to at least 30 the number of apparent victims of sectarian reprisal killings discovered in the capital in the last four days.
- At least 25 other people were killed in violence across Iraq, including three tribal sheiks slain in a drive-by shooting north of the capital.
- Three supporters of anti-U.S. cleric Moqtada al-Sadr died in a Baghdad mortar barrage.

Iraq, February 18, 2006:
- Car bombs and gunmen killed more than 20 people, including an American soldier this Saturday.
- An American soldier died when a roadside bomb exploded near the Shaab soccer stadium in eastern Baghdad. It was the first death of an American soldier since Tuesday and brought the number of U.S. personnel killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003 to at least 2,273.
- Four Iraqi policemen were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a fuel tanker on an eastern Baghdad highway.
- Another bomb exploded in another part of east Baghdad, missing a police patrol but killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding four.
- A senior Baghdad police official escaped assassination when a bomb exploded near his convoy in the Karradah district. Brigadier Abdul-Karim Maryoush was unharmed but two police escorts died.
- Two more Iraqi civilians were killed in a pair of roadside bombings - one in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, and another in Baquba. Both those bombs were intended for police patrols.
- Another bomb in Falluja killed and child and blew off his brother's legs.
- U.S. soldiers killed three men trying to plant roadside bombs in Baghdad's notorious Dora neighbourhood.
- At least 10 other Iraqis died in a series of gunfights and ambushes throughout Baghdad, including two policemen slain on their way home.
- The US command said American and Iraqi troops found and destroyed 11 roadside bombs and three weapons caches in Baghdad in the past 24 hours. Twenty-nine suspects were arrested.
- In addition, police found the bodies of four men -bound, blindfolded and shot to death- in three separate parts of the Iraqi capital. Their identities were unknown and it was unclear when they died, but they appeared to be victims of reprisal attacks by Shiite and Sunni extremists.

Iraq, February 20, 2006:
- A suicide bombing on a bus in Baghdad has killed at least 12 Iraqis.
- Eleven people have died in other violence, including a restaurant bombing in the northern city of Mosul.
- The US has threatened to cut aid to Iraq if the new government includes politicians with a sectarian bias. US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was speaking after talks to form a new government faltered over divisions between Shias, Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

Iraq, February 21, 2006:
- A remote controlled bomb in a car exploded on a street packed with shoppers in a Shiite area of Baghdad, killing 22 people and wounding 28. The car bombing occurred shortly. In a Shiite corner of Dora, a predominantly Sunni Arab district of Baghdad and one of the most dangerous parts of the city. The blast apparently was aimed at a police patrol but missed its target, killing and maiming shoppers strolling with their families along a street lined with appliance shops and fruit and vegetable stalls.
- At least eight other people were killed and more than 30 injured in bombings and shootings elsewhere in Baghdad and in attacks on beauty parlours and liquor stores - symbols of Western influence - in Baquba.

Iraq, February 28, 2006:
- At least 35 people have been killed and scores injured by four bomb blasts in Baghdad.
- 24 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a petrol station in a Shia district of the city.
- The bodies of nine Iraqis, including a Sunni Arab tribal leader, are found, riddled with bullets, in Tarfaya, south of the city of Baquba
- Two British soldiers are killed and another is injured by a roadside bomb on the outskirts of Amara, in southern Iraq
- A US soldier is killed by small-arms fire in the west of Baghdad
- A bomb damages a mosque erected by Saddam Hussein over his father's grave in his hometown of Tikrit.
- On March 1, 2006, at least 26 people have been killed in a fresh wave of bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital, amid warnings the country is on the brink of civil war. The worst death toll was in a blast near a security checkpoint that killed at least 20 people and wounded 40.
Iraq, March 2, 2006:
- A bomb blew up a vegetable market in a Shiite section of Baghdad as at least 36 people were killed.
- Al-Jaafari met with representatives of the main political parties to discuss ways of containing the sectarian attacks, reversing an earlier decision to cancel the meeting after the move against him.
- The Iraqi government announced a one-day ban on private vehicles in Baghdad and its outskirts aimed at averting violence on Friday, when Muslims attend the most important prayer service of the week.
- Adnan al-Dulaimi, a leader of the Sunni's largest parliamentary bloc, escaped an assassination attempt because he already had sped away from the scene in another vehicle in his convoy after the car in which he had been riding got a flat tire. Gunmen opened fire on the disabled car, killing one of al-Dulaimi's bodyguards and wounding five others.
- A bomb killed five people in a Shiite militia stronghold.

Iraq, March 3, 2006:
- The bodies of at least 19 people killed in a suspected sectarian attack have been found in Nahrawan, southeast of Baghdad. Residents said about 50 gunmen attacked the small town.
- A daytime curfew was in force in the capital during Friday prayers, in an attempt to curb a surge in violence. Last week, the bodies of 47 factory workers, who had been dragged from their vehicles and shot, were also found in Nahrawan.

Seven people have been killed in an explosion near a market in the Zafaraniya district of Baghdad on March 4, 2006. The blast was caused by a car bomb or a mortar attack. At least 15 people were wounded in the explosion, which hit a minibus terminal near a market.

Iraq, March 7, 2006:
- At least 10 people were killed and 22 wounded in Baghdad and three other Iraqi cities
- In the Diyala provincial town of Khalis, northwest of Baquba, three Iraqi soldiers were killed and another wounded in an explosion. A car bomb targeted the soldiers' convoy.
- In Baquba, three people working for firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr were killed and another wounded in a drive-by shooting.
- Also in Baquba, one police officer died and one was wounded when attackers sprayed a patrol with gunfire.
- A few minutes later, a car bomb exploded in the same neighbourhood, narrowly missing police but killing a bystander.
- In the Iraqi capital, two US military convoys were the targets of car bombs. One civilian was killed and six people wounded in the attacks.
- Also in Baghdad, Iraqi police said one insurgent died during a gun battle with police. Five officers and one suspected insurgent were wounded.
- In Hilla, a car bomb on a major road wounded seven people. Another blast caused no casualties.
- The Babil provincial governor imposed a curfew in Hilla on cars and trucks.

Iraq, Wednesday March 8, 2006:
- The bodies of 20 men have been found dumped in Baghdad. Eighteen were discovered in a minibus in a western district of the city populated mainly by Sunni Arabs. They appear to have been strangled or shot. In a separate incident, two bodies were found in east Baghdad. The victims had been tied up and shot.
- Gunmen in police uniforms are reported to have seized dozens of employees at a security company in the city. The gunmen broke into the compound of the firm in the Zayouna district.
- Two policemen are killed and five people hurt in a roadside bombing in central Baghdad.
- Another roadside bomb targets a convoy of Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr in central Baghdad, killing two people, police and ministry sources say. The minister is not present.
- At least two people are killed in a car bomb in the western town of Falluja.
- The US military says one of its soldiers was killed and four others wounded on Tuesday by a roadside bomb as their patrol passed in Tal Afar, northwest of Mosul.

Iraq's interior ministry denied on March 9, 2006, any involvement in the mysterious abduction of 50 security firm staff in Baghdad. People in police uniforms seized the employees of the al-Rawafed Security Company at gunpoint. One report said genuine police commandos carried out the attack, but others said they were militants posing as police. The top US general in Iraq, Rick Lynch, said neither the Americans nor the Iraqis knew who had taken them.

Iraq, March 9, 2006:
- Explosions in Iraq have killed at least 11 people and wounded 19 others, all civilians. The blasts targeted an Iraqi army patrol in al-Amariyah, a middle-class neighbourhood in west Baghdad, killing nine civilians and wounding six.
- At Yarmouk hospital in west Baghdad, a car bomb was detonated, killing at least two people and wounding 13 as they entered the clinic.

On March 10, 2006, a suicide truck bomb struck a checkpoint manned by US soldiers and Iraqi security forces in the former Sunni stronghold of Falluja on Friday, killing at least 11, including five police, police said. Police said six civilians were killed as the bomb ripped through a line of vehicles.

Up to six car bombs have ripped through a Shiite area in east Baghdad on March 12, 2006, killing 46 people and wounding more than 200. The apparently coordinated attacks on markets in Sadr City have raised fears sectarian reprisals could again plunge Iraq into civil war. Radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr has appealed for calm to Iraqi Shia following bomb attacks in Baghdad. The bombings destroyed street markets in the slum district of Sadr City that is a stronghold of Sadr supporters.

On March 14, 2006, Iraqi authorities have discovered bodies from two mass killings, taking the number of corpses found in the past 24 hours to more than 80. The bodies of 15 bound and apparently tortured men were found in an abandoned vehicle in Baghdad's Khadra district. Hours later, at least 27 bodies were found bound, blindfolded and buried in a southeastern suburb of the capital.

At least 20 people including two US soldiers were killed in fresh violence in Iraq on Wednesday March 15, 2006. Eleven people -most of them women and children- were killed when a house was bombed during a US raid north of Baghdad. The US military acknowledged four deaths -a man, two women and a child- in the raid that they said netted an Al Qaeda suspect in the rural Isahaqi area, about 80 kilometres north of the capital. A nephew of the killed head of the family -Faez Khalaf- said the US forces landed in helicopters and raided the home early Wednesday. A senior Iraqi police officer said autopsies on the bodies showed each had been shot in the head. Meanwhile, two US soldiers were killed in fighting in Al Anbar province. Also, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed two Iraqis and wounded five others in Baquba. The attack came shortly after another bomb killed a policeman here. In Baghdad, two Shia pilgrims were shot dead, said police. Three explosions killed at least four people and injured 20 north of Baghdad, police said.

Iraq, Monday March 20, 2006:
- Bombs killed at least six security staff and a number of bodies were found, apparent victims of sectarian strife.
- The third anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq saw at least two fatal roadside bombings. One of them killed at least four security guards near the town of Musayyib, south of Baghdad. The other killed two police commandos and two other people in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Karrada.
- At least another nine bodies were also found, in the capital and elsewhere, most showing signs of torture.
- Shia pilgrims have been shot at around Karbala over the past week, with about a dozen deaths reported.

On March 21, 2006 Iraqi insurgents attacked a police station Miqdadiya, near Baquba and 65km north of Baghdad, killing 18 people-mostly policemen- and freeing dozens of prisoners. About 20 attackers, armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, took part in the raid that lasted about half an hour. Authorities said 10 insurgents were killed in the firefight. At least 13 people were reported injured. All of the 30 prisoners held at the police station escaped in the raid. Many of them were thought to be suspected militants linked to the insurgency.

Four Iraqi police commandos, including a senior officer, have been killed in an attack on a government office in Madain, south of Baghdad, on March 22, 2006. Insurgents fired 14 mortar rounds during the dawn attack on the Madain council building, where interior ministry troops were stationed. Afterwards, Iraqi forces searched the area and arrested at least 70 suspects.

Iraq, March 23, 2006:
- More than 30 people have been killed, many of them policemen, and dozens wounded in a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad.
- In the deadliest incident, a suicide bomber blew up his car outside the headquarters of the anti-terrorist unit in Karrada, killing 25 people. Ten policemen were among the dead in the blast and at least 32 people were injured. The suicide bomber had tried to drive into the car park, but was stopped by guards and blew up his car at the gate of the car park of the anti-terrorist unit.
- Another car bomb near a Shia mosque in the southwestern district of Shurta killed at least five people.
- At least three policemen were reported killed in an earlier roadside bombing.

Iraq, March 24, 2004:
- Five Iraqis have been killed and 17 injured by a bomb planted outside a Sunni mosque in the town of Khalis, 60km northeast of Baghdad.
- A series of insurgent attacks in the capital left seven other people dead, including three policemen.
- Police discovered the bodies of seven men in the city's east. They had been handcuffed and shot in the head.
- In Baghdad, four people were killed when gunmen raided a bakery in the predominantly Sunni district of Saidiya. A bomb that the attackers had left behind killed a policeman afterwards.
- Two other policemen were shot dead in an ambush in the city's west.

Iraq March 26, 2006:
- Police and soldiers found 30 bodies, most beheaded, near a village north of Baghdad. Authorities reported no immediate information on the identities of the victims or on who may have been responsible. The presence of the corpses was reported by residents in Mullah Eid, a village near the town of Buhriz about 65 km northeast of Baghdad.
- At least 16 other Iraqis were killed in a US-backed raid in a Shiite neighbourhood of the capital. Aides to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi police both said it took place at a mosque, with police claiming 22 bystanders died and al-Sadr's aides saying 18 innocent men were killed. The Americans said Iraqi Special Forces backed by US troops killed 16 insurgents in a raid on a community meeting hall after gunmen opened fire on approaching troops.
- US troops arrested at least 40 Iraqi Interior Ministry forces who were holding 17 foreigners in a secret bunker complex. It was not clear who the foreigners were but the Shiite-led Iraqi government has launched a crackdown on Sunni foreign fighters from Arab states it accuses of carrying out suicide bombings which have killed thousands of mostly Shiite Iraqis.

Iraq, Monday March 27, 2006:
- A suicide bomb inside a military base housing US and Iraqi forces in Kish near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has killed at least 40 people. The attacker struck at an Iraqi police recruitment centre at the base. No Americans died. Up to 30 people were hurt in the blast.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has expressed concern to US military authorities about a clash that killed 20 people near a mosque in a Shia area of Baghdad on Sunday. US officials say Iraqi Special Forces led the raid, backed by US advisors, to disrupt an armed insurgents' cell. Angry local residents say many of the dead were unarmed Muslim worshippers.

The Pentagon said on Monday March 27, 2006, no mosques were entered or damaged in an operation involving Iraqi and US forces that killed more than a dozen people and prompted Iraq's ruling Shiite alliance to urge American forces to return control of security to Iraqis. The Pentagon insisted that there were no mosques that were entered into or damaged as part of this operation. Government-run Iraqi media have portrayed the operation as a US raid on unarmed worshipers in a holy place. Iraq's security minister, Abd al-Karim al-Enzi, said 37 people were killed in the attack.

On Tuesday March 28, 2006, the US military in Iraq is facing growing political pressure over a raid the Mustafa mosque in northeast Baghdad's Sadr City that left about 20 people dead on Sunday evening. US officials said 16 insurgents had been killed and 18 captured, along with a significant weapons cache. However, members of Iraq's ruling Shia Islamist bloc say many of the dead were civilians taking part in prayers. "Entering the mosque and killings approximately 18 innocent men who were inside the mosque performing sunset prayers and became martyrs was unjust and wrong, it was an unjustified and flagrant attack," the interior minister said.
The US military said the bloodshed happened after Iraqi commandos and soldiers from the Iraqi counter-terrorism force came under fire during a house-to-house search for insurgents. Members of the US Special Forces were present but only in an advisory capacity. The fighting took place in an office adjacent to the mosque. Large numbers of weapons were found, the US military said, and an abducted employee of the ministry of health was freed, after a 12-hour ordeal of beating. Iraqi police said the dead included seven members of the Mehdi Army, the militia loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, three members of another Shia Islamist party and seven civilians with no party affiliation. News footage taken after the attack seemed to belie US assertions that troops had not entered or damaged any sacred building during the raid. The room where the killing occurred appeared to be a prayer hall. The floors are carpeted and the walls covered with religious posters. The tape showed a tangle of male bodies and spent 5.56mm bullet casings on the blood-smeared floor - the kind of ammunition used by the US military.

Iraq, Tuesday March 28, 2008:
- The bodies of 14 men, who had been blindfolded and shot in the head, have been found in Baghdad's western al-Adel district. The identities of the men and the motive for their killing are not known.
- Elsewhere in Baghdad, nine people working at a foreign exchange and an electronics shop were kidnapped.
- On Monday, 16 employees of a trading company in Mansour were kidnapped.
- Three civilians were killed by an explosion outside the house of a correspondent for the US-funded Radio Sawa in the southern city of Nasiriya.
- Policemen opened fire on a mini-bus filled with explosives as it approached them at high speed limiting the effect of a suicide bomb attack on the police station in Haswa, south of Baghdad. The bus exploded, wounding 11 policemen and a female bystander. The blast also killed the two insurgents inside the bus.

Iraq, March 30, 2006:
- Gunmen dressed in police uniforms have attacked a trading company the al-Ibtikar Trade Contracting Co in Baghdad, killing at least eight Iraqi employees. The motive of the attack was not clear, as the gunmen did not take any money.
- Assailants in speeding cars gunned down a police commando as he was leaving his house in south Baghdad
- Drive-by shooters killed a lawyer as she got out of a taxi in the southern city of Basra.
- Bombings and other attacks in the capital killed a policeman and wounded a dozen Iraqis.
- The US military also reported the death Thursday of an American soldier in Falluja. The soldier died Tuesday from wounds sustained in fighting.

Iraq. April 2, 2006:
- At least 50 people were killed this Sunday. Violence included a mortar attack, military firefights, roadside bombings and other explosions.
- US military reported the deaths of six soldiers and airmen, including two who were killed when their helicopter apparently was shot down during a combat air patrol southwest of Baghdad on Saturday. A roadside bomb in central Baghdad killed two US soldiers on foot patrol on Saturday. A Marine died from wounds suffered during combat Friday in Anbar province. And a soldier died of injuries suffered Thursday in a non-battle related operation in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- At least nine people, including three women and two children, were killed in a mortar barrage in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Dora, a predominantly Sunni Arab area. Fifteen people were wounded in the attack.
- The bodies of 10 men, all blindfolded and with their hands tied in front, were found Sunday morning in three areas of western Baghdad. All of the men had been shot.
- About 40 miles north of Baghdad, in the village of Gubba, insurgents blew up a Shiite Muslim mosque, leaving it in ruins and killing a guard posted inside.
- Five people, including three children, were killed when a firefight erupted in Ramadi, an insurgent hotbed 60 miles west of Baghdad, after a US military Humvee was struck by a roadside bomb, witnesses and a hospital official said.
- Gunmen have burst into a family home in south Baghdad and killed four people in an apparent sectarian attack.

Iraq, April 6, 2006:
- A car bomb exploded Thursday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, killing at least 10 people. Thirty people were wounded in the bombing, which occurred about 300 yards from the Imam Ali shrine
- Shiite politicians also blocked a bid to have parliament try to break the deadlock on forming a new government.
- The US military announced the arrest of a top insurgent leader believed to have been responsible for last year's kidnapping of Italian journalist Guiliana Sgrena.

A car bomb killed six people and wounded 14 Saturday April 8, 2006, near a Shiite shrine in the Euphrates River town of Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad. A senior official warned Iraq was in an ``undeclared civil war'' that can be curbed only by a strong government and greater powers for security services.

Iraq, Saturday April 14, 2006:
- Seven Iraqi workers with a construction company have been killed in the southern city of Basra. Ten employees were handcuffed and blindfolded. They were lined up against a wall to be shot. Seven of them were killed, but three managed to escape.
- Two policemen were killed when gunmen near Baghdad ambushed a large convoy transporting police vehicles. Eighteen others were injured in the attack, which took place late on Thursday when the convoy deviated from their planned route while returning to the southern city of Najaf.
- Two US marines are killed and 22 wounded in fighting in western Anbar province on Thursday
- At least four people die in separate bomb attacks on two Sunni mosques in Baquba. The attacks came as worshippers left the mosques after midday Friday prayers
- Two Iraqis are killed and four British servicemen wounded when a British military convoy is attacked by a suicide car bomber in Basra on Friday
- A suicide bomber attacks a police station in the northern city of Mosul, wounding six people, including five policemen.

Iraq, April 15, 2006:
- Violence across Iraq claimed another 11 lives including a British soldier killed by a bomb in the southern city of Basra.
- Two separate bomb attacks in Baghdad killed seven people, including three Iraqi soldiers.
- A gunfight between security officers and insurgents in the capital left two more dead, while Iraqi police colonel was shot dead in Basra.

Iraq, April 17, 2006:
- There has been fighting between US troops and insurgents in the Iraqi capital and the city of Ramadi.
- US troops were involved in a seven-hour clash in Baghdad's Adhamiya district after insurgents attacked Iraqi security forces. Five rebels were killed and one member of the Iraqi security forces was injured. There were no US casualties
- In Ramadi, insurgents launched a coordinated attack on a government building.
- Earlier, the bodies of 12 men were found in Baghdad, Iraq's interior ministry said.
- US troops fired on two suicide car bombers heading for the government building.
- Other insurgents fired at Marine positions on the roof of the building and at another observation post.
- A roadside bomb targeted an army patrol in central Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding several others.

Iraq, Wednesday April 19, 2006:
- At least 19 people were killed and two schoolteachers were slain by militants who slit their throats in front of their pupils.
- Two groups of terrorists have cut the throats of two teachers in front of their students in the Amna and Shahid Hamdi primary schools in the Shaab district of Baghdad.
- Five people were killed in a car bomb attack in the northern city of Beiji. The car bomb targeted a passing United States military convoy and also wounded four people.
- In Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, three university professors were shot dead by gunmen close to the University of Diyala.
- Also in Baquba, a police officer was shot dead, while two civilians were wounded in a roadside bombing.
- One person was killed in a roadside bombing near the party office of former premier Iyad Allawi in western Baghdad and 10 people -including two police officers- were wounded.
- Three security guards at a power station in Baghdad's notorious al-Dura neighbourhood were shot dead by gunmen, while three street sweepers were also killed in a separate shooting in the same area.
- Gunmen in the southern Baghdad neighbourhood of Saidiyah shot a former Iraqi army colonel dead in front of his house.
- A car bomb killed two people and wounded two others on a busy market street in the capital's centre.
- Police found five bullet-riddled bodies near a water purification plant in the Rustumiyah suburb just outside Baghdad.
- The US military announced that a US soldier died after a roadside bomb north of Baghdad struck his vehicle on Tuesday.
- The latest fatality brought the US military death toll in Iraq since the invasion to 2 374.

Friday April 21, 2006, six off-duty Iraqi soldiers were captured and shot execution-style in northern Iraq. The soldiers were just leaving the restaurant after lunch there when they were seized by a group of unidentified gunmen waiting outside. The captives were taken to a nearby street, lined up and shot to death. The attack occurred in the industrial city of Beiji, where the soldiers had stopped en route to their military base in Mosul, 90 miles to the north.

Iraq, Saturday April 22, 2006:
- Eight people including four US soldiers were killed, including the first Australian army casualty since the beginning of the Iraq war.
- A roadside bomb killed four US soldiers on combat patrol south of Baghdad.
- Suspected insurgents set off two bombs in a public market in Muqdadiyah, northern Iraq, killing at least two Iraqis and wounding 17.
- The bodies of 10 Iraqis apparently tortured and killed in captivity also were found in and around Baghdad.
- In Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car sprayed a police patrol with machine gun fire, killing one officer, and a roadside bomb wounded two policemen.
- An Australian soldier shot himself in the head in a "tragic accident" inside Baghdad's Green Zone.
- Police also found a body with signs of torture floating in the Tigris River in Kut.
- Also in Kut, a homemade bomb exploded outside the home of Iraqi legislator Amir Najim al-Quraishi, a member of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular party, breaking glass windows and destroying a fence, but causing no casualties.
- In Mosul, 360 kilometres northwest of the capital, gunmen riding in a car wounded an Iraqi soldier on patrol.
- On Friday, at least 22 Iraqis were killed, including six in a car bombing in Tal Afar in western Iraq and six off-duty Iraqi soldiers were slain in Beiji in northern Iraq, police said. agencies

Iraq, Sunday April 23, 2006:
- Mortar rounds have exploded in Baghdad on April 23, 2006, killing at least six civilians and wounding two. Three mortars exploded near Iraq's Defence Ministry while others landed near the interior ministry and Shaab stadium.
- Insurgents killed three American soldiers in the Baghdad area.
- All together 27 Iraqis were killed on that day.

Iraq, Monday April 24, 2006:
- At least 28 bodies of police recruits have been discovered in two areas of Baghdad. The bodies of 15 young men were found in a truck in Abu Ghraib on the western outskirts of the city on Sunday. The rest were discovered in the district of Baghdad. All had been shot.
- A series of car bomb attacks in Baghdad left at least eight people dead and dozens injured.
- There were seven attacks in all, the most deadly of which was a double car bombing near the Mustansiriya University in the east of the city in which five people died and 25 were injured.
- Another blast near the health ministry, apparently targeting a police patrol, left three people dead and 25 injured, including several policemen -two of whom had been directing traffic.
- Eleven people are hurt in an attack in central Baghdad apparently targeting a US military convoy.
- Two bombs in cars parked near to Iraqi police patrols injure six in the New Baghdad area of the city.
- A car bomb explodes in the Mansur area of the city injuring seven people.

A bomb in a minibus has exploded in the Sadr City district of Baghdad on April 25, 2006, killing at least two people and wounding at least three. The bomb was hidden in a plastic bag in the parked vehicle.

Iraq, April 26, 2006:
- US troops backed by a helicopter and jets struck a suspected safehouse of foreign insurgents, killing 12 militants and a woman in a raid near the site where an American helicopter crashed on April 26, 2006.
- In Baghdad, a bomb ripped through a minibus carrying passengers to their Shiite neighbourhood, killing four people, who were among at least 12 Iraqis killed.
- Police also found 11 bodies dumped in Baghdad and elsewhere, the apparent victims of sectarian killings.

Iraq, Friday April 28, 2006:
- At least 21 Iraqi insurgents and seven soldiers have been killed in fighting in Baquba during which at least 43 insurgents were captured. Baquba was put under curfew after the attacks on Thursday on police stations and checkpoints in the city and surrounding province of Diyala. The attacks raged for "hours", an Iraqi police official said, estimating that between 400 and 500 rebels took part.
- At least two civilians also died in the fighting.
- An alleged senior member of the al-Qaeda in Iraq militant group, Humadi al-Takhi, is killed along with two other militants when US and Iraqi troops raid a house in Samarra.
- A bomb attack on a patrol in Falluja kills at least two Iraqi policemen.
- he US military confirms the death of a US soldier in a roadside bombing on Thursday evening in Baghdad.
- In Baquba, insurgents used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms to attack five police checkpoints, a police station and an Iraqi army headquarters.

Iraq, April 29, 2006:
- Within the last 24 hours, insurgents in Iraq killed five people; a roadside bomb killed an American soldier; and 12 bodies, all shot in the head and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad.
- A police officer and another man were kidnapped; they were later found shot to death. They had been abducted in the middle of the night from a house in al-Musayyib, about 60 km south of Baghdad.
- Three more police officers died in separate roadside bombings.
- The American soldier died southwest of Baghdad. The death brings the number of US troops and military civilian deaths in Iraq to 2,397.

Iraq, May 3, 2006:
- A suicide bomber has killed at least 15 people in the Iraqi city of Falluja by blowing himself up in a crowd of men waiting to join the police. Thirteen of the dead in Falluja were police recruits and two were serving officers. The bomber was dressed in civilian clothes and detonated his bomb outside the entrance of a police building.
- The bullet-riddled bodies of 14 men were recovered together in the Shaab district of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
- Four Shia students were pulled from a minibus and shot dead overnight.
- About 20 other corpses were found in Baghdad.

Iraq, May 4, 2006:
- At least ten people have been killed and 52 injured in a suicide bomb attack outside a courthouse in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The bomber exploded his device near a convoy of police vehicles on a main road in the mainly-Shia Sadr City area.
- At least 13 civilians died and 4 were wounded in a US raid on a house in the city of Ramadi, although the US military has not confirmed this. Hospital and police officials said the civilian deaths happened when US aircraft bombed a house in the Aziziyah area of the city, about 115km west of Baghdad. Medics said two women and a child were among the dead.
- Two US soldiers also died in a roadside bomb attack.
- The attack raised to at least 2,409 the number of members of the US military who have died since the beginning of the war in 2003.

Iraq Friday May 5, 2006:
- A roadside bomb killed three American soldiers convoy near Mahaweel, 56 kilometres south of Baghdad south of Baghdad in Babil province as US and Iraqi forces swept through a city to the north where three insurgents had been killed the day before after firing on U.S troops.
- In Samarra, about 100 kilometres north of the capital, American and Iraqi forces imposed a daytime curfew and searched neighbourhoods looking for insurgents a day after three militants were killed after they opened fire on US soldiers.

Iraq, Sunday May 7, 2006:
- A number of car bomb attacks have killed at least 14 people in Baghdad and Iraq's holy city of Karbala.
- In Baghdad, two bombs killed at least nine people, mostly soldiers.
- A bomb near the provincial government in Karbala killed at least five people.
- Baghdad police also said they had found the bullet-riddled bodies of 43 men killed in apparent sectarian attacks. Twenty-eight were found in Baghdad's western Kharkh area, while another 15 were recovered from the eastern Rusafa district.

Iraq, Monday May 8, 2006:
- Insurgents killed at least 13 people in several attacks across Iraq.
- Two car bombs in western Baghdad killed five people each. One of the cars exploded near a courthouse.
- Insurgents killed at least two people in drive-by shootings outside the capital.
- A roadside bomb killed an American soldier southeast of Baghdad.
- The bodies of two Iraqi journalists were found, one day after they were abducted. Authorities also found the bodies of three police commandos kidnapped last week.
- The US military says troops killed Ali Wali, an explosives expert and member of the Ansar al-Islam terrorist group, during a counter-terrorist raid in the Mansur district of Baghdad on Saturday.
- Two Iraqi policemen died and 12 people were wounded when another car bomb went off near a police patrol travelling down busy Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad.
- One American soldier was killed and another wounded during a clash Sunday near Tal Afar.
- The fatalities raised to at least 2,421 the number of US military members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003.

Iraq, Tuesday May 9, 2006:
- A car bomb has killed at least 17 people and injured 35 in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar.

A reporter who worked for a pro-Sunni Iraqi television station was gunned down in Baghdad on May 11, 2006, making him at least the fourth media worker killed in Iraq this month. Saud Muzahim al-Hadithi was found dead in Baghdad's Dora neighbourhood last week. News of his death came three days after the bodies of two other television station employees were found on a highway southeast of Baghdad. Al-Baghdadiya's reports are often critical of the Iraqi government and the US military's presence in Iraq. The station is sympathetic to the country's Sunni Arab minority, which forms the backbone of Iraq's insurgency.

Iraq Sunday May 14, 2006:
- Fourteen people have died and six were hurt in a double suicide attack near Baghdad airport. The blasts took place in a car park close to the airport compound, the US military said.
- Militants north of the capital also attacked the Iraqi foreign minister's convoy, killing two of his bodyguards.
- The violence came a day after two British soldiers died in a bombing near Basra.
- Elsewhere in the capital, at least another 11 people died in a series of attacks on police patrols and a market.
- At least five civilians are killed when a bomb aimed at a police patrol explodes on Palestine Street in the east of Baghdad
- At least three people are killed and another 13 injured by a roadside bomb planted in the Sunni-dominated district of Adhamiya in the north of the city
- Three civilians are killed when a bomb detonates at a vegetable market in the southern Zafaraniya district of the Iraqi capital
- Insurgents and police clash in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, leaving one policeman dead
- Two civilians die and nine are injured in a bomb attack targeting a US military convoy in Mosul
- Police in Karbala find the bodies of five people who had apparently been kidnapped.
- At least two bodyguards working for Iraq's foreign minister were killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb north of Baghdad hit their convoy of vehicles. Minister Hoshiyar Zebari was in the motorcade.

Iraq, Tuesday May 16, 2006:
- Insurgents shot down a US helicopter during a raid against al-Qaida militants in Youssifiyah, south of Baghdad and killed two soldiers, bringing the weekend death toll of American service members to seven.
- American forces killed more than 40 militants, including an al-Qaida operative, in five raids south of Baghdad in an area commonly known as the ``Triangle of Death''.
- Other Americans killed over the weekend included two US Marines who died Sunday during unspecified ``enemy action'' in Anbar province.
- Two soldiers died Sunday in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad, and another died in a roadside bomb in the capital Saturday.
- The deaths raised to at least 2,443 the number of US military personnel who have died since the war began in 2003, according to a count by The Associated Press.
- Monday, insurgents fired more than 30 mortar rounds at a British military camp in southern Iraq, wounding four soldiers.
- Six British soldiers have been killed and five wounded over the past nine days - all in southern Iraq, an area that has traditionally been far more peaceful that central and northern Iraq where US forces are based.
- In Balad Ruz, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen pulled three teachers -two brothers and a cousin- and their driver from a minibus and killed them.
- Five corpses were found in western Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday May 18, 2006:
- 12 people have been killed in attacks in the capital, while 15 members of the national martial arts team were kidnapped at gunpoint.
- In one attack, at least six labourers and a driver were killed by gunmen who stopped a minibus in west Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in northern Baghdad's Waziriya neighbourhood, killing at least three police officers and several bystanders.
- There are reports that the Sunni small Sharhabil bin Hassan shrine has been blown up inside in Kanan, northeast of Baquba, days after six Shia shrines were damaged in the area.

A suicide bomber killed at least 12 people -including three police officers- and injured 17 when he blew himself up Sunday May 21, 2006, in the downtown Karradah neighbourhood of Baghdad Safar restaurant frequented by police. Sunday also saw roadside bombs, mortar rounds and a drive-by shooting that killed at least 18 Iraqis and wounded dozens.

Iraq, Tuesday May 23, 2006:
- A bomb went off in a motorcycle parked in the courtyard of a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing 11 people and wounding at least nine. The bombing in the mixed Tunis neighbourhood bore the markings of the sectarian violence tormenting Iraq. The mosque is near the Sunni Arab stronghold of Azamiyah.
- An hour later, a roadside bomb exploded outside a bakery in southeast Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 12.
- Five people were killed earlier in the day when a car bomb exploded at the entrance to a police station in Baghdad's biggest Shiite neighbourhood.

Iraq, Wednesday May 24, 2006:
- Armed clashes between two tribes near the town of Sowera, 45 kilometres south of Baghdad, left 16 dead and another 18 wounded.
- A member of the Baquba City Council, Adel Ali, was assassinated along with two of his associates near a town east of Baquba.
- In Hillah, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad, nine corpses were discovered. The unidentified corpses had been shot dead and showed signs of torture.
- A Lebanese businessman, Carlo Daccash, kidnapped in Baghdad earlier this month was freed after payment of a ransom, a Lebanese security source said Wednesday.

Iraq May 25, 2006:
- A judge from Dujail, Valid Ahmed, where Iraqi ousted leader Saddam Hussein is accused of killing 148 Shiites, was kidnapped by gunmen on his way to Tikrit- Samara.
- Two Iranian truck drivers were reportedly abducted. Officials have also reported that the bodies of six people, four in Baghdad and two in Baquba, had been discovered.
- A senior member of the Iraqi Turkmen Front political movement said Ali Hashim and his three companions were kidnapped on the road between Baghdad and Tuz.
- Gunmen in Baghdad shot and wounded Khalil al-Abadi, a senior official of the country's defence ministry.
- At least six bodies, most riddled with bullets or showing signs of torture, were discovered.
- Bombs wounded at least 11 people in Baghdad.

Iraq, Friday May 26, 2006:
- Ten people were killed in a car bombing, which also injured 18 people in a crowded market place near al-Nahda bus station.
- Another car bomb in central Baghdad killed at least nine people and wounding 31.
- Elsewhere in the capital, a bomb went off in the southern neighbourhood of al-Bayaa wounding 18, and there were two blasts in an upscale west Baghdad neighbourhood that wounded five.
- In western Baghdad, three bodies were found with bullet wounds and signs of torture.
- Meanwhile, in the predominantly Shia southern city of Basra, a Sunni imam, Wafiq al-Hamdani, and a bodyguard were killed by assailants in a drive-by shooting as they travelled to their mosque for Friday congregational prayers, police said. Sunni leaders have closed 170 mosques in protest.
- In the northern city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb detonated near a police patrol in the south of the city, killing one policeman and wounding four.
- Also in Kirkuk, armed men shot dead a police officer and his friend as they were having tea outside his house. Another friend was wounded in the drive-by shooting.
- Four bodies were found in Kut including the tortured corpse of a member of the Shia Mahdi Army militia. Police also discovered two beheaded bodies in Kut.
- Police found near Suwayra, south of Baghdad, the body of a member of the Mahdi Army militia which had bullet wounds and showed signs of torture.
- Assailants killed the coach of Iraq's national tennis team and two of his players while they were driving through Baghdad on Tuesday.
- Employees abducted from the local Diyala Television station in Baquba watched armed men execute two policemen held with them before being released.
- Armed men stormed a wedding party on Thursday and abducted the groom, his uncle and cousin and a guest at the party. All were found the next day, beheaded near Muqdadiya.
- The speaker of Iraq's national assembly, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, condemned what he said was the arrest of the brother of Sunni Arab parliamentarian Taysir Awwad by US and Iraqi forces in a raid on her house.

Iraq, Saturday May 27, 2006:
- Two U.S. Marines were missing after their helicopter crashed during a maintenance test flight in Iraq's Anbar province Saturday. The AH-1 Cobra crash did not appear to be caused by enemy action.
- Another U.S. Marine was killed in enemy action in Anbar province on Friday.
- Three civilians were killed and 29 wounded in a car bombing on Friday in Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Hay al Amil.
- A roadside bombing targeting a police patrol in the Mansour neighbourhood of the capital wounded two civilians.
Iraq Monday May 29, 2006:
- A wave of car bombings and shootings plagued Shiite and Sunni areas of Iraq, killing more than three dozen people including two CBS crewmembers and a U.S. soldier.
- At least eight bombings rocked the capital. A car bomb exploded as a U.S. convoy patrolled in central Baghdad, killing veteran CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, 48; soundman James Brolan, 42; and an American soldier. Network correspondent Kimberly Dozier, 39, was critically wounded. The CBS crew was on patrol with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, when the bomb exploded. The U.S. military said an Iraqi interpreter also was killed and six American soldiers were injured.
- At least 37 other people were killed nationwide, most of them in Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed 10 people and injured working for an Iranian organization opposed to the Tehran regime.
- A car bomb parked near Baghdad's main Sunni Abu Hanifa mosque killed at least nine Iraqi civilians and wounded 25. It exploded at noon in north Baghdad's Azamiyah neighbourhood and disintegrated the vehicle.
- A bomb planted in a parked minivan killed at least seven people and wounded at least 20 at the entrance to an open-air market selling second-hand clothes in the northern Baghdad suburb of Kazimiyah.
- Another parked car bomb exploded near Ibn al-Haitham college in Azamiyah, also in northern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding at least five - including four Iraqi soldiers.
- In other attacks, a roadside bomb killed two police officers and wounded three others in Baghdad's Karradah district, while one man was killed and six were wounded when a bomb hidden in a minivan exploded.
- A mortar shell exploded at a Shiite mosque in southern Baghdad's Zafraniyah district. Shiite militiamen sealed off the area and prevented police from approaching.
- Gunmen in separate incidents killed two police officers in western Baghdad; two police officers, identified as former Baathists, in Amara, 180 miles southeast of Baghdad; and police Brigadier General Sadiq Jaafar Salih, director of the national ID card office in Diyala.

An attack on Iraq's interior ministry killed at least one person on May 30, 2006. A roadside bomb in the south of Baghdad has also killed a police officer.

Iraq, June 3, 2006:
- Seven Iraqi policemen have been killed in an attack on a police checkpoint in the town of Baquba. Up to 10 people were also wounded when insurgents attacked the al-Razi checkpoint with rocket-propelled and hand grenades and small arms fire.
- Eight severed heads were found on a road near Baquba.
- At least four bodies were found across Baghdad, all with signs of torture.
- Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in eastern Baghdad.

Iraq, Sunday June 4, 2006:
- Gunmen killed one Russian embassy employee and kidnapped four others in Baghdad on Saturday.
- A car bomb in Basra killed at least 27 people.
- Seven policemen were killed and 10 people wounded by an insurgent attack on a checkpoint near Baquba. Among the wounded were four policemen and six civilians.
- Police found the severed heads of seven cousins and a mosque Imam near the town of Baquba on Saturday. One was Sheikh Abdel Aziz al-Mashhadani, the imam of a Sunni Arab mosque near Baghdad.

Iraq, June 5, 2006:
- Gunmen dragged 24 people, mostly teenage students, from vehicles and shot them dead. Gunmen manning a makeshift checkpoint near Udhaim, Diyala province, stopped cars and killed passengers. The victims included youths aged 15 to 16 who were on their way to the bigger regional town of Baquba for end of term exams, but also elderly men. The attackers dragged them one by one from their cars and executed them. Some tried to flee but were gunned down.
- A Sunni religious group accused security forces in the Shiite-run city of Basra of killing 12 unarmed worshippers in a mosque overnight. Police said they had returned fire and shot dead nine terrorists. The incident came just hours after a car bomb killed 28 people.
- At least 50 people have been kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in central Baghdad.

Iraq, June 6, 2006:
- The First Iraqi Army Division has taken over from U.S. forces in patrolling an area in Anbar province, the first transfer on that level in the western heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency. It assumed control of territory near the town of Habbaniya on June 2.
- Gunmen shot dead Thoaban Abdul Kathim, head of the local council of Baghdad's western Al-Jihad district, along with an aide and a driver while they were heading to their office.
- A man and his wife were gunned down in the western Furat district.
- Police found nine severed heads in the al-Hadid district in the city of Baquba.
- Two civilians were killed and seven others were wounded when two mortars hit a market in central Baghdad.
- Three mortars landed near a hospital in central Baghdad; there were no immediate reports of any casualties.
- A roadside bomb killed one woman in Baghdad. Two people, including a teenage girl, were later killed when police who had sealed off the area opened fire when their car failed to stop despite warnings.

Iraq June 9, 2006:
- At least 23 people have been killed in separate attacks across Iraq, including nine in a car bomb attack in Baghdad near a Shia mosque.
- A car bomb targeting a passing police patrol exploded in Karrada, killing nine civilians and wounding 23 others.
- In Mosul, gunmen shot five butchers sitting in a shop in the Nabi Yunis area, killing all of them.
- Four Sunni Arabs were killed when their minibus was raked with gunfire near Baghdad.
- Three people were killed and 28 wounded when a bomb exploded in a restaurant in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen also killed two civilians and wounded four others in two separate attacks on the main road north of the town of Hilla.

Iraq, June 13, 2006:
- At least 16 people have been killed in a series of bomb attacks in Kirkuk. The attacks came a day after al-Qaeda named a successor to its Iraq leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and vowed to take revenge for his killing.
- The offices of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's Kurdish PUK party were also targeted. Police opened fire on a suspected suicide car bomber, causing the vehicle to explode.
- A university professor has been shot dead in Baghdad.
- At least six bodies were found in different parts of the capital, showing gunshot wounds and signs of torture

Iraq, June 15, 2006:
- At least 27 people were killed and several others injured on Thursday.
- Three successive roadside bombs targeting Iraqi army patrols killed five soldiers and injured six others in the northern town of Tal Afar. Four soldiers were killed when the first roadside bomb hit their vehicle. A second bomb went off as soldiers on foot rushed to the site. The third bomb hit an Iraqi army vehicle nearby.
- Gunmen stormed a Sunni mosque near Tikrit, killing four people and wounding 15.
- At least 18 more people were killed in other violence-related incidents.
- In Baquba, gunmen killed 10 people, including two brothers.
- Police found seven bullet-riddled bodies across Baghdad.
- A policeman was also shot dead by armed men.
- US and Iraqi forces detained a senior Shia official after raiding his home in Kerbala.

Iraq, June 17, 2006:
- A series of bombs killed at least 43 people in and near.
- A car bomb struck an Iraqi police checkpoint in a Shiite area southwest of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding 38.
- Mortar rounds slammed into a crowded market in the northern Shiite Kadhimiya district of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding another 14.
- A bomb exploded in a crowded market in central Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 11.
- A car bomb exploded near Iraq's National Theatre in central Baghdad, killing one person and wounding five.
- Gunmen in a car shot dead a civilian near his house on Friday in the town of Mahaweel, 75 km south of Baghdad.

Iraq, June 18, 2006:
- In Baghdad 10 bakery workers were kidnapped at gunpoint from a mainly Shia area.
- The bodies of nine other men were found elsewhere in the city, bearing signs of torture.
- South of Baghdad, a hunt is continuing for two US soldiers missing since an attack on Friday on their checkpoint. Some witnesses say masked militants kidnapped them.
Iraq, Monday June 19, 2006:
- Four people were killed in a car bomb attack on an Iraqi army patrol in Baghdad. At least eight people were injured.
- In the town of Madain, south of Baghdad, gunmen enter a house in the early morning and kill three members of a family while they are still in bed
- In Karbala, in southern Iraq, a police lieutenant colonel and his three bodyguards are killed when their convoy is ambushed.

Iraq, Wednesday June 21, 2006:
- Gunmen abducted around 100 Iraqi factory workers as they were being ferried home from work in a fleet of buses just north of Baghdad. The abduction, prompting fears of another horrific sectarian massacre. Officials said that five busloads of employees from an industrial area at Taji, 20 miles north of Baghdad, were commandeered by dozens of gunmen in at least five minibuses.
- An al-Qaida-linked group announced that it would kill four Russian Embassy staff abducted 18 days ago in an attack in Baghdad in which a fifth Russian was killed. The group had demanded Moscow's withdrawal from Chechnya and the immediate release of all Muslim prisoners.
- In Baghdad, a senior member of Saddam's defence team, Khamis al-Obeidi, became the third lawyer representing the former dictator and his seven co-accused to have been killed since the crimes against humanity trial began in October last year. Mr al-Obeidi was abducted from his home at 7am by men dressed in police uniforms. He was shot dead and his body dumped on a street near the Shia slum of Sadr City.

Iraq, June 22, 2006:
- Mortar bombs in the southern city of Basra wounded nine Iraqi civilians. The mortars appeared to have been aimed at official buildings but missed.
- Saddam Hussein has gone on a hunger strike to protest against the killing of one of his main lawyers and his defence is considering boycotting the trial.
- The governor of Diyala province was wounded and his driver and a bodyguard killed when a bomb exploded near his convoy in Baquba. They dismissed a US military statement that there was no bomb, only a tyre blowout that caused an accident.
- A bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded in the Alawwi area in central Baghdad, killing two civilians and injuring eight others.
- Fourteen bodies of workers in an electricity plant were found in the city morgue on Tuesday. They were abducted and killed on June 12.
- Gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead a police officer in Najaf.
- Four US soldiers were killed on Tuesday in two separate attacks in Iraq's western Anbar province.
- Gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in his home in Dhuluiya, 40 km north of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb south of Baghdad killed a US soldier on Wednesday.
- Gunmen killed a carpenter on Wednesday in Hawija, 70 km southwest of Kirkuk.
- Iraqi soldiers killed a gunman and arrested two on Wednesday after coming under attack in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.

Iraq, June 23, 2006:
- At least 10 people died in a blast outside a mosque outside the village of Hibhib -the village where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed- near Baquba.
- Four people were killed in an explosion near a petrol station in Basra on June 23, 2006.
- In Baghdad the Mehdi army, a Shia militia, said seven of its men died in attacks by Sunni gunmen.
- Some 500 detainees were due to be released from Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad on Friday, as part of the reconciliation programme.

Iraq, Saturday June 24, 2006:
- Gunmen opened fire on a car in Najaf, killing two employees of a US military base.
- A suicide car bomb exploded in Dhuluyia, 90 km north of Baghdad, killing five members of an Iraqi security patrol.
- A roadside bomb killed the local intelligence chief, Mousa Hachim, and two of his guards in Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed three Iraqi soldiers and wounded five when they fired at their minibus near the town of Udhaim, 100 km north of Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed three people near a car showroom in Baquba.
- The headless body of a young woman was found in the River Tigris near the town of Suwayra on Friday.
- A US soldier was killed in a bomb blast while on patrol south of Baghdad.
- A U.S. soldier was killed in a roadside bombing in the centre of the capital on Friday.
- The Shiite tribal sheikh Jasim al-Hindi, the head of the small Gureyat tribe, was kidnapped along with his son in Mahaweel, 90 km south of Baghdad on Friday.
- US forces hunting al Qaida insurgents raided the home of a senior Sunni Arab religious leader in Iraq, seizing him and four suspected terrorists.
- One woman and two children were wounded when five shops belonging to Shiites were bombed in Baquba.
- A car bomb wounded two civilians when it exploded near a passing US military convoy in the western Baghdad district in Khadhra.
- Iraqi army forces captured a local insurgent commander, Ali al-Najar, and five other rebels in Diwaniya, 180 km south of Baghdad.

Iraq Monday June 26, 2006:
- A bomb left in a bag exploded at a market in Hilla. Seventeen people had been killed and 25 wounded. The police however said only eight were dead and 58 wounded.
- A bomb strapped to a parked motorcycle killed seven people at a crowded market in the mainly Shiite village of Khairnabat, near Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. Twenty five people were wounded.
- Two American soldiers found dead south of Baghdad last week were kidnapped and killed. Privates First Class Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker were part of a three-man team guarding a canal crossing in Yusufiya.
- A US Marine died from wounds sustained in combat in the western Anbar province.
- A suicide bomber killed two police commandos and wounded four at a checkpoint in al-Saidiya district.
- Gunmen shot dead a security guard for top Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi in Baghdad.
- One civilian was killed and five wounded when a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded on a road in eastern Baghdad.
- Police killed five insurgents on Sunday in the small town of Suwayra.
- Gunmen killed a policeman on Sunday in Kut.
- Gunmen killed a police officer on Sunday in Mosul.
- A policeman was killed and six people wounded -four police and two insurgents- in clashes in Mosul.
- A bomb outside a shop killed a policeman and wounded five people. Police had gone to recover the body of a Shiite man killed by gunmen in the religiously mixed city of Baquba.
- A policeman and a civilian were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul. Iraqi soldiers killed three gunmen in a separate incident. Gunmen killed a Kurdish man in the city on Sunday.
- The body of a policeman was found with bullet wounds in his head and chest near Falluja.
- Gunmen shot dead two undercover policemen and their driver in their car in Iskandariya.

Iraq, June 29, 2006:
- A suicide car bomber struck a funeral in Kirkuk, killing 4 people and wounding 27.
- A trash collector and the head of security for Baghdad University were also slain.
- At least six other deaths were reported in the capital, including two merchants, a baker, an electrical worker and a woman sitting in her car with three of her sons, who were wounded.
- Police found the body of a man who had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot in the head in western Baghdad.
- Gunmen in a civilian car intercepted a car carrying Kadhim Challoub, who was in charge of the guards at Baghdad University, ordered his driver and his guard out, and then killed the security chief on the eastern side of the capital.
- A roadside bomb aimed at a police patrol in northern Baghdad missed its target but killed one civilian and wounded another.

Iraq, July 3, 2006:
- Bombings in two crowded Iraqi markets have killed at least eight people and wounded dozens of others.
- The first was a car bomb in Mosul caused five deaths. It was followed by the second deadly attack in Mahmoudiya.
- US military announced that insurgents had killed two of its troops in separate incidents. A soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle and a marine died in combat.

Iraq, Tuesday July 4, 2006:
- Mortar rounds landed in a square in western Baghdad where Iraqi security forces are normally stationed, wounding 11 people, including four soldiers and three traffic policemen.
- Gunmen killed an employee in the ministry of culture's office in southwestern Baghdad.
- Gunmen abducted Iraq's Deputy Electricity Minister Raad al-Harith and 19 bodyguards after ambushing their convoy in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday.
- Iraqi and US troops killed seven insurgents during two-hour long clashes on Sunday night in Baghdad's northern Adhamiya district.
- Two police were killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb struck near a police checkpoint in eastern Baghdad.
- A civilian was killed and two others wounded when several mortar rounds landed near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Hawija.
- Gunmen wounded a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni religious group, on Monday in the city of Falluja.

At least seven people have been killed and 30 injured in Sadr City district of Baghdad on July 7, 2006, in clashes between the Mehdi Army fighters, loyal to radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, and US and Iraqi troops. US officials said they had captured a senior insurgent responsible for several militant cells across Baghdad. But a senior official in Moqtada Sadr's office said the intended target of the operation was Abu Dera, a senior figure in the Mehdi Army, who is still at liberty.

US-led forces arrested a regional commander for a pro-government Shiite militia suspected of smuggling surface-to-air missiles and spying for Iran on Friday July 7, 2006. Adnan al-Unaybi, leader of the Mehdi Army militia in charge of an area south of Baghdad was arrested during an Iraqi-US raid near the town of Hilla on Thursday. Unaybi had been previously detained in 2004 but later released for torching liquor stores and tearing down public billboards of Iraqi singers. The same day Iraqi and US forces arrested a Mehdi Army leader in Baghdad's Sadr City slum after a firefight in which 30-40 gunmen were killed or wounded. Unaybi led the Mehdi militia in the volatile middle Euphrates valley, an area that has seen much fighting.

Iraq, Friday July 7, 2006:
- US-led forces arrested a regional commander for a pro-government Shiite militia suspected of smuggling surface-to-air missiles and spying for Iran.
- A mortar attack and a car bomb killed five people and wounded nine near two Sunni mosques in Baghdad.
- A mortar attack killed three and wounded about 30 in the mainly Shiite Shula district of Baghdad.
- A car bomb outside a Shiite mosque killed six and wounded 46 in the village of Tal Banat, near Mosul.
- Four mortar rounds landed on the governorate building of Ramadi, killing one Iraqi army soldier and wounding two.
- Iraqi troops killed or wounded 30 to 40 gunmen during an overnight assault on a building in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City slum.
- Gunmen shot dead three people in three different districts in Mosul on Thursday.
- A bomb exploded outside a Sunni mosque in Baquba, wounding seven worshipers.
- US-led forces killed two fighters and detained five suspected insurgents during a raid near Baquba on Thursday.

Iraq, Saturday July 8, 2006:
- Interior Ministry commandos and US troops surrounded a Baghdad mosque loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
- Four children were killed and 38 wounded when four mortars struck an open field in the northern Baghdad district of Kadhimiya.
- A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in the Hay al-Jihad district; four people were wounded.
- The bodies of six Shiite rag collectors were found in the mainly Sunni Baghdad district of Doura. They had gunshot wounds to the head and chest.
- Three civilians were killed and five wounded when mortar rounds landed in the southern Baghdad area of Abu Dshir.
- Insurgents killed three US soldiers in the violent western Anbar province.
- Police found two beheaded bodies in the religiously mixed town of Baquba.
- Two bodies with gunshot wounds to the head were found in the town of Khalis, just north of Baquba.
- Gunmen wearing uniforms of Iraq's security forces killed a Sunni cleric.
- Gunmen shot dead a woman, believed to be a translator for US forces, in southern Baghdad's Bayaa district, police said.

Iraq, Sunday July 9, 2006:
- Gunmen in Baghdad have killed at least 40 people at a fake police checkpoint, in an apparent sectarian attack against Sunni Muslims. Shia militants stopped cars in the western Jihad district, separated Sunnis and shot them.
- At least 17 people died when two car bombs exploded near a Shia mosque in the capital.

Iraq, Monday July 10, 2006:
- Gunmen have ambushed a bus in Baghdad, killing at least six people. The attack happened in the Amariya district, a mainly Sunni area.
- Earlier a series of explosions in Baghdad killed at least 10 people and injured more than 40. Two of the bombs struck the run-down Shia area of Sadr City in what appear to be reprisals for the attacks on Sunnis on Sunday. A third bomb exploded in central Baghdad on Monday but no casualty figures are yet available.
- Police found five unidentified bodies in Suwayra.
- At least three people were killed and seven wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a truck outside the offices of the Kurdish party of President Jalal Talabani in Kirkuk.
- A policeman was killed and four people were wounded by a roadside bomb near the city of Hilla.
- A member of the provincial council in Diyala province, Adnan Iskandar al-Mahdawi, was killed in a drive-by shooting.
- A roadside bomb in the centre of Baghdad injured five policemen.
- Gunmen attacked a bus in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Amariyah in western Baghdad, killing the driver and six passengers, including a woman.

Iraq, Tuesday July 11, 2006:
- Gunmen have opened fire on a minibus in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing at least 10 Shia Muslims. The vehicle, bearing a coffin, was heading to a funeral in the southern city of Najaf, which is holy to Shias. Two cars drew up alongside the minibus, which was travelling on a road in a southern suburb, and sprayed it with gunfire. There were no survivors.
- A suicide bombing near the Green Zone in central Baghdad killed five people and injuring 10. That blast targeted a restaurant frequented by police.
- Also in Baghdad, gunmen attacked a Saudi Arabian import and export company in the western Mansour area, killing five Iraqi employees.
- More than a dozen bombings killed about 60 people in more than a dozen bombings, shootings and ambushes -mostly in the Baghdad area.
- Suicide bombers struck across the street from Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, killing up to 16 people. Sixteen other people were killed in the blast.
- More than 1,607 Iraqis have been killed and nearly 2,500 wounded since al-Maliki's government took office May 20.

Iraq, July 12, 2006:
- Clashes erupted between Iraqi policemen and gunmen in the mostly Shiite district of Um al-Maalif in southern Baghdad, killing one civilian and one policeman.
- One policeman was killed when gunmen shot at a police patrol in central Tikrit.
- The bodies of two carpenters were found with gunshot wounds in Tikrit.
- Iraqi security forces said they had found the bodies of 20 bus drivers kidnapped earlier from a bus station in Muqdadiya.
- One civilian was killed and six were wounded when a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army headquarters in the town of Hasswa.
- Gunmen killed a policeman in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- A body with gunshot wounds and signs of torture was found near Kirkuk.
- A suicide bomber walked into a restaurant in eastern Baghdad and blew himself up, killing seven people and wounding 20.
- Three civilians, including a child, were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in northern Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a Baghdad University professor on Tuesday in the western Mansur district.
- A bomb exploded near a private clinic owned by the wife of the Governor of Salahaddin, killing her and wounding two of her aides on Tuesday in Tikrit.

A suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in Mosul on Thursday July 13, killing five people and wounding five. Two policemen and three civilians were killed, and two policemen and three civilians were wounded.

Iraq, Friday July 14, 2006:
- Gunmen sprayed a minibus with machinegun fire in Kut killing five Shiite pilgrims, including a woman and a child. The pilgrims had been travelling to the holy Shiite city of Kerbala when gunmen attacked them on the outskirts of Kut.
- A bomb struck a Sunni mosque in Baghdad after Friday prayers, killing seven people and wounding five.
- Mortar rounds hit a Shiite mosque north of the capital, killing two and wounding four.

Gunmen have killed at least 12 Iraqi soldiers in an attack on a checkpoint at Rashaad, 38.6km on a highway south of Kirkuk on July 15, 2006.
- Unidentified gunmen in the town of al-Diwaniya killed three Iraqis, including a policeman.
- The bodies of 16 Iraqi civilians were found in different sites south of Baghdad. Eight bodies were found in Alexandria, four in al- Latifiya, and four in Jarf al- Sakhr. All the victims were civilians and were blindfolded, handcuffed and shot.
- An Iraqi army source announced the arrest in central Iraq of a group of wanted suspected terrorists including six linked to al-Qaeda terrorist network. The operation, carried out by a joint Iraqi-coalition force, also uncovered some weapons and ammunition.
- The chairman of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee Ahmed al-Hajiya and 30 of his assistants were kidnapped by gunmen. Six of those captured on Saturday had since been released. Two bodyguards are known to have been killed during and immediately after the mass abduction.
- A US soldier was killed when his vehicle detonated a roadside bomb near Sadr City in northeast Baghdad.
- Gunmen have killed at least 12 Iraqi soldiers in an attack July 15, 2006, on a checkpoint on a highway south of Kirkuk in the north. The city is home to Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen who claim the right to run the city and the oil-rich area around it.
- The head of the country's North Oil Company was kidnapped in Baghdad and a suicide bomber killed at least 20 people outside the capital.

Iraq, Monday July 17, 2006:
- At least 48 people have been killed and more than 60 injured in an attack on a market in Mahmoudiya south of Baghdad. Mortars were fired into the open-air market before at least 20 gunmen opened fire on the panicking crowds. Many women and children were among the casualties, while most of the victims were believed to be Shia Muslims.
- Three Iraqi soldiers had been killed at a checkpoint in the town prior to the attack on the market.
- Three American soldiers were killed in separate attacks, two in the Baghdad area and one in western Iraq. One soldier was hit by small arms in western Baghdad, another soldier died from injuries suffered in an explosion south of the capital and the third soldier died "due to enemy action" in Anbar province.

A car bomb attack in the southern Iraqi city of Kufa has killed at least 53 people and left 103 injured on July 18, 2006. The bomb hit a crowd of labourers seeking work as they gathered close to a Shia shrine in the centre of the city.

Iraq, Thursday July 20, 2006:
- Violent attacks left a reported 15 Iraqis dead and 54 injured amid the discovery of 38 bodies, presumably victims of sectarian violence.
- A blast outside a fast-food restaurant on Baghdad's central Palestine Street killed two Iraqis, one a police officer, and injured another twelve, including a number of policemen.
- In a separate incident, a car bomb was detonated in a marketplace in Shorja district killing four civilians and injuring another fifteen, according to eyewitness reports. The bomb also damaged a number of nearby shops and vehicles, while another car bomb in the same area was defused.
- A car bomb blast on the road between Tikrit and Bayji killed four people and wounded 12.
- Police were told a body had been discovered inside a car parked outside a restaurant on the Tikrit- Bayji highway. As police removed the body, the car blew up.
- A car bomb was detonated in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk resulting in the deaths of six Iraqi civilians and the injury of another 15.
- Over the last 24 hours, a total of 38 corpses of gunshot victims had been found in Baghdad - 22 of which were found in the Karkh district of the Iraqi capital, while another sixteen were found in the Rasafa district. The bodies reportedly bore evidence of torture.
- Baghdad's central morgue said it had received a total of 33,728 corpses since the beginning of the current Iraq war in 2003, most of them unidentified. The morgue received a total of 9,558 bodies during the first half of 2006, compared with 6,012 bodies for all of 2003.

Iraq, Friday July 21, 2006:
- Three policemen and three Iraqi soldiers were killed when clashes with gunmen erupted in the town of Mahmudiya. Five "terrorists" were killed, 13 wounded and 47 detained. U.S. helicopters fired rockets and 21 weapons were seized.
- A suicide bomber in a car killed six policemen and wounded 13 others near the former rebel stronghold of Falluja.
- The bodies of five people who were kidnapped were found in Muqdadiya.
- A police officer and a civilian were shot dead in separate attacks in Muqdadiya.
- A US Marine was killed due to enemy action in Iraq's Al Anbar Province.
- US troops killed two suspected insurgents as well as two women and a child and wounded 23 people, including women and children, and detained four suspects in a raid to hunt members of al Qaeda northwest of Baquba. The US forces bombed three houses in the area.
- Two Salvadoran and four Polish soldiers and an Iraqi translator were wounded when their convoy was attacked near Numaniya.
- A roadside bomb targeting a Sunni mosque in the eastern New Baghdad district of the capital exploded, killing one civilian and wounding two others.
- A policeman was gunned down in the centre of Mosul.
- The bodies of three Iraqi soldiers in uniform with gunshot wounds, bearing signs of torture, were found about 20 km north of Falluja.
- The body of an unidentified headless man was found in the southern part of Kirkuk.
- A roadside bomb targeting a Sunni mosque exploded in the town of Khalis, killing one worshiper and wounding two.
- Two suspects wanted for killings, kidnappings and guerrilla attacks were seized by British forces in separate overnight raids in Basra.

Iraq, Sunday July 23, 2006
- More than 50 people have died in two separate car bomb attacks.
- At least 34 of them were killed when a bomb exploded at a crowded market in Sadr City - a mainly Shia area in the Iraqi capital. A suicide bomber drove a minibus packed with explosives into the entrance of the open-air market. More than 70 people were also injured in the blast.
- A few hours later at least 20 people died in a blast near a courthouse in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- The market bombing followed a bomb attack that killed eight people outside the area's town hall.

Iraq Monday July 24, 2006:
- An Iraqi soldier was killed and six wounded when a bomb blasted their vehicle during clashes with insurgents in central Baghdad's Haifa Street area.
- Gunmen shot dead tribal leader Sheikh Mahmoud al-Neda, as well as another man and wounded a third, in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
- Three civilians were wounded when three mortar rounds landed among houses in the northern town of Tal Afar.
- Gunmen shot dead a policeman near his home in Mosul.
- Four civilians were shot dead after gunmen opened fire on them in Mosul.
- A car bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in the city of Samara, killing two civilians and wounding 17 others, seven of them policemen.
- An Iraqi was shot dead by gunmen near the city of Kut.
- Gunmen attacked a group of civilians killing two and wounding 17 others near the city of Hilla.
- Five Iraqi soldiers were killed and four wounded when a car driven by a suicide bomber exploded near their patrol in Mosul.
- An Iraqi soldier was killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in the western Mansour district of Baghdad.
- A civilian was killed and three policemen wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in the Waziriya district of Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed an agricultural engineer near the holy city of Kerbala.
- Mortar bombs landed in the district of Dora, wounding eight civilians.
- A civilian was wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a U.S. military patrol in Mosul.
- Gunmen killed Wathiq Yunis, the local head of the Turkmen Front, a small political party, along with his three bodyguards in Mosul.
- The Iraqi army arrested 36 suspected insurgents on Sunday in different cities of Iraq.

Gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped 17 people from a central Baghdad apartment building in broad daylight on Wednesday July 26, 2006. The kidnappers abducted 10 men, five women and two children from different families living in the building, hours after Bush conceded at a White House news conference that violence in the Iraqi capital was a pressing problem.

A mortar barrage followed minutes later by a car bomb blasted Baghdad's upscale Karradah district Thursday July 27, 2006, killing 31 people and wounding 153.

Four worshippers were killed and two wounded after two mortars exploded outside a Sunni mosque in southern Baghdad Friday July 28, 2006. A US Marine died Thursday during operations in Iraq's expansive and restive Anbar province, west of Baghdad.

Iraq, Saturday July 29, 2006:
- A car bomb killed three people and wounded 15 when it blew up near a petrol station in central Kirkuk.
- Insurgents killed four US Marines in action in Iraq's restive Anbar province on Thursday.
- Police said they pulled two headless corpses wearing military uniform from the Tigris river in the town of Suwayra.
- A woman was killed and two others wounded when a mortar hit a house in the small town of al-Alam, near Tikrit.
- One policeman was killed and one wounded when gunmen opened fire on their patrol in the oil refinery city of Baiji.
- A minibus driver was killed when three gunmen in a car opened fire on him in southeastern Mosul.
- An Iraqi soldier shot dead a policeman after an argument at a checkpoint in Najaf.
- Iraqi security forces arrested over 60 suspected insurgents in different parts of Iraq in the last 24 hours. One policeman was killed during the raids.
- Iraqi forces captured a foreign fighter on Thursday in a raid on the Abu Ghraib district in western Baghdad.
- A grenade attack wounded 12 people as they queued for temporary labour work in central Baghdad.
- Seven police were wounded in a joint US and Iraqi raid against members of the Mehdi Army. The incident took place in the town of Diwaniya.
- A roadside bomb near a police patrol in Baghdad's northern Waziriya district wounded six people, including three policemen.

Gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms have kidnapped 26 people in a commercial district in central Baghdad on Monday July 31, 2006. The gunmen pulled up in 15 vehicles and rounded up staff and customers of a firm on a shopping street in Arasat. The head of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce was seized along with 10 of his staff, as well as 15 employees of a mobile phone company nearby.

Iraq, Tuesday August 1, 2006:
- Bombings and shootings killed more than 70 people in Iraq as U.S. forces prepare to take back Baghdad's streets from gunmen. The dead included 20 Iraqi troops, a U.S. soldier and a British soldier.
- The American soldier, was killed by enemy action" in Anbar province. In a separate statement, the military said a US soldier from the 16th Corps Support Group died the day before in a roadside bombing south of the capital.
- Officials confirmed that about 45 Shiite Muslims were kidnapped over the last two weeks on the main highway to Syria and Jordan.
- A roadside bomb devastated a bus packed with Iraqi soldiers near Beiji. All 24 people aboard were killed. All but four of the dead were Iraqi soldiers.
- In Baghdad, 14 people died and 37 were wounded when a car bomb exploded at a bank where police and soldiers were picking up monthly paychecks.
- A British soldier was fatally wounded in a mortar barrage on a British base in Basra. Britain has lost 115 soldiers in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.
- In Najaf 45 people disappeared while travelling by bus through the Sunni-dominated area west of Baghdad.

Iraq, Wednesday August 2, 2006:
- A series of bombs have hit the Iraqi capital, Baghdad killing three people and injuring nine.
- Up to three blasts were reported in the city's Tayaran Square, where labourers wait for daily construction work.
- Bombs exploded on a soccer field killing 11 young people. The two homemade bombs went off on a soccer field in the mostly Shiite district of Amil in west Baghdad, killing both players and spectators ranging in age from 15 to 25.
- At least 42 other people -two of them Americans - died elsewhere in sectarian or political violence.

Iraq, Friday August 4, 2006:
- Two civilians were killed and four others wounded when gunmen opened fire in the Doura district of south Baghdad. They said the casualties might have been participants in a rally called earlier in the day by radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in support of Hizbollah.
- Ten people, including three policemen, killed when a suicide car bomber drove into a crowd of spectators at a football match where a police side was playing a local side in the town of Hadhar. There were 12 wounded, including nine police.
- A senior Mosul police officer and two bodyguards were killed by a car bomb and at least one policeman and four militants died in heavy clashes between insurgents, and US and Iraqi forces in the city.
- Three suspected militants linked to al-Qaida in Iraq were killed in US raids and an air strike southeast of Baghdad.
- Two marines were killed in separate incidents in Anbar province.
- US soldiers killed two suspected militants in Mahmudiya, after they were shot at from a yellow van. The van was subsequently stopped and security forces found the bodies of two men, together with several weapons.
- Three Iraqi civilians were killed and nine wounded by a mortar attack apparently aimed at US marines in Ubaydi.
- US soldiers killed a suspected insurgent they believed to be burying a roadside bomb north of the capital.

Iraq, Saturday August 5, 2006:
- Six Iraqi Police officers, including an Iraqi Police Battalion commander, and one resident were killed in multiple attacks in eastern Mosul involving a suicide bomber, several explosive devices and small arms fire.
- US soldiers killed two militants they caught preparing a roadside bomb south of Baghdad.
- Iraqi forces killed 45 insurgents in five days of clashes near the town of Madaen, south of Baghdad. The insurgents had attacked civilians and Iraqi security forces. Three policemen were killed and four are missing.
- Five Iraqi army soldiers died and one was injured when gunmen opened fire on their checkpoint southwest of Kirkuk.
- Nine corpses showing evidence of torture were found in various parts of the capital.
- Gunmen killed a human rights activist in Diwaniya. Ali Hussein was shot near his house.
- Ten people were wounded in three separate roadside bomb attacks near shops in central Baquba.
- Police found seven bodies, four of them decapitated, in different parts of Kut.
- Two US soldiers were killed in action in Iraq's restive Anbar province.

Iraq, Sunday August 6, 2006:
- A roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad killed three Multi-National Division soldiers.
- A suicide bomber blew himself up at a mourning ceremony, killing at least 10 people and wounding 20 in Tikrit.
- Police said gunmen shot dead Sheikh Ali Hussein Shalash, a local preacher and member of the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars.
- One policeman was killed and five wounded in clashes with insurgents on the edge of Baghdad.
- US soldiers kill a suspected militant during a raid near Baiji. The raid was against a gang suspected of an attack on Saturday that killed five Iraqi soldiers.
- US soldiers killed one militant and detained 11 others on Sunday during raids near Taji.
- Police found two bodies in Dora, a southern district of Baghdad, and a third body in Ghazaliya, in west Baghdad.
- A bomb planted in a minibus killed a civilian and wounded the driver in Baghdad-Jadeeda, an eastern neighbourhood of the capital.
- Four more people died from injuries sustained in a bomb attack in the Baghdad district of Karada last Tuesday, taking the toll from the blast to 14.
- Iraqi and US army arrested 15 suspected insurgents in villages near Kirkuk.
- Four truck drivers were killed and their vehicles destroyed near Ishaqi when gunmen attacked a convoy transporting barbed wire to a US military base.
- Police say they have found 12 corpses around the capital, including the body of a woman from the mainly Shiite district of Shula in northwestern Baghdad. The bodies of the men bore signs of torture and all 12 were shot in the head.
- Iraqi police said they had retrieved four bodies from the river Tigris. All were handcuffed and blindfolded and had been shot.
- Gunmen killed a police officer on Saturday in Baghdad.
- Gunmen attacked an army checkpoint, kidnapping a sergeant and seizing a number of weapons in the town of Taza, near Kirkuk.
- Gunmen kidnapped a contractor in Hawija.
- An Iraqi army medic described a scene of horror to a US military hearing that will decide if four US soldiers are to be court-martialled for the murder and rape of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family.

Iraq, Tuesday August 8, 2006:
- At least 19 people have been killed and scores hurt in a series of blasts in Baghdad on.
- Two bombs claimed at least 10 lives and injured 69 people in a busy market in the al-Shurja district.
- Earlier, a bomb hit a minibus and a taxi in the centre of the city, killing at least nine people. Two other blasts targeted police, wounding three.
- There was also an armed raid on a bank in the capital. Robbers killed three security guards and two bank officials and escaped with a large quantity of money.
- A US soldier died of wounds sustained in fighting.
- The violence came a day after at least 4,000 US troops were deployed on the streets of the capital in an attempt to reduce sectarian killings and kidnappings. Correspondents say the deployment is being seen as an admission that a two-month-old security operation involving 50,000 mostly Iraqi troops around Baghdad has failed to curb the violence.

Iraq, Wednesday August 9, 2006:
- Three American soldiers were killed in the Sunni insurgent area west of Baghdad.
- Iraqi officials said about 1,500 people died violently last month in the capital -many shot execution-style by sectarian death squads.
- Two Americans were missing after a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter went down the day before in Anbar province. The helicopter crashed in an unspecified body of water and divers were searching for the missing troops. The crash was not due to hostile fire. The deaths brought to at least 17 the number of American service members killed in Iraq this month. All but five died in Anbar.
- Deputy Health Minister Dr. Sabah al-Husseini said about 1,500 violent deaths were reported last month in the Baghdad area -excluding members of the US-led coalition. The Baghdad morgue said 1,815 bodies were brought in last month, and about 85 percent had died violently. The biggest cause of violent deaths was gunshot wounds, mostly in the head.
- Four people were killed and five wounded when fighting broke out between gunmen and residents of a Shiite community in north Baghdad.
- Four people were killed and 16 wounded in an explosion late Tuesday at a Shiite mosque in Baquba.

Iraq, Thursday August 10, 2006:
- A suicide bomb attack at a market in Najaf has killed at least 35 people and injured more than 90 others. The attack occurred near the Imam Ali shrine, one of the most sacred Shia Muslim sites. A Sunni insurgent group claimed it had carried out the bombing.
- A bomb in a restaurant in Baghdad killed at least six people.
- At least three police commandos, including a senior officer, were also killed in clashes with gunmen in southern Baghdad.

Iraq, Friday August 11, 2006:
- Six bound and blindfolded bodies bearing signs of torture were found in different parts of Baghdad. Each had been executed with a single shot to the head.
- Gunmen in two cars shot dead one civilian while he was heading to work in Baiji.
- A policeman was gunned down in western Mosul.
- Gunmen ransacked offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Kerbala.
- In Kut, a guard was hurt when about 50 armed men stormed the PUK building there, breaking windows and setting office furniture on fire on the street.
- The bodies of two missing US servicemen were found among the wreckage of their helicopter, which crashed on Tuesday in Anbar province.
- Hundreds of followers of a Shiite cleric from the Fadhila Party marched peacefully in Basra in protest against a PUK-owned newspaper column criticizing their leader.

Iraq, Saturday August 12, 2006:
- A car bomb in southwestern Baghdad killed at least three people and wounded nine.
- A roadside bomb targeting Iraqi soldiers killed three soldiers in western Ghazaliya district of Baghdad.
- Gunmen assassinated Nabil Ghaithan, director of the post office for the Muthanna district, while he was in his car in Samawa.
- Two US soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb south of Baghdad struck their patrol.
- Iraqi forces killed eight suspected militants and arrested seven more in the Um al-Maalif district of southern Baghdad.
- Twelve other suspects were detained in a separate raid in Amiriya. Iraqi forces elsewhere in the country had rounded up a further 35 over the last 24 hours.
- US forces said they rounded up 60 suspected militants in a district of southern Baghdad.
- US troops killed 26 rebels and wounded six in fighting on Friday in Ramadi.
- Gunmen killed two civilians in al-Masarif district in Mosul.
- A sniper attacked a police patrol, killing one officer and wounding another in Mosul.
- Gunmen assassinated a member of Iraqi intelligence in front of his home in Diwaniya.
- Two civilians killed and three wounded in a roadside bomb attack aimed at a police patrol in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen attacked a police station in Mahmudiya. Two of the assailants were detained after they were injured in the assault.
- Three died in a bomb blast in the southern city of Basra.
- Police found the bodies of two civilians shot in the head and chest in Balad.
- Gunmen killed police captain Nuri Juad in Baquba.
- Seven policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb targeting their patrol in Baquba.

Iraq, Sunday August 13, 2006:
- Gunmen abducted Ayatollah Hussein al-Husseini, a member of the Shiite religious clergy, from his office in New Baghdad district of the capital.
- Gunmen killed a civilian inside a market in the religiously mixed city of Baquba.
- Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Baquba.
- A woman and two children were killed when an old land mine, planted during the Iraq-Iran war, exploded near the town of Bedra.
- Three people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a Shiite mosque in eastern Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a colonel in the Oil Protection Facilities, a security body charged with guarding Iraq's oil infrastructure, while he was in a gas station north of Tikrit.
- Four people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off in a popular market in Mahmudiya.
- The governor of Mosul, Duraid Mohammed Kashmula, escaped an assassination attempt when gunmen attacked him while he was supervising the distribution of fuel in a gas station in Mosul. A bodyguard was wounded in the attack.
- Gunmen killed a civilian on Saturday in the small town of Owja, near Tikrit.
- Gunmen stormed the house of a civilian and shot him in a town near Balad.
- An insurgent was killed and four policemen and an insurgent were wounded during clashes erupted in a small town near Hilla.
- Two civilians were wounded on Saturday when Katusha rocket landed on a residential district in the town of Mussayab.
- Iraqi army and police arrested 30 suspected insurgents, including 16 who were planning to kill relatives of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, during the last 24 hours in different cities of Iraq. Six policemen were killed during these operations.
- The body of a woman who had been shot dead was found on Saturday in small town of al-Gherba, near Kut.

Four Iraqis have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on an office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday August 15, 2006. The death toll could climb as rescuers search the rubble. More than 30 people were injured in the attack.

Iraq. Tuesday August 15, 2006:
- A suicide bombing in the north and street battles in the south claimed 16 lives.
- Nine people - five civilians and four security guards- died in the suicide attack in Mosul office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party of President Jalal Talabani. Forty-one people were wounded by the blast, which heavily damaged the one-story building and set 17 cars on fire.
- Seven were killed in the fighting between Iraqi forces and followers of an anti-American cleric in Karbala. Three Iraqi policemen and four gunmen were killed and 17 people were wounded in the clashes.
- In Baghdad, US and Iraqi forces have surrounded the Sunni neighbourhoods of Amariyah and Ghazaliyah and the Shiite area of Shula, systematically searching houses and shops for weapons.

Iraq, August 16, 006:
- At least eight civilians have been killed and 28 wounded by a bomb in, Baghdad. The explosion happened in a crowded area of the Nahda district to the east of the city.
- In Basra armed groups attacked the city council, in what reports say may be a move to avenge a tribal leader killed on Tuesday.
- The police in Mosul killed six insurgents.

Iraq, August 16, 2006:
Iraqi security forces and British troops fought Shiite militias and tribesmen in two major cities south of Baghdad in sustained battles that left two policemen and a dozen militiamen dead.
Bombings in various parts of Baghdad killed 21 people and wounded 59 others.
In Basra, a gun battle erupted between Iraqi Army troops and members of the dominant local tribe, the Bani Asad, angered by the killing on Tuesday of a tribal leader, Faisal Raji al-Asadi. Six people were killed in the fighting.

Iraq, Thursday August 17, 2006:
At least eight civilians have been killed and 28 wounded by a bomb in Baghdad. The explosion happened in a crowded area of the Nahda district to the east of the city.
Police have killed six insurgents in Mosul.

Iraq, Friday August 18, 2006:
The Iraqi government announced a two-day vehicle ban in parts of Baghdad fearing an attack on a major Shiite religious festival. Nearly 1,000 Shiite pilgrims were killed in a stampede during last year's ceremony.
Seven pilgrims walking to Kadhimiya were shot dead by gunmen in a car in al-Adel district.
Iraqi soldiers supported by US troops have found three rockets and a mortar round during a search of an office of Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr in northwestern Baghdad.
Three suspected death squad leaders believed to have taken part in the killing of 40 people in the predominantly Sunni district of al-Jihad on July 9 were detained by Iraqi forces.
In Mahmudiya, four people were killed and 10 hurt when mortar rounds hit a building complex.

On Sunday August 20, 2006, gunmen have opened fire on Shia Muslim pilgrims in Baghdad, killing at least 20 and injuring 300. Tens of thousands of Shia are making the annual pilgrimage to the tomb of revered Imam Musa Kadhim in the Kadhimiya neighbourhood. The gunmen were thought to be Sunni extremists.

Iraq Tuesday August 22, 2006:
- Insurgent attacks killed at least 13 people across Iraq as British troops stormed into a southern city to arrest a suspected "terrorist".
- Eight of the murder victims were young Shia men from Najaf, who were pulled from buses by gunmen late on Monday as they travelled north to Madaen on the outskirts of Baghdad, and shot dead in the street.
- Two civilians were killed in a blast in central Baghdad.
- Three civilians were murdered in Baquba. Fifteen more civilians were wounded in a mortar strike within the town.
- British troops backed by Challenger tanks raided a site in the southern Iraqi town of Amara and seized six suspects.
- Two civilians were killed in crossfire between British forces and Mehdi Army militiamen.

Iraq, Thursday August 24, 2006:
- A US soldier died of wounds after militants using small arms fire attacked his patrol.
- Two civilians were killed and nine people, including two policemen, wounded when a car driven by a suicide bomber exploded near a police station in eastern Baghdad.
- The head of police patrols in eastern Baghdad, Colonel Hussein Abdul Wahid, escaped an assassination attempt when a car bomb exploded near his motorcade in the eastern district of Zayouna. He was unharmed but five of his bodyguards were wounded.
- Four civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in central Baghdad.
- Four policemen were wounded when a car bomb exploded near their patrol in northern Baghdad.
- Two policemen were killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Baquba.
- A car bomb wounded four policemen and a civilian when police were lured to the vehicle by a false tip claiming a dead body was in the car in Baquba.
- Gunmen in army uniforms kidnapped two truck drivers in the Amara-Kut highway.
- Police arrested Abdul Rahman al-Aathari, head of al Qaeda-linked groups in Mosul.
- Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Mosul.
- The police found a body with gunshot wounds in the city of Mosul.
- Gunmen killed four people, three of them from Saddam Hussein's ousted Baath party, in different attacks in Kerbala.
- A US soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle.
- A US soldier was killed on Wednesday after his unit clashed with militants south of Baghdad. Two insurgents were also killed in the fighting.
- A hospital in Mosul received the bodies of seven people with gunshot wounds, including five from the same family.
- Gunmen killed three policemen on Wednesday at a checkpoint in Balad.
- Police found the bodies of three people, handcuffed and with gunshot wounds, in Kut.
- Police found a body, handcuffed and with gunshot wounds, in the town of Suwayra.
- Two policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in central Baghdad.
- Police retrieved a body, handcuffed, blindfolded and with gunshot wounds, from a river near Latifiya.
- Police retrieved a body from the Tigris River in the city of Tikrit.
- Police found the body of an Iraqi near the town of Baiji after earlier finding its severed head in the same town on Wednesday.
- Three policemen and three civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Baquba.

Iraq, August 26, 2006:
- Gunmen in the town of Baquba attacked a Shiite family, killing two women and two children and wounding 11. The family had previously received Sunni insurgent threats and were moving out of their home when the attack took place.
- Four Kurdish civilians were killed in a drive-by shooting as they were travelling southwest of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen in Tikrit stormed a bakery on Friday and killed three Shiite workers and wounded two.
- Gunmen killed a policeman in the town of Samara.
- Insurgents killed the owner of an ice factory on Friday in the small town of Dhuluiya.
- Gunmen killed a policeman in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Friday.
GUNMEN in a speeding car opened fire on two sisters working as translators for the British consulate in Basra, killing one of them and seriously wounding the other.

Iraq, Sunday August 27, 2006:
- At least seven people have been killed and more than 30 injured in bombings in Baghdad.
- Five died and 14 were hurt when a vehicle exploded near a hotel.
- A car bomb outside the offices of a state-run newspaper claimed at least two lives and wounded 20 people.
- A series of car bombings and shootings across Iraq have killed about 60 people on Sunday.
- Car bombs exploded in Baghdad, the town of Khallis north of the capital, the northern oil city of Kirkuk and Basra in the Shia south on Sunday.
- In Khallis, gunmen stormed a market and cafe, killing 16 people and wounding 25.
- A bomb blew apart a minibus in a busy commercial road in central Baghdad, killing nine people.
- In Basra, where Maliki has imposed a state of emergency to deal with increasing violence fuelled by tensions between rival Shia factions, seven people were killed by a motorcycle bomb in a market, officials said.
- Police said 20 bodies had been found in parts of Baghdad on Saturday. Some bore signs of torture and most had been killed by gunshots to the head.

Iraq, August 29, 2006:
- An explosion at a disused oil pipeline in southern Iraq has killed at least 27 people, possibly many more. People had been siphoning fuel from the pipeline in an industrial zone south of Diwaniya.
- In a separate development, police found more than 20 bodies at two sites in Baghdad. All the victims had been shot and tortured. Eleven of the bodies were found near a school in a southwestern district of the capital. At least 10 other bodies were dumped behind a Shia mosque in the west of the city.
- Insurgents killed two Shia militiamen in the city of Baquba. The militiamen were killed in an attack on the office of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.
- Two US soldiers died in Iraq - one in fighting in Anbar province and the second from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident.

Iraq, Wednesday August 30, 2006:
- A wave of bombings in Iraq, including one at a busy Baghdad market and another an army and police recruitment centre, has left 44 people dead.
- The blast at the Shurja market killed 24 people and injured 35.
- Other blasts and shootings were also reported in the Iraqi capital.
- In Hilla a bomb killed 12 people queuing to join the police.

Iraq September 1, 2006:
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in central Kirkuk, seriously wounding three policemen.
- A senior Iraqi intelligence officer during Saddam Hussein's rule was found dead with gunshot wounds and hands bound near his home near Dujail north of Baghdad a day after he was kidnapped. He was the second former senior Saddam officer to be killed in as many days.
- A roadside bomb killed three Iraqi policemen in Baghdad's southern Doura district.
- Gunmen killed a policeman after storming his house Thursday night in the village of Numaniya.
- Police found the bodies of three men blindfolded and handcuffed in the southern Shiite city of Kerbala.
- The civilian death toll from violence in Iraq fell by 28 percent in August. Some 769 Iraqi civilians were killed in August compared to 1,065 in July.
- Mortar shells slammed into a residential area in the town of Mahmudiya killing one child. A separate mortar attack in Mahmudiya injured three civilians.

Fourteen Pakistani and Indian pilgrims have been ambushed and killed on their way to Iraq's Shia holy city of Karbala on September 2, 2006. The victims were taken off a bus and separated then they were shot dead at close range.
Iraq, September 6, 2006:
- Two bombs have exploded within minutes of each other in Baghdad, leaving eight people dead and 46 injured.
- The first blast was caused by a car bomb, targeting a busy street in the capital's northern Qahira district.
- The second was a roadside bomb that exploded nearby soon afterwards as Iraqi soldiers arrived at the scene.
- Baghdad police found the bodies of 19 people shot dead. The bodies showed signs of torture.
- Three people were shot and killed in the mainly Sunni town of Baquba.
- Insurgents killed six policemen and wounded six more in a bomb attack in Sinjar.
- Al-Qaeda-linked militant group, the Mujahideen Shura Council, broadcast a video on a website apparently showing the killing with shots to the head of two Iraqi national guardsmen it branded as collaborators.

Iraq, Thursday September 7, 2006:
- A series of suicide car bombings and roadside blasts in Baghdad has killed about 15 people, including members of the police and security services.
- In the worst attack a car bomb exploded at a petrol station used by Iraqi police killing at least five people. About 15 people were wounded in the blast, which also damaged 20 police and civilian cars waiting to refuel.
- In one of the attacks, insurgents killed three civilians and wounded 20 more in a roadside bombing near the Sunni al-Nida mosque, in a largely Shia area of north-east Baghdad. The bomb exploded as a police patrol was passing the area and several security force members were injured.
- In the western Mansour district, a roadside bomb killed a man as he was driving his daughter to school for an exam. Fifteen-year-old Marwa Faris and a passer-by were also injured.
- A suicide car bomb also exploded near a road tunnel in the centre of Baghdad, killing two civilians and two police special forces officers, and wounding 13 people.
- A roadside bomb also targeted a police patrol in the central Karrada district, killing a civilian and wounding two others.
- A nephew of Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani had been kidnapped. Gunmen snatched Ahmed al-Mashhadani on Wednesday night in northern Baghdad.
- The bodies of six men with multiple gunshot wounds were found in Mosul.
- Two people were killed and 15 wounded by a car bomb in Iskandariya.
- Gunmen stormed into the home of a policeman in Kirkuk, killing a member of his family and wounding two others.
- The bodies of three people, including a beheaded woman bearing signs of torture, were retrieved from the Tigris river near town of Suwayra.
- The bodies of two people with multiple gunshot wounds, showing signs of torture with their hands and legs bound together, were found in Kirkuk.
- A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives at an Iraqi police commando checkpoint in western Baghdad's Yarmouk district, wounding seven police commandos.
- A man and his 15-year-old son were killed by gunmen in the northern city of Mosul.
- A US soldier died on Wednesday from combat wounds in Anbar Province, western Iraq, the U.S. military said in a statement.
- A US soldier was shot dead by insurgents on Wednesday near the town of Hawija.
- A policemen was shot dead by gunmen in the southern town of Hay.
- Gunmen killed two people, a man and a woman, guarding a car park on Wednesday in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb exploded on Wednesday near a police patrol in Kirkuk, wounding four policemen, including an officer.
- Gunmen killed two Iraqi guards charged with protecting oil infrastructure and wounded two others on Wednesday night while they were travelling in a car north of Tikrit.
- The Iraqi army detained one wanted insurgent and 19 suspected insurgents in the last 24 hours in various parts of Iraq.

Iraq, Friday September 8, 2006:
- Four people were killed and six wounded when mortar rounds landed on a road between Mussayab and Kerbala. Among the casualties were pilgrims walking to a Shiite festival in Kerbala.
- Two people were killed and 19 wounded late on Thursday night when mortar rounds landed in Mussayab.
- A car bomb exploded and mortar rounds landed near a Shiite mosque in Haswa on Thursday, killing two people and wounding 15.
- Clashes between insurgents and US troops after a roadside bomb attack on a U.S. convoy on Thursday in Falluja. Three Iraqis were killed and six wounded. Residents said US troops used loudspeakers to demand people turn in insurgents or face a "large military operation".
- A car bomb targeting the convoy of Colonel Ali Mohammed, police chief for the city's Karrada district, exploded in Zayouna district, central Baghdad, killing one policeman and a bystander. Six others, including four policemen, were wounded in the blast.
- A British soldier died on Thursday from combat wounds he received on Tuesday during an attack in Qurna, near Basra.
- A US soldier died of combat wounds after his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad.
- One civilian was killed and a young child was injured following an accident involving a US military convoy in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed Ibrahim al-Khalaf, leader of the Sunni Arab Bagara tribe, and seriously wounded his guard and a member of the city council in a drive-by shooting in Hawija.
- The six bodies of blindfold people with multiple gunshot wounds, showing signs of torture, were found overnight in different areas of Baghdad. Two of the bodies were found in Shula, two in Sadr City and two others in Doura.
- An Iraqi soldier was killed and two were wounded when gunmen ambushed their patrol 15 km south of Samarra.
- The body of Haider Hamza, an interpreter working for Danish troops in Iraq, was found shot dead in front of his house in central Diwaniya. He had been kidnapped three days ago.
- Iraqi border guards accused Iran of shelling their territory and taking six soldiers prisoner after a clash on the border northeast of Baghdad.

Iraq, Saturday September 9, 2006:
- Sixteen bodies -shot, bound and blindfolded- were found in different areas of Mahmudiya.
- The bodies of 14 people, all of them with gunshot wounds and hands tied, were found in different areas of Baghdad on Friday.
- A suicide car bomb attack killed one policeman and wounded 10 civilians after police at Baghdad's Adhamiya police station fired at the approaching car and forced it to detonate early.
- A car bomb targeting police patrols in northern Baghdad killed one policeman and wounded six people, including four policemen.
- A roadside bomb killed two policemen and seriously wounded 12 people, including civilians, as they travelled on a highway just south of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed Abdul-Kareem al-Rubaie, an employee at the state-funded al-Sabah newspaper, and wounded his driver in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad.
- A 10-year-old boy was killed and his mother wounded on Friday after gunmen entered the home of an Iraqi soldier in the northern border town of Sinjar, near Syria.
- Police Brigadier Muthhir Kamil was kidnapped in northern Baghdad's Shaab district on Friday.
- A car bomb killed a civilian and wounded four when it detonated near a US army patrol in eastern Baghdad's Zayouna district. The blast also burned out a Humvee. The U.S. military said three soldiers were wounded in the attack.
- Four bombs targeting US forces in the town of Baiji, killed three civilians and wounded three others on Friday.
- Three mortar rounds seriously wounded three women and a child in the Shiite town of Balad on Friday.
- A bomb hit a police patrol in eastern Baghdad, wounding two policemen.
- Clashes between insurgents and police wounded three civilians in Samarra.
- Several mortars landed in Baghdad's Doura district on Friday, wounding seven people.
- A roadside bomb wounded three people in northern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded two Iraqi soldiers in Baghdad as their vehicle passed by.
- A bomb detonated at a major road intersection in Bab al-Sharji in central Baghdad, wounding two people.

Iraq, Tuesday September 12, 2006:
- A car bomb detonated in Baghdad's upscale Mansour neighbourhood, killed at least six people and wounding 18 others.
- Violence overnight and on Tuesday resulted in at least 24 people being killed around Iraq.
- In Middadiyah, a town just outside Baquba, a roadside bomb next to a market killed at least four people and wounded 24 others.It was the second attack in the Baqouba area following an attack late on Monday by gunmen who assaulted a Shiite mosque in a town with mortars and assault rifles, killing seven people and wounding three.
- In Mosul, gunmen attacked and killed four unidentified Kurds and injured another.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in eastern Baghdad's Zaiyouna neighbourhood, wounding three police officers and a civilian.
- Gunmen killed police brigadier Ziad Ramzi in Mosul. The officer was in plain clothes when he was shot.
- Two armed men were killed and four Iraqi soldiers were injured in a firefight between Iraqi forces and gunmen in the Qadisiyah area in eastern Rawah, 275 kilometers northwest of Baghdad.

Iraq, Wednesday September 13, 2006:
- Iraqi police have found in the space of one day 60 bodies of people bound, tortured and shot in Baghdad. They were found all over the city, from Sunni areas in the west to Shia districts in the east -but most were found in largely Sunni west Baghdad. Fifteen of the bodies found by police were discovered in eastern Baghdad where most of the city's Shia live. Police have not been able to identify any of the 60, let alone say whether they are Shia or Sunni.
- Car bombs killed at least 22 people in Baghdad. One device near the national sports stadium in the eastern Shaab district exploded in a parked car during the morning rush hour, killing 14 people including two policemen and wounding at least 57. A bomb later went off near a police patrol in the Zayona district killing eight people and injuring at least 17.
- A mortar attack in central Baghdad wounded at least one policeman and several civilians.
- The US military announced the death of an American soldier wounded by "enemy action" in Anbar province

Iraq, Friday September 15, 2006:
- Police in Baghdad have recovered at least 49 bodies from the streets of the capital in the past 24 hours. Most of the victims had been shot in the head, and showed signs of having been tortured.
- The latest discoveries take the number of bodies found in Baghdad in the past three days to more than 100. Some of those killed were probably the victims of attacks by sectarian militias. Others could have been targeted by criminal gangs hoping to obtain ransoms.
- Seven US servicemen have been killed and dozens more wounded in the past 48 hours across Iraq.
- So far in September, 25 US soldiers have been killed,

Iraq, Saturday September 16, 2006:
- Forty-seven bodies have been found across Baghdad raising the total number of corpses found in recent days in the Iraqi capital to 176. Many of the victims had been tortured or shot in the head or chest. Police said 21 bodies were found in eastern Baghdad, and the other 26 in the west of the city.
- Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and three wounded when a bomb exploded inside a car they approached that contained a body.
- A suicide car bomb killed one civilian and wounded 22 when the attacker detonated his vehicle outside a well-fortified police station in southern Baghdad's Doura district.
- A roadside bomb killed three policemen and wounded another when it blew up as a police patrol was passing in the restive town of Baquba.
- Iraqi police said four members of the Albu Baz tribe were killed along with a gunman who attacked them on Friday after they clashed in the city of Samarra. The Albu Baz tribe blamed al Qaida militants for the attack.
- Iraqi police killed two insurgents after they repelled an attack by them on their checkpoint, just south of Kirkuk. Two policemen were also wounded in the attack.
- A Sunni member of Iraq's parliament escaped a bomb attack on his convoy unhurt as he travelled through western Baghdad. Two of Mohammed al-Dani's guards were lightly wounded in the attack.
- Three policemen were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul.
- A suicide car bomb targeting a US military patrol killed four civilians and wounded eight.

Iraq, Sunday September 17, 2006:
- At least 23 people have been killed and 65 injured in a series of bombings in Kirkuk.
- A suicide bomber blew up a truck killing 18 people close to offices of Kurdish political parties and a police station.
- Hours later, a joint US-Iraqi security patrol was targeted in an attack which left three civilians dead.
- Two further roadside bomb attacks were reported, as well as a suicide car bomb attack at an Iraqi army checkpoint.
- At least one person was killed in another blast that targeted the house of a local tribal leader.
- In Baghdad, officials said 24 bodies were found. Most of the victims had been shot dead in apparent sectarian attacks. Several of the corpses showed signs of torture. About 180 bodies have been found in the city in the last five days.

Iraq. Monday September 18, 2006:
- A bomb killed 22 people in a market in the city of Tal Afar. The blast was caused by a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive vest in the market.
- Earlier, a suicide car bomber killed 13 people in the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi. The driver struck outside a recruitment center as men were gathering to join the force.

Iraq, Thursday September 21, 2006:
- A U.S. soldier was killed in the Anbar province west of Baghdad. The soldier died from wounds sustained from enemy action.
- Earlier in the day, another US soldier had been killed in northern Baghdad on Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded next to the vehicle he was traveling in.
- Thirty-eight bodies were found dumped in the streets of Baghdad.
- One Italian soldier died in a road accident during a patrol just hours before the handover of Dhi Qar province, bringing a bitter end to a mission deeply unpopular in Italy.
- Six officers died in a mortar and gun attack on a police station in west Baghdad
- A car bomb in a market in north-west Baghdad killed two people
- At least three died in violence in Baghdad's Doura neighbourhood

Iraq, Friday September 22, 2006:
- Gunmen in a car shot and killed one civilian and wounded two policemen in Kirkuk.
- One civilian was killed and five people, including two policemen, were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Latifiya.
- Two policemen were killed while they were defusing a bomb placed on the side of the road in Iskandariya. Two children were wounded in the attack.
- Residents of the religiously mixed Hurriya district in northwest Baghdad clashed with gunmen who set two houses on fire. Firefighters were fired on when they came to tackle the blazes.
- Police found 10 bodies, including those of two women, in different parts of Baghdad. Most bore signs of torture and had been shot. The two women were found in the western Shi'ite district of Shula. None of the bodies was immediately identified.
- Police found two bodies, one beheaded, in a western part of the city of Mosul.
- Police found a woman's body dumped on the side of the road in the small town of Taza.
- Three gunmen in a car opened fire and killed Nomass Atout, a former Ba'ath party member, near his house in Diwaniya.
- Assailants bombed the house of a policeman who was killed a week ago in southern Mosul wounding five of his neighbours.
- One U.S. soldier was killed late on Thursday after the vehicle he was travelling in was struck by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad.
- Two car bombs in Shi'ite districts of southern Baghdad wounded 16 people late on Friday. Five were hurt in a market in the Abu Chehr district and 11 in a street near an Agriculture Ministy office in Zaafaraniyah.

Iraq, Saturday September 23, 2006:
- Two US soldiers were killed and three wounded when a bomb blasted their patrol in Hawija, near Kirkuk.
- Sunni militant group Ansar al-Sunna posted on the Internet photographs of the identity cards of four Indians and three Pakistanis and said they were among 10 South Asian Shiite Muslims it killed in Iraq as they headed for Syria.
- A motorcycle bomb exploded at a restaurant in northeast Baghdad, injuring five people.
- A car bomb killed 34 people and wounded 35 others -many badly burned- in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City.
- Men at a checkpoint beheaded nine people, including some policemen, after pulling them out of two cars in the northern town of Baiji.
- A Danish soldier was killed by a roadside bomb.
- A US soldier in the Baghdad task force was killed by a roadside bomb in the north of the capital.
- Gunmen shot dead Fadhil Abu Seybi, the head of a local tribe and a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a prominent Shiite party. Abu Seybi was killed outside his home in the holy city of Najaf.
- Police found five bodies bearing signs of torture and bullet wounds, in different parts of the small town of Mahmudiya.
- Police found the body of an Iraqi woman in a river northwest of Kirkuk.
- The body of a teenage boy was found dumped on a roadside in the small town of Rashad, the body had numerous gunshot wounds.
- A US contractor was killed on Friday as the result of a rocket attack in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra.
- The Iraqi army captured a regional leader of the al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunna group, along with two aides, in a village near the town of Muqdadiya.
- At least 35 people have been killed in a car bomb attack on a kerosene tanker in the mainly Shia district of Sadr City in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Iraq, Sunday September 24, 2006:
- At least 20 people were killed and 41 injured in violence around Iraq.
- Police discovered another 13 bodies, the apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
- The Health Ministry in northern Baghdad was hit by two mortar shells, which slammed into the building and its garden, seriously injuring three civilians.
- As police patrolled the area later, a roadside bomb exploded killing four policemen and wounded four more, while killing two civilians and injuring two others.
- In eastern Baghdad a car bomb targeting another police patrol killed five people, and wounded 17. The bomb was detonated in a parked car as the patrol went by. Three policemen were among the dead, while seven were injured.
- An Iraqi soldier died in east Baghdad in a morning attack. The soldier was gunned down in his car on his way to report to his unit.
- A bomb in a parked car blew up next to an army patrol in northern Baghdad, killing two other Iraqi soldiers and wounding two passers-by.
- Two more Iraqi soldiers were killed and another two injured when a suicide car bomber slammed into a checkpoint in Tal Afar. The soldiers opened fire on the car as it sped toward the checkpoint but were unable to prevent the detonation.
- In Mosul a bomb blast wounded two civilians.
- One more person was killed and five others wounded in Al-Musayyab when their house was hit with a mortar shell.
- Unidentified assailants gunned down three civilians in Baqouba, then sped away in their car.
- Insurgents attacked a convoy of two vehicles in the Diwaniyah area, seriously damaging one with a roadside bomb and wounding its four occupants. Witnesses said the other vehicle took the injured men away from the scene. A group of children then threw stones at the burning vehicle.
- In two separate operations near Baquba, the Iraqi army killed one insurgent and wounded three, while capturing a total of 19 including the wounded men.
- Police also found more apparent victims of sectarian death squads, discovering five bodies bearing signs of torture, blindfolded with their hands and legs bound, in eastern Baghdad. In a northeastern part of the capital, police said they found four more bodies of men aged 30 to 35, riddled with bullets.
- Another four corpses bearing signs of torture were found in the town of Laylan.
- Baghdad police on Sunday raised the confirmed casualty toll in the deadly bombing of a kerosene truck on a crowded street on Saturday to 38 killed and 42 injured.

Iraq, Tuesday September 26, 2006:
- Gunmen assaulted two Sunni mosques and sprayed bullets into Sunni homes; they killed three people and wounded 15, many of them attackers suspected of being followers of a radical Shiite cleric.
- Police in Baghdad also found the bodies of 23 men apparently slain by the sectarian death squads terrorizing the capital.
- Three gunmen died in an attack on the Sunnis' al-Kheyr mosque in Khadra, another western neighborhood.
- In other violence, explosions killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens in and around the capital.
- In the deadliest incident, at least seven civilians died and 11 were injured when a series of explosions rocked a predominantly Shiite apartment building in Mahmoudiya.

Iraq, Saturday September 30, 2006:
- A suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern town of Tal Afar killed two people and wounded 30.
- A car bomb outside the home of a police colonel in the northern oil city of Kirkuk wounded 10 people.
- A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded four in Iskandariya.
- Gunmen stormed an Iraqi army battalion headquarters on Friday, freeing five suspected criminals held there.
- Gunmen abducted and killed a translator for US troops south of Hilla.
- Eight bodies were found in Baquba north east of Baghdad on Saturday including three belonged to a father and his two sons.
- Ten people including one policeman were wounded in a car bomb outside the house of a police officer in Kirkuk.
- Authorities imposed a curfew on Baghdad, ordering all cars and people off the streets of the capital until 6:00 a.m. on Sunday.
- The US military in Iraq said its forces had arrested a man at the house of the Sunni Arab politician Adnan al Dulaimi on suspicion of planning car bombs attacks.

Iraq, Monday October 2, 2006:
- 50 bodies had been found in Baghdad since Sunday.
- 14 shop workers were abducted in broad daylight in the city.
- Four US soldiers have died in a roadside bomb attack. The incident brings the number of American soldiers killed since Sunday to 13.
- Fourteen employees at a Baghdad computer shop were seized in a midday attack on Monday - the second mass abduction in as many days
- At least seven of 26 people snatched from a meat plant on Sunday were found dead in southern Baghdad.

At least 13 people died and dozens have been injured in a series of bomb blasts in Baghdad on October 4, 2006. About 75 people were reported injured when three explosions hit the mainly Christian Camp Sarah district. Nearby buildings were heavily damaged by the force of the blasts. The blasts ripped through a busy market area largely given over to traders selling spare parts for cars and other vehicles. One car bomb exploded, quickly followed by two roadside bombs.

A suicide attacker using a bomb-laden lorry killed 14 people at an Iraqi army checkpoint in the city of Tal Afar on October 7, 2006. Four soldiers and 10 civilians died in the blast.

Iraq, Saturday October 7, 2006:
- Thousands of Iraqi troops launched a crackdown in Kirkuk ordering residents to stay in their homes in an effort to put down violence.
- On Saturday, a bomber rammed a police checkpoint with an explosives-packed car, killing 14 people in the town of Tal Afar.
- 26 Iraqis killed around the country.

Iraq, Sunday October 8, 2006:
- US and Iraqi troops have killed 20 suspected Shia militants during heavy clashes in the southern Iraqi city of Diwaniya.
- Police in Baghdad found the bodies of 51 people who had been abducted, tortured and murdered.
- A 36-hour curfew was lifted in the northern city of Kirkuk following a huge security operation. Thousands of Iraqi army and police force personnel backed by US-led coalition troops combed Kirkuk for insurgents, while US troops lent helicopter support. About 180 people were detained and large quantities of arms and ammunition seized.

Gunmen killed 11 people in an attack - security guards and technicians- on the offices of a new satellite TV channel - on the Shaabiya channel in Zayouna in the east of Iraq's capital- in Baghdad on Thursday October 12, 2006. Masked gunmen -some also wearing police uniforms- raided the station.

Iraq, Sunday October 15, 2006:
- A series of six bomb attacks in Kirkuk has killed at least 10 people and injured more than 70 people. Two police units and an American military patrol were targeted, as well as a crowded market.
- At least 40 bodies were found in the town of Balad, mainly Sunnis killed in apparent revenge for the earlier killing of 14 Shias.
- Earlier in Baghdad, two bombs hit the convoy of a senior interior ministry official, killing seven people.
- A coalition of Sunni Muslim insurgents - the Mutayibeen Coalition- released an internet video statement proclaiming an independent Islamic state covering Baghdad and several other provinces stretching as far north as Kirkuk.
- Another bomb targeted the local headquarters of a security agency that protects government installations, but hit a training college for female teachers, killing two students.
- There has also been a spate of sectarian killings over the weekend in the town of Balad.
- In Baghdad, Sunday's bombing killed four passers-by and three security men. The interior ministry's head of finance, Hala Shakr Salim, survived the attack on her motorcade as it drove through the eastern district of Mustansiriya.
- Police found almost 30 corpses dumped across Baghdad during Sunday.
- Five US soldiers died on Saturday -four in two incidents in Baghdad, the fifth in Falluja.

At least 41 people have been killed in a series of bomb blasts across Iraq on Thursday October 19, 2006. Most of the deaths occurred in Mosul, where a suicide bomber blew up a lorry at a police station. A suicide car bomber killed another 12 people in Kirkuk, while bombers also struck in Khalis and Baghdad.

Iraq, Sunday October 22 and Monday October 23, 2006:
- One Iraqi soldier was killed and four wounded in clashes between the Iraqi army and gunmen near Balad.
- One policeman was killed in Baiji.
- A mortar wounded three people in Balad.
- A car bomb targeting a US military patrol north of Baghdad killed two civilians and wounded five.
- A US Marine died in combat on Saturday.
- Eight bodies with gunshot wounds in the head, some of them bound, were found in different districts of Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed four policemen from the Facility Protection Services (FPS) in al-Fadhil district in central Baghdad, an Interior Ministry source said. FPS protects the country's infrastructure.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed two policemen and wounded four others, including two civilians, in Baghdad's western Ghazaliya district.
- A car bomb killed a civilian and wounded 13 others near Beirut square in northeastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed three and wounded 13 others, both police and civilians, near the shrine of a Sunni cleric in central Baghdad, police said.
- The Iraqi government imposed a curfew in the tense southern town of Amara after clashes between Shiite militia and police.
- The US military said its forces killed five suspected insurgents, including four who were in a building that was destroyed in an air strike south of Balad.
- A civilian contractor working as an international police liaison officer was killed and four US soldiers were wounded on Sunday when a roadside bomb in east Baghdad hit their vehicle.
- A US soldier died on Sunday when a roadside bomb in western Baghdad hit the vehicle he was travelling in.
- A US soldier was killed on Sunday by small arms fire while on patrol southwest of Baghdad.
- The US military said a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a soldier and two other soldiers were killed by small arms fire in the capital on Sunday.
- 14 Iraqi police recruits were killed and 25 wounded in an ambush on a convoy of buses near Baquba.
- Bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 9 shoppers. A suicide bomber killed 4 people and injured 20. A car bomb exploded at the Shurja Market killing 3 people and injuring 8 while another bomb nearby injured 6 more. A bomb hidden below a car killed 2 others and injured 10.
- In Balad Ruz a roadside bomb hit an ambulance killing the driver and injuring 6 patients.
- A US Marine was killed fighting in the Anbar province.
- A roadside bomb outside Baghdad killed a Ukrainian working for a British firm. Another one was injured.

Iraq, October 24, 2006:
- US soldiers shot dead four Iraqi fire-fighters they had mistaken for insurgents in Falluja
- A car bomb in Baghdad wounded 13 people
- Two policemen died in Amara, in an attack blamed on Shia militiamen

Iraq, Thursday October 26, 2006:
- At least five people have been killed in clashes between gunmen and police in Baquba. The fighting went going on for several hours and spread through the town. The police called for support from the Iraqi army.
- Four marines and a sailor were killed in fighting in Anbar province on Wednesday.

Iraq, Saturday October 28, 2006:
- A MI-24 Polish helicopter made an emergency landing in Suwayra after it was hit by small arms fire, wounding one "coalition" soldier and one Iraqi army soldier. The soldiers are in stable condition.
- At least five people were killed and 20 wounded when a car bomb went off near a residential compound in Iskandariya.
- Six Iraqis, including three women and two children, were killed in Ramadi on Saturday in a dawn air strike. The US military said it had no reports of air strikes at that time but troops came under attack several times on Friday and responded with tank fire and precision munitions. It said a rocket-propelled grenade fired by an insurgent missed a US patrol and hit a house.
- Police said at least two soldiers and one civilian were killed in clashes between Iraqi army and insurgents. Another three civilians were wounded.
- Gunmen kidnapped 11 Iraqi soldiers travelling in a minibus at a fake checkpoint in the town of Udhai.
- A car bomb exploded near a municipal building in Dujail, wounding five people including a policeman in the town.
- A roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol, killing one policeman and wounding three.
- The US military said US troops killed a suspected insurgent who was disguised as a woman and detained 10 more suspects in a raid south of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb hit a minibus, killing one person and wounding eight near a restaurant on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad.
- Mortars hit a garage in southern Baghdad, killing one man and wounding 35.
- Police retrieved five bodies with signs of torture and bullet wounds from the Tigris River in the town of Suwaira.
- Police retrieved one body with signs of torture and bullet wounds from a river near the town of Numaniya.
- Gunmen killed a former member of the Baath Party in the town of Wihda, south of Kut.
- A private security guard from Nepal was wounded when gunmen attacked an electricity power unit in Nasiriya.
- One Iraqi soldier was killed and three wounded when they raided a house in Hawija southwest of Kirkuk, and clashed with gunmen inside.
- Police found two bodies dumped near a road between Kirkuk and Hawija. The bodies had signs of torture and bullet wounds.
- Gunmen killed the head of a women's organisation in the town of Hawija and then shot dead a police officer as they fled her home.
- A roadside bomb targeting security forces guarding an oil industry facility wounded two police officers in eastern Baghdad.
- US Marine died on Friday from wounds caused by enemy action in Anbar province. The monthly toll for US forces in October is now 98.
- Four people were killed on Friday and five wounded when gunmen opened fire on their minibus in the village of Muradiya near the town of Khalis.

Iraq, Monday October 30, 2006:
- A bomb explosion in the Sadr City area of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has killed at least 30 people and injured more than 60. The blast targeted labourers who had gathered for work early in the morning in Mudhafa Square, in the densely populated, largely Shia neighbourhood.
- At least 50 people have died in other attacks in Iraq.
- The death of two US troops has taken US losses in October to 101 -the highest total since January 2005.
- A Marine was killed on Sunday in combat in Anbar province. The other, a military policeman, was reportedly killed in eastern Baghdad.
- More than 2,800 US troops have died since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. November 2004, when 137 US soldiers were killed, remains the deadliest month so far.

Iraq, Wednesday November 1, 2006:
- At least 27 people were killed in attacks on Wednesday.
- Police searched for at least 40 Shiites abducted by suspected Sunni gunmen along a notoriously dangerous highway near the town of Tarmiyah.
- The US military reported the death of one solider in fighting on Tuesday in the Anbar province.
- The number killed in a suicide-bomb attack on a Shiite wedding in Baghdad on Tuesday rose overnight to 23, including nine children. Another 19 were still being treated at the hospital.
- US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday night stormed an office in the southwestern hamlet of Ahrar belonging to the al-Sadr organisation. The troops, using US air cover, arrested five followers of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

On November 11, 2006, Sunni gunmen ambushed a convoy of minibuses at a fake checkpoint near Latifiyah on the dangerous highway south of Baghdad, killing 10 Shiite passengers and kidnapping about 50. Across the country at least 52 other people were killed in violence or were found dead, five of them decapitated Iraqi soldiers.

Iraq, Sunday November 12, 2006:
- A suicide bomber killed 35 Iraqi police recruits, the bloodiest such attack in weeks. Al Qaida claimed responsibility for killing 35 and wounding 58 in the blast.
- Three American soldiers have been killed in Iraq's volatile al-Anbar province raising to 30 the US troops' death toll in Iraq this month. The three assigned to 1st Brigade, 1st Armoured Division died on Saturday from wounds sustained due to "enemy action" while operating in al-Anbar province. Since the US-led war in Iraq broke out in March 2003, more than 2,840 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq.
- Four British soldiers were killed and three seriously wounded in an attack on a patrol boat in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Sunday. Their boat was attacked on the Shatt al Arab waterway. The routine patrol was caught in an explosion caused by an improvised bomb.
- In all, over 100 deaths were reported on Sunday alone.

Eleven people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a minibus in northern Baghdad on November 13, 2006. At least 18 other people were injured in the attack, which took place in Shaab, a majority Shia area. The bus was passing a church at the time of the explosion.

GUNMEN wearing Iraqi police commando uniforms kidnapped about 150 staff - both Shiites and Sunnis- from a government building in the Higher Education Ministry building in central Baghdad on November 13, 2006. The gunmen then checked identity cards to sort Sunnis from Shiites, and then drove off with only Sunni men. The gunmen had a list of names of those to be taken and claimed to be on a mission from the Government's anti-corruption body. Those kidnapped included the ministry's deputy general directors, employees, and visitors. Iraq's higher education minister said on November 16 he fears some ministry workers kidnapped by gunmen on Tuesday have been tortured and killed. 80 remained in captivity, while some of those who had since been released were badly beaten. In continuing violence, gunmen killed nine people in an ambush on a bakery in the east of the capital.

Iraq, Saturday November 18, 2006:
- Three British security guards detained by Iraqi police near Basra on Friday after a clash at a police checkpoint were handed over to British officials. He said the men had been guarding a convoy that was stopped by customs police at Zubayr near the Kuwaiti border. In an exchange of fire, a policeman and a Briton were wounded and a British guard was killed.
- Gunmen shot dead a leading member of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political party, Ali al-Adhadh of SCIRI, and his wife in Baghdad.
- Police found 20 bodies in different areas of western Baghdad.
- Insurgents killed one guard and wounded another as they attacked the residence of Iraq's Science and Technology minister in eastern Baghdad's Zayouna district.
- Police imposed a curfew in Baquba, north of Baghdad, where Interior Ministry officials said two mortar rounds landed on a residential area, killing two people and wounding five. Residents later reported fierce clashes between US troops and Sunni insurgents to the south of the city.
- A roadside bomb exploded in the town of Nassiriya in southern Iraq, killing one child.
- Gunmen killed seven people, including Shiite tribal leader Asif al-Khazraji, near the town of Ishaqi on Friday.
- A car bomb wounded 20 people near a restaurant in the town of Tikrit on Friday.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing one civilian and wounding two policemen near the town of Latifiya.
- Gunmen attacked alcohol sellers in Kut wounding a nine-year-old passer-by.
- Gunmen killed Sultan Salman, a tribal leader, in the town of Muwafaqiya.
- A suicide car bomber wounded seven Iraqi soldiers when he attacked an army checkpoint outside Mosul.
- Gunmen killed Omar al-Falahi, a mosque preacher in Falluja, on Friday. Mosque preachers in the area have been killed by extreme Sunni militants after they have called for calm and unity.

Iraq, November 19, 2006:
- A suicide bomber has blown himself up among a crowd of labourers looking for work in Hilla, killing at least 22 people. Another 44 people were injured in the attack in the mainly Shia Muslim town.
- In a Shia area of eastern Baghdad, at least 10 people died and 45 were injured as three car bombs went off at a bus station.
- Three civilians were killed and three police injured in a roadside bomb attack in central Baghdad
- Sunni insurgents attacked a police checkpoint and shot police and Shia residents in the city of Baquba on Saturday.

Iraq, Monday November 20, 2006:
- Police found 60 bodies in various parts of Baghdad over the past 24 hours.
- Gunmen attacked the convoy of an Iraqi deputy health minister Hakim al-Zamily, killing two of his guards, but the minister was unhurt.
- A roadside bomb hit the convoy of a junior minister, Mohammed al-Oreibi. Nobody was hurt in the blast.
- Gunmen killed Ahmad al-Tai, the head of clinical science at the nursing college in Mosul University.
- Police found eight bodies, including five people they said had been kidnapped on Sunday on the road from Dujail to Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a police colonel and two of his brothers on Sunday in Ishaqi.
- Gunmen killed doctor Ali al-Grari, a professor at Babil University in Hilla, in a drive-by shooting on the main road between Hilla and Baghdad.
- The body of an Iraqi actor was found with three bullet wounds in the head in al-Yarmouk district in western Baghdad. Waleed Hassan was known for his popular sketch show "Caricature".
- A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle near a police checkpoint and killed two people, including a policeman, and wounded six others, including four policemen, in Ramadi.
- A mortar round landed near a court and wounded three people in Ramadi.
- A suicide car bomber rammed his car into a joint Iraqi police-army patrol and killed three soldiers and wounded four others, including a policeman, on Sunday in a town west of Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed two civilians and wounded three others in Iskandariya.
- A roadside bomb in a crowded food market killed three people and wounded five others in Jamila district in eastern Baghdad.
- A US Marine died on Sunday from wounds suffered in combat in the western province of Anbar.
- In Sadr City, Iraqi Special Forces backed by US advisers raided a group suspected of kidnapping, torturing and murdering Iraqi civilians and soldiers. Iraqi forces searched a mosque. No one was detained and there was "minimal damage" to the mosque.
- The bodies of 14 people, with gunshot wounds and bearing signs of torture, were found dumped south of Baghdad.
- US forces conducted an air strike and killed two suspected insurgents on Sunday in Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol and wounded two civilians near a highway in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a police officer from the Facility Protection Services (FPS) along with his driver in Baquba.

Funerals are being held in Iraq for victims of Thursday November 23, 2006's bomb attacks in Baghdad's Shia Sadr City district that left more than 200 people dead. In apparent retaliation, mosques were attacked in a Sunni area of Baghdad with unconfirmed reports of casualties. The latest violence came despite a citywide curfew and appeals for calm.

Gunmen bent on revenge burned mosques and homes in a Sunni enclave of Baghdad on November 24, 2006. 30 people were killed as suspected Shiite militiamen rampaged for hours, untroubled by a curfew enforced in the capital by US and Iraqi forces after bombs killed at least 200 people in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City. Four mosques and several houses were burnt in a small Sunni part of the mainly Shiite Hurriya area in northwest Baghdad. One witness said 14 people were killed in his mosque during Friday prayers.

The Iraqi authorities have extended until Monday November 27, 2006 a curfew imposed on Baghdad in response to recent killings. The measure was intended to prevent reprisals for bomb attacks on the Sadr City area, which killed more than 200. Violence continued across Iraq however, with 21 bodies found in a village north of Baghdad. US and Iraqi forces said more than 50 insurgents died in raids.

Two car bombs outside one of Baghdad's main hospitals have killed four people and injured at least seven others on November 28, 2006. Most were civilians waiting to collect relatives' bodies from the Yarmouk hospital mortuary. Also, northern Kirkuk province governor Abdul Rahman Mustafa survived a suicide bomb attack; the blast killed one civilian and injured at least 12 other people.

US forces have killed two women in an air attack on a house in Baquba on November 29, 2006, a day after five girls were killed by US tank fire in Ramadi. American soldiers engaged in a gun battle in the northern city called in air support that killed eight suspected insurgents. Soldiers searching the building also found the bodies of two women. Iraqi police said all the dead were civilians from two families, a man and his three sons and another couple and their son and daughter.

In sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni communities 36 people died on Tuesday December 5, 2006, in Baghdad alone. In northern Baghdad, at least 15 people died and several were injured when gunmen attacked a bus carrying civilian employees of a Shia religious group. Shortly afterwards, at least 15 people were killed and some 25 wounded in three car bomb blasts near a petrol station in a south-western district. A US soldier was killed and five injured when gunmen attacked a military convoy in the Iraqi capital on Monday.

Iraq, Wednesday December 6, 2006:
- Ten Americans died in four separate incidents on.
- In addition two US soldiers were killed Sunday in Baghdad and a navy sailor was killed in Anbar province on Monday. The latest deaths raised to at least 30 the number of US troops who have died this month. At least 2,918 service members have been killed since the war started in 2003.
- Two mortar rounds landed and exploded in a second hand goods market in a mixed Shiite-Sunni area in central Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens.
- About 25 minutes later, a suicide bomber on a bus in Sadr City detonated explosives hidden in his clothing, killing two people and wounding 15.
- A total of at least 75 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Wednesday, including 48 whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in different parts of the capital.

US-led forces in Iraq say they have killed 20 al-Qaida militants in an air strike that was ordered after troops came under fire in the Thar area, north of Baghdad on December 8, 2006. Local officials say those who died were civilians and mostly included women and children. Elsewhere, more than 1,000 Danish and UK troops stormed homes in Basra, in a raid the UK military described as the biggest of its kind in southern Iraq. A US soldier died in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad.

A suicide car bomb killed at least five people and injured more than 40 in the holy city of Karbala on December 9, 2006, near one of Shia Islam's most important sites, the Imam al-Abbas shrine, the final resting place of an early Shia leader. The bomber parking his car before he detonated the bomb. Karbala, 80km south of Baghdad, is Iraq's second holiest Shia city after Najaf.

Iraq, December 10, 2006:
- Baghdad: at 09.30 a car bomb with a suicide man exploded inside a civilian house Iraqi commandos were using as a base in al doara/almahdiah al thania area of southern Baghdad, the bomber was killed and 5 others were injured.
- At 10.00 a car bomb exploded near al Maamon College in al iskan area northern Baghdad, it was aiming at Iraqi commandos, 1 civilian was killed, 2 commandos were injured and 2 civilians were injured.
- At 10.30 this morning an IED exploded in Palestine Street eastern Baghdad near Al Mustansiriyah University, 1 civilian was killed and 6 others were injured.
- At 13.30 when an bank employee bringing a big amount of money inside the bank in saadon street near city centre, 4 civilian cars stopped in front of the bank with people wearing Iraqi army uniforms, took the bank employees with the money, and disappeared.
- Mortars fell at al aemma Shiite mosque in al amil area eastern Baghdad but no casualties were reported.
- At 5 o'clock this evening one mortar fell in abu atsheer area southern Baghdad, 2 civilians were killed and 7 others were injured.
- At 18.00 an IED exploded near the highway protection police near al ameiryah pool area, 4 civilians were injured.
- One mortar fell at sabaa al boor area in taji northern Baghdad, 4 civilians were injured.
- Today 46 dead bodies were found in different areas in Baghdad: 9 bodies were found in different places in adhamiyah, 3 Sadr city, 1 new Baghdad, 2 abu atsheer, 4 dora, 4 bayaa, 3 shoala, 4 amil, 4 amiriyah, 4 hurriyah, 3 ghazalaiyah, 2 saidiyah, 1 mansour, 1 jihad and 1 shurta.

A suicide attacker set off a large bomb in a central Baghdad square on December 12, 2006, killed at least 70. The man detonated an explosives-packed pick-up truck after reportedly attracting crowds of Shia labourers to his vehicle with the promise of work. More than 230 people were also injured in the blast. The blast in Tayaran Square happened when it was crowded with day labourers from the Shia suburb of Sadr City who gather there every day hoping to find work.

Iraq, Thursday December 14, 2006:
- The convoy of the Iraq vice president Adil Abdul Mahdi had been targeted by insurgents in Al Khadraa neighbourhood west of Baghdad. The attack happened on the main road near Mulla Hwish mosque. No casualties recorded in the attack.
- Two bomb experts died last night when they were trying to defuse a car bomb in Sadr City.
- Insurgents wearing the uniform of Interior Ministry commandos driving 10 MOI cars kidnapped 20-30 civilians from Sinak neighbourhood near the Sinak bridge downtown Baghdad.
- 25 to 29 of the people who were kidnapped were released in shaab neighbourhood east of Baghdad. The police do not know the exact number of the kidnapped people adding that the released people are all Shiite Muslims.
- Two people were killed including an Iraqi army soldier and 7 others injured including 3 Iraqi army soldiers when a car bomb exploded in Al Jamiaa neighbourhood.
- A policeman was killed when insurgents in Al Silikh neighbourhood east of Baghdad targeted his patrol.
- Insurgents assassinated a policeman while he was leaving his house for work in Al Karkh.
- The number of dead bodies found in Baghdad today increased up to 45 bodies. 42 bodies were found in the western part of Baghdad (Karkh part) and 3 bodies were found in Rusafa.
- In Diyala province a combined force of Iraqi national police and an American army unit arrested today early morning the leader of one of the terrorists groups in Diyala province named Mohammed Abbas in the al Jadida neighbourhood west of Baquba.
- In Diyala province American troops defused a bomb in a car parked near the social & cultural officers club in Baquba city.
- A British soldier was injured in an IED explosion in Basra.
- Police in Tikrit city said that the American troops arrested last night Hayif Mawlood Faraj with two of his sons and three of his brothers after raiding their house. Faraj is the owner of the biggest money exchange office and a goldsmith. The American troops took over more than 150 thousands US $ and more than 3 KGs of Gold.

A suicide car bomber has killed at least 11 people and injured about 30 others in Baghdad on December 20, 2006. The attacker rammed his vehicle into a police checkpoint near Baghdad University in the southwestern Jadiriya district. Police officers and students were among the victims.

Iraq, Saturday December 23, 2006:
- Clashes between Iraqi security forces and a powerful Shiite militia left five people, including four policemen, dead and wounded 17 others in Samawa.
- A roadside bomb killed two civilians outside the town of Hawija southwest of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed an Iraqi intelligence officer in the southern Iraqi city of Diwaniya.
- Police found two bodies, blindfolded and with their hands tied, in Diwaniya on Friday.
- A policeman was shot dead by insurgents in the town of Samarra.
- Insurgents in Dour, near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, killed an Iraqi soldier.
- Gunmen assassinated Wathaah Abid-Rabbuh, a tribal figure from the large mainly Sunni Jubour tribe, in Mosul.

A suspected suicide bomber killed at least seven Iraqi police and wounded 30 others near Baghdad on December 23, 2006. The bomber struck at a police station in the town of Muqdadiya, in the province of Diyala. The bomber walked into the police station compound, destroying much of the building when he detonated his explosives.

Iraq Sunday December 24, 2006:
- At 11.00 an IED exploded near an American patrol at al kamaliah area southeast Baghdad, 4 Iraqi citizens were injured.
- At 14.00 an IED exploded in BOB AL SHAM area northeast Baghdad near an American patrol, 4 Iraqis were injured.
- At 16.00 3 mortars fell at AL ZAWRA stadium in al jeafer area, 7 athletes were injured. At 17.00 one mortar fell in al gereat area northeast Baghdad, 5 civilians were injured.
- 29 bodies were found in Baghdad, 2 were found in Sadr city, 1 kamaliyah, 1 obaidi, 5 amil, 3 ghazaliyah, 2 hurriyah, 3 dora, 2 belat al shuhadaa, 1 saidiyah, 1 jihad, 1 bayaa, 1 shurta khamsa, 1 adil, 1 yarmouk, 1 mahmodiyah, 1 kadhemiyah and 2 shoala.
- Two IED's exploded this morning, killing one Iraqi soldier and injuring 16 others in Khanakeen area.
- A suicide man wearing police uniform with explosives vest exploded himself this morning inside muqdadiah police directorate killing, 7 policemen and injuring 30 others, 14 in critical condition.
- The Iraqi police were able to defuse 5 IED's that were planted in different places at Khalis main market.
- Two policemen were killed when their vehicle was attacked by unknown terrorist group west of Baquba city.
- The police academy in Diyala province celebrated the graduation of its first class. The first class consisted of 180 policemen and officers and the period of the course was 14 days.
- Clashes between MAHDI army and Iraqi forces led to the deaths of 7 civilians and police; 19 others were wounded. According the semawa health centre, the final number of people killed is 11 and 45 injured.
- Heavy clashes broke in RUMETHA area north of SEMAWA between MAHDI army and Iraqi police, which led to the killing of 4 people, 2 of them policemen and 2 from MAHDI army. This happened when the Iraqi police arrested the head of Sadr office in rumetha area, ADNAN AL HASSAN.

More than 30 people have been killed and scores hurt in a wave of car blasts in Baghdad on December 26, 2006. An attack near a Sunni mosque in northern Baghdad killed at least 15 and wounded 35. Earlier, at least 15 people died and 60 were wounded in a triple bombing on a busy market street in the southwest of the capital. Three US soldiers had been killed in more bombings just outside Baghdad.

Iraq, December 27, 2006:
- Two employees working for the ministry of the higher education were injured when insurgents attacked their bus in Al Yarmook neighbourhood downtown Baghdad.
- Three policemen and two civilians were wounded in an IED explosion targeted a police patrol near sacred heart church in Kam Sara neighbourhood east of Baghdad.
- 10 people were killed and 10 other were injured when a parked car bomb exploded in Palestine St. east of Baghdad.
- A US hummer vehicle was destroyed by an IED explosion in Al Qanat Street the casualties were not recorded.
- Clashes between insurgents and Iraqi army patrols broke up in Al Fadhil neighbourhood downtown Baghdad while the commandos forces faced another group of insurgents in Saidiya.
- Insurgents assassinated the governor of Al Husainiya district Hameed Al Sharifee and his assistant while they were going to work.
- American forces killed the head of Shaheed Allah organization (one of the Sadrists' organizations) Sahib Al Amiri. Karrar, the son of Sahib Al Amiri, said "An American force raided our house at 6 am today. They entered the house. They asked us about my father who tried to run away. He tried to go to the roof but they caught him. He tried to talk to them but an American soldier shot him dead even before he could say a word."
- 3 people including 2 policemen were killed and another 3 were injured when insurgents attacked a police patrol with an RBG 7 missile in Al Aswad neighbourhood in Khalis.
- A civilian was assassinated and another 2 were wounded when insurgents opened their machineguns fire in the housing building neighbourhood in Khalis city.
- 18 insurgents were killed and their group leader was arrested when they attacked Bait Jabriya neighbourhood, a part of Abo Saida village east north Baquba. People of the neighbourhood defended their village. 4 residents from the village were killed and another 13 were injured. The American forces killed two residents.
- A special force of Dayal police raided a safe house of the terrorist Mohammed Ibraheem Mohammed Al Karkhi who is called the prince of the western part of Baquba city.
- Two British soldiers were injured in an IED explosion in Maaqal neighbourhood north of Basra. Two British bases were attacked with Katyosh rockets without recording any casualties.

A car bombing in a market in the southern Iraqi city of Kufa has killed at least 31 people on December 30, 2006. Another 45 people were injured. The attack came within hours of the hanging former leader Saddam Hussein. Those caught up in the attack were women and children shopping in the fish market ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday. The bomb was planted in a minibus.

Iraq, Monday January 1, 2007:
- Two US soldiers were killed and two more wounded in an explosion in Iraq's Diyala province.
- US forces were fired on from an office building belonging to Sunni Arab politician Saleh al-Mutlaq during a raid on a suspected al Qaida safehouse in Baghdad in which six insurgents were killed. The dead include two security guards a family of four, including two children. Two more were wounded.
- Police found 40 bodies in Baghdad in the past 24 hours, including 15 in one place near the Sheikh Maa'rouf cemetery in western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb exploded near Mahmudiya near an Iraqi army patrol, killing one soldier and wounding three.
- Prisoners in a jail near Mosul smashed cell doors, burned furniture and broke cameras during a riot that left at least seven guards and three inmates injured before Iraqi police and army ended the fighting.
- A mortar attack killed an Iraqi woman and wounded another civilian on Thursday northwest of Habaniya.

Two explosions in Baghdad on January 4, 2007, have killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 20 others. The bombs exploded in quick succession near a petrol station in the western suburb of Mansour. An increase in the number of attacks has also been expected following the execution on Saturday of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Iraq Sunday January 7, 2007:
- Five more US troops were killed. Three airmen were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad. Another was injured. A soldier died Saturday from small-arms fire in Baghdad, and another soldier died Friday from combat wounds sustained in Anbar province.
- Sectarian violence continues to rage across Iraq. At least nine deaths are reported.
- Drive-by gunmen killed three Sunni Muslim shopkeepers in a mixed neighbourhood of Baghdad.
- A Shiite cleric and his son were shot dead near a shrine south of Baghdad.
- In eastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb missed an Iraqi police patrol but killed two pedestrian.
- Drive-by shooters sprayed bullets at four guards for the Iraqi finance ministry, killing one.
- In Diwaniyah, south of the capital, gunmen assassinated a defence ministry employee as he left his house for work.

At least nine people have been killed in an ambush on a bus carrying workers to Baghdad airport on Monday January 8, 2007. Reports of the death toll vary, with one news agency putting the number of dead at 15. At least 11 people were also injured in the attack. Victims were mainly Shia Muslims from the Sadr City area. They were attacked outside the airport's main checkpoint. Meanwhile, Iraq's defence ministry said it killed 23 suspected insurgents, with almost 60 suspects killed in 48 hours.

US and Iraqi troops killed at least 50 militants on January 9, 2007, during a battle in a Sunni stronghold of Baghdad. At least 1,000 soldiers backed by US aircraft fought the militants in the Haifa Street district.

Iraq, Monday January 22, 2007:
- Bombs ripped through markets killing at least 100 people in and around Baghdad as US and Iraqi forces prepared for a large-scale assault on insurgents and militias in the violent capital.
- Two car bombs exploded at the busy second-hand Haraj market in the heart of Baghdad, killing 88 Iraqis and wounding 160. The Haraj bombs exploded seconds apart, sending twin columns of thick smoke billowing above the Bab al-Sharki district on the east bank of the Tigris River.
- A few hours later, a combination of mortar fire and a roadside bomb killed another 12 people at a popular market in the town of Khalis, northeast of Baghdad. The bomb was placed in a vegetable cart and ripped through a crowd of people as they shopped late in the day.
- Elsewhere in Baghdad another 10 people were killed in mortar attacks.
- Police also recovered 27 corpses of men shot to death execution-style.
- Insurgents killed three US soldiers, raising the military's losses to 47 since the start of January. A soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle in northern Nineveh province and two marines had died on Sunday from wounds sustained in "enemy action" while operating in the western Anbar province.

Iraq, January 23, 2007:
- About 600 fighters and 16 leaders of the radical Shia militia, the Mehdi Army, have been captured by security forces. 52 operations had been conducted in 45 days targeting the militia, which is loyal to Najaf-based cleric Moqtada Sadr. Sunni extremists were also the focus of the crackdown. US and Iraqi forces are currently preparing for a broad offensive in the strife-torn Iraqi capital Baghdad.
- Five Iraqi police were reported to have been killed in a gun battle in Mosul
- At least three people died in car bomb attacks in central Baghdad
- The deaths of three US soldiers were announced
- Gunmen wearing police uniforms abducted thirty Palestinian men in Baghdad. They were later released.
- A civilian helicopter crashed in a Sunni area of Baghdad, killing five people. Unconfirmed reports said it had been shot down.

Iraqi forces backed by US helicopter gunships have fought insurgents in the Sunni-dominated Haifa Street area of Baghdad on January 24, 2007. It was part of the new plan to restore security to the capital. The area was cleared after a daylong offensive in which up to 30 militants were killed. One US soldier also died.

Iraq, January 25, 2007:
- Forty people have been killed and 80 injured in a car bomb in the Karrada shopping district of central Baghdad.
- The attack came shortly after two mortar attacks on the central Green Zone, site of government buildings.
- Earlier, at least five people were killed in attacks on two other markets in the capital.
- The Iraqi defence ministry said Iraqi and WE forces killed 30 insurgents during fighting in Baghdad.
- Another 30 were captured during the clashes in the Sunni district of Haifa Street.

A bomb detonated at a Baghdad Ghazil pet market has killed at least 15 people and injured 35 others on January 26, 2007. The market is a popular destination, which sells dogs, cats, birds and other animals. Along with exotic animals such as snakes and parrots, the market also sells domestic animals such as goats and sheep.

Iraq, January 27, 2007:
- At least 15 people have been killed and 55 injured in twin suicide car bomb attacks near a market in the mainly Shia New Baghdad district.
- Eight computer firm employees were kidnapped by men in police uniforms in central Baghdad
- The US military killed 14 suspected insurgents during an air strike on a building used as a hideout south of Baquba
- A rocket or mortar landed inside Baghdad's Green Zone near the US Embassy. It is unclear if anyone was injured

Officials in Iraq say at least 200 militants were killed on Sunday January 28, 2007, during clashes near Najaf between a previously unknown group, the Soldiers of Heaven - leader was among those killed- and US-backed Iraqi troops ahead of a major Shia Muslim festival. Three Iraqis and two US troops also died (their helicopter was shot down.) There is no independent confirmation of the scale of casualties and there is still uncertainty about the group.

At least 40 people have been killed on January 30, 2007, in a wave of attacks across Iraq at the climax of Ashura, the most important Shia Muslim religious festival. A suicide bomber killed 19 people at a mosque in Baladruz. In the same region, 11 people died in an attack in Khanaqin. At least 10 people were killed by mortar fire in the mainly Sunni district of Adhamiyah in Baghdad. Ashura marks the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson in 680 AD.

Iraq Thursday February 1, 2007:
- At least 73 people have been killed and some 167 injured in a double suicide bombing near a busy market in the Iraqi town of Hilla.
- At least 10 other people were killed in bomb and mortar attacks across Baghdad. Six people died when a minibus was hit in the mainly Shia area of Karrada. Three more people died in a car bomb in another mainly Shia district of the capital, Rusfasi. The blasts followed mortar attacks in the mainly Sunni area of Adhamiya, in which at least one person was killed.
- Police found 30 unidentified bodies across the capital.

A suicide bomber driving a truck loaded with explosives hidden beneath cooking oil, canned food and bags of flour obliterated a Baghdad food market on Saturday February 3, 2007, killing at least 121 people. About 30 shops and 40 houses were destroyed. More than 300 people were injured in the thunderous explosion. The nearby al-Kindi hospital - quickly overwhelmed -began turning away the wounded and directing ambulances to hospitals in the Shiite Sadr City neighbourhood.

Iraq, Monday February 5, 2007:
- Three car bombs killed 24 people and wounded scores in Baghdad.
- A car bomb targeting a petrol station in the southern neighbourhood of Saidiya killed 10 people and wounded 62.
- Eight people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a garage.
- A third car bomb exploded near a children's hospital in Andalus Square in central Baghdad, killing six and wounding nine.
- Iraqi and US forces killed a top official of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Al Sadr's organisation in a raid on his home north of Baghdad on Sunday. Sadr's political office called the killing of Khadhim Al Hamadani an "assassination".
- In other violence, 33 more died, including several near the Baquba, in Diyala province, and in Mosul.
- Police said fighting erupted in Adhamiya yesterday after militants attacked the Sunni district in northern Baghdad.
- In Amil, a religiously mixed area of Baghdad, gunmen in police commando uniforms dragged people from their homes in Janabiyeen, a Sunni enclave that is home to members of the Janabiyeen tribe, and set at least five houses ablaze.
- Police also found 25 corpses of people killed execution style in Baghdad.
- Yesterday, the US and British militaries announced the deaths of two US and one British soldier.

A total of 76 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on February 11, 2007. North of Baghdad, a suicide truck bomber crashed into a police station, killing at least 30 policemen. The US military says a soldier was shot and killed the day before in the Diyala province. A second soldier was reported killed today in western Baghdad.

At least 76 people have been killed in four bomb attacks in the Shorja Baghdad market. Three explosions in quick succession killed at least 71 people and wounded about 164. Half an hour earlier a parcel bomb exploded at the Bab al-Sharqi market, killing five people.

On February 13, 2007, a van crammed with explosives has exploded near a college in Iskan, western Baghdad, killing at least 16 people. At least 45 people were injured in the attack, which took place in a car park between the college and a large food warehouse. One US soldier was killed in combat in Anbar province.

In Baghdad on February 16, 2007, US and Iraqi forces sweeping through the city encountered little resistance to their offensive. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, under heavy US pressure to show progress, told Bush the effort has been a "brilliant success" so far, while Bush said US patience was not unlimited.

On Sunday February 18, 2007, a twin car-bombing in eastern Baghdad killed at least 60 people and wounded more than 120. Earlier, Iraq's leaders had hailed a steep decline in sectarian violence, kidnappings and assassinations in the capital under the crackdown. But within hours, near simultaneous blasts ripped through a pedestrian shopping street in the New Baghdad district, the worst attack since US and Iraqi troops began the push to secure the capital last Wednesday.

Iraq, Monday February 19, 2007:
- A number of bombings have killed 18 people and wounded many others in Iraq. The violence comes despite an intensified security operation in Baghdad and across Iraq.
- Eleven people, including five police officers were killed in a car bomb attack near the city of Ramadi in Ambar province.
- In Baghdad, an explosion on a bus in the mainly-Shia area of Karrada has killed at least five people and wounded about eight others.
- Roadside bombs in the southeast of the city have killed two people and injured 40.

Iraq, Tuesday February 20, 2007:
- A suicide bomber blown himself up at a funeral in Baghdad, killing seven mourners and injuring about 20 other people.
- At least 14 other people died in violence in and around Baghdad, including six killed when a chemical tanker was blown up north of the city.
- Insurgents had killed five US soldiers in the past days. Three US soldiers died in a roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad and two more in a suicide car bombing. In all, 19 soldiers were also injured in the two attacks.

Iraq, Sunday February 25, 2007:
- The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite militia, Muqtada al-Sadr, said that bombs "continue to explode" in Baghdad and that US-led security crackdown is doomed to fail.
- A suicide attacker struck outside a college campus, killing at least 41 people. Most of the victims were students at the college, a business studies annex of Mustansiriyah University. At least 46 people were injured in Sunday's blast. The suicide attacker detonated a bomb-rigged belt near the main entrance to the college, where students were resuming midterm exams after the two-day weekend in Iraq. The guards confronted the bomber as he tried to enter the college grounds.
- Two Katyusha rockets hit a Shiite enclave in southern Baghdad, killing at least 10.
- A bomb near the fortified Green Zone claimed two lives.
- A car bombing in a Shiite district in central Baghdad killed at least one person and injured four.
- In Mosul, US troops killed two gunmen in a raid and captured a suspected local leader of the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq.
- The toll from a suicide truck bombing in the Anbar province on Saturday to 52 dead and 74 injured. The attack on worshippers leaving a mosque in Habbaniyah, was believed linked to escalating internal Sunni battles between insurgents and those who oppose them.

Iraq, Monday February 26, 2007:
- A suicide car bomber targeting a police checkpoint killed13 people and wounded 10 in Ramadi.
- Iraq's Shiite vice president escaped an apparent assassination attempt Monday after a bomb exploded in municipal offices where he was making a speech, knocking him down with the force of the blast that left at least 10 people dead and 18 injured. Adel Abdul-Mahdi was bruised and hospitalised for medical exams.
- Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was in stable condition in a hospital in Amman, Jordan, on Monday, recuperating from exhaustion and lung inflammation. Talabani, 73, fell ill Sunday and was unconscious when he was rushed to a hospital in Sulaimaniyah.
- In Diyala province, US and Iraqi forces seized a weapons cache that includes parts for sophisticated roadside bombs that are believed to originate in Iran.
- Last week, US troops found a suspected Shiite weapons hideout in the southern city of Hillah that also included parts to make the lethal roadside bombs. The US military Monday said that 63 weapons caches have been discovered during major US-Iraqi security sweeps around Baghdad that began February 14. The arsenals included anti-aircraft weapons, armour-piercing bullets, bomb components and mortar rounds.
- Iraq's Appeals Council agreed to review the case of Saddam Hussein's deputy, Taha Yassin Ramadan, who was sentenced to death by hanging February 12 for his role in the massacre of Shiite civilians in 1982 following an assassination attempt against the former Iraqi leader.

Iraq, February 28, 2007:
- A car bomb exploded in the southern commercial district of Bayaa in Baghdad, killing 10 people and wounding at least seven.
- The US military killed eight people in raids aimed at suspected al-Qaida militants north of the capital. US helicopters and fighter planes bombarded an area near the town of Taji after soldiers reported seeing a group of several armed men. The US military arrested four suspected insurgents.

Iraq, March 1, 2007:
- At least five people have been killed and 10 injured by a car bomb targeting an Iraqi police officer's wedding in Falluja. The victims were guests driving in convoy behind the bride and groom, an Iraqi wedding tradition. Lieutenant Naim Jumaili and his bride survived the attack, but several guests are reported to be missing.
- 10 suspected insurgents have been killed since Monday during fighting in Diyala province. Five people were also detained in raids.
- Police in Baghdad have found the bodies of at least 10 people dumped in different parts of the city.

Iraq, Friday March 2, 2007:
- Iraqi police found the bodies of 14 policemen, all shot in the head, hours after an al Qaeda-linked group showed pictures of 18 men it said were seized to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month. The bodies were discovered close to Baquba.
- At least 10 people have been killed in a bomb blast in the Sadr City district of Baghdad. The explosion an open-air car market left another 17 Shia civilians wounded.
- A car bomb exploded close to a police checkpoint in the mainly Sunni southwestern neighbourhood of Saydia, killing one policeman and wounding two of his colleagues.

A suicide bomber killed at least 26 people near Mutanabbi Street, a busy district lined with bookshops and open-air bookstalls in the commercial centre of Baghdad on Monday March 5, 2007. Many shops were set on fire and more than a dozen cars were burnt out by the explosion. The blast was the first major attack in Baghdad for several days and the most deadly since a female suicide bomber killed 40 people at a Baghdad college on 25 February.

Iraq, Tuesday March 6, 2007:
- Nine American soldiers died in explosions north of Baghdad.
- Six soldiers died when a bomb exploded Monday near their vehicles during a combat operation in Salahuddin province. Three others were wounded in the blast.
- Another three soldiers died the same day in a roadside bomb attack in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
- Two suicide bombers exploded in Hillah themselves in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims Tuesday, killing at least 10 people and wounding sixteen others.
- At least 20 others were killed in earlier shootings and bombings along the way.
- Insurgents killed 112 Shiite pilgrims heading for the holy Iraqi city of Kerbala, when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in one crowded street lined with tents.
- In the worst incident, two suicide bombers strapped with explosives detonated themselves in Hilla killing 78 people.

Iraq, Wednesday March 7, 2007:
- There was a deadly suicide bomb attack in Iraq and a bomber killed more than 30 people in a cafe in Bala Ruz northeast of Baghdad. The explosive killed more than 30 people and injured dozens of others.
- Bombs and gunfire killed at least 11 people as they headed toward a Muslim shrine ahead of a weekend holiday. It was a continuation of attacks on Shiite pilgrims that killed at least 120 people Tuesday.
- A roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad killed three American soldiers. They were patrolling a well-travelled road to try to clear if of explosives.

Iraq, Saturday March 10, 2007:
- Soon after an international meeting started, at least two mortar shells landed near the venue but injured no one.
- A car bomb at about the same time killed at least 18 people and injured 40 others in the Sadr City area.
A man described as a "senior leader" of an al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group has been arrested. Earlier reports had suggested that the man was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Sunni Arab group the Islamic State in Iraq. But it was later confirmed that this was not the case.

Iraq Saturday March 11, 2007:
- Two bomb blasts killed dozens of people and injured several others while foreign envoys held peace talks just three kilometres away. Initial reports put the death toll close to fifty, which medics say could increase due to serious injuries to a number of men, women and children.
- A suicide bomber attacked an army checkpoint in Baghdad killing 35 people. Six soldiers were among those killed when the attacker rammed a military position guarding the entrance to the east Baghdad Sadr City.
- Another car bomb occurred in Eastern districts of Baghdad killing eleven people and injuring many others.
- Earlier, three mortar shells fell near a building of Iraqi foreign ministry causing damage to building, but no loss of life was reported.

Iraq, Sunday March 11, 2007:
- Two bomb attacks in Baghdad, have left at least 29 people dead. Nineteen people died in the Karrada district when a car bomb exploded near a truck carrying Shia pilgrims.
- A suicide bomber blew himself up on a minibus in eastern Baghdad, killing 10 people and, injuring at least eight.
- In Karrada, a car bomber drove into a truck that was bringing about 70 men and boys home from the holy city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.
- Last week, in the run-up to the ceremony, scores of pilgrims -perhaps as many as 90- were killed in bomb and gun attacks across Iraq.

Iraq, Thursday March 15, 2007:
- Four deaths on Thursday and two on Wednesday have taken the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq to 3,196.
- A roadside bomb explosion in eastern Baghdad killed four American soldiers and wounded two others.
- Two more American were killed on Wednesday in al-Anbar province.
- A car-bomb blast near an Iraqi military checkpoint in Baghdad killed eight people and wounded 25 others in a Shiite neighbourhood. Iraqi security forces were among the casualties.
- In Iskandariyah a car bomb killed at least four people and wounded 24 others.
- The U.S. military says it is investigating an incident Wednesday in Mosul, in which coalition forces killed an Iraqi soldier by mistake. An initial account indicates that coalition ground forces and a helicopter were fired on during a raid in Mosul, and they returned fire, killing one person who was later identified as a member of the Iraqi army.

Insurgents in western Iraq set off three chlorine gas car bombs on Friday March 16, 2007, weeks after two similar attacks sparked fears of a new campaign to use unconventional weapons in Iraq. The attacks came a month into a major US-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad aimed at stemming sectarian violence that threatens to pitch Iraq into outright civil war.

Iraq, Sunday March 18, 2007 -Mothers' Day:
- Attacks in Baghdad killed at least four Iraqis and seven US troops.
- A car bomb at a popular market in the Shia district of Sadr City killed three people and wounded another seven.
- Four US soldiers were killed and one wounded when their vehicle was ambushed by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad on Saturday.
- Also on Saturday, an explosion in the capital's Diyala province killed one US soldier and injured five others.
- A US marine died while fighting in Anbar province

Iraq, March 19, 2007:
- At least 14 people have been killed in a series of bomb blasts in Kirkuk. Eight bombs went off in various parts of the city within half an hour. More than 30 people were hurt.
- A bomb had exploded near a Shia mosque in the Shorja district of Baghdad, killing at least five people.

Iraq, Saturday March 24, 2007:
- A suicide bomber driving a truck has detonated explosives outside a Baghdad police station in the mainly Sunni district of Doura, killing at least 18 people. Most of those killed were police officers. A further 23 people were injured in the blast.
- Mortars landed in a Shia enclave in Doura, killing at least three people.
- Three car bombers attacked a police station and checkpoints near the Syrian border, killing six people.
- A truck bomb in the town of Haswa, south of Baghdad, exploded, leaving at four people dead
- The US military called in air strikes and killed three suspected insurgents in the Rutba area near the Jordanian border. A fourth suspect blew himself up.
- Four Iraqi soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in Falluja.
- On Thursday, a mortar landed in the zone near the building where the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki were holding a news conference.
- A double bombing just outside the zone on Friday injured one of Iraq's deputy prime ministers, Salam Zaubai, and left nine people dead. Mr Zaubai was said to be in a stable condition after he had surgery to remove shrapnel.

Iraq, Saturday March 24, 2007:
- A suicide bomber driving a truck with explosives hidden under bricks destroyed a police station in Baghdad and killed 20 people. At least 47 people died in the attacks. The explosion caused part of the two-story station to collapse.
- In all, at least 74 people were killed or found dead in Iraq on Saturday, making it the seventh deadliest day since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched the security operation on February 14.
- At least 25 bullet-riddled bodies were found: 11 in Baghdad, six pulled from the Tigris River and eight in the Anbar city of Falluja.
- Two more U.S. soldiers were killed on Friday, one by a roadside bomb while on a foot patrol south of Baghdad and another who died in fighting in the Sunni Anbar province.
- Northwest of the capital, a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up outside a pastry shop in a central market area in Tal Afar, killing at least 10 people and wounding three.

Iraq Tuesday March 27, 2007:
- Two truck bombs simultaneously struck markets in Tal Afar killing at least 50 people and wounding dozens.
- A suicide car bomber killed at least 10 in a market near Ramadi.
- A mortar attack on a Shiite district area in southern Baghdad killed at least four people.
- A Marine was killed Saturday during combat in Anbar province west of Baghdad.
- Two elderly Chaldean Catholic nuns were stabbed multiple times by two intruders who raided their home Monday night near Kirkuk's Cathedral of the Virgin in Kirkuk. They lived alone and there was no sign of a robbery.

A number of gunmen killed dozens of people in the northwestern Iraqi town of Talafar on Tuesday March 27, 2007, possibly a revenge for yesterday bombing. The attack took place in a Sunni district.

On Thursday March 29, 2007, we were told that the gunmen have killed at least 70 Sunni men in the northwestern Iraqi border town of Talafar. The deaths were in apparent reprisal for bombings in a Shia area on Tuesday, which left about 55 people dead. Elsewhere, two suicide trucks carrying chlorine were detonated near a compound in Falluja, wounding 15 soldiers.

On Saturday March 31, 2007, the death toll from a lorry bomb this week in the town of Tal Afar on Wednesday was raised to 152, making it the deadliest single bombing of the four-year-old conflict. In addition 347 people were wounded in Tuesday's attack on a Shiite area. There was another, small lorry bomb in the mixed northwestern town on the same day. A hundred homes had been destroyed in the main blast blamed on al Qaeda. The explosion left a 23-metre-wide crater.

A suicide bomber slaughtered a group of nine children in the northern oil city of Kirkuk and suspected Sunni militants executed 21 Shiite workers as bloodshed in Iraq raged on Monday April 2, 2007. The bomber blew up his truck full of flour and explosives near a primary school and police station in Kirkuk, killing a total 12 people, including the nine children. Another 178 people were wounded in the blast that caused extensive damage at a time when US troops were visiting the police station. One policeman was among the dead. The other two victims were women.

Iraq, April 5, 2007:
- A US helicopter has come down in southern Iraq after apparently coming under heavy fire from insurgents. The helicopter came under attack near Latifiya. The US has lost more than 50 military helicopters in Iraq since the invasion with the loss of a number of soldiers.
- A major security operation in Baghdad has resulted in a decrease in the number of attacks on coalition troops there, the US military said. If you believe it.
- The deaths of eight coalition soldiers were announced on Thursday -four British and four American- as well as of at least 10 Iraqi soldiers.
- The Iraqis died when about 40 gunmen attacked a checkpoint near Mosul.
- The British soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Basra. A civilian interpreter was also killed.
- The US troops died in two separate incidents in Baghdad on Wednesday.

A suicide truck bombing in Ramadi killed at least 35 people on April 6, 2007. A suspected al-Qaida in Iraq suicide bomber smashed a truck loaded with TNT and toxic chlorine gas into a police checkpoint -the ninth such attack since the group's first known use of a chemical weapon in January. Clashes had erupted between US and Iraqi forces and fighters from the Shia Mehdi Army militia in the city of Diwaniya.

Iraq Saturday April 7, 2007:
- A suspected al-Qaida in Iraq suicide bomber smashed a truck loaded with TNT and toxic chlorine gas into a police checkpoint in Ramadi on Friday, killing at least 27 people -the ninth such attack since the group's first known use of a chemical weapon in January. The bombing left many people nearby with breathing difficulties and some needed hospitalisation. Most were released in about 30 minutes but thirty other victims were hospitalised with wounds from the explosion. In low exposures, chlorine irritates the respiratory system, eyes and skin. Higher levels can lead to accumulation of fluid in the lungs and other symptoms. Death is possible with heavy exposure.
- Including those killed in Ramadi, 46 people died or were found dead in sectarian violence nationwide on Friday.
- The US military reported the death of the 20th service member so far this month. The soldier did not die in combat.
- The Basra police commander said the type of roadside bomb used in an attack that killed four British soldiers Thursday had not been seen in the region previously. It was a feared Iranian-designed explosive were used as penetrator.

Iraq Sunday April 8, 2007:
- A large car bomb explosion was targeting supporters of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr near the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, has killed at least 18 people and hurt about 28.
- Moqtada al-Sadr' s followers call for the withdrawal of coalition troops.
- Six US soldiers were killed in separate attacks. A roadside bomb killed three during a patrol south of Baghdad. Another died and three were wounded by a mortar or rocket attack in a separate incident south of the capital. Two more soldiers died from wounds sustained in combat in the Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, north of Baghdad.
- A 24-hour ban on movement by all vehicles, for fear of car bomb attacks, has now been called in the capital from 0500 on Monday.

Iraq, Tuesday April 10, 2007:
- A suicide bomber reported to be a woman has attacked a police-recruiting centre leaving at least 14 dead and about 20 people were reported to have been wounded in the attack on a large crowd of would-be officers at a centre in Muqdadiya, northeast of Baghdad.
- In Baghdad, five civilians were killed by a car bomb near the university.
- Three US soldiers died in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad on Monday, and another in combat in western Anbar province. These latest deaths bring the estimates of the number of US military fatalities to about 40 this month. Tallies vary, but about 3,280 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion.

A truck bomb explosion on a bridge in Baghdad killed at least eight people and sent several cars toppling into the River Tigris below on April 12, 2007. Several people have been hurt in the blast and police are looking for survivors in the river waters.

The United States on Thursday April 12, 2007, strongly condemned a suicide bombing at Iraq's parliament building inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. The powerful blast rocked Iraq's parliament building when many members of the parliament were having lunch after their ordinary session.

Iraq's parliament has held a special session on April 13, 2007, in a defiant response to a suicide bombing inside its building. Turnout was low because of a travel curfew, but those present said it was a message to all "terrorists". One MP has been confirmed dead. Initial reports by the US military said eight people had died - three of them MPs. An Iraqi umbrella group of insurgent movements believed to be linked to al-Qaida said it was behind the attack in the heavily fortified area.

We were told on April 14, 2007, that the suicide bombing in the Iraqi Parliament, in which eight people were killed, has shaken the Bush Administration and made it more likely that Democrats in Congress will not back down in their determination to end the war.

Iraq, April 14, 2007:
- At least 36 people have been killed and more than 160 hurt in a suicide car bomb attack in Karbala. The attacker detonated explosives at a crowded bus station in the city close to a shrine holy to Shia Muslims. Many of the casualties were said to be women or children.
- In Baghdad at least 10 people died in a truck bomb attack on a key bridge in the south of the city. The driver of the pick-up detonated his bomb near a checkpoint on the Jadariya Bridge, across the River Tigris. The bridge appears to have been left intact.
- This follows a truck bomb that partially destroyed the Sarafiya Bridge in northern Baghdad on Thursday, killing eight people.
- The attacks come as a US-led security operation enters its third month. The surge has brought down the rate of sectarian murders in the capital but has failed to stop bomb attacks.
- The latest attacks suggest a change in tactics by insurgents, who are targeting infrastructure in an attempt to undermine confidence in the crackdown.
- British forces have killed eight gunmen laying landmines in Basra in the area where four soldiers and a translator were killed in a roadside bomb earlier this month.

Iraq, Sunday April 15, 2007:
- A suicide car bomber killed at least 40 people and wounded scores at a crowded bus station near a Shiite shrine in the holy city of Kerbala.
- In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber detonated his device near a checkpoint at the southern Jadriyah Bridge, killing 10 people and setting fire to cars in the second major attack on a bridge in the capital in the past three days.
- At least 43 people have been killed in a series of bomb and suicide attacks Baghdad.
- At least 18 people were killed when two car bombs exploded in a busy market in a mainly Shia district of the city.
- Eleven more died when a minibus blew up in the Karaka district, while a suicide attack on a bus in the city's northwest left at least six dead.
- Two further roadside bombs went off in Karaka after nightfall, killing at least eight people, police said.
- Three US soldiers died in Iraq over the weekend, the US military announced.

Suspected Sunni insurgents penetrated the Baghdad security net Wednesday April 18, 2007, hitting Shiite targets with four bomb attacks that killed 183 people, the bloodiest day since the US troop increase began nine weeks ago. The most devastating blast struck the Sadriyah market as workers were leaving for the day, charring a line-up of minibuses that came to pick them up. At least 127 people were killed and 148 wounded, including men who were rebuilding the market after a February 3 bombing left 137 dead. The car bombing appeared meticulously planned. It took place at a pedestrian entrance where tall concrete barriers had been erected after the earlier attack. It was the only way out of the compound, and the construction workers were widely known to leave at about 4 p.m., the time of the bombing.

Iraq, Wednesday April 18, 2007:
- A car bomb in Baghdad's mainly Shiite district of Sadriya killed 140 people and wounded 150; the worst single insurgent bomb attack in the capital since the 2003 US-led invasion.
- Gunmen killed three people in an attack on a vehicle near Baiji, north of Baghdad. Those killed were the son of Iraq's deputy interior minister and his two bodyguards.
- Another 25 decomposed bodies were found in a school in Ramadi. The latest discovery came a day after 17 bodies were found in a deserted school in Ramadi.
- Eight bodies were discovered in Mosul.
- One army officer and a civilian were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Mosul. Another three police were wounded.
- A car bomb killed 35 people and wounded 75 near an intersection in the Shiite district of Sadr city in northeastern Baghdad.
- A car bomb killed 10 people and wounded 15 in the predominantly Shiite district of Karaka in central Baghdad.
- Two police were killed and eight wounded in a suicide car bomb attack at a police checkpoint in Baghdad's Sadiyah district.
- A bomb inside a minibus killed two people and wounded five near al-Shurja in central Baghdad.
- A suicide car bomb targeting a police patrol killed two policemen and wounded four, including two civilians, near Baghdad.
- One insurgent was killed and eight others were detained during two raids near Taji.
- US soldiers discovered a cache of nitric acid during a raid on a warehouse in eastern Baghdad on April 12. The nitric acid, which can be used in manufacturing explosives, was stored in 600 five-gallon containers. Three people were detained in the raid.
- The bodies of 25 people were found shot in different districts of Baghdad on Tuesday.
- US forces killed five insurgents, wounded four and detained 26 more during an operation near Garma.
- Iraqi soldiers killed six insurgents and arrested 126 during the past 24 hours in different parts of Iraq.
- Gunmen attacked Iraqi army and police checkpoints in two different districts; a policeman and a soldier were wounded in Tal Afar.
- Gunmen wounded a judge, his wife and son in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed Ismail Kadhim, a police major who was also a security guard for the Speaker of the Iraqi parliament, in southern Baghdad on Tuesday.
- Four people were wounded by a mortar round which landed in the residential district of Dora in southern Baghdad on Tuesday.
- Four policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb attack on their patrol in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday.

Three US soldiers were killed and six others were wounded on April 21, 2007, in separate attacks in Baghdad and southwest of the capital. A roadside bomb killed one soldier and wounded two were wounded while they were on a foot patrol southwest of Baghdad. Another soldier died and three were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb, followed by small-arms fire in southwestern Baghdad. A combat security patrol also was attacked by small-arms fire, killing a soldier and wounding another in an eastern section of the capital. At least 3,318 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003. Also today, Poland's defence ministry said a Polish soldier was killed and four injured when a roadside bomb hit their convoy Friday night in Diwaniyah. Twenty Polish soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the war began.

Iraq, April 22, 2007:
- Two car bombs have exploded at a police station in the southern, mainly Shia neighbourhood of Bayaa, Baghdad, killing at least 12 people and wounding about 82 others. The first bomber sped through a checkpoint before exploding his car in front of the station, the other detonated his car at the checkpoint.
- A mortar was reported to have hit a residential area of Baghdad, wounding at least two people.
- A car bomb in the neighbourhood of Saidiya in southern Baghdad killed six civilians and wounded 37 people, police said.
- In Mosul, gunmen killed 23 textile workers from the minority Yazidi sect after forcing them out of a minibus. Yazidis are members of an ancient minority sect and live in northern Iraq and Syria.

Iraq, April 23, 2007:
- Car bombs have rocked Ramadi, killing 20 people. Three cars exploded in quick succession near a restaurant and market in the western district of al-Taamim.
- Earlier blasts hit Baquba and Mosul, and near where the new US envoy was giving his first briefing in Baghdad.
- At least 10 people died in Tal Uskuf, just north of Mosul, when a suicide bomber detonated his car outside an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
- A suicide car bomber struck a police station in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people.
- In Baghdad at least seven people died in a suicide attack in Karradat Mariam near the edge of the Green Zone where Mr Crocker was delivering his briefing.
- Another car bomb exploded close to the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. One person was reported killed in the blast.
- More than 150 people were reported wounded in the succession of blasts.

Iraq, Tuesday April 24, 2007:
- Nine US soldiers have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a base. Some 20 troops and an Iraqi civilian were injured in the attack in province of Diyala, to the northeast of Baghdad.
- More than 3,300 US troops have been killed and some 24,300 have been injured in Iraq since the conflict began.
- In Baghdad two car bombs exploded near the Iranian embassy. At least four people were reported hurt in the blasts. Two blasts in the same area on Monday left one person dead.

Iraq, Saturday April 28, 2007:
- A car bomb has killed at least 55 people and injured about 70 in Karbala, the second such attack in two weeks. The city houses two of Shia Islam's holiest shrines and reports say the bomb went off on a busy street near the golden-domed mosque of the Imam Abbas shrine as people headed to pray.
- Nine US soldiers were killed in Iraq in the past two days.
- On Friday three soldiers and two Marines were killed during combat operations in Anbar province.
- Three US soldiers were killed and another wounded by a roadside bomb southwest of Baghdad on Saturday.
- Another soldier was killed and two were wounded when their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb, south of the capital.

Iraq, Monday April 30, 2007:
- A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 32 people when he blew himself up among mourners at a Shiite funeral. The attack took place inside a crowded mourning tent in the town of Khalis in volatile Diyala province. More than 60 people had been wounded. Last month, US commanders sent a force of armoured vehicles and 1,000 extra soldiers to the province.
- Five US soldiers were killed in Iraq over the weekend, raising the number killed this month to over 100 and making April one of the deadliest of the war for US forces.
- A roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad killed three soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter.
- A marine was killed in western Anbar province on Sunday.
- Another soldier was killed by small arms fire in eastern Baghdad on Saturday.
- Before the latest deaths, the number of US troops killed in Iraq in April was 99. Some 3,350 US troops and many tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003.
- April has also been a bad month for British forces, with 12 killed, the highest number in a month since March 2003, when 27 died in the opening days of the war. British Defence Secretary Des Browne made an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Monday. He met Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, officials said. Browne also went to the southern city of Basra, base of the British forces in Iraq.

Three American soldiers were killed and two others were wounded in Iraq on May 2, 2007, when improvised explosive devices struck their vehicles. The attacks occurred in two different parts of Baghdad. In one attack, two soldiers were killed and two were wounded while their Multi-National Division-Baghdad unit was clearing IEDs from roads in the southern part of the Iraqi capital.

Iraq, Thursday May 3, 2007:
- _ A rocket attack Wednesday on the Green Zone killed four foreign contractors working for the US government: two of the contractors were from India, one was from Nepal and one from the Philippines.
- A senior Iraqi official said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the leader of an al-Qaida front group, was killed in a clash with Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad. The US military, however, said the militant killed was Muharib Abdul-Latif al-Jubouri, a senior member of al-Qaida in Iraq responsible for the kidnappings of several Westerners including Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll.
- US-led forces arrested 11 militants suspected of building bombs and helping foreign fighters in a series of raids. The troops also found bomb-making material and anti-aircraft weapons.
- Gunmen stormed the offices of the private, independent Dijlah radio station in a predominantly Sunni area in western Baghdad, killing two employees and wounding five others, then detonating a bomb that set the building on fire.
- Police in Falluja found nine bullet-riddled bodies -four members of a Sunni tribe that recently joined an alliance against al-Qaida in Iraq and five found near the tax office.
- A Sunni cleric, Mohammed Khalil al-Mashhadani, was shot to death in a mosque in northwestern Baghdad, while a mortar attack also struck a residential area in a Shiite enclave in southern Baghdad, killing at least one person and wounding six.
- Gunmen stormed a market in Baquba killing a plainclothes policeman after a militant read a death sentence issued by al-Qaida and two Shiite men. They then killed a policeman after he arrived at the scene to investigate.

Iraq, Saturday May 5, 2007:
- In Iraq, a suicide bomber struck army recruits west of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 15 people in another warning to Sunnis not to cooperate with the Shiite leadership. The suicide attack in the mostly Sunni town of Abu Ghraib was the deadliest in a series of attacks that left at least 74 people dead nationwide. The dead include ten recruits and five soldiers. Another 22 people were wounded.
- A suicide car bomber tore through a police station in western Baghdad, killing a policeman.

Iraq, Sunday May 6, 2007:
- US and Iraqi forces discovered a bloodstained torture chamber loaded with ammunition during a raid in Baghdad. If the ammunition had detonated prematurely, the number of civilian causalities would have been "horrific." The torture chamber was discovered while coalition forces were chasing a terrorist with ties to Iran.
- Coalition killed as many as 10 insurgents who were linked to the Shiite stronghold in the Sadr City district.
- Sunday was marked by a wave of violence that killed at least 53 people throughout Iraq.
- The deadliest attack occurred in Baghdad when a car bomb exploded near a market killing at least 27. The attack came amid a surge of US troops intended to bring stability to Iraq's capital city.
- Roadside bombs killed eight American soldiers in separate attacks in Diyala province and Baghdad.
- At least 95 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide Sunday. They included 12 policemen in Samara, among them the city's police chief, who died when Sunni insurgents launched a suicide car bombing and other attacks on police headquarters.
- The deadliest attack against US forces occurred in Diyala, where six U.S. soldiers and a European journalist were killed when a massive bomb destroyed their vehicle. Two US soldiers were wounded.
- Two other American soldiers died in separate bombings in Baghdad.
- The military Sunday also reported three other deaths -two Marines in a blast Saturday in Anbar province and a soldier who died Sunday in a non-combat incident in northern Iraq.
- Those deaths raised to at least 3,373 the number of US military members who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

Two suicide car bombers have killed at least 24 people near Ramadi on May 7, 2007. The first exploded in a busy market in Albu Thiyab, to the east of Ramadi, killing at least 15 and injuring 30. The other targeted a police checkpoint some 15 minutes later in the town of al Jazeera. Five police officers and five bystanders died. Ten people were hurt.

Iraq Monday May 7, 2007:
- Suicide bombers killed 13 people in two attacks around the Sunni Arab city of Ramadi. The first of the attacks happened about noon in a market on the northwest outskirts of the city, killing eight people and wounding 13. About 15 minutes later, police at a nearby checkpoint spotted a second car bomb and opened fire, but the driver was able to detonate the vehicle. Five people, including two policemen, were killed and 12 were wounded.
- In all, at least 68 people were killed or found dead nationwide Monday.
- They included the bullet-riddled bodies of 30 men found in Baghdad -the apparent victims of sectarian death squads. All but two were found in west Baghdad, including 17 in the Amil neighbourhood where Sunni politicians have complained of renewed attacks by Shiite militiamen.
- The Islamic State claimed responsibility Monday for attacks that killed 34 people over the weekend -including six US soldiers and a Russian embedded photojournalist who died in a roadside bombing in Baquba. The 34 also included the police chief of Samara, Col. Jalil Nahi Hassoun, who was killed Sunday in an attack on police headquarters. He was buried Monday following a tearful procession by police in blue uniforms who escorted the flag-draped coffin as it was driven in the bed of a white pickup truck through the Sunni city.
- At least five al-Qaida fighters were killed in the fighting in Samara.
- Also Monday, the military announced a US soldier was killed by small-arms fire in western Baghdad the day before, bringing to nine the number of American personnel slain Sunday.

At least 16 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in the southern Iraqi town of Kufa on May 8, 2007. The explosion destroyed a restaurant and severely damaged shops in an open-air market.

Iraq, Tuesday 8, 2007:
- In bomb blasts and other incidents of violence almost 50 people were killed.
- A powerful car bomb exploded in southern Iraqi city of Kufa killing 16 people in the attack. In addition 70 were wounded.
- A suicide attack on a police station in Jalawlah, killed two police and wounded 22 others, mostly civilians.
- In Baghdad itself, a bomb exploded killing two people and injuring six others.
- Gunmen shot dead a policeman in Diwaniya.
- Another police official was gunned down in southern Iraq city of Ammara.
- A group Islamic State of Iraq has claimed in videotape that it has kidnapped five Iraqi National Guards men and four police officials from Diyala province. The group has demanded release of all Sunni women prisoners from Iraq jails within 72 hours.
- One American soldier was killed and four others were wounded by gunfire in the Diyala province.

An attack by a US helicopter against suspected insurgents place in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad has killed a number of children at a primary school on May 9, 2007. The school is in the village of al-Nedawat close to the Iranian border. A suicide truck bomb ripped through the Interior Ministry in the relatively peaceful Kurdish city of Irbil today, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens.

Iraq Sunday May 13, 2007:
- At least 45 people have been killed and dozens wounded by a suicide truck bombing in the northern Iraqi town of Makhmur. The bomber crashed his truck into the offices of a leading Kurdish party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, where a meeting was being held at the time.
- In Baghdad, at least 10 people died when a car bomb exploded near a market in the mainly Shia Sadriya district. Some 45 people were wounded when the bomb exploded on Wathba Square near the popular commercial area.

At least 32 people have been killed and 50 injured in a suspected chlorine bomb in Iraq's Diyala province on May 15, 2007. The attack happened in an open-air market in the village of Abu Sayda. Use of chlorine bombs has become more common since the start of the year. Chlorine gas burns the skin on contact and can be fatal after a few breaths.

Iraq Wednesday May 16, 2007:
- Mortar rounds hit the US-controlled Green Zone for a second day, killing at least two Iraqi people, wounding about 10 more and raising new fears for the safety of workers at the nerve centre of the American mission in Iraq.
- Nine people were wounded in a rocket attack Tuesday, and four Asian contractors were killed in a barrage May 3.
- At least 88 violent deaths were reported by police across Iraq, including 32 people who died the night before when a car bomb exploded near a market in the Shiite enclave of Abu Saydah northeast of Baghdad.
- Clashes also broke out in the mostly Shiite city of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, when Shiite militants loyal to anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr battled police to protest the arrests of two of their members. Eleven Iraqis were killed and 75 wounded.

More than 60 people were killed and dozens wounded in mortar strikes, drive-by shootings, roadside explosions, suicide bombings and other violent attacks on Thursday May 17, 2007, as a new study warned that the country was close to becoming a "failed state."

Iraq, Modayday May 221, 2007:
- Roadside bombs killed seven American soldiers on Sunday, including six who died in one attack in western Baghdad. An interpreter working with the unit was also killed. A second bombing Saturday killed a soldier when the blast struck the armoured vehicle he was in near Diwaniya. Two soldiers were wounded in that attack.
- The casualties raised the number of American service members killed in Iraq to 71 so far this month, coming after 104 soldier deaths in April, and already the largest two-month casualty total this year.
- Several mortar shells slammed into the Green Zone, one of them striking the Iraqi parliament building but causing no casualties.
- At least 58 Iraqis were killed or found dead across the country Monday, including seven people ambushed on a bus northeast of Baghdad. The dead also included 24 men whose bullet-riddled bodies were found across Baghdad, apparent victims of sectarian death squads.
- US forces in Iraq have killed the alleged mastermind of a guerrilla attack in which five US troops died. Azhar al-Dulaimi was killed on Friday during clashes with US troops as they tried to capture him in northern Baghdad.
- One US soldier was killed and four others abducted and later gunned down.

Iraq Tuesday May 22, 2007:
- A car bomb killed at least 25 people and wounded about 60 others in Baghdad. The bomb exploded in an outdoor market in the mainly Shia Amil district, in the southwest of the city. Many of those killed and wounded were women and children.
- In two separate attacks in eastern part of the capital, 12 students were killed and at least 28 injured. In the first attack, mortar rounds landed on a college affiliated with Baghdad University, killing four students and injuring 25 more. Hours later, gunmen fired on a minibus full of students from Mustansiriyah University. Eight were killed and three injured.
- In other attacks across Baghdad, two Iraqi policemen were killed and one injured when gunmen in the Khadra district ambushed their car.
- A roadside bomb blast hit a police patrol car in the east of Baghdad, killing one policeman and injuring three.
- The US military in Iraq said it killed nine suspected insurgents and freed 12 Iraqi hostages in a raid on a house in western Baghdad.
- US and Iraqi troops are still searching for three US soldiers missing since their patrol was ambushed on 12 May.
- Four US soldiers and one Iraqi were killed in the attack, near Mahmudiya.

Iraq Wednesday May 23, 2007:
- Iraqi police said they found in the Euphrates River in Musayyib the body of one of three US soldiers missing in Iraq since 12 May.
- 20 Iraqis have died in a suicide bomb attack on a café; 15 people were also injured in Mandali, a town of mainly Shia Muslim Kurds near the Iranian border.
- US forces reported the deaths of another nine service personnel. Seven of the nine US troops killed on Tuesday died in four separate roadside bomb and shooting attacks in and around the capital Baghdad. The other two were marines killed in Anbar.
- Three months into the US build-up of troops in Iraq, violence appears to be rising, both against American troops and Iraqi civilians.
- Five Iraqi civilians were killed and 17 wounded in a gun battle just outside the Green Zone.
- Thirty unidentified corpses were found throughout the capital.
- Statistics on the numbers of car bombs, roadside bombs, people wounded and people killed show that May is likely to be the bloodiest month so far this year. The number of anonymous bodies found on Baghdad's streets, victims of what US officials call sectarian murders, is averaging 22.5 a day, up nearly 50 percent from April and March and equal to the rate in January, before the troop build-up began. US officials say that an increase in American deaths was expected as US troops fanned out over the city.
- This week, American troops uncovered at least two terrorist havens northeast of Karmah that appeared to be al-Qaida torture chambers. Seventeen hostages were freed, including a 13-year-old boy who'd been severely beaten and had electrical wires attached to his tongue. The operations left 19 al-Qaida members dead and 58 in the hands of US troops.
- Iraqi border guards seized a car loaded with bombs and cables near the Iranian border city of Panjwin.
- Since Friday, 24 American service members have died in Iraq.

Iraq Thursday May 24, 2007:
- At least 40 people have been killed and 70 hurt in a car bomb attack on a funeral in Falluja. The man being buried was part of an alliance of tribal leaders working with the authorities against al-Qaeda.
- In Baghdad, gunmen stopped a bus at a fake checkpoint in a Shia district, killing 11 passengers.
- Gunmen set up a checkpoint and shot dead 11 passengers aboard a minibus in Husseiniya in North Baghdad, police have said.
- The attackers then hid a device among the bodies, which detonated when police officers arrived at the scene, killing two civilians and wounding four others.
Iraq, Friday May 25, 2007:
- British sources said on May 25, 2007, the leader of the cleric's Mehdi Army in Basra has been killed by Iraqi forces. A source close to the Mehdi militia in the city accused the British Army of carrying out the killing -this is also how Arab news channels are reporting the death. Abu Qadir, also known as Wissam Waili, 23, was wanted for weapons trafficking, theft, financing illegal militias and carrying out attacks on British forces. A spokesman said Iraqi forces had tried to arrest him and that the militia leader had died in an exchange of fire. He denied British troops were involved.
- The US military reported the deaths of five soldiers in Iraq. The death toll for US troops in May -currently at least 85- looks like being one of the highest since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Iraq, Tuesday May 28, 2007:
- Police recovered the bodies of 33 people from various parts of Baghdad in the past 24 hours.
- A truck bomb killed 24 people and wounded 90 others near the Sunni Abdul Qadir al-Gailani mosque in central Baghdad.
- Three civilians were killed and 10 wounded by a car bomb in Zaafarniya district in south eastern Baghdad.
- Eight people were killed and 35 wounded when mortar rounds landed in the Shiite district of Karrada in central Baghdad.
- Two civilians were killed two others were wounded by roadside bomb in the Baayaa district in southwestern Baghdad.
- Four policemen were killed by a car bomb in Mosul.
- Police found the bodies of three men in different parts of Mosul.
- At least two people were killed and six wounded by a car bomb in the Karrada district in central Baghdad.
- Four people were killed and 29 wounded by a bomb in a restaurant in the Bab al-Muadham district of north-central Baghdad.
- The bodies of 12 men were found dumped in a large hole in the Uwaireeg area south of Baghdad. All the victims had gunshot wounds and showed signs of torture.
- A roadside bomb wounded five policemen in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.
- A roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi soldiers near Hawija.
- One person was killed and 11 wounded by a mortar round in Baquba.
- The Iraqi army killed an insurgent and arrested 45 others during the past 24 hours in different parts of Iraq.
- A sniper killed a female student near in al-Mustansiriya University in northeastern Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed three policemen and wounded seven in the Fadhil district of central Baghdad.
- The US military said US and Iraqi troops had raided a suspected al Qaida prison camp near Baquba on Sunday and freed 41 men.
- Hamad al-Jouburi, the head of a regional "salvation council" set up to fight al-Qaeda, said gunmen attacked his brother's two houses and abducted four of his sons and set the houses on fire in a village near Baiji. Earlier, local officials said gunmen killed the four sons of Jouburi's sister.
- A security detainee died on Saturday in Camp Cropper, a US detention facility in southern Baghdad. The likely cause of death was complications from diabetes.
- US forces detained nine suspected insurgents in raids against suspected al Qaida insurgents in Mosul and western Anbar province.
- A car bomb in a busy market killed seven people and wounded 12 on Sunday in the western outskirts of Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded nine others in eastern Baghdad on Sunday.
- Two people were killed and one other was wounded in a mortar attack on Sunday in Nahrawan.
- In Diyala province, a US soldier was killed when an explosion hit his vehicle and a second soldier was killed in an explosion in Baghdad. The deaths brought the number of troops killed this month to at least 102, putting May on pace to become the deadliest month for Americans here in more than 21/2 years.
- In Kut, 70 police officers resigned from an elite police unit and handed over their weapons, saying they were afraid of the Mahdi Army militia of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq, Tuesday May 29, 2007:
- Five Britons have been kidnapped from Iraq's finance ministry in Baghdad. They included four bodyguards and a finance expert possibly German. The kidnappers wore police uniforms and arrived in up to 40 police vehicles.
- Baghdad was shaken by a bus explosion which killed at least 22 people and injured about 55.
- A car bomb killed at least 15 people and hurt at least 36.
- The US military also announced that two of its soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash on Monday in Diyala province.
- A Shiite mosque was destroyed in the second of the two attacks in the Amil neighbourhood in west Baghdad.
- Police found 35 bodies dumped or buried in a newly dug mass grave.
- Across Iraq, police and morgue officials contacted by The Associated Press reported a total of at least 120 people killed or found dead yesterday. All of the officials refused to allow use of their names fearing they could be targeted by militants.
- In the Baghdad kidnappings, about 40 heavily armed men snatched the five Britons from an Iraqi Finance Ministry annex and sped away in a convoy of 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles toward Sadr City, the Shiite Mahdi Army stronghold not far away.

At least 20 people have been killed in a suicide bombing at a police recruitment centre in Falluja on May 31, 2007. Dozens more people were wounded in the attack. Police said the bomber was wearing an explosives vest and had passed through several checkpoints when the device was detonated among a crowd of police recruits. Ten policemen are reported to have been killed.

US troops battled al-Qaida in west Baghdad on Thursday May 31, 2007, after Sunni Arab residents challenged the militants and called for American help to end furious gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighbourhood to huddle indoors. Backed by helicopter gunships, US troops joined the two-day battle in the Amariyah district. The fight reflects a trend that U.S. and Iraqi officials have been trumpeting recently to the west in Anbar province, once considered the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. Many Sunni tribes in the province have banded together to fight al-Qaida, claiming the terrorist group is more dangerous than American forces.

The US military forces have killed six suspects and detained 18 others in separate operations targeting al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists.
A military statement on June 1, 2007, said 10 suspects were detained in Baghdad for their connection to a senior al-Qaida in Iraq commander, and seven were arrested in Taji. In western al-Anbar province, six suspects were killed and one arrested in two separate raids on areas north of Falluja.

Iraq, Sunday June 3, 2007:
- At least 10 people have been killed by a parked car bomb in an open-air market north-east of Baghdad. More than two dozen others were wounded in the blast at Balad Ruz market, which was packed with shoppers. The attack was aimed at a passing patrol, police said, but nearly all the victims were civilians.
- The US military announced the deaths of 14 soldiers, almost all of them in the Baghdad area or in the province of Diyala in the past 72 hours. All but two were killed by roadside bombs.
- The bodies of 31 people were found in Baghdad in the past 24 hours, the victims of apparent sectarian death squads.
- Ayad Shahab Ahmed, a director of the Iraqi Central Bank, and his brother were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Amil district of southwestern Baghdad.
- Two civilians were killed in drive-by shooting in central Kirkuk. Gunmen in a car opened fire on a crowd of people.
- The bodies of nine people were found shot and bound south of Baquba.
- Iraqi and US soldiers killed seven suspected members of al Qaida in Iraq, detained eight suspects and destroyed a truck bomb factory in Falluja on Saturday.
- Iraqi soldiers killed two suspected insurgents linked to al Qaida in Iraq and detained two others southwest of Balad.
- Gunmen killed Sheikh Ali Khudher al-Zand, imam of a Sunni mosque, in al-Khadhraa district in western Baghdad on Saturday.
- A car bomb in a busy market killed 10 people and wounded 30 in Balad Ruz.
- At least three people were killed, including an Iraqi soldier, in clashes with the Mehdi Army militia on Saturday and Sunday in Diwaniya. Another 29 people were wounded, including five policemen.
- Five people were killed and seven wounded when gunmen at a fake checkpoint opened fire on two minibuses near Baquba.
- The bodies of 26 people were found shot in different districts of Baghdad on Saturday.
- Two farmers were killed and five wounded in clashes between two Sunni tribes in a rural area near Kirkuk on Saturday.
- Mosul hospital morgue received the bodies of nine people, including four policemen and a woman, in Mosul on Saturday.

Iraq, Wednesday June 6, 2007:
- A suicide car bomb attack near the Iraqi city of Falluja has killed at least 15 people. At least 13 people were also wounded when the attacker detonated the car bomb in a market place.
- This comes when the US admitted its security "surge" in and around Baghdad faced serious challenges. A US security review said coalition forces controlled less than one-third of Baghdad's neighbourhoods.
- Four more US soldiers have been killed.
- A soldier died from wounds received from enemy fire a day earlier in the north-eastern province of Diyala.
- A Task Force Lightning soldier was killed by an explosion during operations in the same province.
- Another soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device during a combat logistics patrol in Baiji.
- In Baghdad a soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations.

Iraq Thursday June 7, 2007:
- Suicide car bombers struck on opposite sides of the capital and at a police station near the Syrian border.
- At least 59 Iraqis, including a journalist, were killed in these and other attacks or found slain.
- Two foreign soldiers, one US and one British, were also reported killed in separate incidents.
- Gunmen in Iraq have attacked the house of a senior police officer, of Col Ali al-Jurani, killing his wife and 13 other people and taking away three of his children. He is the head of emergency police in the town of Kanaan, in Diyala province.

Iraq, Saturday June 9, 2007:
- A suicide bomber slammed an explosives-laden truck into an Iraqi army base is near the town of Iskandiriyah overnight, killing 12 soldiers and wounding 30.
- Violence in other parts of Iraq took the day's death toll to at least 28.
- Police found the bodies of 27 people, 24 in Baghdad and three south of the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.
- The US military said mortars rained down on Camp Bucca, a US-run prison near the southern Iraqi city of Basra, killing six inmates and wounding 50 more.
- In Baghdad, security and medical officials say five were killed and 12 more wounded when a roadside bomb struck a passing minibus in the eastern Al-Baladiyat neighbourhood.
- A car bomb detonated next to a police patrol, killing a policemen and a bystander and wounding 12 others in Baghdad's north-east Shiite neighbourhood of Al-Shaab.
- Another policeman was killed in a separate clash with armed men in the same neighbourhood.
- In Kut, south of Baghdad, clashes broke out between US-Iraqi forces and militants from the Mahdi Army militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Two people were killed and five wounded.
- The military carried out a series of raids in which six militants were killed.
- In a raid south-east of Falluja, the former rebel city in the western province of Anbar, US troops targeted a weapons distributor for the al Qaida in Iraq network. US troops approached the area, where five men reached for weapons. The coalition forces responded by engaging the armed men, including the suspected distributor, and killing them. An Iraqi boy was wounded in the gunfight.
- The military also announced the death of one more militant in a similar raid in Baghdad.

Iraq, June 10, 2007:
- A suicide truck bomb killed 14 policemen and wounded 42 at a police station north of Baghdad. Among the dead were five officers, including two colonels. More than 30 police were among some 50 people wounded.
- U.S. forces were hit by another suicide bomber at a checkpoint south of the capital. Some U.S. forces had to be evacuated after the attack on the checkpoint near a major bridge. Three US soldiers were killed and six injured after a suicide bombing caused a bridge across a highway near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, to collapse.

Iraq Tuesday June 12, 2007:
- Iraqi police discovered 26 corpses with gunshot wounds in different parts of Baghdad. Of these, 21 corpses were found in the Karkh sector west of Baghdad, while five were found in Rusafa. The corpses were found in the districts of Rahmaniya, Dora, Jihad, Saidiya, Amil, Abu Ghraib, Kadhimiya, Yarmouk, Mansour, Zafaraniya, Sadr City, Jamila, Raghiba Khatoun and Jumhouriya Street.
- A roadside bomb killed two civilians and wounded seven others near Al-Risafi Square in central Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded three civilians in the Zafaraniya district in eastern Baghdad.
- Coalition forces detained 11 suspected militants during operations against al-Qaida in Iraq in Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in the Mansour district of western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded three others in the Adhamiya district, in northern Baghdad.
- A policeman was wounded by sniper fire in the Karrada district of eastern Baghdad.
- Two booby-trapped corpses exploded in the Saidiya district in southern Baghdad without casualties.
- Gunmen killed three policemen and set their vehicle on fire in the suburb of Bub Al-Sham northeast of Baghdad.
- An Iraqi Army patrol captured a militant wearing an explosive belt and driving a truck with eight tons of TNT in the suburb of Radhwaniya, southwest of Baghdad.
- Two civilians were killed and four others wounded when gunmen in three vehicles opened fire against their bus near the Al-Sud village on the main road between Baquba and Khalis.
- Gunmen kidnapped six labourers in Madain.
- A suicide car bomber killed three police officers and wounded 15 other people at a checkpoint west of Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb killed two security contractors and wounded two others in an attack against a US military convoy near Sulaiman Beg.
- Kurdistan police arrested militants charged with killing a Falluja police commander near the city of Sulaimaniya on Monday.
- A roadside bomb wounded five policemen near the Zab village north west of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed a policeman, Uday Farouq, in a drive-by shooting on his way home near Hawija southwest of Kirkuk.
- Iraqi police found the body of a kidnapped policeman with gunshot wounds in Tikrit.
- A security source said 14 mortar shells hit different parts of the predominately Shiite town of Balad, without casualties.
- Gunmen killed a medical student at a college in central Mosul.
- Gunmen killed Khair Al-Din Sabri, head of the Iraqi Central Bank branch in Mosul, and two of his bodyguards.
- Iraqi security forces arrested a Syrian driving a truck which was carrying a car packed with explosives near Karbala, on Monday.
- Unknown militants fired four mortar shells at a Multi-National Forces military base west of Kut.
- Iraqi troops detained six suspects and discovered a weapons cache during a security sweep in the districts of Shuhadaa' and Karama.
- Iraqi police defused a roadside bomb planted near the shrine of Ali bin Al-Hussein in the town of Al-Imam northeast of Hilla in the Babel governorate.

The two minarets of the al-Askari shrine in Iraq, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, have been destroyed by two explosions on June 13, 2007. The minarets collapsed completely after being hit by bomb blasts. The shrine houses one of two tombs in Samara for revered Shia imams. On June 14 political and religious leaders in Iraq appealed for calm after an attack on one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari shrine in Samara. Iraq's most prominent Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, condemned the attack but urged people not to respond with violence.

Iraq Thursday June 14, 2007:
- An al-Qaida-linked group has taken the responsibility for the killing of 14 Iraqi army and police officers.
- Three Sunni mosques were attacked or burned Thursday, but curfews and increased troop levels kept Iraq in relative calm a day after suspected al-Qaida bombers toppled the towering minarets of a prized Shiite shrine.
- Four people were killed and six wounded in attacks on the Kawaz, Othman, al-Abayshi and Basra Grand mosques on Wednesday.
- The US military detained 25 suspects in raids against al-Qaida in Iraq over the past two days.

An important, historic Sunni shrine south of Basra was blown up on Friday June 15, 2007, raising fears of further Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings and reprisals. The town of Zubayr near Basra is largely Sunni, though it is situated in the overwhelmingly Shiite deep south. Iraqi authorities put the large southern port of Basra under curfew.

As many as 20 people have been killed in clashes between coalition forces and Shia militia in southern Iraq on June 18, 2007. Fierce fighting took place in Amara, Maysan province, during the operation, which also targeted Majar al-Kabir. Six people had also been injured in the clashes.

A truck bomb struck a Shiite mosque on June 19, 2007, in central Baghdad, killing 78 people and wounding more than 200. The blast occurred in a parking lot near the mosque, causing the outer wall and a building just inside it to crumble. Gunfire erupted shortly after. The mosque's imam, Sheik Saleh al-Haidari, said it was a truck bomb and the explosion hit worshippers as they were leaving afternoon prayers.

Iraq Tuesday June 19, 2007:
- At least 78 people were killed and 224 wounded, including a correspondent for the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram, in a car bomb explosion targeting the Shiite Khillani mosque in a crowded area of central Baghdad.
- The bodies of 21 people with gunshot wounds and signs of torture were found in different areas of Baghdad on Monday, police said. Twelve bodies were found in the Karkh sector in western Baghdad (2 in Dora, 2 in Amil, 2 in Bayya', 2 in Amiriya, 2 in Kadhimiya, 2 in Shu'la), and the rest in the Rusafa sector in eastern Baghdad (3 in Adhamiya, 2 in Baghdad Al-Jedida, 2 in Sadr City).
- Several mortar shells hit the fortified Green Zone area, which hosts Iraqi government offices, US and British embassies, and residences of Iraqi politicians. Five shells landed near the office of PM Maliki and another near the American post exchange store.
- The Iraqi army killed 15 suspected insurgents and arrested 65 others during the past 24 hours in different districts of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb explosion and a rocket-propelled grenade badly damaged two US Humvee vehicles and wounded several soldiers near the Adala School in the predominately-Shiite Hurriya district.
- Militants attacked a bus carrying Iraqi employees who work at the US military base in Rustumiya near the new Diyala bridge in southeastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding two others.
- Interior Ministry commandos arrested about 30 high school students while they were taking their final exams at the Uqbah bin Nafi' school in the Saidiya district of southern Baghdad. Students said the commandos were randomly shooting outside the school before they stormed in swearing and shooting and randomly arrested 30 students from classrooms.
- A joint US-Iraqi force raided a mosque in the Za'faraniya district in southeastern Baghdad and detained five guards.
- Two people were killed and five wounded in a roadside bomb attack targeting a police patrol in the Za'faraniya district in southeastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb explosion against a US military patrol in the Wahda suburb southeast of Baghdad killed four soldiers and wounded three civilians.
- An Iraqi soldier was killed and three others wounded in a roadside bomb attack against their patrol in the Dora district of southern Baghdad.
- Three civilians were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in the predominately Sunni district of Yarmouk in western Baghdad.
- A mortar attack wounded three civilians in the Sha'ab district in northern Baghdad.
- The US military said it had killed 22 suspected militants in the early hours of a major offensive against Al-Qaida in Iraq around Baquba.
- A medical source from the Ba'quba hospital said the medico-legal institute received 13 unknown bodies on Monday night and Tuesday morning from different parts of Baquba. The bodies were blindfolded and handcuffed and bore signs of torture and three were beheaded.
- Joint US-Iraqi troops arrested a suspected Al-Qaida leader in Muqdadiya. The detainee, Mohammed Khalid Al-Haroun, is suspected of issuing fatwa calling for attacks against residents in Muqdadiya.
- Unknown militants blew up the headquarters of the Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc in Hawija. The bloc is led by Sunni MP Mish'an Al-Jubouri, who is currently residing in Syria and is wanted by the Iraqi government for corruption and embezzlement charges.
- Police detained 10 suspected militants following clashes in a suburb 5 km south of Karbala, a police media spokesman said.
- Two Shiite tribal leaders were killed and their driver wounded in a roadside bomb attack near the town of Iskandariya.
- At least 35 people were killed and 150 wounded in the second day of fierce fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi police in Nasiriya.
- Three civilians were killed and a policeman wounded in a mortar attack in the Hakimiya district in central Basrah late Monday.
- A woman and a child were killed by a mortar attack in the town of Tal Afar.
- Gunmen killed a female student from the University of Mosul as she was leaving the main university gate following final exams.
- Over 500 local policemen, including 100 border guards, submitted their resignations following threats by suspected Islamic State of Iraq militants in the desert Ba'aj province. Only 15 policemen now remain in the border province, which is completely controlled by extremist Sunni militant groups, and the border with neighbouring Syria is left unprotected.
- A civilian was killed and two others wounded by Iraqi Interior Ministry commandos sniper fire in Samara. Interior Ministry commandos have occupied six schools in the predominately Sunni city to use as bases.
- Four suspected militants were killed and 16 others detained in Samara.
- A roadside bomb explosion targeting a US military patrol on the Haditha-Tiwan road destroyed a Humvee vehicles and wounded several soldiers.

On Friday June 22, 2007, US helicopters have killed 17 gunmen with suspected al-Qaida links outside Khalis, Diyala province north of Baghdad. But a senior US commander has admitted that most of the senior al-Qaida leaders -80%- they are targeting have fled.

Iraq June 25, 2007:
- A number of senior Sunni tribal leaders are among 12 people killed and 15 wounded in a suicide bombing at a hotel in central Baghdad. According to initial reports, six sheikhs are among the dead. The Sunni leaders, from Anbar province, were meeting at the hotel and were the target of the attack.
- At least 27 people died in a blast in Baiji.
- At least eight people died when a bomb ripped into a crowd of police recruits outside the governor's office in Hilla.

Suicide bombers struck a central Baghdad hotel and four other targets across Iraq on June 25, 2007, in a surge of attacks that left at least 29 people dead. A man wearing a belt of explosives walked into the lobby of Baghdad's Mansour Hotel, approached the reception desk and detonated his bomb. Nine people were killed and at least 16 others were wounded. The high-rise hotel houses the Chinese Embassy and several news organizations. A number of Iraqi parliament members also stay at the Mansour. The attack was the fifth in a string of suicide and other bombings, from Mosul and Beiji in the north to Hilla in the south. Two were aimed at US targets, but no casualties were reported. The deadliest occurred at a police station in Beiji when at least nine civilians were killed and 21 others wounded.

Iraq, Thursday June 28, 2007:
- A car bomb has killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens more in Baghdad. The bomb was left in a parked car at a bus terminal in the mainly Shia district of Bayaa in south-west Baghdad.
- Relatives of 11 Iraqis killed by US troops in the village of Khalis last week have demanded compensation, and have called for the Americans to withdraw claims the men were from al-Qaida;
- Twenty headless bodies without identification have been found on the banks of a stream near the Tigris river close to Baghdad;
- Three British soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb hit their patrol in Basra, in southern Iraq. A fourth soldier was wounded.
- In Baghdad, about 40 vehicles, including buses, were set alight in the latest explosion.

Iraq, Saturday June 30, 2007:
- US-led forces say they have killed 26 militants in overnight operations in the Sadr City area of Baghdad in which four vehicles were destroyed. Iraqi hospital and police officials put the death toll at eight and said civilians were killed in their homes.
- Troops also detained 17 militants in pre-dawn raids on the area, a Shia stronghold. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki criticised the raids on Sadr City, saying his government strongly opposed operations carried out by US-led forces without its permission.
- The US military denied reports from Thursday that 20 headless bodies had been found south of Baghdad and suggested it had been misinformation spread by insurgents.

The number of civilians killed in Iraq fell sharply in June 2007 to the lowest monthly total since a US-backed security clampdown was launched in February. 1,227 civilians died violently in June, a 36 percent drop from May. US military officials said it was premature to draw conclusions about the effects of the crackdown, which is seen as a last ditch effort to avert full-scale sectarian civil war between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs. But while the civilian death toll fell, June was costly for US forces, with 101 soldiers and Marines killed. That made the April-June quarter the bloodiest since the invasion in 2003.

Iraq, Wednesday July 4, 2007:
- At least 15 people have been killed and 17 others injured in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint near Ramadi. Many of the victims of the bombing were police officers manning the checkpoint.
- At least three people died when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in Baiji in Iraq's north.
- An American soldier has been killed and one other injured in a helicopter crash in Nineveh province north of Baghdad. A U.S. It was not brought down by enemy fire.

At least 15 members of a wedding party, including three children, died in a car bomb attack in the Iraqi capital. At least 27 people, including the bride and groom, were also injured in the blast on Thursday July 5, 2007, in a southern Shia district of Baghdad. The newlyweds escaped with minor injuries. Several nearby shops and businesses were badly damaged in the blast.

Iraq, Friday July 6, 2007:
- At least 17 people were killed when a booby-trapped car exploded in a Kurdish village north of Baghdad.
- Shiite militants and police battled in the southern Iraqi town of Samawa and roadside bombs killed at least eight Iraqi troops.
- US forces killed three insurgents in raids in western Iraq in which a senior Al Qaida leader involved in supplying weapons for attacks and preparing propaganda videos was captured.
- Fighting had broken out on Thursday when police attempted to crack down on members of cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. At least one policeman and four civilians had been killed in the fighting and 26 wounded.
- Near the town of Hilla, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army patrol on the main route east of town and killed four soldiers. Four more were killed in a similar attack in the northern city of Samara.
- At least four more Iraqis were killed in armed attacks in the north of the country.
- There is growing American political pressure to pull out US forces, but army leaders said would trigger a "mess".
- In Baghdad, at least five mortar shells crashed into the fortified Green Zone in an area near Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki's office and the US embassy.

Iraq Saturday 7, 2007:
- A huge truck bomb at an outdoor market in the largely Shiite town of Tuz, northern Iraq, killed at least 115 people and injured around 250, levelling shops and houses.
- A suicide car bomber killed six people including five Iraqi soldiers when he drove into a military checkpoint in east Baghdad. The attack wounded 24 people, including 18 soldiers.
- A mortar bomb killed seven members of one family as they slept on their roof in the Sunni neighbourhood of Fadhil in central Baghdad. They included a couple and their four children, aged nine to 17. Electricity blackouts have stopped air conditioners from working, so many Iraqis find it cooler to sleep on roofs.
- On Friday evening, a suicide car bomber killed 22 people and wounded 17 others when he drove his vehicle into a group of Shiite Kurds near Iraq's border with Iran. The victims were returning from a funeral.
- Eight US soldiers died in attacks in recent days. Six soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad in roadside bombings on Thursday and Friday while two Marines were killed in combat in Anbar province on Thursday.
- In Basra, one British soldier was killed in fierce fighting with militants.

On Sunday July 7, 2007, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki described Saturday's bombing in Amirli, northern Iraq as a "heinous crime". Rescuers are still searching for survivors of the attack, which officials now say killed 130 people and injured 240 others, many seriously.

Iraq Monday July 9, 2007:
- Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.
- Two American soldiers -one killed Sunday in a suicide bombing on the western outskirts of Baghdad and another who died in combat Saturday in Salahuddin province, died. Three soldiers were wounded in the Sunday blast.
- Sunday's deadliest attack occurred when a bomb struck a truckload of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing 15 and wounding 20.
- Also Sunday, two car bombs exploded near simultaneously in Baghdad's mostly Shiite Karradah district, killing eight people. The first detonated near a closed restaurant, destroying stalls and soft drink stands. Two passers-by were killed and eight wounded.
- About five minutes later, the second car exploded about a mile away near shops selling leather jackets and shoes. Six people were killed and seven wounded.
- A bomb hidden under a car detonated Sunday at the entrance of Shorja market -a mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad- killing three civilians and wounding five.
- Police reported they found the bodies of 29 men Sunday scattered across Baghdad victims of sectarian death squads.
- Four other people were killed Sunday in separate shootings in Baghdad.

Iraq, Wednesday July 11, 2007:
- Sunni extremists seized control of a remote village, Sherween, a village of 7,000 Shiites and Sunnis in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad in a fierce battle with residents who pleaded for rescue by the Iraqi Army and police.
- In Baghdad, a big mortar and rocket attack on the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone compound on Tuesday killed two Iraqis and a Filipino and wounded 25 other people.

Iraq, Monday July 16, 2007:
- Bomb attacks in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk have killed at least 85 people and wounded more than 180.
- A suicide bomber detonated a lorry near the offices of a Kurdish political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), causing most of the casualties.
- Two other bombs later went off in the city. No group has claimed the attacks.
- Several hours later, a car bomb exploded in southern Kirkuk, killing a police officer and wounding six other policemen.

Iraq July 17, 2007:
- Gunmen wearing military uniforms have killed 29 people - men, women and children- in a village in Diyala province north of Baghdad.

A suicide car bomber struck a busy marketplace in the Iraqi town of Hilla on Tuesday July 24, 2007, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 60. Most of the wounded were women and children, and the blast destroyed 15 vehicles.

Two suicide car bombings struck Iraqi soccer fans taking to the streets to celebrate Iraqi football team's victory in Baghdad on Wednesday July 25, 2007, killing at least 55 people and injuring 135 others. The first deadly bombing killed at least 30 people and wounding 75 others. In eastern Baghdad, another suicide car bombing attacked an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Ghader district, killing at least 25people and injuring 60 other, most of the victims are soccer fans.

South Korea sent President Roh Moo Hyun's security adviser to Afghanistan to negotiate the release of 22 of its citizens held by the Taliban. Baek Jong Chun will arrive in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on July 27, 2007, to lead the talks over the kidnapped South Koreans. The Taliban two days ago killed one of the 23 hostages it held.

A British soldier was killed in an operation targeting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan on July 27, 2007. He was killed as his company came under fire after securing a bridge north east of Gereshk in Helmand province. He was the second British casualty in the province in as many days and the 66th since military operations began in Afghanistan in November 2001.

The US military on Friday July 27, 2007, killed around 17 militia fighters in clashes in Iraq's holy Shiite city of Kerbala, but hospital and police sources said some civilians were among the dead.

Iraq, Monday August 6, 2007:
- At least 28 people were killed by a suicide truck bomb in the northern town of Tal Afar. The blast hit a mainly Shia district of the mixed town and injured about 40, with some feared trapped under rubble.
- In Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit commuters, killing nine and injuring eight.

Iraq, August 6, 2007:
- Fifty-four people died in sectarian violence in Iraq.
- A suicide bomb explosion killed 30 people and wounding 50. Twelve children were among the people killed in a massive blast when a suicide bomber blew up a truck packed with explosives in a Shiite village in northern Iraq.
- The military announced the deaths of five US soldiers in Baquba and four more in the Diyala province. The four soldiers were killed and 12 others wounded in an explosion.
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- Fifteen Iraqis were killed further south.
- A roadside bomb killed nine more.

A car bomb Friday August 10, 2007, killed 11 people in a Kurdish district of the Hurriya neighbourhood of Kirkuk. Forty-five people were wounded in the explosion. A US military helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing south of Baghdad.

A roadside bomb killed the governor and police chief of the southern Iraqi province of Diwaniya on August 12, 2007. Three members of the governor's security detail also died. The governor was a key figure in the Badr Organisation, the military wing of the largest Shia Muslim party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). Khalil Jalil Hamza and police chief Maj-Gen Khaled Hassan were returning to Diwaniya city after a funeral when a bomb exploded beside their convoy.

At least 200 people have been killed on Tuesday August 14, 2007, in a series of bombings apparently aimed at a Kurdish religious minority group in northern Iraq. Some 200 more were reported injured as at least four blasts hit areas home to the Yazidi sect near the city of Mosul.

Rescuers used bare hands and shovels Wednesday August 15, 2007, to search through clay houses shattered by an onslaught of suicide bombings that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect in the deadliest attack of the Iraq war. The US military blamed al Qaida in Iraq. The victims of Tuesday night's coordinated attack by four suicide bombers were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect that has been targeted by Muslim extremists who consider its members to be blasphemers. The blasts in two villages near the Syrian border crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage. Entire neighbourhoods were flattened.

Main previous bombing attacks in Iraq:
August 29, 2003: Najaf Car bomb exploded outside the Imam Ali mosque in the Shia holy city, killing 125 people including Ayatollah Mohammad al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most prominent Shia ayatollahs.
February 1, 2004: Irbil, Twin suicide bombers target two Kurdish party offices, killing 109 people and injuring a further 250.
March 2, 2004: Karbala and Baghdad, Suicide bombers attack Shia Ashoura festival-goers, killing at least 140, including 49 Iranian pilgrims.
February 28, 2005: Hillah, north of Baghdad, A suicide car bomber targets Shia police and National Guard recruits, killing 125 people.
September 29, 2005: Balad, A string of car bomb attacks in the centre of Balad, a mostly Shia town, kill at least 102 people.
November 23, 2006: Sadr City, Baghdad, Mortar fire and five car bombs kill 215 people in the capital's Shia Muslim slum.
February 3, 2007: Sadriya, Baghdad, A suicide truck bomber kills at least 128 people and wounds 343 others in a market place. The market was attacked again on April 18, when more than 140 are killed.

The death toll from four suicide truck bomb attacks in northern Iraq has risen to 400, we were told on Thursday, making it by far the deadliest attack since the ousting of Saddam Hussein four years ago.

The governor of a southern Iraqi province, Muhammad Ali Al-Hassani, was assassinated Monday August 20, 2007, by a roadside bomb, the latest attack to open up the prospect of escalating violence among Shiites. In the attack, Hassani was leaving his house in the Rumaitha area of Samawa in Muthana Province for his office when he and a number of his security personnel were killed by the bomb.

At least 10 people have been killed in Baghdad, in clashes between US forces and militants in a mainly-Shia district, the Shula area in north-west Baghdad, and a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. Women were among those killed in the fighting. In Samara at least five people died when suspected al-Qaida fighters attacked several police stations.

On August 25, 2007, the Iraqi government imposed a partial travel ban in Baghdad and the outskirts of the capital ahead of a major Shia festival next week. Two-wheelers and hand carts, but not cars, will be banned in Baghdad and its outskirts from 1800 on Saturday. The curfew aims to curb insurgent attacks against up to two million Shia pilgrims expected to head to Karbala. Earlier, a car bomb in northern Baghdad killed at least seven in a Shia area.

The US military said on Tuesday August 28, 2007, its troops have killed 33 insurgents in a joint operation with Iraqi troops 80km north of Baghdad. Several hundred US and Iraqi soldiers took part in the operation on Monday to reopen the water supply to the town of Khalis. Insurgents cut water supplies to Khalis several days ago by shovelling earth into an irrigation canal. A joint assault force of US and Iraqi troops -which landed by helicopter- killed 13 insurgents. Fire from attack aircraft killed 20 others.

A power struggle between rival Shiite groups erupted during a religious festival in Karbala on August 28, 2007, as gunmen with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades fought street battles amid crowds of pilgrims, killing 50 people and wounding 200. Members of the Mahdi Army traded fire with security forces loyal to the government. Several vehicles and a hotel for pilgrims were set ablaze, and terrified pilgrims who had been praying at two shrines were trapped inside as clashes erupted nearby. Witnesses said buses that had been used to bring pilgrims to the city were bullet-shattered and bloodstained. The government forces in Karbala and other towns in southern Iraq are dominated by the religious party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed wing, the Badr organization.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, imposed a curfew in the city of Karbala after fierce fighting on Tuesday august 28, 2007, killed more than 50 people. The clashes between security forces and gunmen cut short a major religious festival in the city, which had drawn hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims. Mr Maliki said calm had been restored and blamed "criminal gangs from the remnants of the buried Saddam regime".
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Iraq, Wednesday July 4, 2007:
- At least 15 people have been killed and 17 others injured in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint near Ramadi. Many of the victims of the bombing were police officers manning the checkpoint.
- At least three people died when a car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in Baiji in Iraq's north.
- An American soldier has been killed and one other injured in a helicopter crash in Nineveh province north of Baghdad. A US It was not brought down by enemy fire.

At least 15 members of a wedding party, including three children, died in a car bomb attack in the Iraqi capital. At least 27 people, including the bride and groom, were also injured in the blast on Thursday July 5, 2007, in a southern Shia district of Baghdad. The newlyweds escaped with minor injuries. Several nearby shops and businesses were badly damaged in the blast.

Iraq, Friday July 6, 2007:
- At least 17 people were killed when a booby-trapped car exploded in a Kurdish village north of Baghdad.
- Shiite militants and police battled in the southern Iraqi town of Samara and roadside bombs killed at least eight Iraqi troops.
- US forces killed three insurgents in raids in western Iraq in which a senior Al Qaida leader involved in supplying weapons for attacks and preparing propaganda videos was captured.
- Fighting had broken out on Thursday when police attempted to crack down on members of cleric Moqtada Al Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. At least one policeman and four civilians had been killed in the fighting and 26 wounded.
- Near the town of Hilla, a roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army patrol on the main route east of town and killed four soldiers. Four more were killed in a similar attack in the northern city of Samara.
- At least four more Iraqis were killed in armed attacks in the north of the country.
- There is growing American political pressure to pull out US forces, but army leaders said would trigger a "mess".
- In Baghdad, at least five mortar shells crashed into the fortified Green Zone in an area near Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki's office and the US embassy.

Iraq Saturday 7, 2007:
- A huge truck bomb at an outdoor market in the largely Shiite town of Tuz, northern Iraq, killed at least 115 people and injured around 250, levelling shops and houses.
- A suicide car bomber killed six people including five Iraqi soldiers when he drove into a military checkpoint in east Baghdad. The attack wounded 24 people, including 18 soldiers.
- A mortar bomb killed seven members of one family as they slept on their roof in the Sunni neighbourhood of Fadhil in central Baghdad. They included a couple and their four children, aged nine to 17. Electricity blackouts have stopped air conditioners from working; so many Iraqis find it cooler to sleep on roofs.
- On Friday evening, a suicide car bomber killed 22 people and wounded 17 others when he drove his vehicle into a group of Shiite Kurds near Iraq's border with Iran. The victims were returning from a funeral.
- Eight US soldiers died in attacks in recent days. Six soldiers were killed in and around Baghdad in roadside bombings on Thursday and Friday while two Marines were killed in combat in Anbar province on Thursday.
- In Basra, one British soldier was killed in fierce fighting with militants.

On Sunday July 7, 2007, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki described Saturday's bombing in Amirli, northern Iraq as a "heinous crime". Rescuers are still searching for survivors of the attack, which officials now say killed 130 people and injured 240 others, many seriously.

Iraq Monday July 9, 2007:
- Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.
- Two American soldiers -one killed Sunday in a suicide bombing on the western outskirts of Baghdad and another who died in combat Saturday in Salahuddin province, died. Three soldiers were wounded in the Sunday blast.
- Sunday's deadliest attack occurred when a bomb struck a truckload of newly recruited Iraqi soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad, killing 15 and wounding 20.
- Also Sunday, two car bombs exploded near simultaneously in Baghdad's mostly Shiite Karradah district, killing eight people. The first detonated near a closed restaurant, destroying stalls and soft drink stands. Two passers-by were killed and eight wounded.
- About five minutes later, the second car exploded about a mile away near shops selling leather jackets and shoes. Six people were killed and seven wounded.
- A bomb hidden under a car detonated Sunday at the entrance of Shorja market -a mostly Shiite area of central Baghdad- killing three civilians and wounding five.
- Police reported they found the bodies of 29 men Sunday scattered across Baghdad victims of sectarian death squads.
- Four other people were killed Sunday in separate shootings in Baghdad.

Iraq, Wednesday July 11, 2007:
- Sunni extremists seized control of a remote village, Sherween, a village of 7,000 Shiites and Sunnis in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad in a fierce battle with residents who pleaded for rescue by the Iraqi Army and police.
- In Baghdad, a big mortar and rocket attack on the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone compound on Tuesday killed two Iraqis and a Filipino and wounded 25 other people.

Iraq, Monday July 16, 2007:
- Bomb attacks in the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk have killed at least 85 people and wounded more than 180.
- A suicide bomber detonated a lorry near the offices of a Kurdish political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), causing most of the casualties.
- Two other bombs later went off in the city. No group has claimed the attacks.
- Several hours later, a car bomb exploded in southern Kirkuk, killing a police officer and wounding six other policemen.

Iraq July 17, 2007:
- Gunmen wearing military uniforms have killed 29 people - men, women and children- in a village in Diyala province north of Baghdad.

A suicide car bomber struck a busy marketplace in the Iraqi town of Hilla on Tuesday July 24, 2007, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 60. Most of the wounded were women and children, and the blast destroyed 15 vehicles.

Two suicide car bombings struck Iraqi soccer fans taking to the streets to celebrate Iraqi football team's victory in Baghdad on Wednesday July 25, 2007, killing at least 55 people and injuring 135 others. The first deadly bombing killed at least 30 people and wounding 75 others. In eastern Baghdad, another suicide car bombing attacked an Iraqi Army checkpoint in Ghader district, killing at least 25people and injuring 60 other, most of the victims are soccer fans.

South Korea sent President Roh Moo Hyun's security adviser to Afghanistan to negotiate the release of 22 of its citizens held by the Taliban. Baek Jong Chun will arrive in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on July 27, 2007, to lead the talks over the kidnapped South Koreans. The Taliban two days ago killed one of the 23 hostages it held.

A British soldier was killed in an operation targeting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan on July 27, 2007. He was killed as his company came under fire after securing a bridge north east of Gereshk in Helmand province. He was the second British casualty in the province in as many days and the 66th since military operations began in Afghanistan in November 2001.

The US military on Friday July 27, 2007, killed around 17 militia fighters in clashes in Iraq's holy Shiite city of Karbala, but hospital and police sources said some civilians were among the dead.

Iraq, Monday August 6, 2007:
- At least 28 people were killed by a suicide truck bomb in the northern town of Tal Afar. The blast hit a mainly Shia district of the mixed town and injured about 40, with some feared trapped under rubble.
- In Baghdad, a roadside bomb hit commuters, killing nine and injuring eight.

Iraq, August 6, 2007:
- Fifty-four people died in sectarian violence in Iraq.
- A suicide bomb explosion killed 30 people and wounding 50. Twelve children were among the people killed in a massive blast when a suicide bomber blew up a truck packed with explosives in a Shiite village in northern Iraq.
- The military announced the deaths of five US soldiers in Baquba and four more in the Diyala province. The four soldiers were killed and 12 others wounded in an explosion.
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- Fifteen Iraqis were killed further south.
- A roadside bomb killed nine more.

A car bomb Friday August 10, 2007, killed 11 people in a Kurdish district of the Hurriya neighbourhood of Kirkuk. Forty-five people were wounded in the explosion. A US military helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing south of Baghdad.

A roadside bomb killed the governor and police chief of the southern Iraqi province of Diwaniya on August 12, 2007. Three members of the governor's security detail also died. The governor was a key figure in the Badr Organisation, the military wing of the largest Shia Muslim party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). Khalil Jalil Hamza and police chief Maj-Gen Khaled Hassan were returning to Diwaniya city after a funeral when a bomb exploded beside their convoy.

At least 200 people have been killed on Tuesday August 14, 2007, in a series of bombings apparently aimed at a Kurdish religious minority group in northern Iraq. Some 200 more were reported injured as at least four blasts hit areas home to the Yazidi sect near the city of Mosul.

Rescuers used bare hands and shovels Wednesday August 15, 2007, to search through clay houses shattered by an onslaught of suicide bombings that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect in the deadliest attack of the Iraq war. The US military blamed al Qaida in Iraq. The victims of Tuesday night's coordinated attack by four suicide bombers were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect that has been targeted by Muslim extremists who consider its members to be blasphemers. The blasts in two villages near the Syrian border crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage. Entire neighbourhoods were flattened.

Main previous bombing attacks in Iraq:
August 29, 2003: Najaf Car bomb exploded outside the Imam Ali mosque in the Shia holy city, killing 125 people including Ayatollah Mohammad al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most prominent Shia ayatollahs.
February 1, 2004: Irbil, Twin suicide bombers target two Kurdish party offices, killing 109 people and injuring a further 250.
March 2, 2004: Karbala and Baghdad, Suicide bombers attack Shia Ashoura festival-goers, killing at least 140, including 49 Iranian pilgrims.
February 28, 2005: Hillah, north of Baghdad, A suicide car bomber targets Shia police and National Guard recruits, killing 125 people.
September 29, 2005: Balad, A string of car bomb attacks in the centre of Balad, a mostly Shia town, kill at least 102 people.
November 23, 2006: Sadr City, Baghdad, Mortar fire and five car bombs kill 215 people in the capital's Shia Muslim slum.
February 3, 2007: Sadriya, Baghdad, A suicide truck bomber kills at least 128 people and wounds 343 others in a market place. The market was attacked again on April 18, when more than 140 are killed.

The death toll from four suicide truck bomb attacks in northern Iraq has risen to 400, we were told on Thursday, making it by far the deadliest attack since the ousting of Saddam Hussein four years ago.

The governor of a southern Iraqi province, Muhammad Ali Al-Hassani, was assassinated Monday August 20, 2007, by a roadside bomb, the latest attack to open up the prospect of escalating violence among Shiites.In the attack, Hassani was leaving his house in the Rumaitha area of Samawa in Muthana Province for his office when he and a number of his security personnel were killed by the bomb.

At least 10 people have been killed in Baghdad, in clashes between US forces and militants in a mainly-Shia district, the Shula area in north-west Baghdad, and a stronghold of the Mehdi Army militia loyal to Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. Women were among those killed in the fighting. In Samara at least five people died when suspected al-Qaida fighters attacked several police stations.

On August 25, 2007, the Iraqi government imposed a partial travel ban in Baghdad and the outskirts of the capital ahead of a major Shia festival next week. Two-wheelers and hand carts, but not cars, will be banned in Baghdad and its outskirts from 1800 on Saturday. The curfew aims to curb insurgent attacks against up to two million Shia pilgrims expected to head to Karbala. Earlier, a car bomb in northern Baghdad killed at least seven in a Shia area.

The US military said on Tuesday August 28, 2007, its troops have killed 33 insurgents in a joint operation with Iraqi troops 80km north of Baghdad. Several hundred US and Iraqi soldiers took part in the operation on Monday to reopen the water supply to the town of Khalis. Insurgents cut water supplies to Khalis several days ago by shovelling earth into an irrigation canal. A joint assault force of US and Iraqi troops -which landed by helicopter- killed 13 insurgents. Fire from attack aircraft killed 20 others.

A power struggle between rival Shiite groups erupted during a religious festival in Karbala on August 28, 2007, as gunmen with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades fought street battles amid crowds of pilgrims, killing 50 people and wounding 200. Members of the Mahdi Army traded fire with security forces loyal to the government. Several vehicles and a hotel for pilgrims were set ablaze, and terrified pilgrims who had been praying at two shrines were trapped inside as clashes erupted nearby. Witnesses said buses that had been used to bring pilgrims to the city were bullet-shattered and bloodstained. The government forces in Karbala and other towns in southern Iraq are dominated by the religious party the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its armed wing, the Badr organization.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri Maliki, imposed a curfew in the city of Karbala after fierce fighting on Tuesday August 28, 2007, killed more than 50 people. The clashes between security forces and gunmen cut short a major religious festival in the city, which had drawn hundreds of thousands of Shia pilgrims. Mr Maliki said calm had been restored and blamed "criminal gangs from the remnants of the buried Saddam regime".

Iraq, Wednesday September 5, 2007:
- A roadside bombing near Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood of Habibiya killed at least 11 civilians and wounded 20 others.
- In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint killed a policeman and wounded 28 other people.
- The US military reported the deaths of six US soldiers in Baghdad -two on Wednesday in eastern Baghdad and four on Tuesday when three US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb, also in eastern Baghdad, and one died in combat in western Baghdad.

At least 14 people have been killed and nine wounded in a US air strike on September 6, 2007, in the Washash neighbourhood of the city's Mansour district, west of Baghdad. Several houses were destroyed in the attack. The US military said it had targeted Shia extremists in "enemy strongholds". Mansour is mostly Sunni, but there is a pocket where there is strong support for Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army militia.

Iraq, Friday September 7, 2007:
- A parked car exploded near a checkpoint set up to protect a village about 20 miles south of Kirkuk, killing two people and wounding four others including a policeman.
- Four American soldiers were killed Thursday September 6, 2007, in Anbar Province while conducting combat operations and three others died in an attack in Nineveh Province in northern Iraq. Both are majority Sunni Arab areas, where extremist insurgents remain active.
- A British soldier - a member of a parachute regiment- died Wednesday while on a mission outside the British area of operations in southern Iraq.

Iraq, Sunday September 16, 2007:
- At least 22 people have been killed in a series of bombings and shootings.
- Fourteen people were killed in Diyala province, north of the capital Baghdad, when militants attacked two villages.
- At least six people were killed by a bomb near the northern city of Kirkuk.
- Two people were killed by a car bomb in Baghdad.
- A suspect in the killing of a Sunni tribal leader in Anbar province was seized.
- Nine more people were killed by either US troops or private military contractors who opened fire on a crowd after a sniper shot at them.
- On Saturday, 10 people were killed when a car bomb exploded outside a bakery as people lined up to buy bread to break the Ramadan fast after sunset.

A suicide bomber killed 26 people including the police chief of the Iraqi city of Baquba on Monday September 24, 2007, in a mosque compound where local Shiite and Sunni Arab leaders were holding reconciliation talks. Two other senior police officers were killed while tribal leaders were among 50 people wounded in the attack in the local capital of Diyala province. The governor of Diyala had also been wounded.

On Wednesday September 26, 2007, at least five people have been killed in a suicide bomber attack near the house of a tribal leader in north-western Iraq. Tribal leader Kanaan al-Shimari was injured in the blast, which took place near the town of Sinjar.

Iraq, September 26, 2007:
- A wave of bombings and shootings swept Iraq killing at least 50 people.
- Iraqi and American troops raided the Iraqi military academy and arrested cadets and instructors allegedly linked to the kidnap-slaying of the former superintendent and the abduction of his replacement, who was later freed.
- The deadliest attack occurred when a suicide driver detonated an explosives-laden truck close to the home of a Sunni Arab tribal leader near Sinjar. Ten people were killed and nine wounded, including the sheik and his son.
- Six civilians were killed and 28 were wounded when a pair of car bombs exploded in an outdoor market in Baghdad's southwestern district of Baiyaa.
- In Mosul, a suicide car bomb struck a court building under construction, killing three people and wounding about 30.
- A bomb exploded near the main gate of a Sunni mosque in the town of Abu al-Khaseeb, about 12 miles south of Basra, killing five worshippers and wounding 10 others.
- In Baghdad, gunmen ambushed a car carrying two senior police officers -Maj. Gen. Ayad Jassim Mohammed and Col. Imad Kadim- in the Qadisiyah district, killing both of them.
- A Shiite adviser to the Iraqi parliament, Thamir Abid Ali Hassoun, was gunned down in eastern Baghdad when assailants blocked an alley near his home and sprayed his car with bullets.
- Other victims were either found dead in Baghdad and Kut or died in bombings and shootings in Tikrit, Basra and Diyala province.
- An American soldier had been killed the day before by small-arms fire in eastern Baghdad.

Iraq, Saturday September 29, 2007:
- Three Iraqi soldiers and three civilians, killed in a suicide truck bombing near Mosul, were among 18 victims of sectarian violence across Iraq.
- Six people were killed and 17 wounded after a bomber in a pickup truck detonated his explosives as Iraqi forces chased the speeding vehicle near Mosul.
- Drive-by gunmen killed a Sunni sheik near his home in Mosul's Mithaq neighbourhood. Qassim was a mosque preacher and member of Mosul's edict commission, a religious rule-making body.
- A 50-year-old journalist visiting his brother in the Bab al-Baidh neighbourhood in central Mosul was killed in a mortar attack. Abdul-Khaliq Nasir worked for Um al-Rabyain, a local newspaper, until it ceased operations about six months ago because of security concerns.
- In central Baghdad, gunmen opened fire at an Iraqi checkpoint, killing one civilian and wounding four others.
- Friday, the US military handed over nine decomposing bodies to a hospital in Samara. The young men were insurgents killed by US forces. US military officials told the hospital to expect at least 15 more bodies in the coming days.
- Two US soldiers were killed by gunfire, one in Diyala province north of Baghdad and one in a southern district of the capital.

Iraq Sunday September 30, 2007:
- Eleven handcuffed and blindfolded bodies, all with gunshot wounds and showing signs of torture, were found dumped in Mosul.
- Five bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad.
- US forces killed 20 insurgents on Saturday after an attack using a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire on a US aircraft northwest of Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed two policemen in eastern Mosul.
- Iraqi and US Special Forces detained 16 suspected militants in operations across Iraq on Saturday.
- One US soldier was killed and another was wounded on Saturday when their unit was hit by a roadside bomb and came under small arms fire.
- Police found three unidentified bodies with signs of torture in the town of al-Haswa, south of Baghdad.
- Suspected al Qaida militants attacked a farm, killing the owner and wounding three of his relatives south of Baghdad.
- Iraqi soldiers killed 40 militants during operations in three northern Iraqi provinces in the past 24 hours.
- Gunmen killed two people in a market in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol and wounded two policemen in the town of Hawija.
- US forces killed two suspected insurgents and detained 21 others on Saturday and Sunday during operations to disrupt al Qaida networks in the cities of Samara, Baghdad, Mosul and Tikrit.
- A member of the Nineveh provincial council and his three guards were killed when gunmen sprayed their car with bullets.
- US forces detained 15 suspects believed to be members of Iraqi Special Groups, which the United States says are linked to Iran, during a combined operation in Baghdad.
- Four bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad on Saturday.
- The body of an Iraqi soldier was found shot in Diwaniya. The soldier was kidnapped on Saturday.
- Gunmen killed two imams of mosques in separate incidents on Saturday in Mosul, bringing the total number of imams killed in the city on Saturday to three.
- Gunmen killed two women and one man in a drive-by shooting on Saturday in Mosul.

US forces in Iraq have killed 25 suspected insurgents in heavy fighting near Baquba on October 5, 2007. The target of the operation had been a Shia militia commander linked to the elite Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Several civilians had been killed or wounded in a US raid carried out in the same area. The US has accused the Quds Force of helping arm Shia militant groups in Iraq. Iran denies any involvement.

Iraq, Friday October 5, 2007:
- A roadside bomb killed two US soldiers and wounded two during operations in the southeastern region of the capital.
- A roadside bomb killed one US soldier and wounded three when it was detonated near their vehicle in Baiji.
- US forces killed 12 gunmen and detained four others in central and northern Iraq.
- An estimated 25 suspected militants were killed in air strike after US forces became engaged in heavy fighting during an operation near Baquba.
- Five people were wounded by a roadside bomb targeting a US patrol in Tuz Khurmato.
- One US soldier was killed by small arms fire during combat operations in a southern area of Baghdad on Thursday.
- Iraqi security forces killed 18 gunmen and arrested 38 others, including four Saudi Arabians, in an operation on Thursday and Friday in Samara. Four policemen were killed and seven others were wounded.
- A roadside bomb wounded three people in Latifiya.
- A body with gunshot wounds was found in a canal in the town of Kifl.

Iraq, Monday October 8, 2007:
- A series of blasts killed at least 24 people across Iraq
- A suicide bomber drove his truck into a police station in Dijla north of Baghdad crumbling the squat concrete. At least 13 people -3 officers and 10 civilians- were killed, and 22 people were wounded.
- A suicide car bomber also struck a police checkpoint in Tikrit killing three officers and one civilian and wounding 10 other people.
- In the capital, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a market near the technology department of Baghdad University, killing five civilians and wounding 15.
- A car bombing near the Polish Embassy killed two Iraqis and wounded five. The attack was carried out five days after the Polish ambassador, Gen. Edward Pietrzyk, was wounded in an ambush.
- An American soldier was killed in fighting Friday near the northern Iraqi city of Baiji. At least 3,816 members of the United States military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

Iraq, Tuesday October 9, 2007:
- At least 19 people have been killed and dozens wounded in two car bomb attacks in Baiji. The suicide blasts targeted the town police chief and a tribal leader.
- Nineveh province deputy police chief Brig Gen Abdul al-Thanon died in a drive-by shooting in Mosul.
- In Baghdad, five people were killed and 25 injured when a car bomb exploded in central al-Khulani square.

Fifteen Iraqi civilians -six women and nine children -- were killed by coalition forces during an operation targeting senior leaders of al Qaida in Iraq on October 11, 2007. The victims were put in harm's way through the actions of the terrorist group. Nineteen terrorists were also killed in the operation, conducted in the Lake Thar Thar region. Six people were wounded and one suspect was detained. The military received intelligence that al Qaida in Iraq leaders were meeting in the area and were conducting surveillance. Two suspects, one woman and three children, were wounded.

Iraq, Sunday October 14, 2007:
- Violence across Iraq, including the bombing of a minibus filled with Shiite worshippers and a suicide truck bomb attack on a police station, has killed 32 people. Dozens of people were wounded in the attacks, which came as Muslims were celebrating the Eid al-Fitr festival that ends the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
- Ten people, including three women and two children, were killed when a car bomb exploded next to their minibus as they were heading towards a Shiite shrine in northern Baghdad.
- Women and children were also among 18 wounded by the blast in Aden square.
- Saturday, a suicide truck bomber supported by several gunmen carried out a coordinated attack on a police station in Samara. Seventeen people were killed and 27 wounded.
- Five people were also killed in two separate attacks south of Baghdad. Four civilians died in clashes between security forces and unidentified gunmen Iskandiriyah.
- A fifth man was killed when gunmen opened fire on civilians in a village near Hilla.
- In Tuz, a bomber exploded a cart full of toys and sweets in a crowded playground, killing a child and a father, and wounding 20 other children.
- A veteran Washington Post special correspondent was shot to death in southwest Baghdad while on assignment.

Militants attacked a mainly Polish military base in Diwaniyah, central Iraq with mortars and machine guns on Monday October 15, 2007, killing five civilians and wounding two Polish soldiers. At least 20 civilians were also wounded, including women and children, during the attack. A Polish helicopter was hit by machinegun fire during the attacks.

Iraq, Tuesday October 16, 2007:
- Bombings and a series of shootings targeted Iraqi security forces and tribal leaders facing internal rivalries, but also bystanders. At least 25 people were killed or found dead nationwide.
- In the deadliest attack a car blew up near a gas station across the street from an Iraqi army checkpoint in Baghdad, killing four civilians and two Iraqi soldiers and wounding 25 others.
- In Mosul, a suicide bomber in a sewage pump truck detonated his payload as he approached a police station recently rebuilt after four previous attacks. The building collapsed, killing at least four policemen, including the station chief, and wounding 75 people. Several nearby shops and cars were damaged.
- Gunmen killed a Sunni tribal leader who recently turned against al-Qaida in an ambush west of Baghdad; his son and another relative were also killed.
- A Shiite tribal chieftain was killed in a drive-by shooting in Nasiriyah.
- The US military announced the arrest of several militants, including one of five extremists believed to be behind last week's rocket attack that killed two American soldiers at Camp Victory.
- The capture in southern Baghdad of a suspected al-Qaida-linked militant believed to be a key leader in a car bomb network was also announced. Nine other suspects also were detained in that raid and others in the Baghdad area.

A roadside bomb killed seven Iraqi policemen near the city of Diwaniya on October 17, 2007. The bomb exploded as three police vehicles were passing along the main road between Diwaniya and Ifak.

A US soldier was killed on Wednesday October 17, 2007, in Salahuddin province when a bomb exploded near his vehicle. A British female soldier, who was serving in Iraq, died on Oct. 14, after a traffic accident in Qatar.

Forty-nine Iraqi "criminals" have been killed in three separate raids in Sadr City in Baghdad on October 21, 2007. Iraqi sources said women and children were among those killed. Sadr City is a stronghold of radical Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr. The poor district has been the scene of much fighting between militants and US forces.

A US helicopter opened fire on a group of men as they were planting roadside bombs in a Sunni stronghold north of Baghdad on Tuesday October 23, 2007, and then chased them into a nearby house, killing 11 Iraqis, including five women and one child.

Around 16 civilians died and another 14 were injured Tuesday October 23, 2007, after a US helicopter attacked a town near Tikrit in northern Iraq. It was the third time in less than two weeks that US troops have killed civilians in an air raid. The Iraqi government also protested an operation that was carried out this past weekend in the Sadr City neighborhood, where US troops with helicopter support massacred 13 people, all of them civilians, including two babies.

Iraq, Sunday October 28, 2007:
- Gunmen in Baghdad snatched 10 Sunni and Shiite tribal sheiks from their cars after talks with the government on fighting Al Qaida, and at least one was later found dead.
- The police found the bullet-riddled body of one of the Sunni sheiks, Mishaan Hilan, about 50 meters, away from where the ambush had taken place.
- A suicide car bomber struck a busy commercial area in Kirkuk, killing at least 8 people and wounding 26. The bombing struck a mainly Kurdish area in the city.
- An explosives-laden car also exploded near a market in Baghdad's northern Shiite district of Kazimiya, killing at least two civilians and wounding 10.
- The decomposing bodies of 12 Shiites were also found near the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba.

At least 27 people died in a suicide bomb attack on a police headquarters in Baquba on October 29, 2007. At least 20 people were hurt. Most victims were police recruits.

A US brigadier general has been wounded in a roadside bomb in northern Baghdad on October 29, 2007. Brig Gen Jeffrey Dorko is the highest ranking US soldier injured in Iraq. Gen Dorko, commander of the Gulf Region Division of the US Army Corps of Engineers, was left with "non-life threatening" wounds from the explosion. He was evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Centre in Germany, where he was said to be in a stable condition. A second soldier wounded in the attack was treated and released.

A US helicopter opened fire on a group of men as they were planting roadside bombs in a Sunni stronghold on Tuesday October 24, 2007, then chased them into a nearby house, killing 11 Iraqis, including five women and one child. The men were seen placing the bombs near the volatile northern city of Samara.

Iraq, Sunday October 28, 2007:
- A suicide car bomber killed at least seven people. A huge explosion ripped through shops and set cars ablaze in the northern Iraqi oil centre of Kirkuk. Some 25 people were also wounded in the blast. A police official put the death toll at eight.
- Gunmen in Baghdad snatched 10 Sunni and Shiite tribal sheiks from their cars after talks with the government on fighting Al Qaida. The two cars carrying the sheiks -seven Sunnis and three Shiites- were ambushed in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shaab. The sheiks were returning to Diyala Province after attending a meeting with the Shiite-dominated government's adviser for tribal affairs to discuss coordinating efforts against Al Qaida in Mesopotamia.
- The police found the bullet-riddled body of one of the Sunni sheiks, Mishaan Hilan, about 50 meters, or 160 feet, away from where the ambush had taken place.

Iraq Saturday November 3, 2007:
- Gunmen wounded three Iranian Shiite pilgrims in the Kadhimiya district of northwestern Baghdad.
- US soldiers killed five gunmen and arrested 10 others during operations in central and northern Iraq.
- A roadside bomb targeted a convoy carrying the heads of the Iraqi army and police in southern Iraq. Both men were unhurt, but two guards were wounded.
- Gunmen wounded the head of Wasit University and three of his guards in central Kut.
- One female US soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near a patrol south of Baghdad.
- Two bodies were found in different parts of Mosul.
- Gunmen killed an employee of the Sunni Endowment, a body that manages Sunni religious sites in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed a man and wounded three police commandos when it targeted their patrol in southeastern Baghdad.
- Three bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed one man and wounded 10 others outside a mosque in Khalis.
- A roadside bomb blew up near a police patrol, killing one policeman and wounding another one in Mahaweel.
- Police arrested gunmen who killed a policeman in central Hilla.

Iraq, November 4, 2007:
- An Iranian pilgrim was killed near Baghdad.
- A car bomb killed three people, including a child, and wounded 13 others in Tikrit. A police source in Baghdad put the death toll at five.
- Police in western Anbar province arrested 30 gunmen and found three decomposed bodies in Garma.
- A roadside bomb wounded two people in Karrada Mariam district in central Baghdad.
- Seventeen people were wounded in separate incidents by suicide bombers driving a truck and a car in northwestern Bab Sinjar.
- Gunmen killed a woman principal at al Mustakbal primary school and wounded a woman principal at Um Qassir school, both in the southern Baghdad district of Saidiya.
- An adviser in Iraq's Finance Ministry, Qutaiba Bader-al-Din, was found shot dead in a vehicle along with another ministry employee in the western Baghdad district of Jamiaa.
- Gunmen on motorbikes killed a policeman west of Kut.
- Police found three bodies with gunshot wounds and signs of torture in southern Tikrit. One of the dead was a police lieutenant-colonel.
- Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded in clashes with militants near Hibhib.
- Gunmen kidnapped the wife of a police officer in Kut.
- A parked car bomb targeting a police patrol killed four people and wounded 11, including a number of policemen, in southern Samara.
- Four bodies were found around Baghdad.
- A car bomb killed one person and wounded four in the Mansour district of western Baghdad.
- A decapitated body was found in the town of Abbasi.
- Iraqi army backed by US soldiers captured 12 suspected militants in a raid on the Sunni Abu Hanifa Mosque in the Adhamiyah district of northern Baghdad.

Iraq, November 5, 2007:
- Six people, including a woman, were found shot dead in Mosul. Some bore signs of torture.
- A decapitated body was found in the southwest of the city of Mosul.
- Three bodies were found across Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting a joint Iraqi army and police patrol killed two pedestrians and wounded seven others in the Zaafaraniya district of southern Baghdad.
- Gunmen shot dead a senior Baghdad civil servant in the Ghadeer neighbourhood of eastern Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed Hamad Abdul-Latif, a member of the Khadhra neighbourhood council, in western Baghdad's Jamiaa district.
- Iraqi police and US forces captured an insurgent bomber and two other suspected militants in Ramadi.
- Iraqi and US forces detained 81 people and found a large weapons cache during an operation against al Qaida in Iraq near Suwayra.
- Six bodies were found in different areas of Mosul.
- Four bodies, all shot, were found in Baghdad.
- One person was killed and three wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a car in eastern Baghdad's Baladiyat district.
- One policeman was killed and six others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Harthiya in western Baghdad.
- US soldiers killed three insurgents who they found trying to plant a bomb on a road in a village near Salman Pak.

On November 5, 2007, Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. They also said that nine Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two of the five who were detained during a January raid of a consulate office in Erbil.

A Sunni faction killed 18 al-Qaida militants in an attack on a compound near the Iraqi city of Samara on Thursday November 8, 2007. Another 16 al-Qaida members have been captured in the attack. The Sunni Islamic Army of Iraq -once part of the insurgency against US-led forces- said its fighters attacked the compound east of the city. The faction is one of several Sunni former insurgent groups that have now turned against al-Qaida. On Friday five Sunni Arab tribal leaders had been killed in a suicide attack in Diyala province.

Al Qaida militants killed at least eight police in southern Baghdad on November 23, 2007, while separately insurgents fired 10 mortar bombs at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. The al Qaida attack in the mainly Sunni Hawr Rajab area of Baghdad was carried out by militants who had stolen two army Humvees before opening fire on a police patrol.

Iraq, Friday November 23, 2007:
- A suicide car bomb slammed an Iraqi police patrol in Mosul killing nine people and wounding 21.
- Also a bomb tore through a pet market in central Baghdad, killing 13 people and wounding 58 others. Four police officers and 10 children were among the wounded.
- On Thursday, al Qaida in Iraq insurgents disguised as members of a Sunni alliance council attacked the council's headquarters outside Baghdad leaving at least 18 people dead.

Iraq Saturday November 24, 2007:
- The bodies of two men with gunshot wounds and showing signs of torture were found north of Falluja.
- US forces killed one militant and detained 10 others during operations against militants accused of working with al Qaida in northern Iraq and Baghdad.
- In one raid southwest of Kirkuk soldiers found a kidnapped man being held in chains.
- One Iraqi soldier and two civilians were wounded by a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol in the Jadiriya district of southern Baghdad.
- Iraqi security forces imposed a curfew during an operation against al Qaida in the city of Kirkuk.
- Two bomb attacks carried out by al Qaida militants in Mosul on Friday killed 21 people. Iraqi police had previously put the death toll at nine.
- A car bomb killed three police rangers and wounded 11 others near Samara.
- The body of a policeman was found with gunshot wounds in Tuz Khurmato, two days after he was kidnapped.
- A roadside bomb wounded two members of the Interior Ministry's anti-crime unit when it targeted their patrol in central Baghdad.
- Six bodies were found in different districts in Baghdad on Friday.
- Iraqi and US forces detained four gunmen, including two "known extremist company commanders" during operations on Friday.
- One mortar bomb killed an Iraqi citizen and wounded two others on Thursday when it landed inside a coalition forces' military base in Balad.

Iraq, Sunday November 25, 2007:
- A roadside bomb targeting a US patrol wounded six people in Mosul.
- Police detained four gunmen after an attack that wounded a policeman in southern Falluja.
- A car bomb killed nine people and wounded 30 near the Health Ministry in Bab al-Muadham street in central Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in the Waziriya district of northern Baghdad. A second roadside bomb exploded when Iraqi security forces arrived on the scene, killing one soldier and wounding six others.
- Four bodies were found in different districts in Baghdad on Saturday.
- Iraqi army and US forces arrested two gunmen during operations on Saturday in different areas in Iraq.

Iraq Monday November 26, 2007:
- One civilian was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol exploded in the city of Mosul. Three bodies were found in different parts of the city, including one with gunshot wounds.
- Four bodies were found in various parts of Baghdad, police in the capital.
- The Iraqi army detained 58 gunmen during the preceding 24 hours throughout the country.
- A roadside bomb wounded two people in the Zaafaraniya district of southern Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a policeman when they stormed his house in Kut.
- Gunmen killed a man and wounded another in a drive-by shooting on Sunday in central Hilla.
- Iraqi army and US forces detained three gunmen during separate operations on Sunday.
- A suicide truck bomb killed one soldier and wounded five others in an attack on an Iraqi army checkpoint on Sunday in the Al-Zab area. Another soldier was missing.
- Police found the body of civilian with gunshot wounds on Sunday in central Kut

Up to four Iraqi civilians are reported to have died in Baghdad on Tuesday November 27, 2007, when US troops fired at a minibus taking them to work. The US military forces opened fire at the vehicle "after the driver failed to heed a warning shot". A US military said the road the minibus was travelling on, in the Shaab area of north-east Baghdad, was only for use by passenger cars. Three women and a man had died. The bus was carrying Finance Ministry employees to work.

A British soldier was killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on December 4, 2007.
Two other British soldiers were also injured in the blast.

On Tuesday December 4, 2007, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate of a police station northeast of Baghdad, killing at least six people, including five security personnel. The bomber attempted to enter the police station in the town of Jawalaa. Three Kurdish security guards, two policemen and a civilian were killed and 25 people were wounded. Jawalaa is a town inhabited mainly by Kurdish Shiites.

Three car bombs in Iraqi cities killed at least eight people, including one in Mosul on December 5, 2007. One person was killed and seven injured in the Dawwasa area when a parked car exploded as a security patrol passed. Bombings killed five people in Baquba and at least two in Kirkuk.

Car bombs killed 23 people in the mainly Shiite Karrada district of Baghdad and three other Iraqi cities on Wednesday December 5, 2007. A car bomb near a Shiite mosque in central Baghdad killed 15 people and wounded 35 as they gathered for evening prayers.

Nine policemen were killed in an attack by suspected al Qaida gunmen on a checkpoint outside Qarah Tappah in the Diyala province on Thursday December 6, 2007. Another seven were wounded in the attack. The gunmen attacked the checkpoint using two vehicles.

At least 26 people died in two blasts in Iraq's Diyala province. Both attackers struck members of US-backed local groups that have been helping to fight al-Qaida. A woman wearing a vest packed with explosives killed 16 people in Muqdadiya on Friday December 7, 2007. The second blast -a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint- left 10 dead. Seven of the dead were Iraqi soldiers and three were members of a local anti-al-Qaida group. Eight people were injured. The driver detonated his explosives when guards asked to search the car.

On December 8, 2007, a truck bomb killed at least six police officers and wounded 16 people Saturday in Baiji, the second attack in two days to take aim at Iraq's most lucrative industry.

The police chief of central Iraq's Babil province was killed in a roadside bombing on Sunday December 9, 2007. Major General Qais al-Mamoori was killed in the village of Al-Buajaj, near Babil's capital of Hilla, when a bomb struck his convoy. His driver and one bodyguard were wounded. Mamoori is the third top Shiite official to be assassinated in the last four months in provinces south of the Iraqi capital and the second provincial police chief to be targeted.

Iraq Sunday December 9, 2007:
- A roadside bomb killed the police chief of Iraq's Babel province and five of his guards.
- A suicide car bomb targeted an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing two soldiers and wounding seven others in Baiji.
- Iraqi soldiers killed nine gunmen and detained 49 others during military operations across Iraq.
- Three bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad on Saturday, police said.
- Gunmen killed Iraqi army colonel Omran Mousa in a drive by-shooting north of Kut.
- Insurgents blew up the house of a member of a neighborhood patrol, wounding three members of his family in the town of Shiras.
- The government announced a ban on official vehicles driving without number plates in a bid to counter death squads and gangs who use unmarked government vehicles in attacks.

On December 12, 2007, three car bombs have exploded in the southern Iraqi city of Amara, killing at least 39 people and injuring more than 100. Two bombs exploded in a car park packed with labourers waiting to travel to work, and a third detonated as people gathered to inspect the damage.

Two more US troops have been killed in separate incidents. A soldier died by a roadside bomb explosion in south of Baghdad on Saturday December 15, 2007. The soldier other was killed on Thursday by a blast which happened when his unit was on foot patrol in the area.

At least 14 Iraqis were killed and28 others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a popular cafe near Baquba on Tuesday December 18, 2007. The death toll is expected to rise due to the power of the blast. The attack came while Sunni Muslims are preparing to celebrate Eid al-Adha that begins Wednesday, an occasion that marks the end of the Muslim pilgrimage season to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

A suicide bomber killed 13 Iraqis and a US soldier in an attack on a recruiting centre for local militias in the town of Qanan, Diyala province, on December 20, 2007. At least 10 people were also injured in the attack. Local militias manned by Sunni Arab Iraqis, backed and armed by the US military, have been taking on al-Qaida in Iraq in many areas of the country.

Iraq, Monday December 24, 2007
- Gunmen ambushed a bus near Baquba and kidnapped 14 Shiite passengers.
- On Sunday, a train rammed into a packed car at level crossing in an area called Al-Sayahiyah north of Hilla, killing 13 people in the vehicle, including 11 children.
- Around 2,000 people protested in Hilla against the appointment of Major General Fadhil Raddad as the new provincial police chief after his predecessor Major General Qais al-Mamoori was killed in a bomb attack on December 9.
- The US military said its troops detained 10 suspected Al-Qaida militants in raids in central and northern Iraq on Monday.

More than 30 people have been killed and scores injured in suicide bombings in northern Iraq on Tuesday December 25, 2007. A car bomber killed more than 20 people when he was stopped by police and local militias in Beiji. The Baiji police chief was sacked after the attack. Later, a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Baquba, at the funeral of a father and son who were part of a Sunni group allied to US forces.

At least 14 people have been killed in a car bombing at a busy market in Tayaran Square, Baghdad, on December 28, 2007. At least 64 people were wounded in the explosion, which happened in a square crowded with shoppers after Friday prayers. The dead were all civilians, including at least one woman and a child.

A suicide bomber Tuesday January 1, 2008, targeted a funeral procession for a victim of another bombing, killing 30 people and wounding 38. The Shiite funeral, in the mixed neighborhood of Zayouna, was for Nabil Hussein, an Iraqi killed Friday in a car bombing in central Baghdad's Tayaran square.

A suicide bomber has killed 10 people in an attack in the city of Baquba on January 2, 2008. Most of the casualties are said to be members of a local volunteer force opposed to al-Qaida. Another 15 people were wounded in the explosion.

An Iraqi soldier opened fire on American troops, killing two and wounding three others on January 5, 2008. An Iraqi general said the patrol had come under fire from gunmen in the city of Mosul, but his soldier had "abused" the situation and shot the Americans. It is thought to be the first such case since the US-led invasion of 2003.

A suicide bomber has killed eight Iraqis, including soldiers, in an attack on Army Day celebrations January 6, 2008. The blast struck outside the offices of a non-governmental organisation in the eastern Baghdad suburb of Karrada. A second bomb, left in a parked car near a restaurant, killed three people and left 12 injured. Up to 12 people are reported injured.

Two US soldiers were killed in separate bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday January 6, 2008. One soldier was killed when his vehicle was hit by a bomb explosion in southern Baghdad. Three others were wounded in the attack. On Saturday, a US soldier succumbed to his wounds in a roadside bomb blast in the province of Diyala.

A double bombing in Baghdad killed at least 14 people, including the head of a US-backed armed group which fights al-Qaida in Sunni Muslim areas on Monday January 7, 2008. The suicide bomber struck at the entrance of the Sunni Endowment, or Waqf, office in Adhamiya district. A second suicide attacker set off a car bomb a few metres away as people fled from the scene of the first explosion. Riyadh Samarai, leader of the Adhamiya Awakening group, also a Waqf employee, was killed along with his son. The attacker is believed to be from among the more hardline Sunni insurgents who do not want reconciliation in Iraq. Other bombs killed at least five people in Baghdad.

Militants killed nine soldiers in the Sunni Arab Diyala province . Six of the US soldiers were killed Wednesday January 9, 2008 when insurgents detonated a large bomb hidden inside a house. Four other soldiers were wounded, and an Iraqi interpreter was killed. Three US soldiers were also killed Tuesday in neighboring Salahuddin province, where Sunni extremists fight Sunni militiamen who have allied with US forces.

On January 15, 2008, he Army is investigating the possibility three US soldiers who died in a firefight in Samara may have been killed by friendly fire. It is not yet certain how the soldiers were killed January 8, but confirmed their families were notified of the friendly fire possibility.The unit, on patrol, discovered buildings filled with explosives and weapon-making material. After further searching, they encountered more than a dozen insurgents fighting from a network of tunnels and trenches. In the ensuing firefight, helicopters and other aircraft were called to attack targets. It's possible three of the troops died as a result of those airstrikes.
A women wearing a belt strapped with explosives blew herself up near a popular market and a Shiite mosque in Khan Bani Saad, a town 9 miles south of Baquba, Diyala province, Wednesday January 16, 2008, killing eight civilians and wounding seven others.

Five school children were killed Tuesday January 15, 2008, after being struck by a car in the convoy of a top judicial official, Midhat al-Mahmoud, president of the Supreme Judicial council, the country's top legal oversight agency, during a chaotic gunbattle with checkpoint guards. The children, ages 6 to 10, were hit by the car. One child died at the scene. The other four died after being taken for medical care.

For the second time in two days, a suicide bomber struck outside a Shiite mosque in Diyala Province on Thursday January 17, 2008, as worshipers prepared for one of the most important days in the Shiite calendar. At least 11 people were killed.

Iraq, Saturday January 19, 2008:
- A messianic Shiite cult's battles with police and attacks on religious holiday pilgrims have left 75 dead across Iraq in two days. Millions of pilgrims were walking in the streets throughout the country in observance of Ashura, a four-day commemoration of an early Shiite martyr, a grandson of Mohammed.
- Seven people were killed and 17 wounded when a Katyusha rocket slammed into an Ashura gathering in Tal Afar.
- A bomb hidden under a pile of trash in Kirkuk exploded near Shiites walking as part of the Ashura observance, killing at least two.
- Two people were killed and 10 wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a popular restaurant in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood.
- The attacks came a day after at least 66 people died and at least 60 were wounded in fighting between Iraqi security forces and members of a violent Shiite messianic cult in two cities in southern Iraq.

About two million pilgrims marched through Karbala on Saturday January 19, 2008, to mark Ashura - one of the holiest events in the Shia religious calendar. Security was stepped up in the holy city, with over 20,000 Iraqi troops and police deployed to prevent violence. Tensions were high after dozens died in fierce fighting on Friday between police and a Shia cult in the two southern cities of Basra and Nasiriya.

Iraq, Tuesday January 22, 2008:
- A suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a high school in Baquba, Iraq's violent Diyala province wounding 21 people. Students, teachers, bystanders and at least one policeman were among the wounded in the attack . The school is next to the provincial governor's office and a municipal building.
- In Baghdad's Shiite eastern Mashtal area, a roadside bombing wounded two policemen.
- Another roadside bombing near a passing police patrol wounded four people - two policemen and two female bystanders - in the Madain area.
- A suicide bomber infiltrated a funeral Monday and blew himself up among the mourners, killing 17 people and injuring 12 others in the latest attack in a mainly Sunni village south of Baiji,a volatile region of northern Iraq. Police speculated that the bomber might have been targeting Interior Ministry officials attending the funeral.

A suicide bomber dressed as a policeman killed Brigadier General Salah al-Juburi, chief of police of Nineveh province, in Mosul Thursday January 24, 2008, as he toured the scene of a bomb blast in which 34 people died. He was killed along with two other officers as they inspected the mangled wreckage from Wednesday's bombing. A leading Shiite cleric, Sheikh Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalai, survived a bomb attack on his convoy in Iraq's shrine city of Karbala that killed two of his bodyguards. He was slightly wounded in the blast and another four bodyguards were also wounded.

A thunderous blast tore through a vacant apartment building in Mosul on Wednesday January 23, 2008, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding more than 130, minutes after the Iraqi army arrived to investigate tips about a weapons cache. The explosion ravaged dozens of old homes and collapsed a three-story building.

Iraq, Sunday January 27, 2008:
- US soldiers and Iraqi security forces killed 13 suspected insurgent fighters during operations in Zelig on January 20 and 21.
- Four bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed three people and wounded 10 others when it hit a minibus carrying a coffin for burial in the capital's New Baghdad district.
- The leader of a US-backed neighbourhood police patrol was killed by a bomb planted in his car in northern Baghdad on Saturday.
- US forces detained 18 suspected al Qaida fighters during operations in central Iraq.

Iraq Tuesday January 29, 2008:
- A suicide car bomb attack targeted a US patrol near Mosul in province of Nineveh wounding some 15 people and causing damages to 10 nearby civilian cars, Jubouri.
- Five US soldiers died in a roadside bomb blast Monday as fighting raged in Mosul.
- Soon after the troops' vehicle blew up, unidentified men in a Mosul mosque sprayed gunfire at the rest of the unit, which returned fire. Iraqi soldiers stormed the mosque, but the gunmen had fled.

A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah , southern Afghanistan on Thursday January 31, 2008, killing Helmand province's deputy governor, Pir Mohammad, and five other people.

On February 1, 2008, about 100 people have been killed by two bombs in Baghdad, attached to two mentally disabled women and detonated remotely. The death toll in Friday morning's attacks at two animal markets was the highest in months in Baghdad.

Iraq Sunday February 3, 2008:
- A senior Interior Ministry official, Lt. Col. Mohammed Ibrahim, director of Iraq's police commandos, and his bodyguard were wounded while his driver was killed by a bomb planted on his car.
- A mortar round slammed into a street in the Sulaikh area in a northeastern section of the capital, killing an Iraqi soldier on foot patrol. Three civilians and another soldier were also wounded in the attack.
- South of Baghdad, an Iraqi policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting near Kut.

Five US soldiers were killed in attacks in Iraq on Friday February 8, 2008. Four of the soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol northwest of Baghdad. The other soldier was killed by an explosion near his vehicle during an operation in northern Iraq.

Iraq, Sunday February 10, 2008:
- Fifteen people were killed, including 10 suspected al Qaida insurgents, in clashes with local security units in northern Iraq. Insurgents attacked a compound set up by a US-backed neighbourhood security unit near Sinjar in Nineveh province.
- Five members of the neighbourhood unit, known by the US military as concerned local citizens or CLCs, were killed and five wounded.
- Two children have died and five other people are seriously ill after eating cake poisoned with thallium delivered to a football club in Baghdad.
- Iraqi police detained 31 suspects in raids against Shiite militiamen. Police said it had arrested 15 militants in Karbala another 16 men were arrested in a Sadrist area of Nasiriyah.

At least 23 people were killed Sunday February 10, 2008, after a car bomb exploded north of Baghdad at a checkpoint run by the police and citizen patrols of Iraqis who have turned against the insurgency. The blast, near a market outside of Balad was one of the deadliest this year. At least 40 people, most of them civilians, were wounded.

On February 14, 2008, gunmen have stormed a house in Saddam Hussein's native village in Iraq and shot dead nine members of his clan, some women and children.

A double attack on Friday February 15, 2008, by two suicide bombers outside a crowded Shiite mosque in Tal Afar killed at least four people and wounded 17. Security forces shot both bombers but that the men still managed to detonate their suicide vests.

The attacks came during Friday prayers when the Sheikh Jawad al-Sadiq mosque was crowded with worshippers.
Iraq Sunday February 17, 2008:
- The US military killed an armed suspect in an assault in Baghdad on a group suspected of financing Shiite militias.
- The US military killed one person and detained 23 others on Saturday in operations to disrupt al Qaida in Sharqat.
- US forces killed two people on Saturday in operations targeting al Qaida in a village northeast of Samara.
- Two US soldiers were killed and another wounded after coming under attack from small arms fire in Diyala Province.
- A parked car bomb killed three people including a policeman and wounded two civilians when it targeted a police patrol in Mosul.
- A female suicide bomber killed at least three people and wounded eight others in the Karrada district of central Baghdad.
- The Iraqi army killed one gunman and arrested 55 others in the last 24 hours in different areas across Iraq.
- Two bodies were found in separate parts of Baghdad on Saturday.
- A roadside bomb killed three people on Saturday in a market in central Baiji. Another roadside bomb killed an off-duty policeman also in Baiji.

Iraq, Tuesday February 19, 2008:
- A suicide bomber rammed a minibus into a building used by Iraqi security forces killing one soldier and wounding two policemen in Mosul.
- Police found the body of a woman with gunshot wounds to her head and chest dumped in a cemetery in eastern Mosul.
- Three people were killed and three others wounded in an insurgent attack on Monday in Baquba.
- A roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi soldiers when it targeted their patrol in central Tikrit.
- Iraqi police killed an al Qaida leader, Mohammed Yahya al-Rahmani, known as Abu Mussab, and three foreign militants on Monday in a town close to Samara.
- The Iraqi army said it had arrested 11 Shiite militants belonging to the Soldiers of Heaven group in Hilla.
- A roadside bomb killed one woman and wounded two people when it targeted a car in the Waziriya district of northern Baghdad.
- Five people were killed and 16 others wounded when a barrage of rockets hit areas near Baghdad's international airport on Monday, including the US Camp Victory military base.

Iraq, Wednesday February 20, 2008:
- Ten people were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the market of Muqdadiyah, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15 others.
- Iraqi police officers attempting to dismantle rockets ready for launching from the back of a truck were caught up in a series of blasts Tuesday that killed at least 13 of them.
- The US military announced that three soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.
- A senior official with Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology, Deputy Minister Samir al-Attar, was injured when two roadside bombs apparently targeting him detonated as he was driving through eastern Baghdad. He was traveling in two-car convoy in Baghdad's Zayona neighborhood when the bombs exploded. Two of al-Attar's guards and three civilian bystanders were injured.

- A leader of an alliance of Sunni Arab tribes which opposes al-Qaida in Iraq, Sheikh Ibrahim Mutayri al-Mohammedi, has been killed in a double suicide bomb attack in Falluja on February 24, 2008. Five men who carried out the attack belonged to al-Qaida in Iraq and were killed in the explosion. Several leaders of Awakening Councils have been killed in the past year.

- A suicide bomber killed at least 40 Shiite pilgrims and wounded 60 others Sunday February 24, 2008, as the pilgrims made their way to Karbala to commemorate one of the holiest days of the Shiite calendar. Women and children were among the casualties. Most of those killed or wounded were pilgrims. Earlier Sunday, militants armed with guns and grenades attacked a group of pilgrims in southern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding more than 30 others. The wounded included two police officers.

- A handicapped man in a wheel chair wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside a police building in the central Iraqi town of Samarra on Monday February 25, 2008, killing a senior officer and two other officers. The bomber came to the building to meet Brigadier General Abdul Jabbar Saleh Rabia, the deputy commander for the security of Samarra. He was allowed to enter the building without being searched as he was handicapped.

A suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus near Mosul on Tuesday February 26, 2008, killing nine passengers. The suicide attack came after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki promised a "decisive battle" against Al-Qaeda fighters in the area last month. In another attack, a group of armed men kidnapped 21 male passengers travelling in two minibuses in the province of Diyala.

The US troops in Iraq have shot dead a civilian who approached their patrol near the town of Miqdadiya on February 28, 2008. The man had a cast on his broken arm under his jacket, which troops had mistaken for an explosives vest. He had ignored instructions to stop and a warning shot. Iraqi police said the man was elderly, hard of hearing and suffering from mental disabilities.

On March 2, 2008, we were told that the number of Iraqis killed by violence rose in February for the first time in several months. At least 633 civilians died, up from more than 460 deaths in January. The increase was mainly due to two attacks in Baghdad and one near Karbala that killed at least 150 people. The sharp rise reverses a six-month trend of fewer casualties, but it is still down from 1,645 civilians killed in February 2007.

Two car bombs in different parts of Baghdad killed at least 19 people on March 3, 2008. The most deadly attack was a parked car bomb in a shopping area on the east bank of the Tigris, killing at least 15 people and wounding 45. A suicide car bomber attacked a police headquarters in east Baghdad, killing four people, including two officers and wounding 12 others. The wounded in the first blast including employees of the nearby labour ministry and students from Baghdad university.

Iraq Monday March 3, 2008:
- At least 23 people were killed in bomb attacks and shootings across Iraq as US troops announced the discovery of a mass grave with the bodies of 14 men who had been bound and shot in the head.
- In Baghdad at least 19 people were killed in two car bombings. At least 15 people were killed and 45 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a labour ministry building in a commercial area of Baghdad. The injured included ministry employees and students from the nearby Baghdad University. A car bomb hit an Iraqi army checkpoint at Maisaloon Square in eastern Baghdad, killing four people, damaging three nearby houses and injuring at least 12 people.
- An Iraqi police chief, Colonel Qassim Obeid, the inspector general of Dhi Qar provincial police, and his three bodyguards were killed in an ambush in Basra.
- The US military announced that soldiers had found the bodies of 14 men with their hands tied behind their backs and with gunshot wounds to the head in a mass grave in the central town of Samarra.
- Government figures issued on Saturday showed that 721 people were killed in attacks in February, including 636 civilians, compared with a total of 541 in January.

Iraq, Tuesday March 4, 2008:
- A car bomb killed four children and two women, and wounded 10 on Monday in Huwaish area, near Samarra.
- At least five people were wounded, including three policemen, when a roadside bomb detonated near their patrol in eastern Mosul.
- Gunmen shot dead a policeman near his house in western Mosul.
- U.S soldiers found four bodies on Sunday in a grave south of Samarra.
- An Iraqi military helicopter crashed near Baiji on March 4, 2008, and all eight people on board were killed. One US service member was among those on board the Russian-made Mi-17 aircraft. The cause of the crash in northern Iraq was under investigation.

Sixty-eight people were killed in twin bomb attacks on a shopping area in central Baghdad on Thursday March 6, 2008. Another 130 people were injured. The second bomb hit a crowd of people, including emergency workers, who had gathered to help after the first blast, causing the high death toll. No-one has claimed to have carried out the attack, but Iraqi and US security officials are blaming al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Iraq Friday March 7, 2008:
- US soldiers killed eight suspected al Qaida fighters and detained 10 others in raids around Samarra. Seven other suspects were arrested in operations elsewhere in central Iraq.
- Coalition forces had killed an armed criminal and detained a suspected Iranian-backed Shiite militia coordinator in Baghdad.
- The death toll from coordinated bombings in the Karrada district of central Baghdad on Thursday has risen to 68. Another 120 were wounded in the attack, which the US military and Iraqi government blamed on al Qaida.
- A girl and three policemen were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a police station in Mosul. Four civilians were among 33 wounded.
- One person was killed and 14 wounded by two roadside bombs near a policeman's house in central Mosul.

Mass grave site filled with the remains of at least 50 and perhaps as many as 100 people, some of them children, have been discovered in a river valley north of Khalis we were told on March 8, 2008. Iraqi police stumbled upon the badly decomposed bodies during a raid a day earlier.

An Iraqi tribal leader, Thaer Ghadban al-Karkhi was a member of the mainly Sunni Arab Awakening councils, allied with the US military against al-Qaeda, has been killed in a suicide bombing at his house south-east of Baquba on March 10, 2008. A woman detonated an explosives vest after he answered the door, killing him, his daughter and two guards. Sunni militias have been credited with helping to bring down the level of violence in Iraq in recent months. However, its members have frequently been targeted for attack by al-Qaeda militants.

Iraq Monday March 10, 2008:
- Two bombings in separate Iraq provinces on Monday March 10, 2008, killed eight US troops.
- A roadside bomb killed three US soldiers and an interpreter in Diyala province.
- Moreover, at least five US soldiers on foot patrol were killed and three others wounded in a suicide bombing in Baghdad.
- Suicide bombers killed five Iraqis in two bombings in Diyala province, including a sheik who helped battle Sunni extremists and his 5-year-old niece.
- One person was killed and eight people were wounded in a suicide bomb attack targeting a US military convoy in western Baghdad.
- Monday's attacks would bring the number of US troops killed in Iraq this month to 10. A total of 3,983 military personnel have died in the nearly 5-year-old war.

Iraq Tuesday March 11, 2008:
- At least 44 people were killed in violence across Iraq including 16 in a bomb attack on a bus, as US and Iraqi officials began talks on the US military's future role in the country.
- The day's bloodiest attack was on a bus travelling from the port of Basra to Nasiriyah when it was struck by a bomb. At least 16 people were killed and 22 wounded.
- Separately, eight people were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint in Dhuluiya manned by Iraqi soldiers and members of a local group fighting Al-Qaeda.
- Elsewhere, 19 people were killed in clashes between militants and security forces, including 10 in the central Shiite city of Kut and nine in Mosul.
- In Basra a civilian was shot dead by gunmen.

Iraq, Wednesday March 12, 2008:
- The US military captured five suspects following a suicide bomb attack in central Baghdad that killed five American soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter.
- Since the attack, another seven soldiers have been killed in a series of attacks targeting US forces, including three on Wednesday in a rocket attack on a base south of Baghdad.
- Violence appeared to be on the rise in Iraq after a day that saw at least 42 people.
- A roadside bomb attack on Tuesday killed 16 passengers and wounded 20 on a bus travelling from Najaf to Basra.

Iraq Thursday March 13, 2008:
- Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho's body was found near the town of Mosul, where he and three companions were ambushed by gunmen on February 29. The archbishop's driver and two security guards were killed in the ambush.
- The US military in Iraq recently received the severed fingers of five men kidnapped in Iraq more than a year ago.
- A parked car bomb exploded in a commercial district of central Baghdad killing 18 people and wounding dozens more -possibly 57.
- There also has been a sharp increase of US military deaths in recent days. Twelve Americans have been killed in the past four days, bringing the overall US military death toll since the start of the war to 3,987.
- US soldiers killed a young Iraqi girl after firing a warning shot at a woman who "appeared to be signalling to someone" along a road where several bombs had recently been found.

Iraq, Saturday March 15, 2008:
- One US soldier was killed by small arms fire in southwestern Baghdad.
- Two bodies were found in different areas of Baghdad in the past 24 hours.
- Five policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb in Kirkuk.
- Three civilians were wounded when a car exploded near Mosul.
- One man was killed when gunmen wearing Iraqi Army uniforms attacked a house in Iskandariya. The man's son and brother were kidnapped.
- US soldiers killed two suspected al Qaida militants near Samarra, on Friday.
- Eight Iraqi civilians were wounded when 29 Katyusha rockets damaged three houses and a school near a US embassy regional office in Hilla on Friday. One woman was killed.
- Iraqi security forces killed three suspected militants in Tal Afar. Two of those killed were wearing belts packed with explosives.
- A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed an interpreter in an attack on a border checkpoint at Rabiya on the Iraq-Syria border on Friday. Two US soldiers, two US Department of the Army personnel and two customs guards were wounded.
- Two men were killed and six others wounded when a hand grenade exploded on a minibus near the city of Kut on Friday. The men killed were playing with the grenade when it went off.
- Two policemen were killed and 10 civilians were wounded during clashes between police and members of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia in Kut on Friday.
- One body was found in a field in Numaniya.

A bomb blast near a Shiite shrine in the central Iraq city of Karbala killed at least 43 people on Monday March 17, 2008. The attack near the revered Shiite shrine of Imam Hussein was a bomb blast and not a suicide attack by a female bomber as reported earlier.

A woman suicide bomber killed six people at a bus station in Balad Ruz in Diyala province on March 19, 2008. One of the dead was a policeman and 12 more people were wounded including three policemen. Elsewhere, US troops shot dead three Iraqi policemen by mistake near Kirkuk.

Iraq Sunday March 23, 2008:
- A string of suicide attacks, shootings and rocket strikes have claimed dozens of lives on a day of violence in Iraq.
- In the bloodiest single incident, 13 Iraqi soldiers died when a suicide attacker drove a fuel tanker into an army base in Mosul. At least 40 people were injured.
- The US military said it killed 12 militants preparing suicide attacks in a house east of Baquba.
- At least 15 people died in rocket and mortar fire apparently aimed at Baghdad's Green Zone.
- Eight were civilians who were killed when rockets landed short of their targets.
- In another deadly attack, at least seven shoppers were killed in the southern Zaafariniya area of the city a Baghdad market when gunmen travelling in three cars opened fire. At least 16 people were wounded.
- At least five people were killed when a suicide bomber struck a queue outside a petrol station in the Shula district of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed five Iraqi soldiers close to the city of Kirkuk.
- At least three people were killed when a suicide car bomb was driven into the house of a tribal leader near Samara

Iraqi authorities on Monday March 24, 2008, imposed a night-time curfew on the movement of people and vehicles in the southern province of Basra until further notice due to clashes between police and members of Mehdi Army militia.

Heavy fighting has been raging in Basra on Tuesday March 25, 2008, as thousands of Iraqi troops battle Shia militias. At least 12 people have died in the operation, which is being overseen in Basra by Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki, a day after he vowed to "re-impose law". British forces carried out air strikes to support embattled Iraqi army tanks and artillery on the ground.

Fresh fighting erupted again on March 26, 2008, in Basra and elsewhere, as Iraqi security forces battle Shia militants for a second day. So far more than 40 people have died and some 225 have been injured. Fighting is also continuing in Baghdad, and there have been casualties after rockets were fired at the Green Zone. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has given militants 72 hours to lay down their arms or face "severe penalties". His campaign to "re-impose law" in the city triggered unrest elsewhere in Iraq and many towns are under curfew.

Heavy fighting continued on Thursday March 27, 2998, between Shia militias and the Iraqi security forces. Extensive exchanges of fire between the Iraqi army and militiamen in Basra and in the town of Hilla are reported. More than 70 people have died and hundreds have been injured in days of violence sparked by an Iraqi crackdown on Shia militias in Basra. Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki vowed to fight Basra's Shia militias "until the end".

On Friday March 28, 2008, Iraq's government extended by 10 days a deadline for Shia militiamen fighting troops in Basra to hand over their weapons. More than 130 people have been killed and 350 injured until now. US-led forces joined the battle for the first time bombing Shia positions. Aid agencies say the upsurge in violence has made Iraq's already poor humanitarian situation "critical".

US forces killed 46 militants in Iraq we were told on March 29, 2008, while Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki said he will stay in Basra until security in the southern city is restored. US troops killed 37 militants in Baghdad and another nine in Sadr City as they worked alongside Iraq security forces.

Baghdad's military command renewed a round-the clock curfew indefinitely on Sunday March 30, 2008, as the government continues a crackdown on Shia militias it began on Tuesday. The curfew had been due to expire early on Sunday morning but violence is continuing and new fighting has also broken out in Basra. Radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr is defying a government deadline for his Mehdi Army militia to lay down arms. Across Iraq, the fighting has claimed more than 240 lives since Tuesday. Despite the continued curfew, some Baghdad residents are rushing to markets to stock up on goods with the price of vegetables doubling in some areas.

On March 30, 2008, Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to abandon a week-old uprising that humbled Iraq's government by exposing its tenuous grip on the country's biggest cities. The Baghdad government has welcomed Mr Sadr's call on his Mahdi army militia to stop attacks on the security forces in Baghdad and Basra. Mr Sadr's announcement came hours after British ground forces were deployed for the first time in support of the struggling Iraqi army and police operation in Basra. After talks in the holy city of Najaf, Mr Sadr raised the prospect of a negotiated end to the worst outbreak of violence in Iraq since 2006.

British forces moved closer to Basra on Sunday March 30, 2008, but they have no plans yet to retake Iraq's second city. British troops in eight to 10 armoured vehicles set up a checkpoint at the Zubair Bridge south of the city and were checking cars heading into Basra.

On Monday March 31, 2008, Iraqi authorities have lifted a curfew in Baghdad, allowing people to leave their homes and easing most measures put in force last Thursday. Driving is still prohibited in three mainly Shia districts, including Sadr City, which saw some of the heaviest fighting last week. Mehdi Army militiamen have withdrawn from the streets.

On April 1, 2008, Iraq's prime minister announced plans to recruit 10,000 security personnel for Basra even as he claimed that his widely criticised military assault on Shia militants in the southern city last week had been a "success". Nouri al-Maliki's announcement that the police and army presence in Basra would be bolstered was tied to a pledge that no one would be arrested without a warrant from the judiciary, a concession to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr's Madhi army repulsed the assault on their strongholds in the city by government troops last week. The attack sparked violence across southern and central Iraq, resulting in at least 200 deaths. While the Madhi army has adopted a lower profile, it has not been forced to disarm as Mr Maliki originally insisted. The recruitment of extra security forces, many of whom will inevitably be Sadr supporters, was presented as part of a seven-point plan to improve conditions in Basra, which included measures to improve public services in the dilapidated and war-ravaged second city.

An air strike in Basra destroyed a house and killed at least one occupant on April 3, 2008. The US military said a militant died, but would not confirm reports from Iraqi sources that up to six civilians may also have been killed. Seven people were killed by a car bomb attack at an army checkpoint in al-Dayah, 25 kilometres from Mosul.

On April 4, 2008, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has ordered a stop to all operations against "people who carry weapons" in the country. This comes a day after he promised to continue to pursue criminals and outlaws in all provinces. Last week there was intense fighting between the Mehdi Army militia and the Iraqi security forces in Basra.

On April 4, 2008, a suicide bomber killed at least 15 people in an attack in the funeral of a Sunni policeman in Sadiya, 60km (37 miles) from Baquba in the province of Diyala. Attacks on funerals are usually blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq.

An Assyrian Orthodox priest, Father Yousif Adel of Saint Peter's Church, was gunned down near his house in Karada, in central Baghdad on Saturday April 5, 2008. A nun who was with Adel when the incident occurred was not hurt. The priest was brought to Ibn Nafis hospital in central Baghdad, but was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Iraq, Sunday April 6, 2008:
- Twenty people were killed in clashes in Baghdad between members of the Mehdi Army militia group and US and Iraqi forces. Women and children were among the dead and more than 50 wounded in the Sadr City district.
- The US military said it had carried out an air strike in Sadr City in which nine "criminals" were killed.
- Iraq's security forces report that they had freed 42 university students hours after they were kidnapped by gunmen near Mosul. The male students were on two buses ferrying them to Mosul from their homes in Shurkat when they were ambushed and captured.
- Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of Father Youssef Adel in Baghdad's Karradah district. The Assyrian Orthodox priest was killed on Saturday at his home.
Iraq, Sunday April 6, 2008:
- Attacks on Iraq's Green Zone and another military base in Baghdad killed three American soldiers and wounded 31 on Sunday April 6, 2008.
- Two US troops were killed and 17 wounded when rockets struck the Green Zone in central Baghdad.
- Another American service member died and 14 were wounded in another attack on a military base in the southeastern area of Rustamiyah.
- Nine militiamen were killed in a US raid during fighting between US and Iraqi troops and loyalists of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in their stronghold in east Baghdad,

The US Central Command Monday April 7, 2008, announced the death of two of its soldiers, one from severe burns caused by a resistance missile attack and the other in an unidentified incident.

At least six people have been killed in mortar attacks in Baghdad on April 9, 2008, the fifth anniversary of the city's capture by American forces. The attacks, in the Sadr City district of the city, came as the capital observed a vehicle curfew. Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr had called for a mass anti-American rally, but cancelled it amid security concerns.

Security forces killed at least 13 militants in clashes in Baghdad on April 12, 2008. Abrams tanks and drone-launched Hellfire missiles were used to quell attacks on US and Iraqi soldiers. Iraqi police and hospital officials say seven civilians died when US helicopters fired on homes and shops in Baghdad's Sadr City district.

Iraqi's interior ministry executed 28 criminals and militant cult members in the city of Basra we were told on Monday April 14, 2008. The executed criminals included militants of a Shiite cult known as "Jund al- Samaa". Members of the group are followers of Ahmed al-Yamani, who believed in the return of a hidden imam.

Iraq April 15, 2008:
- More than 50 people have been killed in blasts at three cities.
- At least 40 died and another 70 were injured when explosives packed in a bus detonated outside a restaurant near a court in Baquba.
- Three died in central Baghdad when a car bomb targeted a police patrol.
- And 13 more were killed in a suicide bombing at a kebab restaurant where policemen were eating in Ramadi.

Following are the latest figures for soldiers and civilians killed since the US-led invasion in March, 2003 until April 15, 2008:
United States 4,038

Britain 176

Other nations 134

IRAQIS:

Military Between 4,900 and 6,375

Civilians Between 82,856 and 90,390

Iraq, Wednesday April 16, 2008:
- US or British forces launched an air strike killing four militants who fired at Iraqi troops in Basra.
- Turkish bombing of northern Iraq on Tuesday caused no casualties among PKK Kurdish rebel fighters, a spokesman for the rebel group said.
- Police killed seven members of al Qaida and arrested three other suspects in Balad.
- Two US Marines were killed on April 14 when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Anbar province.
- Police found three bodies in different areas of Baghdad on Tuesday.
- A roadside bomb wounded two guards for a government department in Kirkuk.

A suicide attack on a crowd of mourners in the Sunni village of Bu Mohammed near the city of Baquba killed at least 50 people and wounded many on April 17, 2008. The funeral was for two members of a group fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose dead bodies were found this week.

Iraq, Saturday April 19, 2008:
- Three rockets hit the Sadr hospital in Sadr City. It was unclear if there were any casualties or who fired the rockets. The US military said it was not to blame. Bodies of three women had been brought in along with 40 wounded people following fresh clashes.
- 16 decapitated and decomposed bodies were found in the desert near Diwaniya. The bodies and heads were in separate plastic bags.
- One civilian was killed and 5 others were wounded when an IED exploded in Mosul.
- Two bodies were found, one in Mosul and the other in a town south of the city.
- One policeman was killed and three wounded in clashes with gunmen near Nassiriya.
- US forces detained 22 suspects in Mosul and Baji in security operations targeting al Qaida militants.
- Gunmen shot and seriously wounded an interior ministry official in eastern Baghdad.
- Iraqi army forces arrested 44 al Qaida militants and confiscated weapons in Mosul.
- Government forces captured the district of Hayaniya in Basra, long a stronghold of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, achieving an objective that had eluded them during a crackdown last month.
- Twelve people were killed and 71 others wounded on Friday and Saturday in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad. Hospitals said the total wounded was more than 130.
- A roadside bomb killed two people and wounded 12 others in eastern Mosul.
- A parked car bomb killed one person and wounded three others in southern Kirkuk.
- A roadside bomb struck a police patrol, killing one policeman and wounding another in the southwest of Kirkuk.
- A US helicopter gunship fired a missile, killing two gunmen in eastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed one US soldier when it struck his vehicle on Friday north of Baghdad.
- A car bomb blast killed one US soldier when he was conducting a patrol on Friday in Salahuddin province.
- A roadside bomb wounded two people on Friday in the Karrada district of central Baghdad.
- One Iraqi soldier was killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in Yarmouk district, in western Baghdad.
- Two bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Friday.
- A mortar bomb killed one person on Friday in al-Nidhal street, central Baghdad.
- One body was found with gunshot wounds in Mussayab.

Iraqi forces in Basra have launched a fresh operation against militants on April 19, 2008. The operation, which apparently sought to seize illegally held weapons, opened with a massive display of firepower by supporting US and UK forces. The operation first met fierce resistance. But the latest reports say the violence has subsided.

US and Iraqi security forces unearthed two mass graves containing a total of 44 unidentified bodies in two areas across Iraq on Sunday April 20, 2008. One mass grave containing remains of 25 badly decomposed bodies was found in the albu-Tu'ma village near the town of al-Khalis. Another mass grave containing the remains of 19 beheaded bodies was found in the al-Shannafiya area.

Iraq, Tuesday April 22, 2008:
- A US air strike killed 10 people in Baghdad as the American military announced the deaths of five troops and a female suicide bomber slaughtered six Iraqis north of the capital.
- The US military announced it had killed five Shiite militiamen in Sadr City, bringing to around 345 the number of people killed since the fighting began late last month.
- Two US marines were killed and three wounded when a bomber slammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint near Ramadi. Two Iraqi policemen and 24 civilians were also wounded in the attack.
- A third marine was killed and another wounded in a separate roadside bomb attack in Basra on Monday.
- Another roadside bomb attack killed two US soldiers "during operations" and wounded another two, as well as three Iraqis in north-central Salaheddin province on Monday.
- The latest deaths bring the US military's overall toll since the March 2003 invasion to 4,044.
- A female suicide bomber blew herself up in Jalawla near a police station in the province of Diyala and killed five policemen and a security guard. The wounded include two policemen and 10 civilians.
US troops have killed 15 Iraqi militants in clashes in Shia areas of Baghdad controlled by the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadron April 23, 2008. The Iraqi army commander in Basra has said his forces are in "almost complete control" of the port city.

Iraq, Friday April 25, 2008:
- The U.S. military killed 3 militants trying to plant a roadside bomb in Baghdad's Sadr City.
- The U.S. military killed two gunmen and detained 18 suspects during operations targeting al-Qaeda in central Iraq.
- A roadside bomb exploded in Adhamiya neighbourhood on Thursday night, wounding three people.
- Iraqi police found three bodies on Thursday overnight in different areas of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed two members of U.S.-backed neighbourhood patrols in southern Mosul.
- Iraqi police found two bodies in Mosul, one of them mutilated, on Thursday.
- Gunmen shot dead a policeman in western Mosul.

A series of co-ordinated bomb attacks killed at least seven people and injured more than 20 in Mosul on Sunday April 27, 2008. Most of the victims died when a suicide bomber crashed his car into an Iraqi police patrol in the city centre. Another bomber blew up his car next to a military checkpoint, while a third attacker detonated a fuel tanker. A car bomb was used in a fourth attack.

Iraq Monday April 28, 2008:
- Four US soldiers have been killed in two separate mortar or rocket attacks in Baghdad following clashes with Shia militia.
- Three US soldiers were killed by indirect fire in eastern Baghdad on Monday. Another soldier was killed by a similar attack in northern Baghdad.
- At least 38 Shia militia fighters have also been killed in the past two days of fighting.
- Twenty-two militants died in a single incident on Sunday, when US tanks opened fire to repel an attack.

Two US soldiers died in clashes on April 29, 2008. One soldier was killed when he came under small-arms fire, the other died when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. April has been the most lethal month for US troops in Iraq, with 46 deaths, since September, when 65 soldiers died.

Five US soldiers were killed on Wednesday April 30, 2008, in Baghdad, raising toll to a seven-month high of 49. US forces said they killed another 16 fighters in gunfights, tank battles and strikes from drone aircraft, following heavy fighting on Tuesday in which they killed 34. Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki, who launched a crackdown against Sadr's Mehdi Army militia a month ago in Basra, said the government would disarm the fighters by force if they refuse to lay down their weapons.

Nine people died on Thursday May 1, 2008, in a Baghdad bomb blast aimed at US troops.

A roadside explosion killed four Marines in western Anbar province on May 2, 2008.
Iraq, Sunday May 4, 2008:
- A bomb hit a motorcade carrying Iraq's first lady through Baghdad on Sunday May 4, 2008. The attack in Baghdad's Karrada district injured four of Hiro Ibrahim Ahmed's bodyguards but left her unharmed. She was headed to the city's central National Theatre to attend a cultural festival when the attack occurred just before noon. It was unclear if she was the target or if the bombing was random.
- A man was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in Mosul.
- The body of a decapitated man wearing a military uniform was found in Mosul.
- Two women were killed by blasts from bombs planted near a policeman's house in a village near Balad.
- Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in al-Maamoun neighbourhood in western Baghdad, killing a traffic policeman and a civilian and wounding eight people, including four traffic police.
- The bodies of four people were found in Baghdad on Saturday.
- The Iraqi army shot dead a suicide car bomber, thwarting an attempted attack on their base in Mosul. A soldier was wounded in the incident.
- The body of a man was found with gunshot wounds in the head and chest in Mosul on Saturday.
- Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi reporter after hauling her out of a taxi in Mosul. Serwa Abdul-Wahab, in her mid-30s, was on her way to work when gunmen shot her in the head.

Iraq, Tuesday May 6, 2008:
- A bomb in a parked car killed at least four people and wounded 21 in Tikrit.
- A roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army patrol, killing one soldier and wounding two in western Mosul.
- Two militants accidentally blew themselves up trying to place a bomb on a road south of Mosul.
- The Iraqi army arrested 97 militants in various parts of Iraq in the previous 24 hours.
- Gunmen killed Ayad Hamza, the deputy director of Nahrain University in charge of sciences, and wounded his two sons in a drive-by shooting on Sunday in Mansour district, western Baghdad.
- Iraqi Special Forces and U.S. troops killed seven militiamen and detained two others in two battles in Baghdad on Monday and Tuesday.
- Iraqi and U.S. forces detained 15 militants in operations against al Qaeda in different parts of the country.
- Three people were killed, including a female college student, and nine wounded in clashes between police and militants in Abu Dsheer district, south Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded seven on Monday in Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad.
- Two mortar bombs killed three people and wounded 10, including four officers from the Facility Protection Services, which guards government buildings and infrastructure, near Baghdad's municipal headquarters.
- A Katyusha missile wounded five people, some of them students, when it landed near the privately owned Al-Mansour University College, in Karrada district, central Baghdad.
- Gunmen ambushed a police patrol, killing two policemen and a civilian and wounding two other policemen in western Mosul.
-Two mortars wounded 12 people, including five policemen, near Utaifiya neighbourhood in central Baghdad.
- Iraqi and U.S. soldiers killed nine militants and discovered weapons caches during night raids in Baghdad on Monday and Tuesday.
- Militants attacked an Iraqi Army checkpoint, killing 10 soldiers and wounding 13 others on Monday in Diyala province.
- Four bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad on Monday.
- Gunmen stormed a house in eastern Mosul, on Monday, killing one person.
- U.S. forces killed two militants and discovered two weapons caches in Baghdad on Monday.
- Iraqi security forces killed 10 militants, arrested 131 others and seized a quantity of weapons during two days of operations in Shula district, northwestern Baghdad.
- The third of five U.S. "surge" brigades is being withdrawn from Baghdad in the next several weeks. About 3,500 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division are returning home to Fort Benning, Georgia.

Militants fired rockets into a British base in Basra on May 8, 2008, killing two contractors and wounding four other civilians. British forces returned fire and a U.S. airstrike killed six militants.

Iraq, Saturday May 10, 2008:
- U.S. and Iraqi security forces killed eight gunmen on Friday in clashes in different districts of Baghdad.
- Two hospitals in east Baghdad's Sadr City slum said they had received the bodies of 19 people and treated 116 wounded in clashes in the past 24 hours.
- A rocket landed in eastern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding eight others.
- Five people were wounded in a rocket attack in Baghdad's western Mansour district.
- Two bodies were found in different districts of Baghdad.
- A mortar round wounded three people in eastern Baghdad's Palestine Street.

On May 11, 2008, the Iraqi government agreed to a ceasefire with Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr to end weeks of fighting in Baghdad. Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army militiamen are to lay down their weapons and remove snipers and bombs from roads leading into the Shia Sadr City area.

At least 11 people have been killed and 20 injured in clashes between US troops and militiamen in Baghdad's Sadr City on Tuesday May 13, 2008. The fighting took place just hours after the signing of a ceasefire deal, agreed between the Iraqi government and Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr. The clashes came as the US military was completing the building of a barrier designed to isolate members of the Mehdi Army from the southern part of Sadr City.

Iraq, Tuesday May 13, 2008:
- Iraq's Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim arrived in Mosul to oversee an Iraqi and U.S. military joint operation against al-Qaeda. Five hundred suspects have been arrested since the offensive started on Saturday.
- A roadside bomb killed five Iraqi soldiers and one civilian when it exploded near an army patrol in southwestern Mosul.
- U.S. forces arrested 19 militants suspected of being from al-Qaeda, including five wanted men, in operations around Iraq on Monday and Tuesday.
- Eleven people were killed and 20 wounded in clashes overnight in the Shiite district of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad. The U.S. military said its troops killed at least three militants trying to plant bombs.
- A roadside bomb attack on a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded three others on Monday near Mahmudiya.
- Gunmen abducted six university students from a minibus near Baquba on Monday.
- A bomb blast wounded two children in southeastern Mosul.
- Gunmen killed an army officer, Brigadier-General Nibras Fadhil Abbas, in a drive-by shooting on Monday in Nisoor square in central Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded five civilians in the Karrada district of central Baghdad.
- A mortar attack killed a woman and wounded three people including a child in Nassiriya on Monday.

Suicide bombers struck a funeral west of Baghdad and an Iraqi army post to the south Wednesday May 14, 2008, killing at least 21 people in attacks that coincided with an Iraqi military offensive in Mosul against Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Lt. Col. Farhan Qassim, chief of police in Suq al-Shiyoukh, an area outside Nasiriyah, was killed Monday May 19, 2008, by a bomb planted in his office. Also on Monday, Iraqi security forces launched raids in Shiite militia strongholds in the city of Basra after gunmen killed one policeman and wounded three others.

The U.S. military troops shot dead 11 militants in Obaidi district close to Sadr City, eastern Baghdad, on Wednesday May 21, 2008, but police and several residents said at least some of the dead were civilians killed by U.S. snipers. The U.S. military said all those killed were members of "special groups", military jargon for rogue units of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia accused of receiving funding and training from Iran.

Eight civilians have been killed in an air strike by US military helicopters north of Baghdad. Two children were among those who died in the attack on Wednesday May 21, 2008, near the town of Baiji. Baiji's police chief said the attack targeted a group of shepherds in a farming area. The US military said the incident was under investigation. In other violence, an Iraqi TV cameraman has been shot dead in crossfire in Baghdad.

Iraqi and US troops have arrested around 400 Shiites in Baghdad. The operation was carried out in two Shiite neighbourhoods in the southwest of the capital where there are many supporters of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Explosives were found at a number of sites.

On Sunday May 25, 2008, we were told that the operations which began in Nineveh province on May 14 had resulted in the detention of some 1,030 suspects. Another 2,000 may have fled the US-backed Iraqi army offensive.

During a house-to-house search in the Sumer neighbourhood of Mosul, Iraqi troops on Monday May 26, 2008, arrested six teenage boys suspected of being forcibly trained by Al-Qaida to carry out suicide bombings. The six boys aged 15 to 18 were trained by a Saudi national suspected of being an Al-Qaida operative, who is believed to have died in the military operations. The teenagers were paraded before the press on Monday morning, a few hours after their arrest. Jackets filled with explosives were recovered from their hideout. One of the boys said he was forced to join or risk his mother and sister being raped.

A car bomb explosion killed at least four people and injured 46 others on Tuesday May 27, 2008, in Talafar, where military operation is going on to wipe out extremists, mainly al-Qaida militants. The attack struck a crowded market. Women and children were among the casualties.

At least 16 Iraqis have been killed and another 30 wounded in a suicide bombing at a police recruitment centre in the town of Sinjar, near the northern city of Mosul on May 29, 2008. Two policemen were among the dead. The other victims were in the process of being recruited into the force.

Nine policemen were killed and seven others wounded when a suicide bomber struck their checkpoint in the town of Hit on Saturday May 31, 2008. Iraqi security forces immediately sealed off the area for fear of further attacks from apparently remnants of Qaida militants, who have been driven off the Anbar province where the town is located.

Nine people have been killed by a suicide car bomb attack in Mosul on June 3, 2008. Nearly 50 others were wounded by the blast, which targeted the provincial police headquarters in the city centre. Four policemen were among those killed as an explosives-laden car exploded near a checkpoint outside the compound. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Mosul is the last major urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Iraq, Sunday June 8, 2008:
- A suicide truck bomber killed an American soldier and wounded 18 others at a military base in northern Iraq. The bomber blew up his vehicle near the patrol base in the town of Rashad in Kirkuk province. Two Iraqi contractors also were wounded in the attack.
- Gunmen killed three U.S. soldiers in the same province last Wednesday.
- Attacks elsewhere in the country killed at least 12 Iraqis. In one incident, five shepherds were shot dead east of the capital, Baghdad.
- In another incident, a bomb exploded outside a police centre in western Baghdad, killing four police recruits and wounding 23 other people.
- A mortar shell landed just outside Baghdad's "Green Zone" government compound, killing three Iraqi civilians and wounding seven others. The mortar apparently was aimed at the defence ministry, but fell short.
- An American soldier was killed Saturday in eastern Baghdad when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle.
- Iraqi police broke up an al-Qaida terrorist cell in the western town of Hit, confiscating 50 explosive belts prepared for suicide attacks.

The head of Saddam Hussein's tribe has been killed in a car bomb in the town of Awja, near Tikrit. Explosives may have been attached to the underside of the car belonging to Sheikh Ali al-Nida, head of the al-Bu Nasir tribe. The driver was also killed in the blast and at least one of his guards was seriously wounded. The car exploded as it was travelling back to Awja, the executed leader's birthplace, after a trip to Tikrit.

On June 15, 2008, Iraqi troops and police backed by US forces have been sent to the southern city of Amara in a fresh operation against Shia gunmen.
Iraqi army tanks have been patrolling major streets in the city and the security forces set up checkpoints.

The US military blamed a rogue Shia Muslim militia -a "special group" led by Haydar Mehdi Khadum al-Fawadi- for Tuesday June 17, 2008's deadly car bombing in the mainly Shia Hurriya neighbourhood of Baghdad. The confirmed death has risen to 63. Many victims were trapped by a fire which engulfed a nearby building. The car exploded near a crowded bus stop in a commercial area in Hurriya. Some 500 Iraqis were killed last month, compared with more than 1,000 in April.

Iraqi security forces backed by US troops have launched a major operation in Amara on June 19, 2008, to drive out Shia militia groups. Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki had set a deadline of midnight for Shia militants around Amara to lay down their weapons. Dozens of militants have already surrendered in the city, a bastion of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.

On June 21, 2008, the US military in Iraq said four militants have been killed during operations against bombing networks run by al-Qaeda in Iraq. One of those killed in a clash just north of Baghdad, is said to have been involved in weapons smuggling. 12 al-Qaeda members were also arrested in continuing operations in Mosul. One of those held is accused of overseeing attacks in Mosul itself and in the western Anbar province. Another is said to have been involved in planning car bombings in Mosul.

Fifteen people have been killed and 39 wounded by a female suicide bomber in the northern Iraqi city of Baquba on June 22, 2008. The bomber detonated the device in front of a group of policemen at the entrance to a local government and law courts complex. A number of civilians are said to be among the casualties.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed and three others injured in a shootout Monday June 23, 2008, outside a local council building southeast of Baghdad as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki promised to extend a military crackdown to Diyala province, north and east of the capital, after at least 25 people were killed and scores injured there the previous day in a suicide bombing and mortar fire. A gunman ambushed the soldiers and their interpreter, who also was wounded, as they left a municipal building in the town of Madain, also known as Salman Park.

Three American soldiers and an interpreter were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Nineveh province on Tuesday June 24, 2008. The latest deaths bring the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to about 4,109.

Iraq Tuesday June 24, 2008:
- A gunman killed a local official in the Rashad area of Kirkuk province.
- Police found the body of a tax department employee, who had been shot, in western Mosul.
- A bomb killed 10 people including two U.S. government employees and two U.S. soldiers at a council meeting in Sadr City. Six Iraqis were also killed.
- The Iraqi army said it captured the leader of a Shiite militia in Kut.
- U.S. forces captured four suspected Shiite militants during a raid in southeastern Baghdad.
- Militants shot dead an off-duty police lieutenant studying law in the University of Mosul as he left the campus.
- The Iraqi army arrested 24 wanted Shiite militants on Monday and found four weapons caches in Amara.
- The Defence Ministry gave all people who have been squatting in government buildings abandoned when U.S. forces ousted Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 three days to evacuate them or risk being forcibly evicted. A number of political parties have headquarters in such buildings.
- U.S. forces detained the head of a local journalists' union in Tikrit.
- Gunmen kidnapped four university students from their halls of residence in western Mosul. They later released two of them.
- U.S. forces said they killed a senior al Qaeda leader in Mosul.
- Two members of a U.S.-backed Iraqi neighbourhood patrol were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle on the outskirts of Balad.
- Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops caught a wanted Iraqi al Qaeda militant along with his Saudi Arabian aide in Yathrib.
- U.S. forces killed one gunman and captured 12 others on Monday in various operations in different parts of northern Iraq.
- Iraqi police arrested three wanted Shiite militiamen accused of killing and kidnapping people in central Kerbala.
Six Iraqis, two American soldiers and two US civilians have been killed in a bomb attack at a local council office in eastern Baghdad on June 25, 2008. One of the US civilians was an official with the state department and the other worked for the defence department, US embassy officials said. Ten people were wounded including three members of the Sadr City council.

Iraq. Thursday June 26, 2008:
- At least 38 people have been killed in two bombings in Iraq.
- The first occurred in the town of Karma where a suicide attacker detonated a bomb at a local council meeting, killing at least 20. More than a dozen people were wounded. Casualties include coalition forces and local nationals and the head of the local tribal council, and members of a neighbourhood patrol force opposed to al-Qaeda
- Hours later, a car bomb in the northern city of Mosul left at least 18 people dead and dozens wounded.
- One soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad, bringing to at least eight the number of American troops killed in Iraq this week.

Iraq, Friday June 27, 2008:
- A suicide bomber killed 20 people at a tribal council meeting in Garma. Three U.S. Marines and two interpreters were among the dead.
- A car bomb killed 18 people and wounded 80 near the Nineveh provincial governor's office in Mosul.
- Two militants were killed when a roadside bomb they were trying to plant blew up in a village near the town of Penjwin in Sulaimaniya province.
- A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier on Wednesday in eastern Baghdad.
- An Iraqi soldier was killed when U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a village and clashed with gunmen near Tuz Khurmato.
- Gunmen broke into a woman's house and shot her dead in eastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in western Mosul, wounding 3 people, including one policeman.
- A parked car bomb exploded near a U.S. patrol in eastern Mosul, wounding one Iraqi civilian.
- U.S. forces detained the leader of a bomb-making cell in the Rashid district of southern Baghdad on Tuesday.
- U.S. forces killed two militants, including an al- Qaeda cell leader, and captured 15 suspected militants on Thursday in various operations in central and northern Iraq.

Gunmen killed a senior city appeals judge in Baghdad. The drive-by shooting occurred Thursday June 26, 2008, in the eastern part of the capital. No one has claimed responsibility. Investigators are looking into a motive for the attack. The judge, Kamal al-Showaili, was driving home from work in the Jamila neighborhood. At least two of his bodyguards also were wounded. Al-Showaili headed the appeals court in Rasafa in eastern Baghdad.

The US military in Iraq says a militant killed on Tuesday June 24, 2008, has been positively identified as the leader of al-Qaeda in the city of Mosul. The man -identified by a pseudonym, Abu Khalaf- had co-ordinated and ordered many attacks. He was shot dead by American troops during a raid on a building in Mosul.

Iraq, Sunday June 29, 2008:
- A bomb blast killed five policemen and wounded two others when it struck their patrol in Dhuluiya.
- A roadside bomb wounded six people when it narrowly missed hitting a police patrol but exploded by a minibus in Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman on Saturday outside his house in Mosul.
- U.S. forces killed two militants and detained 15 suspected militants while targeting al Qaeda in Baghdad, Mosul and the town of Sharqat on Saturday and Sunday.
- U.S. forces destroyed weapons, seized money and detained nine suspected al Qaeda militants in various places in the Tigris River Valley in an operation ending on Thursday.

Iraq, Monday June 30, 2008:
- Five Iraqi appeals court judges escaped assassination attempts when bombs exploded outside their homes in eastern Baghdad.
- US forces killed six suspected al Qaeda militants and detained 22 others during operations in different parts of Iraq on Sunday and Monday.
- The body of an Iraqi civilian was found with gunshot wounds in the head on Sunday in western Mosul.
- Gunmen killed two Iraqi soldiers when they attacked their checkpoint in a drive-by shooting in western Mosul.
- The body of an Iraqi soldier was found with gunshot in Mosul.
- Gunmen wounded a man when they opened fire on him in Mahaweel.

A suicide truck bomb struck the house of an Iraqi tribal leader near Mosul on Tuesday July 1, 2008, killing a civilian and wounding 22 others. Abdul Razzaq al-Wagga', head of the Jubour tribe, one of Iraq's largest tribe, and his wife escaped with injuries when a suicide bomber drove a truck loaded with explosives into their house in the town of Qaiyarah. Wagga' house and several nearby houses were destroyed.

At least 13 people have been killed in two bomb attacks in Iraq on Sunday July 6, 2008. In the first, a car bomb exploded in a mainly Shia district in north-eastern Baghdad, killing six people and injuring 14. The second bomb, in the eastern province of Diyala, killed seven people, including the wife and two children of a Kurdish leader.

Iraq Sunday July 6, 2008:
- A roadside bomb killed up to seven family members of a senior Iraqi Kurdish official in Jalawla.
- A parked car bomb killed six people including a woman and wounded 14 others in Shaab district, in northern Baghdad.
- The body of a woman was found with gunshot wounds and signs of torture in Mussayab.
- A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded another when it blew up near their vehicle in Haswa.
- A parked car bomb wounded five people in west Baghdad's Jamiaa district.

On July 7, 2008, a female suicide bomber killed nine people and wounded 12 others in an attack on an Iraqi market. The attack took place in the al-Mafraq area west of Baquba in Diyala province.

A bomb exploded in Falluja, killing four policemen and a civilian on July 9, 2008. Fifteen people were injured in the blast outside a bank in the city. The casualties were people who were inspecting the scene of an earlier blast when the second explosion was detonated.

In Mosul, a suicide car bomber on Wednesday July 9, 2008, targeted a military convoy carrying a senior Iraqi commander, killing five civilians and 22 people, including seven of the commander's guards, were injured. Lt. Gen. Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, chief of operations in Ninevah province, escaped unharmed. Also Wednesday, a bomb went off outside a bank in Fallujah, killing four policemen and a civilian. After an initial blast went off, drawing a crowd and police to the area, a second bomb exploded, causing the deaths and wounding 15 people in the city

On July 10, 2008, we were told that US troops in Iraq are facing new rocket-propelled bombs used by suspected Shiite militiamen. The powerful bombs have killed at least 21 people this year, including at least three US soldiers.

Iraq, July 13, 2008:
- One police officer and one member of a US-backed neighbourhood patrol group were killed when militants opened fire on a soccer game in Dhuluiya; three other people were wounded.
- Three policemen were killed and four people wounded, including two policemen, when two roadside bombs went off in central Falluja.
- Six people including two policemen were wounded by a roadside bomb blast in Palestine Street, eastern Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a member of the political office of the Shabak minority group inside his car on Saturday, east of Mosul.
- Gunmen killed one person in a drive-by shooting in western Mosul.
At least 35 people have been killed and more than 50 injured in a double suicide bombing north of Baghdad on July 15, 2008. The two attackers mingled with a crowd of would-be recruits at an army base in the city of Baquba and then blew themselves up simultaneously. One of the bombers is said to have been disguised as a soldier. US forces in Iraq say they have detained 15 suspected insurgents, including an alleged al-Qaeda leader.

Police said on July 16, 2008, a car bomb exploded in a popular outdoor market in Tal Afar killing at least 15 people. Nearly half the victims are children. About 70 others were injured when a parked car rigged with explosives struck late afternoon shoppers. Earlier, two people died in a car bombing in Mosul.

Two private security contractors died in a car bombing in Mosul. Eight Iraqis were injured in the blast, which occurred Sunday July 20, 2008, when an assailant drove into the middle of a convoy and detonated explosives. They were working as bodyguards for the Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani, leader of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

At least eight guards have been killed and 24 other people were wounded in a woman suicide bombing at a checkpoint manned by U.S.-allied Sunni guards in central Baquba on July 24, 2008.

Seven Shiite pilgrims travelling to a shrine in Baghdad were shot to death in an ambush in a Sunni town south of the capital Sunday July 27, 2008, as authorities tightened security ahead of a major religious festival that is expected to draw tens of thousands of worshippers. Two new operations will begin early next month in a bid to rout insurgents from rural hideouts in northern Iraq and solidify recent security gains in urban areas.

Suicide bombers killed at least 47 people and wounded about 240 in attacks on crowds in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk on July 28, 2008. Three blasts in Baghdad killed at least 25 Shia Muslim pilgrims heading for the city's Kadhimiya shrine. The attacks, which wounded about 90 people, were carried out by women suicide bombers. In Kirkuk, a suicide bomber targeted a crowd of Kurdish protesters, killing at least 22 and injuring at least 150. Demonstrators were protesting at a proposed law on local elections which has raised tensions there.

Iraqi forces backed by American troops have launched a major operation against insurgents in the north-eastern Iraqi province of Diyala on Tuesday July 29, 2008. A curfew was imposed across the province as troops and police started deploying in the regional capital, Baquba. In Baghdad, a vehicle ban has been imposed following Monday's suicide bomb attacks on Shia pilgrims.

Iraq, Thursday July 31, 2008:
- Iraqi forces have detained 100 militants and seven policemen in Diyala as part of a big offensive. The operation began on Tuesday.
- Three policemen were killed and four were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his car into a police centre in the town of Qaiyara.
- Gunmen killed Yousuf Ahmed, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, in Mosul on Wednesday. The party is one of three groups in the main Sunni Arab bloc in the national parliament.
- Three U.S.-backed neighbourhood patrol guards were killed and two were wounded on Wednesday when a roadside bomb exploded near their checkpoint in the city of Samarra.
- A roadside bomb killed a policeman on Wednesday in the town of Tal Afar.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty soldier on Wednesday in Mosul.

Iraq, Friday August 1, 2008:
- A bomb planted on a car killed one person and wounded another in the Qadissiya district of western Baghdad.
- Iraqi soldiers killed four militants and arrested eight others during fighting in the town of Dhuluiya. Three Iraqi soldiers were also wounded.
- The body of a man was found, with apparent signs of torture, in central Kut.
- A roadside bomb killed at least two Iraqi soldiers and wounded at least one other in Rashad.
- Nine people, including three Iraqi soldiers, were wounded by a series of car bombs on Thursday in eastern Mosul.
- Police reported the discovery of the bodies of three women in Mosul on Thursday. Two of the women appeared to have been shot.
- Gunmen shot and killed an off-duty policeman on Thursday in central Mosul.
- The U.S. military said it had captured more than 20 suspected insurgents and individuals believed to be linked to Sunni Islamist group al Qaeda near Mosul and in Baghdad.

A truck bomb killed at least 12 people and injured 14 near a passport office in a busy Sunni area of Baghdad on August 3, 2008. The parked vehicle exploded near al-Maghreb Street in the northern district of Adhamiya.

A series of bomb attacks Sunday August 3, 2008, most of them in Baghdad killed 15 people and wounded at least 38. In the deadliest attack a small truck parked near the passport office on Magreb Street in the north of Baghdad killed 12 people and wounded 23. Several people suffered burns as flames from the powerful blast swept skywards, damaging buildings.

Iraq, Monday August 4, 2008:
- A string of attacks killed five people and injured at least 28, including two American soldiers blown up in a roadside bombing in the capital Baghdad.
- The soldiers were killed when the bomb exploded next to their patrol in the central Baghdad district of Karada. An American soldier was also injured in the incident.
- Another bomb planted in a Baghdad street targeted an Iraqi army patrol, killing two people and wounding 15. The improvised explosive device (IED) went off as the patrol passed by on eastern Baghdad's Palestine Street, killing one soldier and one civilian. Nine soldiers were among the injured.
- In a separate incident two policemen were injured in a blast in the Dura district.
- On Sunday, a series of bomb attacks in Iraqi capital killed 12 people and wounded at least 34.
- In Mosul, 370 kilometres a bodyguard of the Kurdish deputy governor of Nineveh province was killed and six others wounded by a roadside bomb. Deputy governor Khasro Goran was not in the patrol at the time.
- In other violence, four people were injured when a bomb exploded inside a minibus near an important Shiite shrine in the holy city of Karbala
- Three American troops were killed and three others injured in non-combat incidents on Saturday. The military did not elaborate on the death of a soldier near a U.S. military base in the eastern province of Diyala. Another soldier was killed in a vehicle accident in the southwest of Baghdad. A third soldier succumbed to his injuries in an accident in northern Baghdad.

Iraq, Tuesday August 5, 2008:
- Iraqi security forces captured more than 80 suspects on Monday and Tuesday during a security operation in the Diyala province northeast of Baghdad.
- One civilian was injured by rockets launched from Iran into a border area of the northern Arbil province on Monday.
- Gunmen attacked on Monday the home of Sheikh Ibrahim al-Karbouli, a leader of a U.S.-backed local patrol unit in Yusufiya. Casualties were reported, but Karbouli was not killed.
- The body of a young man was found in eastern Mosul.
- The body of a child was found in eastern Mosul on Monday.
- A roadside bomb wounded six people including two policemen in Palestine Street, in eastern Baghdad.
- U.S. forces captured 15 militants during operations in central and northern Iraq.

A bomb at a crowded outdoor market in Tal Afar on Friday August 8, 2008, killed 21 people and wounded 50 others. Also Friday, the US military announced that two Marines died in a noncombat-related incident near Karma on Thursday in Anbar province.

Iraq, Sunday August 10, 2008:
- Eight people were killed and at least 50 wounded in a wave of bomb attacks -at least 6- across Iraq.
- Iraqi officials presided over a dedication ceremony for a newly renovated Parliament building that sits outside the Green Zone but the thump of an explosion could be heard as the ceremony was starting.
- In Diyala Province, 2 people were killed and 26 wounded when a car bomb went off in the city of Khanadine; 10 of the wounded were Kurdish police officers.
- By midday, five roadside bombs had detonated around Baghdad, most of them apparently aimed at Iraqi Army patrols. Three people were killed and 10 wounded in the deadliest attack, which targeted an Iraqi Army patrol near Baghdad's town hall.
- A bomb hidden in a pile of garbage exploded in the Shiite neighbourhood of Kamaliya in eastern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding 10.
- A car bomb at a gasoline station in another Baghdad neighbourhood killed one and wounded five.

Iraqi officials have imposed a curfew in the capital of eastern Diyala province after a suicide bomber killed at least two people and wounded at least seven others Tuesday August 12, 2008. The blast occurred near a convoy carrying the Diyala governor Raad Rasheed and an Iraqi army commander in the provincial capital, Baquba. The two were unharmed in the attack. The bomber, dressed as a woman, was attempting to approach the convoy when soldiers identified him as a threat and opened fire, causing the explosives to detonate.

Iraq, Wednesday August 13, 2008:
- Car bomb attacks have killed at least four people and wounded at least 28 in northern Iraq.
- A bomb exploded in a parked car in the town of Qayara killing two civilians. At least nine people were wounded in the blast.
- A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives near a convoy carrying Abdul-Karim Ali Nsaif, the mayor of the town of al-Multaqa, near Kirkuk. The bomb wounded the mayor and at least three of his bodyguards.
- Another suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army patrol in Mosul, killing an Iraqi soldier and a civilian and wounding at least 15 people.
- In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed an American soldier and an Iraqi interpreter. The explosion hit their vehicle.
- The Iraqi government has urged ethnic Kurdish military forces to withdraw from an area outside the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq. But the officials say they have not agreed to pull their troops out of the Kurdish-populated areas of eastern Diyala province.
- A brigade of Kurdish troops patrols areas of Diyala where many Kurds live, although the province is not part of Iraq's northern Kurdistan region.

At least 18 people were killed and scores were wounded Thursday August 14, 2008, when a suicide bomber blew herself up in a tent filled with women on a religious pilgrimage. The attack occurred in the city of Iskandariya.

At least five people died in a suicide car bomb attack targeting a police convoy in central Baghdad on August 15, 2008. At least 10 more people, including two policemen, were also hurt when the bomber rammed his car into the convoy.

At least six people have been killed in a car bomb attack against Shia pilgrims in Baghdad on August 16, 2008. At least 10 people were injured in the blast in the capital. It is the latest in a number of recent attacks on Shia pilgrims heading to the holy city of Karbala to mark the birth date of a 9th Century Shia imam.

Iraq, Tuesday August 19, 2008:
- A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and wounded 29 near a mosque in a mainly Sunni part of Baghdad. The attacker rode up on a motorcycle before setting off a bomb in the Adhamiya district. The dead include Faruq al-Obeidi, a local leader of a US-backed Sunni militia fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq.
- A suicide car bombing killed five policemen in Ramadi. At least seven other people were wounded in Monday's attack.
- In other violence Monday, gunmen ambushed a bus carrying election workers in Abu al-Khasib near Basra. Two election officials were killed and a third was wounded.
- Gunmen fired on a car carrying a Shiite cleric in the Zafaraniya district of southern Baghdad, killing him and wounding his wife.
- Three bombs also went off in the Iraqi capital in the Yarmuk, Mansur and Karrada districts, wounding 17 people, including nine policemen.
- Also Monday, the number two US commander in Iraq predicted that some Shiite militia leaders who fled to Iran for training and supplies will try to return to Iraq soon.
- Coalition forces detained 11 suspected terrorists during operations targeting al-Qaida in central and northern Iraq on Monday and Sunday.
- Lebanon Prime Minister Fuad Siniora will travel to Baghdad this week for trade talks. It will be the first visit to Iraq by a Lebanese leader since the US-led invasion in 2003.

The governor of the province of Diyala said his secretary was killed in an attack by a unit of the security forces on his office in Baquba on August 19, 2008. The death may have occurred during an exchange of fire between the governor's guards and the security forces. A member of the provincial council was also arrested. No official reason has been given for the raid.

At least 25 people have been killed and 29 wounded in a suicide bombing on the western outskirts of Baghdad on August 25, 2008. The attacker detonated his explosives inside a tent as people were gathered to celebrate the release of a former detainee from the U.S. detention centre Camp Bucca.

Two prominent al-Qaeda leaders with links to the kidnapping of the British-Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan have been caught by US forces in Iraq we were told on August 25, 2008. Ali Rash Nasir Jiyad al-Shammari, known as Abu Tiba, and Salim Abdallah Ashur al-Shujayri, known as Abu Uthman were detained earlier this month. Abu Tiba was the Sunni militant group's senior adviser in the Iraqi capital, while Abu Uthman was the "emir", or leader, for the capital's eastern Rusafa district. Abu Tiba was in charge of al-Qaeda in Iraq during its most active period in early 2007. Abu Uthman was believed to be the planner behind the kidnapping of US journalist Jill Carroll. His associates were also involved in the kidnapping of Mrs Hassan, who was later killed by her captors, and of a group of Christian peace activists.

A suicide bomber attacked recruits waiting outside a police station Tuesday August 26, 2008, in Iraq's restive Diyala province, killing 28 people and wounding 45 others. The bomber walked up to the line of recruits in the province's mainly Arab district of Jalawla and set off his explosives.

- Gunmen shot dead an anti-al Qaida fighter and his family in Gunmen shot dead an anti-Qaida fighter and his family in the al-Wathba village in Diyala province on Friday August 29, 2008. Zeidi has joined the Awakening Council group who fight al-Qaida militants. The Awakening Council groups are armed groups, especially some powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups, who fight the al-Qaida network after the latter exercised indiscriminate killings against both Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities. In a separate incident, two Iraqi security members were seriously wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol near the al-Asriyah village.

- On September 3, 2008, US troops killed six members of the Iraqi security forces during a patrol on the river Tigris north of Baghdad. The Americans have given no casualty figures, but have spoken of their regret at the mistake. The Iraqis say the incident occurred when Iraqi forces fired warning shots into the air as a US boat was passing close to a checkpoint near Tarmiya.

- At least six people were killed and 50 wounded on September 6, 2008, when a suicide car bomber apparently staged a traffic accident to draw more victims to the explosion. The suicide attack happened at an outdoor market in Tal Afar. The bomber got into a traffic accident and began arguing with the driver of another car. He detonated his car bomb as a crowd gathered around the shouting men.

- Iraq, Saturday September 13, 2008:
- Abomb has killed four people and wounded nine others at a security checkpoint in eastern Baghdad. The dead include three Iraqi police commandos and a member of an armed Sunni group that has turned against al-Qaida in Iraq. The injured include seven Iraqi security personnel and two bystanders.
- On Friday, a car bomb ripped through a crowded commercial district in Dujail, a mainly Shiite town north of Baghdad killing at least 32 people.
- At least 10 people have been killed in two bomb attacks targeting security forces in Iraq.
- A roadside bomb killed six Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Khanaqin town in Diyala province, north-east of Baghdad.
- In Mosul, gunmen kidnapped and killed four staff members of Sharqia TV.
- A bomb in eastern Baghdad killed three Iraqi policemen and a Sunni militiaman opposed to al-Qaida. At least eight people were hurt in the blast, which targeted a checkpoint.

- Iraq, Thursday September 18, 2008:
- Seven US soldiers were killed when their helicopter crashed west of Basra. The Chinook helicopter, which had been en route from Kuwait to the military base in Balad north of Baghdad, had not come under fire and the crash appeared to have been an accident.
- Two US other soldiers were shot near a base in Iskandariyah. They were believed to have been killed by a US soldier who had been arrested.

- US forces acknowledged killing three women during a raid on a house of suspected insurgents Friday September 19, 2008, but Iraqis said eight people had died, all members of a family with no ties to the violence in their country.

- The head of the main journalists' union in Iraq, Muayad al-Lami, the chief of the Iraqi Journalists' Union, survived an assassination attempt on Saturday September 20, 2008, when a bomb exploded outside his office in Baghdad.

- An interior ministry brigadier has been killed in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad. Gunmen killed Brigadier Adel Abbas and his driver as they drove to work Sunday September21, 2008. In another attack, a finance ministry director was seriously wounded when a bomb exploded in his car, also in western Baghdad.

- Iraq, Sunday September 21, 2008:
- Bomb attacks across the country have killed at least nine people and wounded about 70 others.
- A suicide truck bomber attacked a police checkpoint in Kirkuk, killing three people.
- Another suicide truck bomber struck in Mosul, killing two people.
- A roadside bomb blast hit a minibus in eastern Iraq's Diyala province, killing three people.
- A roadside bomb in Baghdad killed a local businessman. - Militants opened fire on a senior interior ministry official, Brigadier General Adel Abbas and his driver.
- Coalition forces detained 25 suspected al-Qaida militants in operations across Iraq on Saturday and Sunday.
- US-led troops also captured five suspected Iranian-backed insurgents in Baghdad.

- On Tuesday September 23, 2008, two roadside bombs apparently targeting Iraqi security forces struck different areas in Baghdad, killing at least one civilian and wounding seven. The first explosion took place in northern Baghdad as a police patrol passed through the area but the attack missed its target and hit a civilian car, wounding four people. Another roadside bomb struck near an Iraqi army patrol in central Baghdad, killing one civilian and wounding three others.

- Iraqi forces launched a major hunt for Al-Qaida gunmen in the province of Diyala on Thursday September 25, 2008, after 35 people were killed in an ambush of a police convoy. Wednesday's attack, which saw the entire patrol wiped out, was one of the deadliest against police in recent months despite massive military crackdowns in the region, one of the most dangerous in Iraq. An American soldier was also killed in a suicide bombing in the province on Wednesday.

- A series of explosions Sunday September 28, 2008, timed to strike Muslims preparing to break the Ramadan fast killed at least 31 people in Baghdad and injured dozens.

- Iraq, Thursday October 2, 2008:
- Three separate attacks in central Iraq have killed 26 people.
- Two bombings near Shiite mosques in Baghdad killed at least 20 people and wounded at least 50 others.
- A car bomber attacked a mosque in the Zafaraniyah district, while a teenaged suicide bomber struck at a mosque in another part of Baghdad.
- In Diyala province, six people were killed when gunmen opened fire on a minibus. Women and children were among the victims.
- The US military captured six suspected terrorists in operations in Mosul and Baghdad.

- On October 3, 2008, coalition forces in Baghdad have killed the man believed to be the mastermind of recent bombings in Baghdad. Mahir Ahmad Mahmud Judu al-Zubaydi, also known as Abu Rami and Abu Assad, was believed to be the leader of one of al Qaida in Iraq's Baghdad networks. Intelligence reports led coalition forces to a building in Baghdad's Adhamiya neighbourhood. They surrounded the building and called on the occupants to surrender but were engaged by small arms fire. The forces returned fire and killed two people, Abu Rami and a female.

- Two Blackhawk helicopters crashed while landing in northern Baghdad on October 5, 2008. One Iraqi soldier was killed and two American and two Iraqi soldiers were wounded. Enemy fire is not suspected at this time.

- Poland turned over control of an area south of Baghdad to American troops on Saturday October 4, 2008, making it the latest in a string of countries to leave the dwindling US-led coalition.

- A suicide bomber killed 11 people, including three women and three children, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on October 6, 2008. The suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a house, which was the objective of a raid by American forces in Mosul. The Iraqis said that most of the victims had died from bullet wounds. One body bag contained fragments of human remains, which is consistent with the report that there was a suicide bomber at the house.

- The death toll from a female suicide bomb attack in Baquba, Diyala province, on Wednesday October 8, 2008, rose to nine and 17 others were injured. A female suicide bomber wearing an explosive-belt blew herself up among a crowd of people at the entrance of the city court before midday. Among the deaths were five Iraqi army soldiers, including two officers. The powerful blast also destroyed several nearby civilian cars and buildings in the city.

- A vehicle bomb in Baghdad killed 13 people and injured another 27 on October 11, 2008. The explosion struck a market in Abu Dshir, a mainly Shia enclave in the predominantly Sunni district of Dora, in the south of the Iraqi capital. The blast destroyed several shops and set vehicles ablaze. Women and children were said to be among the dead.

- Iraq, October 12, 2008:
- A bomb planted in a parked car killed nine people and wounded 13 when it exploded in a busy commercial street in the Bayaa district of southern Baghdad.
- Two Iraqi soldiers were killed by a sniper in Mansour district of west-central Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb hit an Iraqi army patrol and wounded an army major in a main street near the town of Sulaiman Pek.
- Five policemen and two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded three policemen and one civilian when it exploded near a police patrol in Qahira district of northern Baghdad
- Iraq deployed around 1,000 police in Christian areas of Mosul as thousands of members of the minority group fled the worst violence against them in five years.

- Eleven persons were killed and 15 others wounded Sunday October 12, 2008 in two separate bomb attacks targeting US and Iraqi troops. A suicide bomber detonated a booby-trapped car parked in a popular marketplace in the Shia neighbourhood of Bayaa, killing nine persons and wounding 13 others. Two policemen died and another two were injured in a car bombing more than one hour later in the Zanjili district.

- Turkish troops and Kurdish separatist rebels clashed on Thursday October 16, 2008. Five soldiers were killed on each side. A spokesman for the rebels said they had shot down a Turkish helicopter on the Turkish side of the border with Iraq on Wednesday. The Turkish military said it crashed because of technical failure, killing a soldier and wounding 15.

- On Tuesday October 28, 2008, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel positions in neighbouring northern Iraq. The jets, backed by artillery fire, pounded "effectively" Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) hideouts in the regions of Hakurk and Avashin-Basyan as well as Zap, a major rebel stronghold.

- Iraq, Monday December 1, 2008:
- At least 32 people have been killed in bomb attacks in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul on December 1, 2008.
- Two bombs exploded near Baghdad's police academy, killing 15 people, many of them reported to be civilians.
- At least another 14 died and 30 were wounded in a suicide car bombing in the centre of Mosul.
- Three people died and a general was seriously wounded in a roadside bomb attack in north Baghdad. General Mudhar al-Mawla is one of the senior officials handling the transfer of US-backed Sunni armed neighbourhood groups to government control.
- 296 civilians were killed in Iraq last month, 58 higher than in October.
- US military deaths continue to decrease with six US troops killed in November compared to 29 in the same month last year.

- Up to 11 people were killed and 45 others wounded in two bomb attacks, including a suicide car bomb, in the province of Nineveh on Tuesday December 2, 2008. The suicide car bomber struck a checkpoint manned by policemen and Iraqi army soldiers in the town of Tal Afer. The attack resulted in the killing of five people, including a policeman, and the wounding of 30 others, including four security members. In separate incident, a pushcart packed with explosives detonated near a school and marketplace in the Baladiyat neighbourhood in northern Mosul, killing six shop owners and stall vendors and wounded 15 people, including some school children.

- Two suspected suicide car bombs have exploded in Falluja killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more on December 4, 2008. The attacks targeted two police positions, both of which were badly damaged in the blasts.

- A suicide bomber killed one policeman and wounded at least nine other people in Kirkuk on Saturday December 7, 2008; the attack targeted police recruits. US military says coalition forces detained 18 suspects over the past two days in operations targeting al-Qaida forces in central and northern Iraq. One of the men is believed to be a leader in al-Qaida's Baghdad network and to have facilitated roadside bombings in the city.

- On December 9, 2008, ten suspected Al-Qaida members have been arrested on charges of organising last week's deadly truck bombings in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah.

- British forces could begin pulling out of Iraq by next March 2009 we were told on December 10, 2008. It still has 4,100 troops in Basra but defence chiefs plan a withdrawal over the next year if Iraqi elections in January pass off peacefully. Almost all British troops should leave Iraq by the middle of next year, with a few hundred possibly remaining to train Iraqi security forces.

- A suicide bomber killed at least 50 people at a restaurant near the city of Kirkuk on December 11, 2008. Around 100 people were also injured in the blast. Kurdish officials were in the restaurant having lunch with Arab tribal leaders at the time. The blast came as Muslims celebrated the Eid-al-Adha holiday.

- Seven members of a family belonging to the minority Yazidi community have been murdered in northern Iraq on December 15, 2008. A mother and father and their four adult children were shot dead when gunmen burst into their home in the town of Sinjar, west of Mosul. The Yazidis are an ancient, religious sect and there have been a number of attacks on them in Iraq in the past. In August 2007, some 400 people were killed in the Sinjar area in multiple bomb blasts targeting Yazidis.

- Iraq, Tuesday December 16, 2007:
- A bomb wounded five people, including three policemen, when it struck a police patrol near Andalus square in central Baghdad.
- The police chief of Rashad town escaped death when a roadside bomb detonated near his convoy and wounded two of his bodyguards.
- A suicide bomber wounded four Iraqi soldiers when he attacked their patrol in Rabea, a town near the Syrian border, on Monday.
- A bomb killed two civilians in al-Shoura town on Monday.

- Remaining coalition forces in Iraq on December 18, 2008:
United States 143,000
Britain 4,100
Romania 600
Australia 300
El Salvador 200
Bulgaria 155
Denmark 55
Lithuania 53
Estonia 38

- Iraq, Monday December 22, 2008:
- A US Marine died on Sunday after being wounded in fighting in Iraq's western Anbar province.
- Gunmen killed two people in a drive-by shooting in eastern Mosul.
- One person was killed in a mortar attack in a residential area in Mosul.

- El Salvador, the only Latin American country with troops in Iraq, said on Tuesday December 23, 2008, it would bring its soldiers home after a UN mandate expires at the end of the year.

- At least 22 people have been killed in a car bomb attack in Baghdad on December 27, 2008.Women and children were reportedly among the dead in the blast, near a bus station in the Shia Kadhimiya district. At least 54 others were injured. The area targeted in the attack is on the way to a major Shia mosque, where crowds often gather on Saturdays.

- Iraq, Sunday December 28, 2008:
- A suicide bomber blew himself up near the convoy of a Sunni party leader during a demonstration Mosul, killing at least three people and wounding 20 others. The suicide bomber on a bicycle blew up his explosive belt at the vehicle of Muhammad Shakir al-Ghannam, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party in the city. Ghannam escaped the attack unhurt because his vehicle was armoured.
- A suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in Fallujah, western Anbar province, killing two people and wounding seven others. A policeman and a civilian were killed and four policemen and three civilians were wounded.

- Iraq, Monday December 29, 2008:
- A roadside bomb killed a US soldier in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City on Sunday.
- An Iraqi was killed when a suicide bomber riding a bicycle blew himself up amid a mass rally against Israel's airstrikes on Gaza.
- In Mosul, 16 people in a crowd of about 1,300 protesters were wounded in an attack in the city centre.

Iraq, Wednesday December 31, 2008:
- Eight people have been killed and about 50 wounded in violence in northern Iraq.
- In the bloodiest incident, a car bomb blast killed four people and wounded about 45 others in a crowded market in Sinjar, west of Mosul.
- In Mosul two bomb blasts, one following the other, killed two people and wounded several others.
- In Mosul gunmen shot and killed a candidate, Mowaffaq al-Hamdani, in the January provincial elections. One policeman was killed and another wounded while chasing the gunmen.
- Two American soldiers were killed in separate combat-related incidents in Iraq, one in Balad, and one in Baghdad.

Iraq, Thursday January 1, 2009:
- A suicide truck bomber killed three policemen and wounded five civilians in Mosul.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman in a drive-by shooting in eastern Mosul.
- Iraqi forces, backed by US soldiers, killed three gunmen on Wednesday after clashes in a village southwest of Kirkuk.
- One militant was killed and another was wounded while the men were planting a roadside bomb in southern Kirkuk on Wednesday.

At least 24 tribal leaders who were meeting at the house of an influential Sunni sheik to discuss national reconciliation efforts were killed and as many as 42 others were wounded Friday January 2, 2009, after a member of the tribe detonated an explosive vest among the guests. Fatalities among the approximately 1,000 members of the Qaraghul tribe gathered for the meeting have ranged as high as 30 killed and 110 wounded. The bombing occurred in the town of Yusufiya.

Iraq, Monday January 5, 2009:
- Two people were killed and one wounded in a drive-by shooting in northern Kirkuk. The victims were drinking alcohol in the street.
- Unknown gunmen entered a pharmacy and killed a student pharmacist in Mosul.
- A car bomb wounded two Iraqi soldiers and four civilians when it struck an Iraqi army patrol in northern Mosul.
- Gunmen, one wearing a medical uniform, shot and seriously wounded a medical student at the hospital where he worked in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed three policemen and wounded six people, including three policemen, when it targeted a police patrol near central Baghdad's National al-Sha'ab stadium.
- Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession, wounding eight people, in central Baghdad's Karrada district.
- Four people were wounded by a roadside bomb in al-Nidhal Street, central Baghdad.
- A car bomb wounded five people in the Abu Dsheer district of southern Baghdad.
- The body of a man was found in eastern Baghdad on Sunday.

On January 7, 2009, Iraqi authorities have closed a major shrine in Baghdad's Kadhimiya area to women amid security concerns as a Shia religious ceremony reaches its climax. Ashura is among the holiest days for Shia Muslims, but women will be barred from the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine. The ban is an extraordinary step, driven by deep concerns over security. The security forces in Iraq lack female members, allowing women to go unsearched and thus able to penetrate security cordons.

Two roadside bombs exploding in quick succession killed five Iraqi soldiers and wounded eight more while they were on patrol in a village near Jalawla, in Iraq's Diyala province on January 7, 2009. One of the dead was an officer.

Iraq, Friday January 9, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed five Iraqi soldiers in Baiji.
- A roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded another six when it exploded in the east Baghdad district of Kamaliya.
- Three rockets wounded four people including two policemen when they landed in central Basra.

Iraqi forces captured the leader of a Sunni Arab militant group blamed for a string of deadly bomb attacks, we were told on Sunday January 11, 2009; he also had links to Iraqi politicians. Thayer Kadhim Abid al-Suraiwi, the commander of Sunni Arab militant group Ansar al-Sunna, was captured last month in west Baghdad. Suraiwi had confessed receiving support from some politicians, but couldn't name any, pending investigation.

A US soldier was killed when a roadside bomb struck a military vehicle in eastern Baghdad on Saturday January 10, 2009. US military deaths in Iraq since March 2003 rose to 4,223.

At least eight people have been killed and more than a dozen injured after a series of bomb blasts ripped through Baghdad on January 12, 2009. Three people, including a policeman died in two blasts in New Baghdad district in the east of the city. In the west of the city, three Iraqi soldiers died when a roadside bomb hit their military convoy. Two civilians were killed in explosions in the central commercial district of Karrada, and near a police checkpoint.

Iraq, Wednesday January 14, 2009:
- A parked car bomb killed a soldier and wounded another three people including a soldier when it exploded on army convoy in western Mosul.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman in eastern Kirkuk.
- A roadside bomb wounded four people in eastern Baghdad's Palestine Street.
- A roadside bomb wounded three civilians when it exploded near a police patrol in the eastern neighbourhood of Zaafaraniya.
- Two militants accidentally triggered a roadside bomb while trying to plant it in northern Mosul, killing one of them and wounding the other.

A roadside bomb exploded Thursday January 15, 2009, near a convoy carrying Abed Theyab, the country's higher education minister; he escaped unhurt. The blast occurred in central Baghdad but at least two civilians were wounded in the attack. Another roadside bomb blast in central Baghdad today killed an Iraqi security official.

An Iraqi police force foiled Tuesday January 20, 2009, a suicide bomb attack on their checkpoint in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province. The policemen opened fire on a suicide bomber who blew up his explosive vest near their checkpoint in the Yarmouk district in western Mosul, wounding three policemen.

Eight members of the same Sunni family have been killed in an attack on their home on January 22, 2009. The dead included six women and a child. The incident happened in a village near the town of Balad Ruz, north of Baghdad, in the province of Diyala.

US troops stormed the house of a former army officer Saturday January 24, 2009, in Hawijah northern Iraq, killing the man and his wife, wounding their 8-year-old daughter and unleashing anger among residents at tactics they deemed excessive. The man, Dhiya Hussein, a former colonel under Saddam Hussein who US authorities said was wanted for running an assassination cell for insurgents in the region. 40 cars carrying hundreds of Iraqi people converged on the family's funeral. The mourners shouted, "Death to America! Death to killers of women!" as they buried the bodies. Gen. Jamal Tahir Bakir, head of the provincial police, said US forces acted on their own in the raid. The US military denied that but said the raid was conducted in cooperation with Iraqi forces. Under a new agreement between the United States and Iraq, which went into effect January 1, all operations must be coordinated with Iraqi authorities.

Two US soldiers died of non-combat causes in separate incidents Saturday January 24, 2009.

Two US military helicopters crashed in northern Iraq on January 26, 2009, killing four soldiers.

Iraq, Tuesday January 27, 2009:
- Police Major General Ahmed al-Attiya, head of Iraqi customs, escaped unharmed after a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy in the Karrada district of central Baghdad. Three of his security guards were wounded in the blast.
- A car bomb killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded three people, including two soldiers, when it targeted an army patrol in eastern Mosul.

Three Iraqi policemen were killed by a bomb on Friday January 30, 2009. The police found a group of explosive devices in different parts of Diwaniyah city. While being transported to a car to the US base, one of the explosive devices exploded at the headquarter of the Diwaniyah police, killing 3 policemen and wounding 16 others.
Gunmen apparently targeting political candidates staged attacks around Iraq, leaving at least three people dead.

An American soldier died of a noncombat-related injury in Kirkuk on February 1, 2009. The latest fatality brings to at least 4,237 the number of US military members who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003.

Iraqi forces said on Tuesday February 3, 2009, they had captured a woman who trained more than 28 female suicide bombers who carried out attacks across Iraq. The woman, Samira Ahmed Jassim, was a member of the Sunni Arab militant Islamist group Ansar al-Sunna and was captured at an undisclosed location two weeks ago.

A suicide bomber killed at least 15 people and wounded 15 others in Diyala province on Thursday February 5, 2009, the bloodiest attack in the country in weeks. A roadside bomb targeted a government convoy in Baghdad that was carrying a deputy education minister. The bomb exploded as the convoy passed through the Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansour. Deputy education minister Muadh al-Jibouri escaped injury.

Iraq, Friday February 6, 2009:
- US and Iraqi security forces killed a civilian and arrested six suspected militants in raids on towns southwest of Kirkuk.
- Iraqi soldiers captured a senior militant of al- Qaida in eastern Mosul, on Thursday. The captured al Qaida operative, an Egyptian national, was considered a leader of the extremist group in Mosul.

A US soldier was killed as a result of a non-combat related injury in Diyala province. The incident took place on Saturday February 7, 2009, near the town of Balad Ruz.

The last Salvadoran troops are home from Iraq on February 8, 2009, ending Latin America's military presence there. Five Salvadoran soldiers were killed and 20 wounded over the country's five-year deployment.

Iraq Monday February 9, 2009:
- Four US soldiers and an interpreter were killed, and other people wounded, including two policemen, when a suicide car bomber targeted a US military patrol in western Mosul. The attack occurred near a police check point.
- Police found the body of a 16 year-old teenage girl from the Yazidi religious minority, slain in northern Mosul.
- A policeman was wounded by a roadside bomb which targeted a police patrol in Kirkuk.
- US forces killed a man on Sunday when he threw a grenade at their patrol in Mosul.
- Seven people were wounded on Sunday when a mortar round landed in a courtyard in the Kadhimiya district of northwestern Baghdad.
- Gunmen in a speeding car shot dead a taxi driver on Sunday in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded two children in eastern Mosul on Sunday, police said.
- A US soldier has died as a result of a non-combat related incident.

At least one Iraqi soldier was killed and five people -including 2 Iraqi soldiers- were injured in a suicide car bomb attack targeted a joint US and Iraqi Army patrol in Mosul on February 11, 2009.

Iraq, Thursday February 12, 2009:
- At least 16 people have been killed in two simultaneous explosions at a bus terminal in Baghdad. Another 40 people were wounded in the blasts, caused by a two bombs near the terminal in the Bayaa neighbourhood in the south west of the city.
- At least two other blasts have been reported on the day in which Shia Muslims mark the Arbain festival.
- A roadside bomb in Waziriya in the north of Baghdad killed one pilgrim and wounded six others as they walked toward the southern holy city of Kerbala. The bomb also injured another six civilians in a minibus.
- Another roadside bomb hit Shia pilgrims in the south of the city at Zafaraniya, killing one and wounding five.
- A soldier was killed and at least one more wounded in a suicide car bomb attack in the northern city of Mosul.
- Two other police were killed and three wounded in a roadside bomb blast near Iskandiriya.

An American soldier has died of non-combat injuries on February 11, 2009.

Attacks targeting Shiite pilgrims bound for the holy city of Karbala rocked Baghdad on Wednesday February 11, 2009, leaving 20 dead and more than 60 injured.

A car bomb killed four policemen and wounded three others on February 12, 2009. The attack targeted a police patrol in the city of Mosul and the wounded included one policeman and two civilians.

At least 32 pilgrims have been killed by a female suicide bomber on February 13, 2009. Sixty-five people were also injured in the attack in Iskandiriya. The blast targeted Shia pilgrims, many of whom have been travelling south to the city of Karbala to take part in an annual religious ceremony.

Iraq, Thursday February 12, 2009:
- At least 13 Iraqis were killed and 39 wounded in a spate of attacks that included the assassination of a Sunni Arab political leader in Mosul. He was one of five Sunni political leaders to be killed since Dec. 31 in or near Mosul.
- A bomb placed inside a propane gas canister in Karbala exploded on a pedestrian-only road teeming with pilgrims not far from Imam Hussein's shrine, killing at least eight people and wounding 35.
- A British soldier died in a "shooting incident" in Basra. The soldier died from a gunshot wound at the Contingency Operating Base.

At least 32 pilgrims have been killed by a female suicide bomber on Friday February 13, 2009. Sixty-five people were also injured in the attack in Iskandiriya. The blast targeted Shia pilgrims, many of whom have been travelling south to the city of Karbala to take part in an annual religious ceremony.

Iraq, Saturday February 14, 2009:
- A roadside bomb killed two civilians and wounded another four people, including one soldier, when it exploded near an army patrol in western Mosul.
- A roadside bomb in eastern Mosul wounded an Iraqi soldier.
- Iraqi police found the bodies of two men just south of Samarra. The men appeared to have been shot.

Iraq, Sunday February 15, 2009:
- Gunmen shot and killed an off-duty Iraqi soldier in western Mosul.
- Gunmen killed a man in western Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed one person and wounded six others in Sadr City, the vast Shiite district. Another police source said one person was killed and 19 were wounded.
- A roadside bomb planted near a home in Sadr City wounded two pedestrians.
- A member of al-Hadba, a mainly Sunni Arab party, was wounded in Mosul by a bomb planted in his car. The politician ran in last month's provincial elections as part of the Hadba list in Nineveh, where the bloc received almost half votes cast.
- Three civilians were wounded when militants threw a hand grenade at a police patrol in central Mosul.
- One policeman was wounded by a roadside bomb in southern Mosul.

An American soldier was killed by a roadside bomb explosion in southern Iraq on Sunday February 15, 2009.

On Sunday February 15, 2009, eight people have died in two roadside bombs targeting Shia pilgrims returning to Baghdad from a religious festival. More than 20 people were wounded when bombs tore through two minibuses in different areas.

At least four people have been killed and 11 others injured after a roadside bomb exploded. The homemade bomb exploded on Monday February 16, 2009, as a minibus passed through al-Hamza square in Sadr City.

A bus filled with Shiite pilgrims collided with a British military vehicle in southern Iraq, killing seven pilgrims and injuring 27 others. The pilgrims were coming from the Shiite holy city of Karbala when the accident occurred late Tuesday February 17, 2009, on the outskirts of Basra. The armoured vehicle was on a routine night patrol and was parked when the bus drove into the back of it.

An American soldier died on Saturday February 21, 2009, during combat patrol near Baghdad. The latest death raised the toll of the U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq to 4,246 since the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq in March 2003.

Iraq, Sunday February 22, 2009:
- Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in western Mosul.
- Four people were wounded by a roadside bomb in the Bayaa neighbourhood of Baghdad.
- An explosion killed five Iraqi soldiers late on Saturday as they entered a deserted home in the town of Baaj.
- Five Iraqi soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in southern Mosul.
- A woman was wounded in central Mosul when gunmen threw several grenades at a police patrol.
- A bomb attached to a vehicle wounded a neighbourhood guard leader in Samarra.
- The head of a local office of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) was targeted by a roadside bomb in central Tikrit. Both Jamal Shaiban and his driver were lightly wounded.
- Two coordinated roadside bombs wounded four people on Saturday in the Mansour district of western Baghdad.

Iraq, Monday February 23, 2009:
- Three people, two of them soldiers, died when gunmen opened fire at an army checkpoint in Ghazaliyah, a mainly Sunni suburb of western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb blast targeting a police patrol near the agriculture ministry in the centre of the city killed two civilians and wounded six people.
- On Sinaa Avenue, a similar device also aimed at a police patrol wounded seven people, three of them policemen.
- In Iskandiriyah, a man was killed and his son wounded in a bombing also targeting police.
- Three U.S. soldiers and their interpreter died as a result of combat operations in Diyala province.
- A car bomb killed one person and wounded another in the village of Mashru'.
- Police found the body of a leader of a neighbourhood guard unit in Jurf al-Sakhar. The man had been handcuffed and shot in the head.
- Seven people were wounded, including three policemen, when a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in the district of Karrada in Baghdad.

A US soldier was killed and three others were wounded in a shooting at an Iraqi police station in Mosul we were told on Wednesday February 25, 2009. One of four soldiers wounded in Tuesday's shooting had died of his wounds, while an Iraqi interpreter was also killed and a second one wounded.

Iraq, Friday February 27, 2009:
- A U.S. soldier died on Thursday from combat wounds received while on patrol in Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb near the home of a police officer wounded one policeman and one civilian on Thursday in central Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded two army officers in western Mosul.

Iraq, Saturday February 28, 2009:
- A civilian and a senior police officer were killed and nine people wounded when a car bomb exploded near restaurants in the west Baghdad district of Mansour.
- Iraqi police arrested 11 suspected militants and confiscated a weapons cache in Udhaim.
- A roadside bomb wounded six people, including three police officers, when it struck a police patrol.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians when it exploded as a police patrol was passing in Baghdad's southern district of Doura.
- Gunmen shot dead two members of a group of U.S. backed neighbourhood patrolmen, and wounded another two in an attack on their checkpoint in Hawija on Friday.

Iraq, Saturday February 28, 2009:
- A U.S. marine died in a non-combat related incident. The soldier, assigned to Multi-National Force-West (MNF-W), died in the province of Anbar.
- A civilian and a senior police officer were killed and nine people wounded when a car bomb exploded near restaurants in the west Baghdad district of Mansour.
- Iraqi police arrested 11 suspected militants and confiscated a weapons cache in Udhaim.
- A roadside bomb wounded six people, including three police officers, when it struck a police patrol in Baghdad's eastern district of Zaafaraniya.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians when it exploded as a police patrol was passing in Baghdad's southern district of Doura.
- Gunmen shot dead two members of a group of U.S. backed neighbourhood patrolmen, and wounded another two in an attack on their checkpoint in Hawija on Friday.

Iraqi security forces have captured 11 members of the country's al-Qaeda network, including the group's self-styled "oil minister". Ali Mahmoud Mohammed and 10 other suspected insurgents were detained on Saturday February 28, 2009, in a village in Diyala province. He is suspected of planning attacks on oil tanker trucks.

Iraq, Wednesday March 4, 2009:
- Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least four people and wounded more than 20 in two separate incidents.
- In the first bombing, at least two people died and 12 others were wounded when a police patrol was hit in the centre of Baghdad. Most of the casualties were reported to be members of the police.
- In the second blast, a car bomb in Mosul killed two policemen and wounded 10 others.

Iraq, Thursday March 5, 2009:
- A car bomb in a popular livestock market killed 12 people and wounded 40 in the Shiite town of Hamza.
- Three people were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol near al-Nisour Square in central Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded Muhsin Taha al-Mismar, the head of the education office of Salahuddin Province, in a town near the city of Tikrit. Mismar's driver was also wounded in the blast.
- Gunmen in a car shot and wounded police Brigadier-General Salam Salman while he was heading to work in central Baghdad.
- A U.S. backed neighbourhood patrol raided a house where it found nine metric tons of explosives and weapons and arrested seven insurgents, near the city of Samarra.

Two combat brigades that had been scheduled to return to Iraq this year will not be replaced reducing American forces by 12,000 and the number of brigades to 12 from 14, we were told on Sunday March 8, 2009, a first step in President Obama's plan to end combat operations there by 2010. In addition, the last 4,000 British troops in Iraq are now due to leave by September.

A suicide bomber killed 28 people and wounded 57 on Sunday March 8, 2009, at the main police academy in Baghdad. Many police and police recruits were among those killed when the bomber, wearing an explosive vest and riding a motorbike also packed with explosives, blew himself up at the back entrance of the police academy.

Iraq, Monday March 9, 2009:
- Two policemen were killed when gunmen opened fire at their checkpoint in western Mosull on Sunday.
- Two members of a U.S. backed neighbourhood patrol were wounded when gunmen opened fire on their checkpoint in the Jihad district of southwestern Baghdad.
- A bomb attached to a car wounded a man and seriously wounded his son in the al-Qadisiya district of southwestern Baghdad.
- Governor of Salahudin province narrowly escaped death and five of his bodyguards were wounded when a roadside bomb struck his convoy just north of Tikrit on Sunday.
- Gunmen shot dead a college student in central Mosul on Sunday.

Iraq, Tuesday March 10, 2009:
- A suicide bomber killed 28 people and wounded 28 others during a tour by tribal leaders and security officials of a market in western Baghdad.
- A parked car bomb killed two civilians and wounded six people, including two policemen in al-Hamdaniya town.
- Gunmen killed a woman when they stormed her house in western Mosul.
- A bomb blast killed a young girl west of Mosul.
- Iraqi police arrested nine suspected militants accused of kidnappings in central Baquba.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in central Baghdad.
- An American marine died in an incident that did not involve combat.

Iraq, Sunday March 15, 2009:
- Police found the bodies of three men with gunshot wounds in the town of Daquq.
- Gunmen in a car opened fire and killed an off-duty lieutenant colonel officer in central Mosul.
- A bomb attached to a car killed Abdul-Latif Salih, a petroleum expert, in the Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad.
- A bomb attached to a car killed the brother of the US-backed neighbourhood patrols leader in northern Baghdad on Saturday. Four members of his family were wounded in the blast.
- Three people were wounded by a roadside bomb on Saturday in the Dawoudi district of western Baghdad.
- Two Iraqi soldiers were wounded on Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in the Mansour district of western Baghdad.

Iraq Monday March 16, 2009:
- One US soldier died from injuries sustained while on patrol in Baghdad.
- A civilian woman was killed and an Iraqi security forces official was wounded on Sunday during a raid by Iraqi and US forces in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb struck a US-backed neighbourhood patrol, wounding three people, including one guard, in the Doura district of southern Baghdad.
- A grenade explosion killed a militant and wounded three civilians in the Mansour district of central Baghdad on Sunday.

- Gunmen threw a grenade inside a car on Sunday evening, seriously wounding a doctor in central Kirkuk.
-Gunmen clashed with Iraqi forces and killed a soldier in western Mosul on Sunday.
- A bomb attached to a car seriously wounded a civilian in northern Mosul on Sunday.

Iraq, Wednesday March 18, 2009:
- Bombs killed a farming couple in northern Iraq. They were killed while working in their orchard in the Diyala province town of Sadiyah. Police said they don't think the bomb was targeting the couple but was left behind by insurgents.
- A suicide car bomber struck a patrol, killing a policeman and wounding two others in Mosul.
- A student in Management and Administration College in Mosul University was shot dead by unknown gunmen.
- An Iraqi soldier was also shot dead in the day when unknown gunmen open fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint in Almuharibin neighborhood in eastern Mosul.
- The Iraqi police shot dead an insurgent in al Mansur neighbourhood in southern Mosul after he threw a grenade at a police patrol.

An airstrike on a militant hideout north of Baghdad killed at least 11 insurgents. On Friday March 20, 2009, ground forces searched the site after the strike and found a cache of weapons, munitions and parts to build improvised explosive devices. It's not immediately known whether any civilians were killed in the strike that an Iraqi security official said occurred Thursday.

A US soldier died of a non-battle related cause. The soldier died on Thursday Match 19, 2009; no details about how and where exactly the incident occurred were given.

Iraq Monday March 23, 2009:
- A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Kurdish funeral, killing 25 people and wounding 45 in Jalawla.
- A bomb at a bus terminal killed nine people and wounded 23 in Abu Ghraib, western Baghdad.
- A suicide bomber killed an off-duty policeman and wounded five civilians in Tal Afar.
- A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up near a police patrol, seriously wounding four policemen including a lieutenant colonel in western Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded two civilians.
- A bomb attached to a car wounded four people, including an official from immigration and Displacement ministry and a Danish national woman who was with him in his vehicle; two other policemen were wounded.

Iraq, Thursday March 26, 2009:
- A blast killed two people and wounded four in northern Baghdad's Shaab district.
- A bomb attached to the car of Qais Safaa, secretary to justice minister, seriously wounded him on Wednesday in Haifa Street, central Baghdad. Another passenger and two passers-by were also wounded in the blast.
- A roadside bomb wounded five civilians on Wednesday when it exploded near a U.S. military patrol in Qahira district, northern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded four civilians on Wednesday when it went off near a U.S. military patrol in Baghdad's northern Adhamiya district.
- A car bomb killed at least 18 people and injured 40 today in the northeastern neighbourhood of Shaab, a mainly Shiite district once controlled by militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr.

Gunmen have shot and killed a Sunni Arab cleric and wounded his son at a town northeast of Baghdad where a suicide bomber struck a Kurdish funeral this week. Sheik Kareem Saleh was walking home with his son Thursday March 26, 2009 when gunmen shot them and fled. Saleh is the imam of a mosque at Jalula in Diyala province.

A car bomb devastated an outdoor market Thursday March 26, 2009, in east Baghdad, killing 26 people and wounding 37 others.

Three people -two civilians and a policeman- were killed in hours of clashes between Iraqi security forces and Sunni Arab neighbourhood guards in Baghdad on Saturday March 28, 2009. At least 15 people were injured. The fire fight with the Sunni Arab fighters, who have been sponsored by the U.S. military to fight al Qaeda, broke out after Iraqi forces arrested their leader, Adil al-Mashhadani, and one of his men on terrorism charges in the central district of al-Fadhil.

Iraq, Monday March 30, 2009:
- A bomb attached to a bicycle killed three labourers and wounded eight others in Baquba.
- A roadside bomb killed one soldier and wounded two others, including a major, when it struck their patrol in western Mosul.

- Gunmen in a moving car shot dead a civilian in western Mosul.

- A bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded four others in western Mosul.

- Gunmen shot dead a senior official in the Mosul branch of Displacement and Migration Office and seriously wounded his aide as they left their office.

- A bomb attached to the car of an intelligence officer in the interior ministry killed him and another passenger and wounded eight passers-by on Sunday in Adhamiya district, northern Baghdad.

- Gunmen in a car shot dead Abdullah Al-Sebaawi, a local leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, on Sunday in the city of Mosul.

On March 30, 2009, security forces in Baghdad have taken control of main roads leading to a district where at least three people were killed on Saturday. Clashes between US and Iraqi forces and a patrol group broke out when a local Sunni militia leader was arrested. On Sunday, troops drove through the Fadil neighbourhood urging fighters to hand over their weapons. US officials are trying to negotiate the release of five Iraqi soldiers taken hostage during the clashes. The arrested man, Adil Mashadani, is the leader of the Fadil Awakening Group -or Sons of Iraq, as the Americans call them.

Iraq, Tuesday March 31, 2009:
- A Sunni Arab official who looks after mosques was killed by a bomb planted under his car in northern Baghdad's Adhamiya district.
- Attackers wounded three civilians when they hurled a hand-grenade at a U.S. military patrol in central Mosul.
- Seven people were killed, including four police officers, and 40 others wounded when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden truck into the compound of a police station in Mosul.
- A sticky bomb attached to a car wounded three police officers in the city of Falluja.
- A mortar round wounded three people in Zaafaraniya district of southeastern Baghdad.
- A mortar round wounded two people in eastern Baghdad.
- A U.S. marine died due to non-combat related incident in western Iraq.

A U.S. aircraft fired on suspected Sunni paramilitary fighters planting a bomb, killing one and wounding two, the U.S. said Friday April 3, 2009. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said he appreciated the contribution of the Sunni paramilitary members in the fight against militants, but warned that he would not tolerate subversives in their ranks. The airstrike was launched Thursday after four men, believed to be members of the Sons of Iraq, were seen planting a roadside bomb near Taji, site of a large U.S. air base about 12 miles north of Baghdad.

An Iraqi police officer was killed and eight policemen wounded on Sunday April 5, 2009, when double bomb explosions struck a police patrol in Fallujah, western province of Anbar. Two police vehicles were badly damaged in the blasts.

Iraq, Sunday April 5, 2009:
- A U.S. soldier died as a result of a combat operation in Diyala province.
- Two houses were blown up in the Abu Ghraib district of west Baghdad, one of which belonged to a leader of the Sunni Arab neighbourhood patrolmen who were instrumental in reducing violence after they turned on al Qaeda. A man was killed and two women wounded.
- Gunmen wounded two Iraqi soldiers in two separate incidences when they hurled hand grenades at their patrols in eastern Mosul.
- Gunmen killed a policeman and wounded another four when they opened fire at a moving police car in central Samarra.
- Two bombs which exploded in succession killed a police officer and wounded another eight in central Falluja.
- Gunmen shot dead a civilian in a bus station in western Mosul.
- Gunmen shot and wounded a civilian in a drive-by shooting in western Mosul.
- Two mortar rounds wounded a policeman when they landed on a police station.
- Gunmen wounded two civilians and a policeman when they shot at a police checkpoint in central Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed a child and wounded a civilian when it exploded in western Mosul.
- Gunmen in a moving car shot and wounded a civilian in the south of Kirkuk.
- A U.S. Marine and a U.S. soldier have also died in two separate non-combat incidents in the last week.

A series of six car bombings in and near Baghdad killed at least 33 people and wounded scores on Monday April 6, 2009. Most of the bombs struck largely Shiite neighbourhoods, but there did not appear to be any other obvious pattern to the attacks. Four of the bombings occurred in or near markets as they filled with morning shoppers. At least four people died in an explosion, including a man selling tea from a sidewalk cart. Fifteen others were wounded.

On Wednesday April 8, 2009, a bomb exploded in a mainly Shia Muslim part of Baghdad, killing seven people and injuring at least 20 others. The blast was in a shopping area in Kadhamiya, 100m from the tomb of Imam Mousa al-Kazim, holy to Shia Muslims. A day earlier, nine people died in another bombing in the area. That followed a series of attacks on Monday killing 34, raising fears that violence levels in Iraq may rise again after reaching their lowest since 2003. 23 people were injured in the blast, which tore through a pedestrian-only area filled with jewellery and clothing shops.
On Thursday April 9, 2009, a bomb exploded in Kadhamiya, a mainly Shia Muslim part of Baghdad, killing seven people and injuring at least 20 others. The blast was in a shopping area near the most important shrine for Shia Muslims in the city. A day earlier, nine people died in another bombing in the area. That followed a series of attacks on Monday killing 34, raising fears that violence levels in Iraq may rise again after reaching their lowest since 2003.

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Friday April 10, 2009 in a suicide bombing in Mosul, the deadliest attack on U.S. troops since March 2008. Two Iraqi National Police officers were also killed. Two American soldiers and 20 Iraqi National Police officers were wounded in the attack at the Iraqi National Police headquarters. Two men suspected of involvement in the attack have been detained. The explosives were loaded in a truck that managed to drive into the main gate of the station.

A suicide bomber attacked a US-allied Sunni militia group on Saturday April 11, 2009, killing at least nine people and wounding 31 others. The bomber struck as militiamen from a local Awakening council were waiting to collect their salaries at an army post in Iskandariya. The bomber was wearing a belt of explosives, which he detonated after mingling with the militiamen.

A U.S. soldier has been killed by an improvised explosive device in Salah-ad Din Province on Sunday April 12, 2009. The soldier died of wounds sustained when the device was detonated. Saturday nine people were killed and about 30 others wounded in a suicide attack on U.S.-allied Sunni militiamen south of Baghdad. The bomber struck as about 200 of the Sunni patrolmen lined up to receive pay checks outside a military building in the town of Jbala.

A U.S. soldier was killed on Monday April 12, 2009, by an armour-piercing bomb near the holy Shiite city of Karbala. The latest death bring the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq to about 4,273 since the Iraq war broke out in March 2003.

A suicide bomber in the town of Habania, Anbar province, attacked an army base, injuring 26 people on April 16, 2009. The defence ministry told the BBC there were no fatalities from the attack, contradicting earlier reports that 16 people had been killed.

At least 10 people were killed and some 20 others were wounded in a suicide car bombing in the city of Kirkuk on Wednesday April 15, 2009 as a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a bus carrying policemen who are task of protecting oil installations. The policemen were travelling home on the bus and were escorted by a police vehicle when the attack occurred.

A suicide bomber disguised in an Iraqi Army uniform blew himself up at Tamouz Air Base in Habbaniya, Anbar Province, on Thursday April 16, 2009, in what Iraqi Army and intelligence officials described as a grave breach of security. Three army officials in Anbar said the attack killed 15 soldiers and officers, contradicting official claims by commanders and the Ministry of Defence that no one died except the bomber. The tally of wounded ranged from as few as 17 to more than 50. It was the second attack on security forces in Iraq in two days, punctuating a spike in bombings that has killed more than 70 people this month, including five American soldiers who died in a suicide truck bombing in northern Iraq last Friday. Officials said the bomber wore a vest or belt of explosives, which he detonated as soldiers and officers of Iraq's First Division gathered near a mess hall for lunch after morning exercises.

A policeman was killed and eight people were injured in two attacks in Mosul on Sunday April 19, 2009. A policeman was killed and three others were injured when a group of seven gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in the al-Shifaa neighbourhood in western Mosul. The policemen traded fire with the attacker, but it was not known whether the gunmen sustained any casualty. In separate incident, a booby-trapped car detonated near passing U.S. patrol in the Faisaliyah neighbourhood in central Mosul. Five people were wounded by the blast, including three were in critical condition adding that he can not confirm whether the U.S. patrol was hit by the blast or escaped it.

Iraq, Monday April 20, 2009:
- A suicide bomber dressed in a police uniform killed four policemen, wounding seven civilians and eight U.S. soldiers near the local government headquarters in Baquba.

- Gunmen killed a man working as a driver for the Planning Ministry in Ghadir district of eastern Baghdad.
- Police said they pulled the body of a man who had been shot in the head and chest from a waterway in Mussayab.
- A microbus and a large truck collided on a highway in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq, killing 16 people and injuring another nine.

Iraq, Wednesday April 22, 2009:
- A suicide bomber killed at least five people inside a mosque in Dhuluiya also wounding 15 people.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in a crowded market wounded eight people, including a policeman, in central Mosul.
- A Kurdish Peshmerga leader escaped death when a bomb in a parked car exploded near his convoy in the small town of Zummar, northwest of Mosul. No casualties were reported.
- Also in Zummar, a suicide car bomber attacked a security checkpoint run by Kurdish Peshmerga forces. One of the Kurdish soldiers opened fire at the car and it detonated before reaching its target.
- Gunmen in a car kidnapped a judge while he was heading to his office in southwestern Kirkuk.
- A suicide car bomber on Tuesday attacked a military checkpoint and seriously wounded two soldiers in eastern Mosul.
- A bomb on Tuesday killed a policeman and wounded three others when it struck their patrol in the Amiriya district of western Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday April 23, 2009:
- Suicide bomb blasts tore through crowds waiting for food aid in central Baghdad and inside a roadside restaurant filled with Iranian pilgrims killing at least 78 people in Iraq's deadliest day in more than a year.
- The toll -at least 31 dead in Baghdad and 47 to the north in Diyala province- follows a series of high-profile attacks this month blamed on Sunni insurgents.
- Iraqi authorities say they have struck back at the heart of the insurgency: claiming they arrested one of the most wanted leaders of a militant network linked to al-Qaida, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, and the head of the Islamic State of Iraq.

At least 60 people have been killed and about 125 injured in a double suicide bombing at the most important Shia shrine in Baghdad on April 24, 2009. The attack happened at the Imam Moussa al-Khadim shrine in the Kadhimiya area as people gathered for Friday prayers. It comes a day after nearly 80 people were killed in two separate suicide attacks in Baghdad and Baquba.

Two female suicide bombers attacked Baghdad's main Shia shrine on Friday April 24, 2009, killing at least 60 people and injuring 125 others. The attack happened at the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in the Kadhimiya area as people gathered for Friday prayers. Many victims in Baquba and in Baghdad were Iranian pilgrims and the violence was condemned in Tehran.

Iraq Sunday April 26, 2009:
- US troops shot dead two member of an Iraqi family and detained four others in a raid on their house in the southern town of al-Kut. The incident provoked a protest among the local.
- A man arrested in Baghdad last week is a top figure in the al-Qaeda-related insurgency. Abu Omar al-Baghdadi had been tracked for more than two months by Iraqi security services.

A US raid in the south of Iraq, in which two people died, was a crime and those responsible should be tried, said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki on April 27, 2009. He added the raid in the town of Kut was a breach of the security pact governing US military actions in the country. The US replied the raid was carried out in full agreement with the Iraqis.

Iraq, Monday April 27, 2009:
- Major General Adel Dahaam, police chief of the southern city of Basra, was unharmed in a roadside bomb attack in Salman Pak. Dahaam was off-duty at the time.
- A roadside bomb wounded two Iraqi soldiers and one civilian in northern Mosul.
- Police has found the body of a man who had been shot in the head and chest in western Mosul.
- Seven suspected al Qaeda insurgents were killed in clashes with U.S. forces in a largely Sunni Arab province.

Two people were shot dead and another wounded when US forces opened fire on attackers near Kirkuk on Wednesday April 29, 2009. The attack on a joint US and Iraqi police patrol occurred in Riyadh. Reports from the Iraqi police said that two civilians, a woman and a man, had been killed. Another man was wounded. However, a statement from the US military said that two combatants were killed and another was injured in the incident.

Three car bombs exploded in the Shia district of Sadr City in Baghdad, killing at least 41 people. Local hospitals said more than 70 people were wounded in the blasts, which occurred in busy markets in the impoverished area.

Following the murders of three Christians on April 26, 2009, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Kirkuk vowed that the Christian community will remain in the nation despite persecution. "We will not leave Iraq. We have a mission to stay here. We have to give witness to our Christian values," Archbishop Louis Sako said. "Even if they try to kill us we will stay."

Two American Marines and a sailor were killed during a military operation in Anbar province where combat operations and violence have declined dramatically. The three Americans died on Thursday April 30, 2009 "while conducting combat operations against enemy forces".

On Wednesday May 6, 2009, a car bomb ripped through the Al-Rasheed vegetable market just south of the Dora district in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and wounding 37. A man drove a pick-up truck in to the Rasheed, one of Baghdad's largest co-operative produce markets, parked the vehicle and left. Police had found another bomb outside the market gate and a disposal crew had been called in to defuse it. Women were among the injured.

Iraq Saturday May 9, 2009:
- Gunmen shot dead an off-duty policeman and wounded three civilians at a market in central Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded one civilian in eastern Mosul.
- Gunmen shot dead an off-duty high-ranking police officer in a shop in the town of Zubair.
- On Thursday, U.S. forces detained a person in Baghdad believed to be linked to the downing of a helicopter in 2007 and suspected to be active in al Qaeda.

Iraq Sunday May 10, 2009:
- A bomb attack narrowly missed Major-General Jaafar al-Khefaji, the chief of the Iraqi traffic police, near al-Hurriya Square in central Baghdad. Three civilians were wounded in the blast.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded one policeman in northern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. patrol wounded one civilian in western Mosul
- A leading figure in a US-allied Sunni militia has been killed Saturday by a roadside bomb in Taji. Abed al-Khairiya was a senior member of the militia, or Awakening Council, in the town.

Iraq, Monday May 11, 2009:
- One of Baghdad's most senior police chiefs was assassinated in a drive-by shooting. Gunmen shot dead the head of police operations, Abdul Hussein Mohsen al-Kadhemi, as he was driving in a central Baghdad district.
- In Mosul one policeman was killed and another was wounded when their patrol came under attack by gunmen.
- On Saturday, an Iraqi police general was killed on the street near the southern oil hub of Basra.

A suicide bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into an Iraqi police patrol in Kirkuk, killing five police officers and one civilian. Tuesday May 12, 2009,'s bombing wounded at least 14 people, including officers and civilians.

Iraq Wednesday May 13, 2009:
- A roadside bomb killed two Iraqi soldiers and wounded three others when it targeted an army patrol in the city of Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb wounded three Iraq policemen when it targeted their patrol in southern Kirkuk.
- One civilian was wounded when a mortar landed near his home in central Mosul.
- Gunmen using silenced guns killed a government employee at Iraq's Integrity Commission, the government anti-corruption office, in northern Baghdad's Shaab district.
- A parked car bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded five people, including one soldier, in eastern Mosul.
- A suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into a police patrol in central Kirkuk, on Tuesday, killing five policemen and wounding 11 other people.
- The Iraqi army said it freed a doctor and his daughter and arrested three kidnappers in Ghazaliya district, western Baghdad on Tuesday.
- Gunmen killed a soldier at an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Mosul on Tuesday.

Iraq Saturday May 16, 2009:
- A U.S. soldier was killed in combat in southern Iraq.
- U.S. and Iraqi forces have arrested three people in northwestern Iraq believed to be linked to a man known as Abu Khalaf, suspected by U.S. officials of funnelling money, weapons and insurgents from Syria to al Qaeda in Iraq.
- U.S. troops shot and wounded a bystander when they fired a warning shot at an approaching car in Jalawla.
- A roadside bomb killed one soldier and wounded two people in southern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded three others in the Ghadir district of eastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded seven people, including two policemen, in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad.
- Militants attacked a checkpoint in central Samarra wounding two policemen and one member of a local government-backed militia.
- A rocket attack killed a child and wounded three members of the child's family in the Sadr city area of northeastern Baghdad.
- Police arrested three suspects in the kidnapping of a relative of Essam Ayid, an Arab member of the Nineveh provincial council. Ayid's relative was kidnapped on Thursday in western Mosul.

Iraq, Sunday May 17, 2009:
- A roadside bomb wounded an Iraqi soldier near an Iraqi base in northern Basra.
- A suicide car bomb killed one policeman and wounded three civilian in central Mosul.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty prison official.
- Police found the body of a man, who had been shot in the head and chest, in a river in northern Samarra.
- U.S. forces wounded one person on Saturday when they fired shots to disable a vehicle in Hilla.
- Police found the decapitated body of a man in northern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded three people on Saturday in the Jihad district of southwestern Baghdad.
- Iraqi and U.S. forces detained four suspected insurgents in Diyala Province on May 11.
- Two Iraqi policemen were killed and three others were wounded on Sunday in two separate attacks, including a car bombing, in Mosul. One officer was killed in a suicide car bomb attack on their patrol. Three of his colleagues were wounded. Another policeman was shot dead in his car by gunmen.

At least 23 people, including three US soldiers, have been killed in a series of deadly bombings in Baghdad and Kirkuk on May 21, 2009. In the deadliest attack, a suicide bomber struck at a market in Baghdad's Dora district, killing 12 people, including three US soldiers. The Kirkuk blast targeted members of the Awakening Council, a US-allied Sunni militia, killing eight people.

Iraq, Saturday May 23, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting a U.S army patrol wounded one soldier and damaged a vehicle in northern Baghdad's Husseiniya district.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded three policemen in central Mosul.
- A Katyusha rocket blasted Baghdad's fortified government and military Green Zone compound overnight, killing a civilian working for the U.S. Department of Defence.
- The body of a U.S. civilian was found in the Green Zone on Friday.
- A U.S. soldier died of a non-combat related cause on Friday.

A woman suspected of training other women to be suicide bombers has been arrested in Baghdad we were told on Sunday May 24, 2009.

Insurgents killed at least 22 people in eight attacks in Mosul and Falluja on Sunday May 24, 2009, using roadside bombs, drive-by shootings, suicide bombers and execution-style killings. One of the dead was a 2-month-old whose house in Falluja was hit by a hand grenade, which also wounded his parents and another child. In Mosul, insurgents surrounded a home where two officers of the National Police lived, shot it up, then entered and killed them.

Former Illinois Commerce Commission Chairman Terry Barnich was killed Monday May 25, 2009, by a roadside bomb while travelling in a U.S. convoy in western Iraq. The blast also killed a U.S. soldier and a civilian contractor working for the Defence Department. Two others were wounded. Barnich, 56, was hired in 2007 as deputy director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad. He was returning from an inspection of a U.S.-government funded wastewater treatment plant under construction in Fallujah.

Iraq, Tuesday May 26, 2009:
- A bomb killed three people and wounded another two when it struck a convoy carrying U.S. officials and civilian contractors visiting a construction site in Falluja on Monday.
- Iraqi police captured the brother of Omar al-Baghdadi, the alleged head of the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaeda linked group, in Jalawla. A man police say is Baghdadi is currently also in detention, though his identity is unverified.
- A roadside bomb wounded two Iraqi army officers and a soldier when it struck their convoy in southern Kirkuk.
- Gunmen shot dead a taxi-driver in front of his house in southeastern Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed three members of a family during a raid on their house in a village southwest of Kirkuk.

At least four people were killed when a bomb attached to a vehicle exploded in Diyala province on Friday May 29, 2009. The attack took place in the town of Khalis, north of Baghdad. In Diyala, a bomb planted on a motorcycle in the town of Baqouba killed the leader of a government-backed Sunni militia. At least three other people were wounded in that blast.

Iraq Friday May 29, 2009:
- A U.S soldier died after a grenade blew up near a patrol in Nineveh province, northern Iraq. Iraqi police said one civilian was wounded in the attack.
- A bomb attached to a minibus killed six civilians in Khalis.
- A bomb attached to a car in Khalis killed one person and wounded three others.
- Gunmen stormed a family home and shot dead a woman and her daughter on Thursday in eastern Mosul.
- Police on Thursday said they found the body of man in Telkeif, north of Mosul, adding that the man had been dead for at least a few days.
- Gunmen shot and killed a woman on Thursday in northern Mosul.
- A joint Iraqi army and U.S military forces operation resulted in the detention of 20 suspected insurgents on Thursday in southwest Kirkuk.

A bomb exploded inside a bus station north of Baghdad on Friday May 29, 2009, killing at least four people and wounding 10. A US soldier also was killed Friday in a grenade attack in the northern province of Ninevah, raising to at least 22 the number of American troop deaths so far in May. That's the deadliest month for US forces in Iraq since September, when 25 died. At least 4,303 members of the US military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Iraq, Saturday May 31, 2009:
- A sticky bomb attached to a car wounded two sports journalists in a northern part of Mosul.
- The Iraqi army arrested a suspected local leader in the cities of Kirkuk and Tikrit, of al-Qaeda linked group Ansar al-Sunna, during a military operation near Kirkuk. Several members of the group were also arrested.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded a soldier and a civilian in eastern Mosul. An off-duty traffic policeman was killed when soldiers started firing randomly at perceived threats after the explosion.
- A roadside bomb struck a car and killed the driver and wounded three others near a police station in Haswa.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed two policemen and wounded four in the city of Samarra.
- A roadside bomb wounded three civilians in eastern Mosul.
- A sticky bomb attached to a truck killed its driver in the town of Iskandariya.

An early-morning explosion at a Baghdad vegetable market on June 1, 2009, killed four people and wounded 13 in the second attack at the same market in just over two weeks.

Dozens of suspected militants were rounded up in weekend operations we were told on Tuesday June 2, 2009. The 45 suspects were detained Sunday in Kirkuk. One suspected terror cell leader was killed and another wounded during the action.

Iraq, Thursday June 4, 2009:
- A bomb planted in a cafe in a mostly Shiite district of southwest Baghdad killed nine people and wounded 31 others.
- Gunmen killed one policeman and wounded another in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded three people when it exploded in front of a greengrocer's shop in Mussayab.
- Gunmen in a car shot and killed a man in Shawmli, south of Hilla.
- A roadside bomb wounded three people when it exploded in the south Baghdad district of Doura.
- A US soldier died on Tuesday of combat-related wounds after a roadside bomb struck his patrol in eastern Baghdad.
- Three security company workers were killed and several wounded in a car bomb attack in Mosul. The explosive-laden vehicle was driven by a suicide bomber into the company headquarters.

Two US soldiers were killed in separate incidents we were told on Saturday June 6, 2009. A soldier died late on Thursday from wounds received during a grenade attack on his patrol in the province of Diyala. In a separate incident, a marine assigned to Multi-National Force died as the result of a non-combat related incident on Friday. About 4,311 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the outbreak of Iraq war in March 2003.

Iraqi security forces have arrested five Americans in connection with the killing of a contractor last month in Baghdad's Green Zone we were told on Sunday June 7, 2009. It could be the first case in which Americans face local justice under a security pact signed last year.

A bomb tore through a minibus during morning rush hour Monday June 8, 2009, in a mainly Shiite area in Baghdad, killing at least seven people and wounding 24. The bomb was attached to the minibus in the southern area of Abu Dshir, a Shiite enclave in the mainly Sunni neighbourhood of Dora.

On June 10, 2009, a rare car bomb in Al Batha near Nasiriya killed at least 28 people - and 70 wounded- at an outdoor market, provoking a near riot among survivors who began stoning the police, blaming them for lax security.

Two people were killed and six others were injured in two separate incidents near Baghdad on June 10, 2009. In the first incident two bodyguards of the leader of a faction that is battling al-Qaeda were shot to death, while the leader himself was wounded. In the second incident, five people were injured when a motorcycle laden with explosives was detonated near a police convoy in Fallujah.

Iraq, Thursday June 11, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeted a US military patrol, wounding one soldier and one Iraqi civilian, in the Talbiya area of east Baghdad. Iraqi police said one civilian was killed and four wounded in the blast.
- A sticky bomb attached to a car wounded the driver and two passers-by in the Mansour district of western Baghdad.
- Four people were wounded by a roadside bomb near al-Mustansiriya Square in northern Baghdad.
- A car bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol and wounded three soldiers and one civilian in southern Mosul.

A senior Sunni lawmaker was shot dead outside a mosque June 12 2009, after Friday prayers in western Baghdad. Harith al-Obeidi, who led the main Sunni bloc in parliament, was killed as he was walking from the al-Shawaf mosque to his nearby home in Yarmouk.

An American soldier was killed in a roadside bomb explosion during combat operations on Friday June 12, 2009.

Iraq Monday June 15, 2009:
- Four people were killed and nine wounded in violence in and around the Iraqi capital.
- In one attack near Tarmiyah, a Sunni district north of Baghdad, an anti-tank rocket was fired at a convoy carrying the leader of a local militia opposed to Al-Qaeda.
- Two bodyguards were killed and three were wounded, but the militia chief Sheikh Jassem al-Mashahadani emerged unscathed.
- A magnetic bomb attached to a bus blew up in a bus station in Baghdad's majority Shiite district of Al-Shaab, killing one person and wounding five.
- Another magnetic bomb clamped on a civilian car exploded and killed a woman and wounded another person, an official said.

A US soldier was killed and six people were wounded in violence across Iraq on Tuesday June 16, 2009, two weeks before the scheduled American pullout from the country's urban centres. The soldier was killed by an improvised explosive device outside Samawa.

Iraq, Thursday June 18, 2009:
- Gunmen in a speeding car shot dead a civilian in northern Mosul.
- A soldier accidentally killed another soldier when his rifle went off by mistake in eastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians on Wednesday when it targeted a police patrol in central Kirkuk.

Iraq, Friday June 19, 2009:
- Gunmen killed Izzat Abdulla, coach of Iraq's national karate team, in east Mosul.
- Gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army patrol, killing one solider and one bystander in east Mosul on Thursday.
- Gunmen killed a civilian in west Mosul on Thursday.

Iraq, Saturday June 20, 2009:
- A suicide truck bomb killed at least 34 people and wounded about 150 others outside a mosque near Kirkuk. Dozens of homes in the area were flattened by the blast.
- Iraqi security forces backed by coalition forces killed a suspected militant in Basra.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty policeman and wounded his mother when they opened fire on his car in western Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police convoy wounded two civilians in northern Kirkuk.
- Two mortar rounds killed a man and wounded eight other people, including two police officers, when they landed on a house and a police station in southern Ramadi.
- Attackers stabbed to death a policeman in central Kirkuk late on Friday.
- Iraqi security forces found the bodies of four men with gunshot wounds on Thursday in a house under construction in Baghdad's eastern Sadr City district.

The death toll from Iraq's deadliest bombing in more than a year rose to 73 we were told on Sunday June 21, 2009, a day after a suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives outside a mosque in the north of the country. More than half of the victims were pulled from the rubble and dust of around 70 clay brick homes that were flattened in the explosion near the northern city of Kirkuk.

Iraq Monday June 22, 2009:
- Bombs killed at least 15 people across Iraq two days after a suicide truck bomb in the north of the country killed 73 people.
- A roadside bomb killed three people and wounded 30 in a market in north Baghdad's Shaab district.
- A parked car bomb killed five people in Karrada in central Baghdad.
- Another roadside bomb tore through a minibus carrying high school students in Sadr City in the east of the capital, killing three and wounding 12.
- A suicide bomber detonated himself outside the Falluja municipal council building in western Iraq, killing one person and wounding five.
- A roadside bomb also killed three soldiers near the northern town of Khanaqin.

Bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq have killed at least 29 people and wounded 75 on Tuesday June 23, 2009. A roadside bomb killed four people in a marketplace in Baghdad's Husseiniya district. Other victims included three students on their way to sit exams and a child of four. The attacks come days before US troops are scheduled to pull out of Iraq's towns and cities.

Iraq, Wednesday June 24, 2009:
- Some seventeen people have been killed and 48 others sustained wounds in the latest series of terrorist attacks across war-battered Iraq.
- Two security agents lost their lives on Monday as unidentified assailants opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint in al-Jazaer neighbourhood. The gunmen fled the scene unscathed after the deadly incident.
- In Mosul two other Iraqi troopers together with an insurgent were killed as they engaged in a gun battle on Monday in the al-Nabi Shet district of central Mosul. Another gunman was also shot and injured in the event.
- An Iraqi civilian was gunned down by militants during the course of a shootout in al-Baladiya neighbourhood, in central Mosul.
- At least four people were killed and 20 others were wounded when an improvised explosive device (IED) was detonated in al-Husseiniya al-Aoula district of northeastern Baghdad.
- A suicide bomb blast claimed three other civilians and inflicted injuries upon seven others in Abu Ghraib area.
- A car bomb went off in Saba Qosoor district of downtown Baghdad, killing a civilian and injuring five others.
- Three civilians were killed and 15 others were wounded in two separate IED blasts in al-Hubaibiya district of eastern Baghdad.

Nearly 70 people have been killed by a bomb blast in the eastern Sadr City area of Baghdad on Thursday June 25, 2009. The device went off in a market place in the predominantly Shia area of the Iraqi capital. More than 130 people have been injured in the blast, one of the worst in Iraq this year. It comes less than a week before US soldiers pull out of all Iraqi cities, a move the US said would not be affected by a recent surge in violence.

Iraq, Thursday June 25, 2009:
- Violence in Iraq left nine people dead and dozens wounded, including several US troops.
- The assaults followed a major blast that killed 72 people and injured about 135 others at a Baghdad market Wednesday, and a deadly blast in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday that killed 80 people.
- After a market attack in Baghdad's Sadr City on Wednesday, eight strikes hit Baghdad and one hit the northern city of Mosul between Wednesday night and Thursday night.
- In Mosul, at least one Iraqi soldier was killed and 15 wounded in a car bombing. The parked car bomb that detonated in al-Arabi neighbourhood in northern Mosul was near one of the city's main entry checkpoints.
- Also in Mosul, gunmen shot dead a young boy in the al-Muharibeen neighbourhood in the northern part of the city.
- In Baghdad, at least five people were killed and 30 wounded when a parked car bomb detonated in a bus station in a predominantly Shiite area of the southwestern part of the city.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a bus station and an outdoor market in a neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad killing two people and wounding 28.
- Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded during an Iraqi police foot patrol in Baladiya square in eastern Baghdad, killing an Iraqi police officer and wounding three.
- Nine US-led coalition personnel were struck by two roadside bombs in eastern Baghdad.
- At least two civilians were wounded when a bomb attached to a minibus blew up in a Shiite area of southwestern Baghdad.
- Three mortar rounds smashed into buildings on a street in central Baghdad, wounding two people.
- A mortar round struck a commercial part of central Baghdad, wounding four civilians.

At least 13 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a bomb attack in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad on June 26, 2009. The bomb, planted on a motorbike at a motorcycle market in the city centre, was the latest in a recent series of major attacks on civilian targets.

A car bomb went off near a Kurdish party's office in the northern province of Nineveh on Monday June 29, 2009, killing eight people and wounding five others. The booby-trapped car was parked near the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the town of Hamdaniyah. The blast occurred when security members came to check the unidentified car. It was immediately detonated when security members approached it, killing five policemen, a Kurdish guard and two civilians. Security members were also among the five wounded people.

Four US soldiers were killed in combat shortly before the American military completed a withdrawal from Iraq's cities, and the prime minister assured Iraqis that government forces taking control of urban areas on Tuesday June 30, 2009, were more than capable of protecting the country.

A car bombing devastated a food market in the city of Kirkuk, killing at least 33 people and wounding 90. The attack on July 1, 2009, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaida in Iraq, was the second in the Kirkuk area since a truck bombing killed 82 people on June 20.

Iraq, Thursday July 2, 2009:
- Bombings killed at least three people in the Baghdad area in the first significant violence since Iraqi forces assumed responsibility for securing cities after the withdrawal of US combat troops from urban areas earlier this week.
- A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army patrol, killing an Iraqi soldier and wounding seven other people.
- A car bomb later exploded near a market on the highway south of Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding 15.
- Two more people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near the Sarrafiyah Bridge that crosses the Tigris River in central Baghdad.

Iraq, Saturday July 4, 2009:
- Iraqi army forces arrested a man suspected of being behind two vehicle bombs in Kirkuk that killed more than 100 people between them. He was seized in Hawija.
- Gunmen killed off duty policeman in central Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed off duty Peshmerga soldier in northern Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed a man as he left a mosque in eastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting Iraqi police patrol wounded one civilian in central Mosul.

A car bomb wounded 10 people in Mosul Monday July 6, 2009, and gunmen shot and wounded a traffic policeman in further violence in the northern Iraqi city after US troops withdrew from urban centres.

Iraq, Tuesday July 7, 2009:
- Gunmen shot dead an Iraqi soldier near a checkpoint and wounded two civilians in Mosul.
- A car bomb killed one civilian on Monday and wounded 13 people, including three policemen, in Mosul.
- Armed men killed two policemen on Monday at a checkpoint in Mosul.
- Gunmen killed a civilian on Monday in a health clinic in Mosul.
- Gunmen killed a policeman in a drive-by shooting in Mosul. Relatives of the policeman returned fire at the attackers and killed one of them.

A double suicide-bomb attack killed at least 34 people and wounded 70 others in Tall Afar, northern Iraq on Thursday July 9, 2009. The first attacker blew himself up near a police officer outside the victim's home, and as people gathered, the second bomber set off his explosives as well.

An American soldier shot and killed a truck driver who did not respond to warnings to stop on a highway north of Baghdad. The incident happened on Friday July 10, 2009, when the truck approached a US logistics convoy that had stopped because one of its vehicles had broken down.

On Saturday July 11, 2009, a car bomb has killed four people and injured 40 at a market on the outskirts of Mosul. All of those killed or injured in the blast in Kukchali, a mixed Sunni-Shia area to the east of Mosul, are believed to be civilians.

At least 6 people were killed and 67 others wounded Saturday July 11, 2009, in bombings in Baghdad and Mosul. The attack in Mosul killed at least 4 and wounded 35 and involved a car bomb on a street in the neighbourhood of Kokjali.

Iraq, Tuesday July 14, 2009:
- Five people including three police officers were killed in attacks across Iraq.
- In Baghdad, two policemen were shot dead by gunmen as they patrolled in the centre of the capital. One gunman was also killed in the attack.
- In Mosul an officer was killed and three others injured by a roadside bomb targeting their patrol in the centre of the city.
- Also in Mosul in a separate incident, a civilian was killed by armed men.
- In a town east of Baquba, north of Baghdad, a police officer's nephew was kidnapped and murdered.

A suicide car bomb killed six people and wounded 16 others Wednesday July 15, 2009, in Iraq's western Anbar province. Two traffic police were among those killed in the attack near an Iraqi police checkpoint in Ramadi.
Iraq, Thursday July 16, 2008:
- A suicide bomber on Wednesday killed six people, including an Iraqi policeman, in an attack on security forces in Anbar province. The attack in Ramadi was carried out by a suicide bomber driving a minibus who struck a checkpoint of Iraqi soldiers and police, killing a policeman and five civilians. The attack injured 19 others, including five police.
- On Wednesday a bomb in Baghdad's Sadr City district killed five people and injured another 23, all of them men. The bomb was hidden in a plastic bag and exploded close to a big tent that was being used for the funeral service of the wife of a Shiite tribal leader.
- Also Wednesday evening, a bomb went off in the mostly Shiite district of Karradah in central Baghdad, wounding nine civilians.
- In Baghdad, dozens of mourners, including senior officials from the Interior Ministry, attended the funeral of the two traffic policemen who were killed in eastern Baghdad. Fellow traffic police motorcyclists led the funeral procession, which included the slain officers' wooden caskets wrapped in Iraqi flags. The officers, Jassim Shuwaili, 24, and Hussein Qassim, 19, were chasing two gunmen in a speeding car after they refused to stop at a checkpoint near Baghdad's fortified Green Zone. One of the gunmen, who was later arrested, opened fire and killed the two motorcycle policemen.

Iraq, Friday July 17, 2009:
- A roadside bomb wounded four Shiite pilgrims near Baghdad's southern district of Doura. The pilgrims were heading to the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in north Baghdad.
- Gunmen in a car wounded a civilian when they opened fire on people in a village southeast of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen wounded a civilian when they shot at him in central Kirkuk.
- Three U.S. soldiers were killed by mortar or rocket fire in Basra.
- A bomb attached to a police car wounded a policeman in the town of Shirqat.
- A bomb planted in the house of a police captain killed two children and wounded 11 other members of the same family in the city of Falluja.
- A roadside bomb in southeast Baghdad's Zaafaraniya district targeting Shiite pilgrims on their way to a shrine killed two people and wounded 12 others.

On July 17, 2009, a helicopter contracted to the U.S. State Department crashed on the Butler Range Complex, a U.S. military training ground just east of Baghdad killing two crew members and injuring two other people on board, the U.S. embassy said on Saturday.

Five people were killed, including the son of a senior Sunni Arab militiaman, in two attacks on Saturday July 18, 2009. A roadside bomb in Al-Karma, 15 kilometres east of Fallujah, killed three people and wounded six.Those killed were the son of Naeem Saleh al-Halbusi, the deputy chief of a Sunni militia opposed to Al-Qaeda, and two bodyguards. Halbusi was injured in the attack. A second roadside bomb in the town killed two people and wounded two. But Saturday's attacks follow a bombing a day earlier at the Fallujah home of a police lieutenant colonel and ex-Sahwa leader in which his two sons were killed and six people wounded.

Iraq, Sunday July 19, 2009:
- A U.S. soldier was killed in combat in Iraq's western Anbar province.
- A bomb killed Mahmoud Abdullah, a senior anti-insurgent militia leader, in Madaen after it was attached to his car. The bomb also wounded Abdullah's guards.
- A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded another when an army patrol passed by in Abu Ghraib town. The attack occurred close to an Iraqi police checkpoint and wounded two policemen as well.
- Gunmen shot dead a handicapped man in western Mosul on Saturday.
- A joint Iraqi-U.S. force shot and wounded a gunman who had hurled a hand grenade at their patrol in western Mosul on Saturday. The attack did not harm the soldiers.

Two people have been killed in bomb attacks in Mr Sadr's stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad on July 21, 2009, and three people died in two car bombings in Ramadi. The two car bombs went off outside a restaurant. Those who died in Baghdad were casual labourers. Thirty people were also wounded.

Five Iranians were killed in the early hours of Wednesday July 22, 2009, when gunmen opened fire on a convoy buses taking pilgrims to Shiite Muslim holy sites in Iraq. The shooting took place on a highway connecting the Iranian border to Baghdad and southern Iraq, about 45 km northeast of the provincial capital Baquba.

American soldiers have killed two people who attempted to throw grenades at a convoy west of Baghdad. In addition one civilian was killed and four were wounded during the attack Tuesday July 21, 2009, on the American convoy in Abu Ghraib. An Iraqi police official gives a conflicting account of casualties. He says four civilians -a boy and three bus drivers- were killed when U.S. forces opened fire on the attackers near a bus station.

Bombs killed 19 people and wounded 80 across Iraq in a flurry of attacks Tuesday July 21, 2009, three weeks after the U.S. military completed its withdrawal from the cities. At least six explosions struck both Shiite and Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad. The Baghdad attacks, including two in the Sadr City district, resulted in 14 deaths.

Iraq, Thursday July 23, 2009:
- A bomb wounded three members of a family that, displaced by violence, was returning to their home in the Ghazaliya area of western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol killed one civilian and wounded two others in Yusufiya, 20 km. The U.S. military said it had no reports of such an attack on a U.S. patrol in that area.
- An insurgent threw a hand grenade at a U.S.-Iraqi patrol in Kirkuk wounding three U.S. soldiers, one Iraqi interpreter and one Iraqi civilian.
- A roadside bomb wounded one policeman and five civilians in east Baghdad's New Baghdad district on Wednesday.
- U.S. soldiers killed two Iraqi insurgents on Tuesday when their convoy was attacked in Abu Ghraib in Baghdad's western outskirts. One civilian was killed and four wounded in an ensuing fire fight. It was unclear who caused the civilian casualties. An Iraqi police source said one civilian was killed and three wounded when U.S. troops opened fire after being hit by a roadside bomb.

Four people were killed and 22 wounded in a car bomb blast on Saturday July 25, 2009, outside the offices of a Sunni Arab party in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah. Security forces had locked down the entire city earlier, preventing individuals and vehicles from entering or exiting in the aftermath of the attack, but later limited that to just the bomb area. All of the casualties appeared to be civilians.

Iraq, Sunday July 26, 2009:
- A roadside bomb wounded one policeman in Mosul.
- An attacker threw a grenade at an Iraqi police patrol, wounding one policeman in central Mosul.
- Gunmen stormed a factory and killed a Christian worker in northern Mosul.
- Gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi police checkpoint killing three policemen and one civilian in Abu Ghraib in Baghdad's western outskirts.
- Gunmen opened fire on a money exchange office, killing three people and wounding five others in central Baghdad's Karrada district.

A suicide bomber killed at least four people and wounded nine others outside a funeral tent in western Iraq on Sunday July 26, 2009. The bomber detonated an explosive vest outside the funeral near Falluja for a police officer who was killed in another bomb attack. A day earlier, a car bomb outside a political party's offices in Falluja killed five people and wounded 21 others.
Two people were killed Monday July 27, 2009, in bombings across Iraq targeting police officers, considered the weakest link among the Iraqi security forces that have taken the lead from withdrawing American forces. The bombings primarily targeted police vehicles in Baghdad, western Fallujah and northern Mosul.

Iraq, Tuesday July 28, 2009:
- A bomb planted in a cafe killed two people and wounded 15 others in Baghdad's central Kesra district.
- A bomb hidden on a motorcycle killed eight people and wounded 13 others in eastern Baghdad's district of New Baghdad.
- Bank robbers shot dead eight people at a Baghdad branch of state-owned Rafidain bank in central Karrada district, before blasting open its vault with sticks of dynamite and stealing 8 billion Iraqi dinars ($6.84 million).
- A militant shot dead a civilian in southeastern Mosul on Monday.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded three civilians in northern Mosul on Monday. The policemen in the patrol escaped unharmed.

Seven people have been killed and eight injured in a bombing at the office of a Sunni Muslim political party in central Iraq on July 30, 2009. The blast took place in a building used by the Reform and Development party in the town of Baquba. The party has stood in regional elections, but failed to win seats.

Bombs exploded near five Shiite mosques around Baghdad within 45 minutes on Friday July 31, 2009, as worshipers attended prayer services, killing at least 29 people in what appeared to be a coordinated attack against followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The bombs, which were hidden just outside the mosques, tore through the Friday calm in five predominantly Shiite working-class neighbourhoods, three of them on the east side of the city, one in the south and one in the north. A total of 136 people were reported wounded in the attacks.

Explosions within minutes of one another shook five Shiite mosques around Baghdad on Friday July 31, 2009, killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens in the most serious outbreak of violence in the capital since U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq's cities on June 30.

Four women and three children were killed in a car bomb attack on a market in the centre of Haditha on Sunday August 2, 2009.The bomb exploded in a popular market when local police are usually on patrol in the area. More than 20 people were injured.

On August 1, 2009, Iraqi police have arrested 36 Iranian exiles on rioting charges after clashes with Iraqi forces at their camp killed at least seven exiles. Residents said 13 people died in the clashes, many of them shot dead by police, and many others wounded. Iraq's government said seven died, most of them because they threw themselves under police vehicles.

Iraq, Monday August 3, 2009:
- Two bombs, one attached to a minibus and another to a bus, killed three people and wounded 27 others in separate attacks in Hilla.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one soldier and wounded two others in western Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one soldier and wounded two others in western Mosul.
- A suicide car bomb targeting an Iraqi police checkpoint killed two people and wounded seven others on the outskirts of Falluja.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in Bab Alsharji district, central Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded one policeman just south of Mosul on Sunday.
- Gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army patrol, wounding one soldier in eastern Mosul on Sunday.
- An Iraqi soldier was wounded in a gun attack in central Mosul on Sunday.
- Iraqi soldiers found seven bodies in northern Baghdad on Sunday.
- A car bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing six people and wounded 21 others in Haditha.
- Two bombs wounded 6 people in market in Iskandriya on Saturday.

At least five policemen have been killed and another 10 wounded in a bomb blast in the south of Baghdad on August 5, 2009. The bombing targeted a police patrol. The bomb was planted on a road in the al-Athouriyeen neighbourhood in al-Doura.

A series of attacks largely targeting Shiite Muslims killed at least 52 people Friday August 7, 2009, most of them in a powerful car bombing at a mosque on the northern edge of the volatile city of Mosul. Most of the 39 fatalities at the mosque were Shiite Turkmens. The massive bomb exploded as worshipers were leaving the mosque in the village of Shiraykhan after attending Friday prayers. The bombing demolished 10 nearby homes. In Baghdad, seven Shiite pilgrims were killed in three bombings as they returned home from a pilgrimage to the holy Shiite city of Karbala. Six more people died Friday evening when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded near a busy marketplace in a Sunni neighbourhood of west Baghdad. The target appeared to be a police car. Three of those killed were police officers who had been in or near the car.

A British soldier died on August 9, 2009, after an explosion in southern Afghanistan. The soldier, from 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment, had been on patrol east of Gereshk in Helmand province.

Iraq, Sunday August 9, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded four policemen in southern Baquba.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded two policemen in western Mosul.
- Police found the body of a merchant with bullet wounds to the head and chest in western Mosul. The merchant was kidnapped a few days ago.

Two truck bombings in northern Iraq and attacks targeting day labourers in western Baghdad killed at least 53 people and wounded scores of others on Monday August 10, 2009, exacerbating ethnic and political tensions in this country. The truck bombings in a small village north of Mosul marked one of the deadliest attacks in an area controlled by the autonomous Kurdish government. At least 35 people were killed and more than 110 were wounded in the attack.

At least eight people were killed and nearly 50 wounded in bomb attacks in Iraq on Tuesday August 11, 2009. In the worst attack, eight people were killed and 30 injured in consecutive car bombings in the eastern Baghdad neighbourhood of Al-Amin. The first bomb tore into a cafe in the mixed Shiite-Christian neighbourhood while local residents smoked water pipes, and was followed five minutes later by a blast outside an apartment complex. Nine people were wounded when a car bomb exploded in a market in the Shaab suburb of northeast Baghdad and four soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb in the Shiite-majority slum of Sadr City. In Baquba a six-year-old boy was hurt when the car he was travelling in was hit by a roadside bomb. Two soldiers were also wounded by a roadside bomb in Abara outside Baquba. Three traffic police were wounded by a roadside bomb planted outside the one-time insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

Iraq, Wednesday August 12, 2009:
- Three policemen were killed and three wounded when defusing a car bomb north of Kirkuk.
- A bomb attached to a car killed one person and wounded another in northern Mosul.
- Gunmen killed an old man near his home in northeastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded three civilians when it exploded inside a bus station in Mahmudiya.
- Gunmen wounded a policeman when they attacked an Iraqi police patrol east of Ramadi. The police killed two gunmen in the attack.
- A suicide car bomber targeting a police station wounded eight policemen in western Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed a policeman and wounded five in central Kirkuk.
- Gunmen shot dead an off-duty police officer as he was leaving a funeral service in Qaiyara.
- Gunmen hurled a hand grenade at a house, killing the mother, her two children and wounding three other family members in Baaj.

A gunfight erupted during an attempted bank heist Thursday August 13, 2009. Four gunmen got into a shootout with police as they tried to flee a bank in Baghdad's downtown Karradah district. The gunmen had Interior Ministry identification cards that allowed them access to the bank and once in, forced bank employees into a room at gunpoint while they went on with the robbery. The men surrendered after the gunfight and a female bank employee was later arrested on suspicion of working with the robbers. No one was hurt in the shootout.
On August 13, 2009, a court official announced that five members of Iraq's presidential guard will go on trial later this month for their alleged roles in a deadly Baghdad bank robbery.

Two suicide bombers killed at least 21 people in a cafe on Thursday August 14, 2009, in the latest attack targeting ethnic or religious minorities in disputed territories. The double bombing occurred in the Ayoub coffeehouse in Sinjar. Most of the victims were Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority. At least 30 people were wounded. The attack, like other recent bombings, appeared intended to exacerbate tensions along a 300-mile stretch of disputed territory near the Kurdish north, pitting the Kurdish autonomous government against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration in Baghdad.

Iraq, Saturday August 15, 2009:
- A gunman wounded nine civilians when he hurled a hand grenade in a market in central Mosul.
- Gunmen shot dead a taxi driver in southeast Mosul.
- A bomb attached to a minibus killed two people in Doura in south Baghdad.
Two roadside bombs wounded six people in the al-Qahira district of north Baghdad.
- Three Iraqis were killed and another wounded when they wandered near an artillery firing exercise held by Iraqi and U.S. troops near Taji.

Two more British soldiers have been killed by explosions in Afghanistan on Saturday August 15, 2009, taking the number of personnel killed since operations began in 2001 to 201. One, from the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh, died in hospital from wounds. The second, from 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, died after an explosion on Saturday while on foot patrol in Sangin, Helmand province.

Iraq, Sunday August 16, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting a provincial council member's convoy wounded him and two guards in the east of Mosul.
- Gunmen broke into a house and killed four people then booby trapped the building with bombs, wounding five people who tried to enter it after the shooting. The incident was in a small town near the city of Falluja.
- A roadside bomb wounded two people in the central Karrada district of Baghdad.
- A gunman shot a soldier dead at an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Mosul.
- Gunmen hurled a hand grenade at a police checkpoint in central Mosul, wounding two policemen and four civilians.

Iraq Tuesday August 18, 2009:
- A bomb attached to a car wounded a soldier in the south of Mosul.
- A bomb attached to car killed one civilian in western Mosul.
- A bomb wounded two gunmen who were planting it and two policemen when it exploded prematurely in central Mosul.
- At least eight people were killed, including two policemen, in three separate attacks on Monday in northern and central Iraq.
- Five people were killed when a car bomb blew up near a convoy of US troops and Iraqi police near the town of Taji. The bomb narrowly missed the joint patrol tearing through a line of gridlocked cars; 38 people were wounded in the attack. There were no casualties among Iraqi and US forces.
- In Mosul armed men killed two policemen and wounded one civilian when they opened fire on a checkpoint in the centre of the city.
- A drive-by shooting at a checkpoint in the town of Musayyib in the central province of Babil also killed one member of a Sunni Awakening, or Sahwa, militia group and wounded two.

On Wednesday August 19, 2009, truck bombs and a barrage of mortars have killed at least 95 people and wounded more than 500 in Baghdad, in the deadliest attacks in months. One vehicle exploded outside the foreign ministry near the perimeter of the heavily guarded government Green Zone, leaving a huge crater.
Another blast went off close to the finance ministry building.

Iraq, Thursday August 20, 2009:
- Iraq has detained 11 security officers for questioning about security failures that led to the bloodiest day in Baghdad in more than a year.
- The Iraqi government has raised the death toll from Wednesday's bomb and mortar attacks to at least 100. More than 500 other people were wounded.

Iraq Friday August 21, 2009:
- A car bomb targeting an army patrol in a village 100 km northwest of Mosul killed four soldiers, including two officers, and wounded one.
- A bomb attached to a vehicle exploded in a vegetable market, killing two people and wounding 20 others in the south Baghdad district of Doura.
- The body of a member of the Kurdish Peshmerga security forces was found in west Mosul, after he was kidnapped a day earlier. The body bore bullet wounds.
- A series of bombs and suspected mortar rounds in the southern Iraqi province of Babel killed seven people and wounded 55 on Thursday

Iraqi TV has broadcasted on Monday August 24, 2009, what it says is the confession by a former policeman to recent devastating bombings in Baghdad. The man said he had orchestrated the attacks with a Syrian-based leader of the outlawed Baath party. The blasts at two ministries and other attacks in Iraq's capital killed at least 95 people on Wednesday. Senior Iraqi officials have said that members of the Iraqi security forces may have collaborated with the attackers in the bombings.

Iraq, Friday August 28, 2009:
- U.S. troops killed one man and wounded other who were planting a roadside bomb southwest of Kirkuk on Wednesday.
- A roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers in east Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one civilian and wounded a soldier in northern Mosul on Thursday.
- Gunmen killed a man affiliated with Mosul's al-Hadba political group when he left a mosque in northern Mosul on Thursday.
- Gunmen opened fire on Iraqi police and killed a girl and wounded one civilian in central Mosul on Thursday.

A spate of attacks across Iraq on Saturday August 29, 2009, killed 19 people, including a local politician and a child, and injured dozens. In the worst incident, five policemen and three civilians, including a 10-year-old child, died when a suicide car bomber targeted a police base in Al-Sharqat. At least 20 people, 13 police among them, were wounded in the morning attack. Hours later, four people were killed and 23 others injured when a bomb exploded at a market in Sinjar.

Bombs struck a cafe in Baghdad and remote communities in northern Iraq on Saturday August 29, 2009, killing at least 18 people.

A civilian was killed and 14 people were wounded in bomb attacks in Baghdad and Diyala province on Sunday August 30, 2009. A civilian was killed and five others injured in a roadside bomb explosion at a main road in Baghdad's eastern district of Kamaliyah. Three more people were wounded in a bomb explosion at a popular market in Baghdad's southern district of Doura. In the province of Diyala, in northeast of Baghdad, five policemen and a civilian were wounded when a roadside bomb struck a police patrol in the provincial capital of Baquba.

Iraq, Monday August 31, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol wounded five civilians in southeast Baghdad's Rustumiya district.
- A roadside bomb targeting a governmental convoy wounded five civilians in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen shot dead a woman near her house in western Mosul on Sunday.
- A roadside bomb wounded three policemen when it exploded near their patrol in western Mosul on Sunday.
- A roadside bomb wounded a boy near his home in western Mosul on Sunday.
- Gunmen in a car shot and wounded an off-duty police officer driving his car in southern Kirkuk.

Two U.S. soldiers died and five injured in a vehicle accident in northern Iraq. The two soldiers, assigned to Multi-National Division-North, were killed on Wednesday September 2, 2009 in a vehicle roll-over accident in the province of Diyala. The latest deaths bring the number of U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq to about 4,338, since the breakout of the U.S.-led war on Iraq in 2003.

Iraq Thursday September 3, 2009:
- Bombings rocked Iraq, killing at least six people and wounding at least another 85.
- Eleven of the 12 bombs struck in the evening, when streets are busier than usual during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
- At least four people were killed and 42 others were wounded when a car bomb and three roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in Musayyiba, a town south of Baghdad. The bombs went off near a Shiite shrine, and a number of Shiite pilgrims were among the dead and wounded.
- Another roadside bomb near a Shiite shrine in Mahauil, south of Baghdad, wounded at least eight others.
- At an outdoor market in Aun, near the Shiite city of Karbala, a sticky bomb affixed to a car killed two people and wounded three.
- In Baghdad, at least 28 people were wounded in bombings that rattled the city. Ten were hurt in two separate bombings in southwestern Baghdad. In the predominantly Sunni district of Adhamiya in northern Baghdad, five people were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated.
- Two other bombings in Baghdad wounded five members of anti-al Qaeda groups known as Awakening Councils. A sticky bomb attached to the car of an Awakening Council member in southern Baghdad's Dora district wounded him and four of his guards.
- Four of the eight people wounded in a bombing in a busy street in northern Baghdad's Kasra neighbourhood were also members of the council.
- A car parked near a busy restaurant in Baquba blew up and wounded four people.

Iraq Sunday September 6, 2009:
- Gunmen stormed a family house, shooting dead a woman and her 3-year old grandchild in western Mosul.

- Gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint, killing one policeman in central Mosul.
- Militants opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint in a drive-by shooting that killed one soldier in eastern Mosul.
- A car bomb wounded six people in Baghdad's eastern Baladiyat district.
- Gunmen opened fire at a police checkpoint in a drive-by shooting that killed one policeman in eastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded five people in Baghdad's central Karrada district.
- A bomb attached to a car wounded three Iraqi soldiers and two civilians on Saturday in Baghdad's northern Adhamiya district.

Iraq, Monday September 7, 2009:
- Police in Iraq say a spate of bombings across the country Monday killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 40 others.
- The deadliest attack took place at a checkpoint near the city of Ramadi in western Anbar province, where a suicide car attacker killed eight people and wounded at least 15 others.
- Another suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a Shiite mosque in Baquba in central Iraqi, killing at least five worshippers and wounding 20 others.
- In a separate attack, near the Shiite Muslim holy city of Karbala in the south, a bomb placed in a minibus killed four people and wounded four others.
- Also two car bombs exploded in separate districts of Baghdad. One of the explosions killed a civilian and wounded at least three other people.
- A bomb attached to the car of an employee in Iraq's cabinet wounded him near al-Wathiq Square, in Baghdad's central Karrada district.
- Gunmen shot dead an employee in the state-run North Oil Company in a drive-by shooting on Sunday in southern Kirkuk.
- A bomb stuck to the car of an off-duty police colonel and his son killed them both and wounded three other people on Sunday in northern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded four civilians on Sunday in Baghdad's southern Saidiya district.

On Tuesday September 8, 2009, four US soldiers have been killed in roadside bombings in Iraq, three in an attack in the north and another in Baghdad. The attack in the north of Iraq was the deadliest single incident involving the US military in five months.

Iraq, Wednesday September 9, 2009:
- Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. troops, killed two men during a pre-dawn raid in southeastern Baghdad. The force returned fire on the two men after coming under fire themselves.
- A car bomb killed at least eight people from a single family in Kirkuk.
- A bomb attached to a minibus wounded two people in northern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen killed a civilian in Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed an off-duty Iraqi army officer and wounded two other civilians north of Mosul.
- An investigative council has charged 29 Iraqi security officials with negligence relating to two truck bombs outside government ministries in Baghdad last month that killed 95 people.
- A bomb attached to a car wounded three civilians in Baghdad's western district of Jamiaa on Tuesday.
- A roadside bomb wounded three soldiers on Tuesday on the northern outskirts of Mosul.
- A bomb planted on a motorcycle killed one civilian and wounded seven others on Tuesday in southern Baghdad.

Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession in a popular market south of Baghdad on Thursday September 10, 2009, killing at least two people and wounding 10 but the toll from blasts in the town of Mahmudiya was expected to rise.

A suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into a Kurdish village in northern Iraq on Thursday September 10, 2009, killing at least 20 villagers and fanning ethnic tension in a restive region. The blast in the village of Wardek wounded 27 people. It seemed calculated to stoke friction between Kurds and Arabs, whose politicians are embroiled in a dispute over claims to territory and oil. Children were among the dead and at least 25 houses in the village were damaged or destroyed. Another truck bomber tried to set off a second blast but local Kurdish Peshmerga forces opened fire and killed him before he reached the village's outskirts.

Iraq, Saturday September 12, 2009:
- Nine people, including four members of a government-backed Sunni militiaman's family, were killed in attacks that also left 38 wounded.
- A roadside bomb in Baquba successfully targeted relatives of a Sahwa (Awakening) member. Two women and two children in the car were killed and two family members were wounded.
- In Baghdad, three people were killed when a parked car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army base and close to the health ministry. 35 people were being treated in hospital for injuries.
- In western Baghdad, a civilian was killed and another wounded when a home-made bomb exploded as they drove past in their car.
- Police successfully defused a bomb placed inside a Koran, the Muslim holy book, at a Shiite shrine in the capital's Kadhimiyah district.
- In Mosul, a traffic policeman died when a roadside bomb targeting a passing Iraqi army patrol was detonated.
- Two bombs exploded meters apart and in quick succession near a book shop in central Baghdad, killing three civilians and wounding 15.
- A roadside bomb wounded two policemen when it struck their patrol in southern Baghdad.
- Two policemen were wounded in clashes with gunmen in western Mosul.

Iraq, Sunday September 13, 2009:
- A parked car bomb in a market killed two people and wounded 12 after Iraqis broke their Ramadan fast in the town of Muqdadiya.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded three soldiers in Saadiy.
- Police found the body of a 12-year-old boy who had been abducted two days earlier in Khalis.
- Gunmen killed a taxi driver in a drive-by shooting in western Mosul.
- A bomb attached to the car of civil servant killed him in Qaiyara.
- Police said they found the body of a man with gunshot wounds to the head and chest in central Mosul.
- Gunmen stormed a house and killed the wife of a policeman along with their three children in southern Kirkuk. The policeman was not at the house at the time of the attack.
- Gunmen fired on a car carrying five off-duty Iraqi army soldiers and killed them on Saturday near the city of Baiji.
- A bomb attached to an Iraqi army vehicle exploded in Kirkuk killing an army officer and wounding a civilian.
- Five policemen were wounded by two different bomb attacks in southern and eastern Kirkuk.
- Fighting between rival tribes resulted in the death of five men near the town of Qaiyara. One other person was wounded.
- Police found the body of a man who had been kidnapped several days earlier near the city of Mosul.
- U.S. and Iraqi forces killed one fighter, captured another and seized a truck loaded with weapons. A helicopter came under fire and responded with rocket and small arms fire that disabled the truck and killed one of the insurgents.

Iraq, Saturday September 19, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed a 5-year-old girl and wounded two her brothers in western Mosul.

- Gunmen shot dead an old woman in western Mosul.
- Gunmen shot dead an off duty policeman in central Mosul.
U.S. forces killed one suspected militant and Iraqi forces captured another when the two were seen fleeing the scene of a bomb blast on Thursday in Hawija.

At least seven people have been killed by a car bomb in the Iraqi town of Mahmudiya on September 18, 2009. The blast hit a busy market place as people were shopping to buy evening food to break their Ramadan fast. Another 21 people were injured in the explosion.

A man was killed and four people wounded south of Baghdad on Sunday September 20, 2009, when a homemade bomb engulfed a family visiting relatives' graves as Ramadan ended and Eid al-Fitr began. The bomb exploded in Iskandiriyah as the family paid their respects at the end of the Muslim holy month. The wounded are two women and two men.

A U.S. soldier was killed and twelve others wounded when their helicopter crashed in the U.S. military's main airbase in Iraq, we were told on Sunday September 20, 2009. The helicopter went down over joint base Balad Saturday.

A series of roadside bombs and shootings in northern and western Iraq on Wednesday September 23, 2009, killed at least six people, four of them security officers, who have increasingly become the target of attacks. Two roadside bombings in Mosul killed a police officer and a soldier, while gunmen killed two civilians, including a young girl who had been kidnapped from her home. A roadside bomb also killed an Iraqi officer and a soldier in Falluja, west of Baghdad.

At least 11 Iraqi soldiers were killed Friday September 25, 2009, in a controlled explosion of weapons confiscated by the Iraqi military. Soldiers were preparing the materials for the controlled explosion just east of Mosul.

Iraq, Saturday September 26, 2009:
- Police have captured another two men who had escaped from jail on Wednesday in Tikrit. They had now captured eight out of the sixteen escaped inmates.
- Police said they had found the body of civilian with bullet wounds to the head and chest in western Mosul.

Iraq, Monday September 28, 2009:
- On Sunday a suicide bomber struck a police station in the city of Ramadi killing three policemen and wounding seven others.
- A bomb planted on a minibus south of Baghdad killed six people and wounded two others. All those killed in the attack, which took place in the small town of Saniya, were passengers.
- Two suspected insurgents were killed and a third was wounded in an explosives accident in Tal Afar.
- Security forces killed two suspected militants in central Baghdad. The gunmen had shot and killed a man before being chased and killed by police.
- A mortar round wounded three people when it landed in a village southwest of the city of Kirkuk.
- A bomb planted on a minibus killed at least three people and wounded two, in an area just north of Diwaniya.
- A suicide bomber driving a water tanker packed with explosives blew himself up near a police station, killing seven policemen and wounding 10.
- Two bombs in west Baghdad's Ghazaliya district killed at least three people, including the commander of the local army battalion, and wounded at least nine soldiers.
- Gunmen in a moving car shot a retired handicapped policeman near his house in east Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded, killing two policemen and wounding two in east Mosul.
- A bomb planted on a police officer's car wounded him on Sunday, in northern Kirkuk.

An American soldier has been killed in an "indirect fire attack" on a military base, Camp Liberty base, which located near the Baghdad International Airport southwest of Baghdad on Thursday October 1, 2009.

Iraq, Saturday October 3, 2009:
- Iraq troops have arrested 140 militants linked to al Qaeda or other Sunni Arab insurgent groups in the past four days.
- A bomb stuck to the car of the mayor of Haditha town, Abdul Razaq Jubair, wounded him and two of his guards in Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb struck the car of Amir Sadeq, general director of electricity supply for Iraq's Middle Euphrates region, wounding him and killing his driver in northern Baghdad's Adhamiya district.
- Gunmen opened fire on and wounded a member of a local pro-government Sunni Arab militia on the southwestern outskirts of Kirkuk.

Iraq Sunday October 4, 2009:
- Iraqi police has captured another man who had escaped from jail last month in Tikrit, in an area just south of Samarra. Police said a total of 10 of the 16 escaped prisoners had now been captured.
- Gunmen in a car opened killed an off-duty policeman driving his car in Baghdad's southeastern al-Ameen district.
- A roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded four when it exploded near their patrol in Baghdad's eastern Mashtal district.
- A bomb attached to a fuel tanker wounded five people and set ablaze four other fuel tankers in western Baghdad. Baghdad's security operations centre said seven tankers were set ablaze, but due to the negligence of a driver, not due to a bomb, and that no casualties were reported.
- Gunmen killed an off-duty traffic policeman on Saturday near his home in eastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb went off near a truck and killed its driver on Saturday in southern Mosul.
- Police said they found the head of a woman in a graveyard on Saturday in central Mosul.

Iraq Monday October 5, 2009:
- A bomb wounded 30 Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers close to the district of Rabia, northwest of Mosul. Initial reports indicated the explosion was caused by a parked car bomb.
- A suicide bomber walked into an Iraqi funeral tent and blew himself, killing at least six mourners and wounding 15 in Haditha.
- Police said they found the body of a Christian man bearing several gun shot wounds in southern Kirkuk. He had been kidnapped from his house two days earlier.
- A roadside bomb wounded two policemen when it struck their patrol in northern Mosul.
- Clashes between insurgents and police wounded one civilian in central Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded one person in western Mosul.
- Iraqi troops have arrested at least 200 suspected insurgents in the past week in the city of Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed one civilian and wounded 6, including two Iraqi soldiers, when it exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in central Falluja.
- A roadside bomb wounded four people, including one policeman, when it went off near a police patrol in Baghdad's central al-Nidhal Street.
- The Iraqi Army killed an insurgent on Sunday who was trying to throw a hand grenade at their patrol in eastern Mosul.
- A bomb placed in a trash mound killed an eleven-year old boy on Sunday in central Mosul.
- Fifteen insurgent suspects who had been detained on Friday in Tikrit were released on Sunday.
- Iraq and U.S. forces arrested a suspected leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq named Ali al-Tikriti on Saturday in northern Nineveh province.
A suicide bomber killed at least six mourners at a funeral on October 6, 2009, for a member of a prominent tribe with ties to both security forces and insurgents. The bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a funeral tent in the mostly Sunni area of Haditha. At least 15 people were injured. The funeral was for a member of the al-Jaghaifa tribe, which is split between members of the police and military and supporters of the Sunni insurgency.

A car bomb exploded Tuesday October 7, 2009, in a crowded residential area in the western Iraqi town of Amiriya, killing at least 11 people and wounding 31. At least five police officers eating in a nearby restaurant were wounded in the bombing, which also set several cars ablaze.

A car bomb in a market near the Iraqi city of Falluja has killed at least nine people and wounded dozens more on October 7, 2009. The explosion came at sunset when a parked car rigged with explosives went off in Amiriya, destroying several cars.

A roadside bomb struck a police patrol northeast of Bagdah killing three officers. The bomb targeted the patrol late Wednesday October 7, 2009, on the outskirts of the town of Jalula in the Diyala province. Among the dead was a police colonel. Four officers were wounded in the blast.

A Sunni cleric who denounced insurgents in Iraq was killed Friday October 9, 2009, north of Baghdad when a bomb tore through his car. Jamal Humadi was driving home after delivering his Friday sermon in Saqlawiyah when a bomb attached to his car exploded. Two passengers were wounded. Humadi was known for his opposition to al-Qaida and Sunni extremists, routinely calling on worshippers to turn away from sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart two years ago.

Iraq, Sunday October 11, 2009:
- Two people were killed and eight were wounded in a twin bombing at a market in Mahmudiya.
- Three bombs killed at least 16 people and scores more were injured in Ramadi.
- A roadside bomb wounded six policemen and five civilians when it struck a police patrol in central Tikrit.
- A roadside bomb injured a policeman in northern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed a civilian and wounded another in central Mosul on Saturday.
- Gunmen shot dead a university student in eastern Mosul on Saturday.

- A suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with explosives at a cafe south of Baquba in Iraq's Diyala province Tuesday October 13, 2009, killing six people and wounding 10. The attack took place in the town of Buhriz, killing Leith Mishaan, the local head of a government-allied Sunni Arab militia, who was at the cafe with other members of his group.

Iraq, Wednesday October 14, 2009:
- Three explosions killed at least three people and wounded 20 in the Shiite holy city of Kerbala.
- Gunmen killed at least seven people and wounded ten in a gold heist in Shula district in northwest Baghdad.
- A sticky bomb planted on a car wounded three people in central Baghdad.
- A car bomb wounded a local imam and his driver in Baghdad's northern Adhamiya district.
- Gunmen opened fire and killed an off-duty security guard in eastern Mosul.

Iraq Thursday October 15, 2009:
- Two people were killed and 12 others injured in bomb attacks in Iraq's Baghdad and Diyala province.
- A roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi Army patrol in northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah, killing a civilian and wounding three people, including two soldiers. - - ------ Another civilian was killed and two people wounded, including a child, when a roadside bomb detonated in the town of Buhruz, near the Diyala capital city of Baquba.
- A roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi Army vehicle near the town of Saadiyah, 60 km north of Baquba, wounding an officer and a soldier aboard.
- Three more soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle in the town of Baladruz, 30 km east of Baquba.
- Two people were wounded when an explosive charge detonated outside a house in the city of Baquba. The Iraqi security forces sealed off the scene and captured three suspects for interrogation.
- A roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded another officer and three civilians in western Mosul.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded one civilian in eastern Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded two others and one civilian in north Baghdad's Adhamiya district.
- A roadside bomb wounded four Iraqi policemen in southern Kirkuk.
- A roadside bomb wounded a member of the Kurdish security forces on Wednesday in Tuz Khurmato.
- An assailant attacked and wounded a local journalist on Wednesday in Ramadi.

A man stood up during Friday Prayer - October 10, 2009- and shot the prayer leader at point-blank range with an assault rifle before spraying the kneeling worshipers around him and detonating a suicide belt, killing 15 people. The attack also wounded 100 others inside the Taqwa mosque in Tal Afar.

Iraq, Saturday October 17, 2009:
- Nine people were killed, including six soldiers and two policemen, in a swathe of bombings and shootings across Iraq.
- Four soldiers died and 10 others were wounded when their patrol struck a roadside bomb near a petrol station northeast of Fallujah.
- In Kirkuk, a roadside bomb in the town of Hawijaa killed two soldiers who were on a military patrol. Two civilians were also injured in the bombing.
- Mosul saw three attacks which left two policemen and a civilian dead. A policeman was killed by gunmen who fled the scene on foot. Two civilians were injured in the shooting. A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded two civilians. Gunmen shot dead a civilian outside his home.

Iraq Monday October 19, 2009:
- A bomb planted in a bus killed one person and wounded eight in Shaab district in north Baghdad.
- A mortar round landed on an Iraqi army recruiting station, wounding four people in northern Mosul.
- An unknown gunman shot and wounded a civilian walking on a street in eastern Mosul.
- A bomb exploded in a popular restaurant killing one person and wounding 10 in southwestern Baghdad's Bayaa district.
- A car bomb targeting a police patrol wounded four policemen in Garma.
- A bomb attached to a car killed a former army officer, who heads a small political party in northern Mosul.
- A bomb attached to a police colonel's vehicle wounded two of the officer's guards in central Kirkuk.
- An American soldier has been killed in a vehicle accident in northern Iraq.

Iraq, Tuesday October 20, 2009:
- A roadside bomb killed a U.S. soldier and wounded two on Monday in Mosul, Nineveh province.
- A roadside bomb wounded two Iraqi soldiers when it struck their patrol in western Mosul.
- Iraqi police found the bodies of two men killed by strangulation in southeastern Mosul on Monday.
- A car bomb killed four people including two policemen and wounded nine civilians in a town outside of Falluja.
- A roadside bomb wounded one soldier and three civilians when it struck an army patrol in northern Baghdad
- A roadside bomb injured two civilians in northern Baghdad.
- A bomb attached to a minibus wounded three civilians in northern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb wounded three people in eastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol wounded one policeman and two civilians in eastern Baghdad on Monday.
- Iraqi troops killed a gunman in a raid that wounded one soldier in western Mosul on Monday,
- A U.S. soldier was killed and two others injured in a roadside bomb explosion. The attack took place on Monday in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh.
- Car bombs and planted explosives killed six people, mostly police in different areas of Iraq.
- A car packed with explosives blew up at a gas station in the town of Saqlawiyah killing three policemen and one civilian. Five policemen and one civilian were wounded in the same blast.
- In Hilla, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded two others.
A bomb has killed one journalist and wounded another in northern Iraq. The blast targeted the Kirkuk home of cameraman Orhan Hijran, who works for Baghdad-based television station Al-Rasheed. He says the blast killed Hijran and wounded correspondent Mohammed Shahid of Cairo-based Al-Baghdadiyah. At least 140 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Six suspected al-Qaida members, including two who were formerly detained by U.S. troops, were arrested near Fallujah we were told on Thursday October 22, 2009. The six men were wanted on suspicion of involvement in "murders" and "attacks" in and around Fallujah. The six are suspected of planning attacks and planting explosives that killed and injured civilians and members of the Iraqi security forces.

Iraq, Friday October 23, 2009:
- Gunmen shot dead an off-duty guard in central Mosul.
- Gunmen shot dead a traffic policeman in eastern Mosul.
- A sniper shot and wounded one soldier at an Iraqi army checkpoint in western Mosul.
- A bomb attached to a car killed a man and wounded his wife and their three sons in Abu Ghraib district of western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one soldier in Baaj.

- Shootings and a bombing have killed two policemen and a soldier overnight in and around Iraq's northern city of Mosul on Saturday October 24, 2009. A policeman was gunned down by an unknown gunman in Mosul's central Bab al-Tob neighbourhood. Another policeman was killed when an unidentified armed group showered him with bullets near his house in the al-Karama neighbourhood. A soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated near his army patrol as it was passing in al-Ba'aj area. A sniper shot injured another soldier when he was manning a checkpoint in the al-Siha neighbourhood in western Mosul.

- Iraq, Friday October 24, 2009:
- A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives killed a guard at a local political party's office and wounded two civilians in central Tikrit.
- A bomb attached to a car wounded two people in central Baghdad.
- Gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint wounding two soldiers in western Baghdad.

- Iraq, Saturday October 25, 2009:
- Two car bombs killed at least 132 people and wounded hundreds in Baghdad.
- A sniper killed an Iraqi army officer in western Mosul.
- Gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint and killed one soldier in western Mosul.
- Armed men killed one person in a drive-by shooting in eastern Mosul.

- On Monday October 26, 2009, workers continued to hunt for victims amid the wreckage from Sunday's bomb blasts, recovering still more bodies as the death toll climbed to as much as 155 -including an uncertain number of children- with more than 500 wounded. An investigation of security breaches that allowed the bombings to occur has started. The bombs were in a minivan and a water tanker truck and had to pass multiple security checkpoints to reach their targets. Trucks are banned from Baghdad's streets during daylight hours unless they have special permits issued by the military, and those are checked at every roadblock. The extent of the damage was even worse than initially feared, with three major government buildings destroyed rather than the two destroyed. The first blast gutted much of the Ministry of Justice and did similar damage to the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works just across Haifa Street. The second blast, which came a minute later, destroyed the Baghdad Provincial Council building a quarter-mile away.

- Iraq, Wednesday October 28, 2009:
- A bomb attached to a minibus killed three women and wounded four men in eastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed three civilians and wounded five people including a soldier in eastern Mosul.
- Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. forces killed a suspected al Qaeda member and arrested five others west of Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded three civilians and a policeman guarding a state-run flour mill in northern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb blew up an oil tanker, killing the driver and his assistant, near Tikrit.

-On Thursday October 29, 2009, Iraq has arrested more than 60 security force members, including 11 senior officers over Sunday's twin suicide bombing in Baghdad. Those arrested include the commanders of 15 checkpoints near to where the attacks took place. The attack in which more than 150 people were killed and 500 injured was the deadliest in Baghdad for two years. The scale of the bombings raised new questions over the competence of Iraqi security forces.

Two U.S. soldiers died in separate non-combat related incidents on Friday October 30, 2009. One soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division-Baghdad (MND-Baghdad), died due to injuries sustained in a vehicle accident. A second soldier, assigned to Multi-National Division South (MND-S), died from non-combat related injuries.

- A bicycle loaded with explosives killed five people and wounded 37 at a market in Mussayab on Sunday November 1, 2009 and a bomb on a bus killed at least three more further south in Kerbala. Women and children were among the dead and wounded. Fifteen people were wounded in the second incident in the Shiite holy city of Kerbala. One of the dead was a police officer at a checkpoint the bus was driving towards. Some police sources put the dead at five.

- A man being questioned in connection with a massive bomb attack in Baghdad has killed his interrogator before being shot himself. The man snatched a gun from a guard, wounding the guard, and killed the investigating officer we were told on Saturday October 31, 2009.

- Iraq, Monday November 2, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded one civilian in southern Kirkuk.
- Gunmen killed a lawyer at his office in central Mosul.
- A car bomb killed two militants inside and wounded two civilians nearby in western Mosul.

- An Iraqi civilian was killed and two others were wounded in gunfire attack and roadside bomb explosion in the Diyala province on Friday November 6, 2009. In separate incident, one more civilian was wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in the Jurf al-Milih area while five suspects were arrested.

- Iraq, Sunday November 8, 2009:
- Two gunmen shot and wounded a policeman in western Mosul. The gunmen were later arrested by police.
- Two militants were killed when a roadside bomb they were planting in eastern Mosul exploded.
- Gunmen in a speeding car shot at and killed an employee of the North Oil Company in central Kirkuk.
- One attacker was killed and a policeman wounded when suspected insurgents attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in Falluja on Saturday.

- Two US army pilots have been killed in a helicopter crash in central Iraq. Their helicopter "experienced a hard landing" at a base in Salahuddin Province on Sunday November 8, 2009. There was no indication that enemy action had been involved. A US marine also died on Sunday of "non-combat related injuries" in Anbar province. The deaths raise to 4,362 the number of US military personnel who have died in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

- Iraq, Saturday November 14, 2009:
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol wounded three soldiers in Garma.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded two policemen in eastern Baghdad.
- Gunmen shot dead a Christian boy near his house in eastern Mosul.
- Gunman shot dead a man at a market in northern Kirkuk.
- Gunmen in a speeding car shot dead a policeman and his brother in northern Baghdad's Shaab District on Friday.
- Gunmen in a speeding car shot and wounded the interior ministry's economic crime unit chief, Brigadier General Wadhah Nasret, in central Baghdad on Friday.

- Iraq, Sunday November 15, 2009:
- A civilian was killed and six people were wounded in separate attacks in Iraq's province of Diyala northeast of Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb struck a minibus near the al-Neda village killing a passenger and wounding three others, one of them in critical condition. Iraqi security forces searched the area and detained several suspects for interrogation.
- In a separate incident, three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in the town of Jedidat al-Shatt, near Baquba. The blast destroyed a police vehicle and several nearby buildings and civilian cars.
- Iraqi security forces detained 13 suspected insurgents and defused two roadside bombs.

- Iraq, Monday November 16, 2009:
- Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms launched execution-style attacks west of Baghdad killing 13 members of a tribe who took up arms against Al-Qaeda.
- Six people died and seven were wounded when a booby-trapped car exploded at a market in the ethnically mixed northern city of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen swarmed into the Saidan district of Zouba and took six residents from their homes, lined them up in a field and shot them dead. The killers burst into the home of Attala Ouda al-Shuker, a leader in the Sahwa (Awakening) movement of Sunni tribesmen who joined US forces in 2006, and shot dead three of his sons and four other relatives.

- Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms abducted and killed 13 people, including a local leader of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab party, whose bodies were found Monday November 16, 2009 with gunshot wounds to the head.

- Iraq, Friday November 20, 2009:
- A roadside bomb struck a police patrol, wounding a policeman in western Mosul.
- Gunmen stabbed to death an Egyptian in central Mosul on Thursday.
- Gunmen shot dead a civilian in western Mosul on Thursday.
- A bomb wounded nine people when it exploded inside a popular restaurant in the southern district of Doura in Baghdad on Thursday.

- Iraq, Sunday November 22, 2009:
- A U.S. soldier was killed in action, south of Baghdad.
- Gunmen in a speeding car killed a senior Turkmen politician in front of his house in eastern Mosul.
- A four-year-old child was killed and four people, including two policemen, wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in central Mosul.
- A bomb attached to a car wounded a police officer in the Karrada district of central Baghdad.

- Iraq, Tuesday November 24, 2009:
- Three people were killed, including two Sunni Muslim clerics, in bomb attacks in Baghdad and Iraq's western province of Anbar.
- Shiekh Adnan Waheed Mohammed, a Sunni cleric was killed when an explosive-charge planted in his car detonated in Bagdad southern district of Doura. The blast also killed another man and wounded a third who were in the car.
- In Anbar province, another cleric was killed and three people were wounded when a bomb attached to the car of the Shiekh Ahmed al-Mohammadi went off in the town of Saqlawiyah.

- Iraq, Wednesday November25, 2009:
- Gunmen wearing army uniforms stormed a house and killed six members of the same family, including two women and a teenage girl, in the town of Tarmiya.
- A roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle belonging to the Ministry of Interior, wounding four civilians in Baghdad's central Karrada district.
- Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession, killing two people and wounding 19 near the police and army operations centre in central Kerbala.
- A sticky bomb attached to a car wounded two people in Baghdad's northern Adhamiya district Tuesday.
- Three people were wounded Tuesday when a sticky bomb attached to a car went off in the central Karrada district of Baghdad.
- A sticky bomb attached to a car wounded an off-duty policeman Tuesday in central Kirkuk.
- A bomb killed at least four people and wounded 25 others. The bomb detonated in a popular restaurant in Karbala when it was packed with breakfast diners.

- Another American soldier has lost his life due to non-combat related injures Iraq on November 28, 2009. The latest casualty brings the November death toll for US troops in Iraq to ten, raising the total so far this year to 145. The US military has lost a total of 4,366 soldiers since the March 2003 invasion of the oil-rich country.

- Gunmen attacked several security checkpoints in the western province of Anbaron Tuesday December 1, 2009, wounding five security members - two policemen and three paramilitary members. The attacks targeted checkpoints manned by Iraqi police and paramilitary members of the Awakening Council groups in the town of Garma near the city of Fallujah.

- Iraq, Monday November 30, 2009:
- Gunmen in a car attacked another car and killed a man and wounded three other people in the town of Rabia. Both the attackers and victims were Yazidis, a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect living in northern Iraq and Syria.
- Gunmen in a car shot and killed an army colonel while he was driving in eastern Kirkuk.
- Attackers threw a hand grenade at a party held by a local artists syndicate, wounding 11 people, including five policemen in the town of Hawija. Two attackers were arrested.
- Gunmen attacked several checkpoints manned by police and government-backed neighbourhood guards, wounding three guardsmen in the town of Garma

- Iraq, Thursday December 3, 2009:
- Attacks killed eight people, including a senior anti-terror officer.
- Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed al-Fahel, the head of the Saleheddin province anti-terror squad, and at least three of his bodyguards were among five people killed by a suicide bomber in Tikrit.
- Seven people were wounded by the blast in a jewellery store in Tikrit.
- In another incident in northern Iraq, two soldiers were killed at a checkpoint in the town of Mohallabiyah when gunmen opened fire on them before fleeing.
- In Baghdad, one person was killed and six wounded by a bomb in Adhamiyah.
- Violence across Iraq dropped dramatically last month, with the fewest deaths in attacks since the US-led invasion of 2003 (122 people were killed last month -88 civilians, 22 policemen and 12 soldiers.)

- Gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in west of Baghdad on Sunday December 6, 2009. Unidentified gunmen stormed a police checkpoint early in the morning in Abu Ghraib area, and killed four policemen before they fled the scene.

- At least six Iraqi policemen have lost their lives in the latest string of terrorist attacks targeting security forces across Iraq. In the first attack, two members of Iraqi police personnel were killed on Sunday December 6, 2009, after a blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) while an emergency police patrol vehicle was passing in Kirkuk. Four other policemen were killed when unidentified assailants opened fire at their checkpoint in Abu Ghraib. One policeman was then on duty while three others on a break. The armed men fled the scene unscathed after the incident. Last month, 13 villagers in the Abu Ghraib area were killed in an attack. Witnesses said gunmen disguised in army uniforms abducted and killed the 13, whose bodies were later found with gunshot wounds to the head. They included a local leader of Iraq's largest Sunni party, which once helped fight al-Qaeda.

- A series of car bombings has killed at least 127 people and wounded 448 in the centre of Baghdad on December 8, 2009. The first blast targeted a police patrol in the Dora district of the city. Four others occurred near official buildings within minutes. After the attack in Dora, a bomb blew up in Shourja Market, near the health ministry. Official buildings located near the other blasts also include the interior ministry, a university and the institute of fine arts. There were civilian and security force personnel casualties.

- An American soldier died after wounds received in a non-combat related incident on Thursday December 10, 2009.

- Iraq, Sunday December 13, 2009:
- Four people including a young girl and an army recruit were killed in bombings.
- In Fallujah separate attacks killed three people and wounded 11.
- A car bomb, apparently targeting a senior policeman in the town of Gharmah on Fallujah's outskirts, killed an eight-year-old girl and another man. The girl had been on her way to school.
- Lieutenant Colonel Saad al-Shemmari, commander of the area's police emergency response squad, was unharmed but seven members of his escort convoy were wounded.
- In Fallujah itself, meanwhile, a policeman was killed and four others were wounded, including one woman, when several bombs exploded around the officer's home.
- In Mosul, one person was killed and 20 others wounded by a car bomb near an army recruitment centre.

- On Tuesday December 15, 2009, a series of car bombs exploded in two Iraqi cities killing at least eight people. In central Baghdad three bombs killed at least four people and wounded 14 outside the heavily fortified Green Zone. That attack was followed by another co-ordinated car bombing in the northern city of Mosul where four people were killed and 40 injured. In Mosul two Syrian Orthodox Christian churches and a church school were attacked.

- Insurgents in Iraq have hacked into live video feeds from unmanned American drone aircraft we were told on December 18, 2009. Shia fighters are said to have used off-the-shelf software programs such as SkyGrabber to capture the footage. The hacking was possible because the remotely flown planes have an unprotected communications link. Obtaining such video feeds could provide insurgents with information about sites the military might be planning to target.

- A suicide bomber killed a local leader in northern Iraq on Monday December 21, 2009. The bomber detonated an explosive vest as leaders from the town of Tal Afar were leaving a funeral. Hussein Akris, an independent politician who heads the Tal Afar governing council, was killed in the attack. One of Akris' bodyguards was also killed and seven others, local politicians and guards, were wounded.

- Iraq, Friday December 25, 2009:
- Eighteen people including six Shiite worshippers were killed in a spate of attacks across Iraq.
- In eastern Baghdad's Sadr City district, a roadside bomb killed six people and wounded 26 when it struck a procession marking the Ashura commemorations. Most casualties were children, some of whom were under the age of 13.
- Four people were killed and five wounded by mortars fired into the residential area of Obaidi, in eastern Baghdad.
- In Mosul, meanwhile, three teachers, who were working with Iraq's census authorities, were found shot dead.
- Also in Mosul one civilian was killed and another was wounded by a bomb targeting a police patrol in the centre of the city.
- In the western part of Mosul police found the corpse of a strangled woman.
- In the central province of Diyala, two brothers of Mustafa al-Azawi, the Sunni Arab mayor of the town of Mansuriyah, were found dead after they were kidnapped on Friday morning.
- A suicide car bomb along a road connecting the northern Iraqi towns of Rabiyaa, near the Syrian border, and Sinoosi also killed a Kurdish peshmerga security force member and wounded 15 others.
- A twin bomb blast in Hilla killed at least 15 people.

- Bombs have exploded among Shiite pilgrims marking the holy day of Ashura, killing at least six people and wounding more than 30 others. Sunday December 27, 2009's deadliest blast was in Tuz Khormato. A roadside bomb exploded during a pilgrims' procession, killing five and wounding 28. In the capital, a bomb exploded in Baghdad's Mansour district, striking a mini-bus carrying Shiite pilgrims. One pilgrim was killed and several others were wounded.

- Iraqi security forces say they defused nine bombs in the city of Karbala on December 28, 2009, as hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims gathered for a religious festival.

- Gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint near Baghdad on Tuesday December 29, 2009, killing four members of an Iraqi government-backed militia. The gunmen pulled two cars up to the checkpoint in a remote, desert area outside Garma and shot the guards from a local militia unit, called Awakening Councils or "Sahwa" in Arabic.

- Attacks by two suicide bombers on Wednesday December 30, 2009, near the office of the governor of embattled Anbar Province wounded the governor. The two bombs killed 24 people and wounded 58.

- A suicide bomb attack Wednesday December 30, 2009, in Anbar province's capital killed 25 people and wounded 100, including the governor. Governor Qassim Fahdawi had rushed to the scene of an earlier car bombing in Ramadi and was preparing to leave the site when the suicide bomber struck. The blast killed the governor's security advisor and wounded Fahdawi and at least one other member of the provincial council.

Iraq, Saturday January 2, 2010:
- A sniper killed an Iraqi army officer in Sadr City, northeastern Baghdad.
- Two car bombs parked on both ends of 20 Street in Bayaa neighbourhood, southwest Baghdad, detonated simultaneously killing one civilian, injuring 19 civilians and two police officers.
- A magnetic bomb stuck to a civilian car detonated in the intersection of Jami'a neighbourhood seriously injuring two young men, who were inside the car.
- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Qahira neighbourhood, northern Baghdad, Friday, injuring one policeman.
- Iraqi police chased and then clashed with an insurgent in a speeding car who tried to open fire at a checkpoint in al Majmu'a al Thaqafiyah neighbourhood, north Mosul. The insurgent was killed.
- An insurgent threw a hand grenade at a police patrol in Shurta neighbourhood, northern Mosul without causing any casualties. The police returned fire and killed him.

- Three policemen were killed and eight people were wounded on Monday January 4, 2010, by two explosions in Kirkuk. The first blast occurred in the Wahad Zahar neighbourhood killing a policeman and injuring five other people. Later a second bomb, apparently targeting an official convoy in the same area, killed two other policemen and injured three other people. Three of the wounded from the two blasts are in critical condition.

- At least 13 people were wounded in a car bomb explosion at a popular marketplace in the town of Burtillah, a predominantly Christian town, Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, on Monday January 4, 2010.

- Five women were killed and eight people wounded in a traffic accident involving a U.S. military vehicle south of Baghdad Wednesday January 6, 2010. The accident took place on the highway near the city of Hilla when a minibus carrying civilians collided with a U.S. armoured vehicle. Most of wounded people were women and children.

- Five explosions that targeted mostly law enforcement officers in Anbar province Thursday January 7, 2010, killing at least eight people. The homemade bombs struck the homes of the deputy police chief, two counterterrorism police officials and a lawyer in the small city of Hit and injured at least 10.

- The combat death of a U.S. soldier Tuesday January 5, 2010, was the first in 43 days, the longest stretch since the war began.

- Iraq, Sunday January 10, 2010:
- One civilian was killed and seven others were wounded in separate incidents in Khalis, Diyala province.
- In a separate incident, a roadside bomb went off at a village near the town of Khan Bani Saad wounding a man and a woman.
- In the province, Iraqi Army and police force searched an area near the city of Khalis, arresting three extremist Shiite militiamen.
- U.S. force stormed Himreen area arresting three suspected al-Qaida members.

- Iraqi security forces detained 25 insurgent suspects and seized explosives and mortar bombs during massive operations in Baghdad on Tuesday January 12, 2010. At least seven people, including five policemen, have been killed and six others wounded in a suicide lorry bombing in Anbar province on January 13, 2010. The bomber struck near a police station in the centre of Saqlawiya. A young girl was among those wounded in the attack.

- Three explosions ripped through the city of Najaf on Thursday January 14, 2010, just hundreds of yards from one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam. Two homemade bombs detonated just five minutes apart in an open-air fish-and-vegetable market. Police found another bomb inside a garbage truck. As they tried to defuse it, a bomb in a car parked nearby exploded, ripping through the crowd. Authorities gave conflicting estimates of the number of dead, ranging from one to at least two dozen.

- Iraqi security forces have captured one of the top leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq network, Ali Hussein al-Azzawi, we were told on Saturday January 16, 2010. Azzawi is allegedly responsible for several high-profile attacks, including deadly suicide bombing against UN building in 2003.

- Iraq, Wednesday January 20, 2010:
- Three people were killed and dozens were wounded in an attempted robbery and ensuing gun battle in Baghdad and suicide car bombing in the northern city of Mosul, security officials said.
- Two jewellers died when their stores were attacked in the Bunuk district of northern Baghdad, with one assailant killed and another wounded in a subsequent shoot-out with police. Four other people were wounded but no goods were stolen.
- In Mosul a suicide car bomber targeted an Iraqi army base, wounding at least 30 people including 20 members of the security forces. The military official said 15 soldiers and five policemen were among the wounded.

- A policeman was killed in a bomb attack and eight decomposed bodies discovered near Fallujah on Sunday January 24, 2010. A roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in the town of Garma near the city of Fallujah killing a policeman and wounding two others. Separately, the police discovered eight decomposed bodies buried in a mass grave outside Fallujah.

- Three large blasts have struck a popular hotel and restaurant district along the Tigris River in Baghdad, killing at least 30. At least another 40 people had been injured and the toll was expected to rise. The first of three car bombs rocked buildings along Abu Nawas Street across from the international Green Zone which houses Iraqi government and diplomatic buildings. Two other large blasts followed minutes later in succession.

- On Tuesday January 26, 2010, Baghdad was hit by a bombing, this time at a forensics office of the Interior Ministry. Officials put the toll at 22 dead. The attack followed a devastating series of bombings on Monday that wrecked landmark hotels catering to foreigners, killing.

- The US military said on January 28, 2010, that a key al-Qaida leader responsible for moving hundreds of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq has been killed in northern Iraq. The man was killed on January 22 after attacking a soldier during a joint Iraqi-US raid in Mosul. The man has been identified through fingerprints and other means as Saad Uwayyd Ubayd Mujil al-Shammari, also known as Abu Khalaf.

- A suicide bomber in northern Iraq walked into a restaurant and detonated an explosives vest, killing at least three people and injuring 25 others on Saturday January 30, 2010.
The incident occurred in Samarra in the predominantly Sunni province of Salaheddin. The popular, busy restaurant in the city centre is frequented by Iraqi security forces and civilians. Authorities imposed a curfew on the city after the strike.

- A woman who veiled her explosives in a black robe struck a column of Shiite pilgrims on the outskirts of Baghdad on Monday February 1, 2010, in a suicide attack. The attack killed at least 54 -including 18 women and 12 children- and wounded 117 people along a major roadway in an industrial district on the northern edge of Baghdad.

- A suicide attacker driving a minibus on Wednesday February 3, 2010, ploughed into a crowd of Shiite pilgrims in central Iraq, killing 20. The bomber struck pilgrims walking on foot on the outskirts of the shrine city of Karbala. The attack also left 117 people wounded. Arbaeen marks 40 days after the Ashura anniversary commemorating the slaying of one of Shiite Islam's most revered figures, Imam Hussein, by the armies of the Sunni caliph Yazid in 680 AD. At least one woman and three children were among the dead.

- At least two explosions tore through crowds marching to the burial place of Shiite Islam's most revered martyr Friday February 5, 2010, in the culmination of ritual mourning that has drawn millions to the holy city of Karbala in one of the world's largest pilgrimages. At least 27 people were killed and dozens more were wounded.

- Iraqi Security Forces, with U.S. advisors, arrested a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq cell leader in Khalaf al Hasun village in Diyala province on February 5, 2010. He is suspected of individual of IED attacks and murdering Iraqi citizens throughout Diyala province. He is also suspected of formerly operating numerous Ansar al-Sunnah terrorist cells in the Nida Tribal Area before becoming an al Qaida leader. Ansar al-Sunnah is believed to have connections with al Qaida and the Islamic State of Iraq terrorist groups.

- On February 10, 2010, an American soldier has died in Iraq of injuries unrelated to combat. The death raises to at least 4,376 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

- Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. troops killed at least five people Friday February 12, 2010, in a raid on suspected members of a so-called Iranian-backed terrorist group. Provincial Iraqi officials said many of the dead were innocent bystanders, and demanded compensation. They said eight people were killed.

- At least 10 civilians have been killed and many more injured in a clash between joint Iraqi-US forces and anti-government fighters in Iraq's Maysan province near the Iranian border. US and Iraqi forces said they came under fire as they approached the village of Ali al-Sharqi on Friday February 12, 2010. The US said five fighters were killed, while local officials said as many as 10 civilians died. The troops were searching for weapons allegedly smuggled across the border by suspected Iranian-backed Kateb Hezbollah fighters when the attack took place.

- On February 13, 2010, the Iraqi authorities have arrested eight people over the killing of six British military policemen, known as "red caps", in a town near Basra in 2003. The six men were surrounded and attacked by several hundred people in Majar al Khabir as they took refuge in a police station. The crowd's frenzy had been stirred up by British searches of their homes for weapons.

- Three bomb blasts targeting Shiite pilgrims south of Baghdad have killed at least six people and wounded 40. The bombs exploded Friday February 12, 2010, on the road to Kufa, one of the main routes to the southern holy city of Najaf. Those killed were pilgrims.

- A car bomb exploded outside a police crime laboratory in Mosul Tuesday February 16, 2010, killing two officers. At least seven other people were wounded in the attack.

- A Christian student was found dead in Mosul on Wednesday February 17, 2010, the fourth in as many days. The bullet-riddled body of Wissam George, a 20-year-old Assyrian Christian, was recovered on a street.

- A suicide bomber struck near the government headquarters in Ramadi, the capital of the Iraq Anbar Province on Thursday February 18, 2010. At least two candidates have been killed. The attack killed at least 13 people and wounded more than two dozen. A bomber wearing a vest or belt of explosives appeared to make a target of the government compound. Bombings have struck at least four party headquarters in Baghdad, as well as a candidate's home in Ramadi. In Maysan, in southern Iraq, gunmen opened fire on a candidate hanging posters for Ahrar killing one of the candidate's aides. The brother of a Shiite Turkmen candidate in Kirkuk was seized -or kidnapped- inflaming ethnic tensions.

- Iraq, Monday February 22, 2010:
- Gunmen killed a family of eight in Baghdad, beheading some of their victims.
- Eleven other people were killed in attacks, including three in a suicide car bombing in west Iraq, and a police commando was shot dead by a sniper in Baghdad.
- Two American Army pilots were killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash on a base in northern Iraq. There were no enemy forces present and no hostile fire reported.
- The deaths raise to at least 4,378 the number of US military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
- Five policemen were killed and two others wounded when a homemade bomb engulfed their vehicle as they prepared to secure an electricity site in Imam Wais, central Iraq.
- In other violence on Sunday, a policeman was gunned down outside his house in Mosul by unknown assailants.
- A Shiite pilgrim was killed and seven more wounded by gunfire as they were walking to Samarra.
- In Tikrit a suicide bomber killed a shopkeeper and wounded two of his clients.

- Violence against Christians in northern Iraq continues to intensify as a Christian man and his two sons were murdered February 23 in Mosul when armed gunmen stormed their home. Eight Christians have been killed in the city in the past two weeks.

- Suicide attacks in Baquba, a predominantly Sunni Arab city, have killed at least 31 people and injured dozens more on Wednesday March 3, 2010. Two car bombs exploded within minutes of each other near government buildings. A later third blast targeted the city's main hospital, where victims of the first attacks were being treated. In the first attack, a driver detonated the explosives inside his car at a checkpoint near a government housing office and a police station. Within minutes, another car bomb exploded outside the headquarters of the provincial council. A third suicide bomber, this time on foot, later blew himself up at the gate of the main hospital as the casualties from the earlier blasts arrived, and during a visit by the provincial police chief, Major General Abdul Hussein al-Shimmari.

- At least 14 people have been killed in Baghdad on the first day of voting (March 4, 2010) in Iraq's parliamentary elections. Suicide bombers attacked two polling stations in different areas of the city killing at least seven people and wounding many others. Earlier, a mortar attack on a crowded market killed seven and wounded at least 10 people.

- At least 14 people have been killed in Baghdad on the first day of voting in Iraq's parliamentary elections, March 5, 2010. Suicide bombers attacked two polling stations in different areas of the city killing at least seven people and wounding many others. A mortar attack on a crowded market killed seven and wounded at least 10 people. The poll is seen as a security test for Iraq as the US prepares to reduce its military presence in the coming months. The early voting involves hundreds of thousands of government employees, the sick and prisoners.

- A car bomb killed four Iranian pilgrims near Iraq's holiest Shiite shrine in Najaf on Saturday March 6, 2010, a day before a parliamentary election that Sunni Islamist insurgents have vowed to wreck. The blast gutted two tour buses parked near the Imam Ali shrine which draws millions of pilgrims from Iraq and Iran each year. The attack wounded 54 people, including 17 Iraqis and 37 Iranians. At least 49 people have been killed in the last few days of campaigning, some of them soldiers and police voting early.

- Iraq's second parliamentary election since the 2003 invasion has been hit by multiple attacks, with at least 35 people being killed. Two buildings were destroyed in Baghdad and dozens of mortars were fired across the capital and elsewhere on Sunday March 7, 2010. Despite the violence, there were long queues of voters at polling stations in a number of cities. Polls closed at 1700 (1400 GMT) but people already in line were allowed to cast their votes.

- An American soldier has been killed and two others have been wounded in an attack on a US military base. The soldier was killed by indirect fire in a mortar or rocket attack on a base in Diyala province. In addition an American soldier died of non-combat related causes in the northern province of Nineveh. Sunday March 14, 2010's deaths bring the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion to 4,384 `.

- A suicide bomber exploded a car in Falluja, Anbar province, killing at least seven people and wounding 13.

- Eight people have been killed and 11 injured by two bombs in Musayyab on Tuesday March 16, 2010. The bombs were detonated within five minutes of each other on the main road in the town in Babil province. The devices -a type known as "sticky bombs"- had been magnetically attached to the underside of two minibuses carrying passengers. Earlier, a roadside bomb injured at least three police in eastern Baghdad. Their patrol car was hit as it drove past al-Mustansriya University.

- Gunmen have killed five Iraqi soldiers in south Baghdad on March 24, 2010. The soldiers were manning a checkpoint in the suburb of Radwaniya, a Sunni neighbourhood close to the airport, when they were attacked. Some 17 people were arrested by security services that closed off the area immediately after the attack.

- Two people were killed and six others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up Wednesday March 24, 2010, at the home of a police officer, al-Hiti, in the province of Anbar. The explosion killed two brothers of al-Hiti and wounded six construction workers with various injuries. Insurgents also attacked an Iraqi Army checkpoint in southwestern Baghdad on Wednesday, killing five soldiers.

- A series of explosions killed six people on Sunday March 28, 2010, including an official of a political faction in former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's electoral coalition. Four bombs went off near the house of Ghanim Radhi, a member of the Development and Reforms movement in the town of Qaim in Anbar province. Radhi and one of his brothers, who is a junior member in the movement, were killed. The first two bombs went off and when people gathered in the area after the blast, two more exploded.

- At least 12 people were killed and 32 injured in a triple bombing in Karbala Monday March 29, 2010. The first bomb targeted the city's educational administrative offices, the second struck near the ambulance administrative offices, and the third hit a nearby restaurant.

- Gunmen armed with silenced pistols fatally shot a Health Ministry official at his home in Baghdad on Wednesday March 31, 2010. The killing comes amid growing concerns that the political uncertainty created by last month's indecisive elections could lead to more violence as U.S. forces prepare to accelerate their withdrawal in the coming months. Mohammed Chillab was sitting in his garden at home in the capital's northern Sunni al-Silaikh neighbourhood when three attackers shot him using silenced pistols. Chillab was the deputy head of the technical affairs department at the Health Ministry.

- U.S. and Iraqi troops have killed or arrested at least six suspected al Qaeda leaders allegedly involved in an extortion and assassination ring in northern Iraq. The suspected militants were killed or arrested in security operations from March 18 to 24 in Mosul. The suspects were accused of involvement in an extortion and assassination network that helped fund al Qaeda around Mosul. Its targets included oil companies and small businesses.

- Iraqi gunmen have killed 25 people believed to be linked to Sunni militias opposing al-Qaeda. Five women were among those killed, as the gunmen in army uniforms pulled the victims out of their houses in a village south of Baghdad on Saturday April 3, 2010. The victims were reported to have been tied up before being shot in the head.

- Thirty-three people were wounded in separate bomb and gunfire attacks in Iraq's province of Diyala and Baghdad, we were told on Sunday April 4, 2010. In Diyala, 13 people were wounded, three of them in critical condition, when a motorcycle packed with explosives detonated in the morning near a crowded marketplace in Baquba. Also in the province, a police force mistakenly traded fire with members of government-backed Awakening Council group at a village near the town of Maqdadiyah wounding four local members and three policemen. The gunfire erupted when the police force stormed the village which was guarded by the local group members who fired back thinking the attackers were only a death squad.

- Three bombs exploded in Baghdad on April 4, 210, as political parties hold talks on forming a new Iraqi government following last month's parliamentary elections. The car bombs, which hit almost simultaneously this morning, killed at least 40 people. One exploded outside the Iranian embassy, another in western Mansour district, and a third detonated near the German ambassador's residence on a street that houses several other legations.

- On Tuesday April 6, 2010, bombs have destroyed seven buildings in three mainly Shia areas Baghdad, killing at least 35 people and wounding 130. At least three of the blasts destroyed apartment buildings in northern Baghdad, and one building in the south western part of the city. Attackers detonated seven blasts across the city, using homemade bombs and a car packed with explosives.
Some buildings collapsed under the force of the blast.

- Two US soldiers were killed and five other US troops were wounded during combat operations in northern Iraq we were told on Thursday April 8, 2010. The deaths occurred during a patrol on Wednesday.

- Iraq, Saturday April 10, 2010:
- A 10-year-old and four police officers and police were killed in insurgent bomb attacks near Mosul.
- A roadside bomb killed two police officers and a soldier in Qaiyara, south of Mosul. They were part of a motorised patrol that was tricked into responding to a report about a false missile attack in Mosul.
- A soldier and a 10-year-old child were killed by a bomb targeting a military patrol at Hammam Al-Alil, south of Mosul.
- Still further south in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, a suspected Al-Qaeda militant aged 24 was killed and four other suspects captured, one of them wounded, as a gas canister was being booby-trapped with explosives in an abandoned house.

- Three bombings in northern Iraq killed six people Saturday April 10, 2010, including one child. In one attack, a roadside bomb killed two police officers and one soldier. In a second attack, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one child and one soldier. The third bombing took place in Fallujah. Two bombs exploded near the home of a former police officer, killing a woman.

- Two car bomb attacks have left four people dead and dozens others injured. An explosive-laden vehicle was detonated near an army patrol in the city of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, on Monday April 12, 2010, killing two soldiers. Another car bomb attack that targeted a police patrol left a civilian and a law enforcement agent dead in Mosul. A total of 37 people were injured in the two incidents.

- A U.S. soldier was killed and three were injured when their helicopter crashed in northern Iraq on Saturday April 17, 2010. The incident had not been attributed to enemy fire and was under investigation. The United States has around 100,000 troops still serving in Iraq seven years after an invasion to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

- The U.S. and Iraq claimed a major victory against al-Qaida on Monday April 19, 2010, saying their forces killed the terror group's two top figures in this country in an air and ground assault on their safe house near Saddam Hussein's hometown. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced the killings of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri. U.S. military officials later confirmed the deaths.

- US and Iraqi forces have killed another al-Qaeda in Iraq leader in the north of the country on April 21, 2010. The man identified as Ahmed al-Obeidi was killed in the northern province of Nineveh.

- Iraq, Friday April 23, 2010:
- A coordinated series of explosions struck a party headquarters, two mosques, a market and a shop in Baghdad.
- The attacks killed at least 58 people and wounded scores more in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.
- The deadliest three bombings exploded in rapid succession near the headquarters of the political movement headed by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr in Sadr City.
- At least seven explosions spread carnage in neighbourhoods across Baghdad from a clothing store in Dora to a market in Rahmaniya, from mosques in Huriya and Amin to the three bombs near the Sadr office. The attacks used bombs hidden in a parked motorcycle and cars, among other places, but did not involve suicide bombers.
- The attacks struck in mostly Shiite Muslim neighbourhoods, but in Anbar, the sprawling Sunni province to the west of Baghdad, 7 people were killed and 11 wounded when five homemade explosives damaged a cluster of houses in a small village. A police lieutenant heading to the scene was also killed by a roadside bomb.

- On Sunday April 25, 2010, al-Qaida in Iraq has confirmed that two of its leaders were killed one week ago in a joint operation by U.S. and Iraqi forces. Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi were attending a meeting when U.S. and Iraqi troops engaged them in a battle and launched an air strike.

- An American soldier has been killed by a roadside blast in the Diyala province in northern Iraq we were told on Wednesday April 28. 2010. The death raises to at least 4,394 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

- Five people were killed and 10 wounded, including several police officers, when two suspected suicide car bombers attacked police checkpoints in the Abu Dsheer district, southern Baghdad, on Wednesday April 28, 2010.

- On Thursday April 29, 2010, eight people were killed when a car bomb exploded near a liquor store in southwest Baghdad.

- Two separate bomb explosions have left 3 people dead and 5 others wounded on April 30, 2010. In the first blast, an explosive device went off in a market in al-Karma area, northern Falluja, leaving two civilians dead and five injured. The second blast occurred when a bomb exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, leaving a bomber dead. The man was trying to plant the bomb on the side of the main road, when it was detonated.

- Gunmen have robbed a jewellery store in northern Baghdad and killed its owner. As they were making their escape, a car bomb exploded nearby, killing three policemen who were responding to the robbery. Seven people were wounded in Saturday May 1, 2010's explosion, including two policemen.

- About 70 college students, most of them Christians, were wounded Sunday May 2, 2-010, and another Iraqi was killed when a convoy of school buses was attacked in a double bombing on the outskirts of the northern city of Mosul.

- Bombs planted inside the home of a policeman in northern Iraq exploded Saturday May 8, 2010, killing him, his mother and one other resident. The bombing was one of several attacks around Iraq's north that killed a total of nine people since Friday evening. The attack took place in the town of Amirli, south of Kirkuk, and injured five other people.

- Iraq, Monday May 10, 2010:
- More than 100 people have died and 350 been wounded in a series of shootings and suicide bombings, the worst day of violence there this year.
- The central city of Hilla saw the deadliest attack, when staffs at a textiles factory were hit by three bomb attacks, killing at least 45 people.
- Two car bombs exploded in quick succession at the entrance to the textile factory in Hilla, just as workers boarded buses to go home in the middle of the day.
- Later, as bystanders and emergency services rushed in to help the wounded, a suicide bomber detonated explosives causing a third explosion. At least 45 people were killed and more than 140 were wounded.
- Gunmen with silencers fitted to their weapons drove up to checkpoints across Baghdad, killing at least seven police and army officers.
- A double suicide bombing in a crowded market in the small town of Suwayra, south of Baghdad, killed at least 11 people and wounded more than 40.
- Basra was struck by three car bomb attacks, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens more.
- Two bombs went off in the mainly Sunni town of Falluja, killing at least four people, including a police officer and his wife.
- There were also attacks in Iskandiriya, south Baghdad, and in Mosul.

- The death toll for a devastating day of attacks across Iraq rose to 119 on Tuesday May 11, 2010, as the worst-hit cities of Basra and Hilla reported new deaths from bombings the previous day, the country's deadliest so far this year

- Six Iraqis, five of whom were security personnel, died and 16 others were injured in a double bomb attack at a popular market in the Dora area Tuesday May 11, 2010, south of the Iraqi capital. The initial blast was followed by a second explosion that targeted security personnel.

- A bomb exploded inside a Baghdad grocery store killing three people and injuring 25 others Wednesday May 12, 2010. The attack was planned by insurgents who detonated the explosives when the Shula district market area was crowded with shoppers.

- A car bomb that tore through a cafe in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood killing nine people appears to have detonated prematurely, also blowing up three suspected militants in the vehicle we were told on Thursday May 13, 2010. The minibus was moving when it exploded and three bodies were found inside, suggesting the militants were headed to another target inside the densely populated district of at least 2 million.

- Iraqi security forces captured an al-Qaida leader, Muzahim Mohammed Horan, the leader of Qaida organization responsible for activities in south of Baghdad areas, during an operation in a town of Latifiyah south of Baghdad we were told on Saturday May 15, 2010. Iraqi troops defused bombs planted in a house and managed to arrest a suspect.

- On May 22, 2010, a car bomb exploded at a market in Iraq's northern Diyala province, killing at least 23 people and wounding another 53. The blast took place in the mainly Shia town of Khalis.

- Two American soldiers were killed in separate incidents in the country's north. One soldier died Friday May 21, 2010. The statement gave no other details about how the soldier died. Another U.S. soldier died Thursday of injuries sustained in a non-combat related incident.

- Masked assailants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns shot up a jewellery market in Baghdad Tuesday May 25, 2010, killing 15 people before they fled with a large quantity of gold.

- An Iraqi MP from the secular Iraqiya bloc of ex-premier Iyad Allawi has been assassinated in Mosul on May 25, 2010. Gunmen set up an ambush for MP Bashar Hamid Agaidi outside his house in the Amil neighbourhood and opened fire when he got home. Mr Agaidi, 32 suffered gunshots to the head and chest, and later died of his wounds.

- As of Tuesday, May 25, 2010, at least 4,400 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003. The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,485 military personnel died as a result of hostile action. Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 31,827 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action.

- A 14-year-old Iraqi girl was killed Sunday May 30, 2010, and dozens of families fled their homes to escape Iranian artillery shells in northern Iraq. The artillery shells hit villages in the Balakiyaki border area northeast of Irbil province where Kurdish rebels were thought to be operating.

- Iraq, Tuesday May 31, 2010:
- Four people were killed and several others wounded in separate attacks. Among the dead was a prominent local leader of anti-insurgent Sunni forces known as Awakening Councils who was shot by two gunmen armed with silenced pistols. The attackers fled the scene after attacking Nael al-Azami near a popular cafe in Baghdad's northern Azamiyah district.
- A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police patrol in the Baghdad's Ghadir neighbourhood, killing one policeman and wounding 10 bystanders and officers nearby.
- In Kirkuk, a policeman died from wounds sustained when a roadside bomb hit his patrol Sunday. Four of his colleagues were seriously hurt in the blast.
- In Mosul, a parked car bomb struck an Iraqi army patrol killing one soldier and seriously wounding a bystander.
- A series of other early morning blasts across Baghdad wounded 11 more people. The first bomb attached to a civilian SUV exploded while it was heading down Baghdad's eastern Palestine Street, injuring the driver and a passenger. About 90 minutes later, two separate roadside bombs targeting police patrols in eastern Baghdad injured a total of five policemen and four bystanders.

- Iraq, Friday June 4, 2010:
- A roadside bomb explosion targeted a civilian car in Dali Abbas area. Two civilians were killed in the attack.
- A roadside bomb explosion targeted civilian in west Mosul city resulted in killing two civilians and injuring four others.

- An Iraqi politician from the Iraqiya bloc has been shot dead by armed men in the northern city of Mosul. Unknown assailants shot Faris Jassim al-Jubouri early on Saturday June 5, 2010, in his home in Mosul. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

- Several bomb attacks killed at least five people in and around Baghdad. The explosion outside a Baghdad police station killed a number of officers and caused more than a dozen casualties. A suicide bomber detonated his vehicle as it approached a police patrol that was heading towards the station. Iraqi police were also targeted by a roadside bomb in Baghdad's Zaytouna neighbourhood, wounding four policemen and a bystander. Outside of Baghdad, in Mahmoudiya, another roadside bomb caused more than half a dozen casualties near a council building.

- Iraq, Monday June 7, 2010:
- Gunmen and bombers killed at least 11 people and wounded scores in a string of attacks in western Iraq and the capital Baghdad targeting mainly police and Sunni ex-insurgents who turned against al Qaeda.
- In Baghdad, a car bomb in the western Mansour district killed three people and wounded nine.
- Four roadside bombs in other areas of the city hit police patrols, killing two officers and wounding more than 20 civilians.
- In Abu Ghraib on Baghdad's western outskirts, armed men killed an imam who was a member of the Sahwa militia, or Sons of Iraq --Sunni former militants who changed sides and fought against al Qaeda, helping turn the tide of the insurgency that nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006-07. Two of the imam's sons were also killed. His wife and a third son, aged two, were seriously wounded.
- In Qaim, near Iraq's western border with Syria, bombs tore through the homes of the local Sahwa militia leader and his son. No one was hurt, but when police arrived to investigate another explosion killed two officers and wounded three.
- In western Anbar province, pre-dawn attacks on the homes of five police officers killed one man and wounded at least 20, many of them relatives of the officers. The dead man, shot by gunmen, was a member of the Sahwa.
- General Ray Odierno, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said on Friday that U.S. and Iraqi forces had killed or captured 34 of the top 42 al Qaeda leaders in Iraq in the past 90 days, leaving the militant group struggling to regroup.

- A series of bombings outside the houses of police officers in western Iraq on Monday June 7, 2010, killed four people and wounded at least 20 others. Security officials said there were at least 17 explosions across Anbar Province, from Qaeim, a desert village near the Syrian border, to Falluja. Ten of the bombs were set off outside the houses of police officers, killing two officers.

- Two civilians were killed when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed into a U.S. army patrol in Iraq Wednesday June 9, 2010, while four other people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in other attacks.

- Masked gunmen killed three jewellers before fleeing with a large amount of gold in a sophisticated attack Wednesday June 9, 2010, in southern Iraq. Six gunmen stormed into three gold jewellery shops in the centre of Basra, killed the owners, and then fled with a large amount of jewellery. Two people were wounded, including a customer and the father of one of those killed.

- A car packed with explosives detonated near a military patrol on Friday June 11, 2010, in the province of Diyala, killing two American soldiers, an Iraqi policeman and two Iraqi civilians. Six American soldiers and at least 24 Iraqi police officers and civilians were wounded.

- Fifteen people were killed and dozens wounded Sunday June 13, 2010, when suicide bombers detonated at least one bomb at Iraq's central bank and gunmen battled troops. This may have been a raid on the vaults. The attack occurred as bank employees were leaving work, sending a thick plume of smoke over Baghdad after the bank's generator was set ablaze. Troops came under fire from gunmen as they surrounded the bank in case the initial bombing was part of a plan to plunder stockpiles of Iraqi dinars and U.S. dollars.

- Attacks across Iraq claimed the lives of five people on Monday June 14, 2010, including a police colonel who was killed by a bomb in the south of the capital. The senior officer had been on board a police convoy targeted by a bomb in the Dura district of Baghdad. Another policeman was also killed and three more were wounded. In Mosul a booby-trapped cart blew up as a patrol passed by, killing one person and wounding 27 including two officers. Security officials also reported the death of a member of the anti-Al-Qaeda Sahwa militia along with his wife, when a bomb attached to their car exploded several kilometres north of Baquba.

- Iraq, Wednesday June 16, 2010:
- A leader of an anti-Qaida paramilitary group leader was killed, and a total of 28 people wounded across the country. A bomb planted in the car of an Awakening Council group leader in Abu Ghraib area killing him and wounding one of his bodyguards.
- Also in Abu Ghraib, a roadside bomb went off near a passing police patrol in the al-Zaiytoon Street, damaging a police vehicle and wounding four policemen aboard.
- A roadside bomb struck a minibus carrying passengers in the al-Mala'b district in central the city of Ramadi damaging the minibus and critically wounding the driver.
- In Baghdad, a Higher Education Ministry senior official escaped unhurt a roadside bomb explosion near his convoy in the Karrada district, wounding three civilians.
- 19 people were wounded in separate attacks during the day across the country, including 14 people wounded in a suicide car bombing that targeted a police patrol in Mosul.

- Iraq, Friday June 18, 2010:
- A car bomb killed seven people and wounded 61. The bomb in a parked car detonated near the home of a provincial official from the Turkoman minority in the town of Tuz Khurmato. Police found a second car packed with rockets and explosives, and were working to defuse it.
- Several attacks on Friday killed seven other people, including four Iraqi soldiers who died when their patrol left base and was hit by three roadside bombs in Qaim, near Iraq's western border with Syria. Six were wounded.
- In Baquba a car bomb wounded at least 30 people. The device exploded near a police captain's house, wounding six members of his family and shattering windows of nearby homes.
- In Samarra, an Iraqi interpreter for U.S. soldiers was shot dead on Thursday by his son and nephew on the orders of a Sunni Islamist insurgent group that considered him a traitor.
- Three people were killed and seven wounded when a rocket fired at a U.S. base landed on houses in Falluja.

- At least 26 people have been killed in a twin suicide car bombing close to a state-owned bank in Baghdad on June 20, 2010. More than 50 others were also hurt when the vehicles exploded simultaneously outside the Trade Bank of Iraq's headquarters in the Yarmouk district. The blasts severely damaged the building and the nearby offices of an interior ministry identity-card centre.

- A bomb attack in the northern part of the country has killed eight people, including six police officers. The latest bombings happened Sunday June 20, 2010, in the town of Shirqat. Two bombs were involved and that the second went off as people gathered to inspect the site of the first.

- Two senior members of a government-backed Iraqi militia have been killed in separate bomb attacks. Raad Tami al-Mujamai and Khamis Sabaa al-Aqabi were killed when bombs attached to their cars detonated on Tuesday June 22, 2010, in the town of Buhriz. The two were members of a local Awakening Council, or Sahwa -bands of former Sunni fighters formed in 2006 to help US and Iraqi forces fight al-Qaeda. Al-Mujamai was a senior member of the Mujamai tribe, one of the largest in Diyala

- Iraq Tuesday June 22, 2010:
- Attacks across Iraq have killed at least four people, including the leaders of an anti al-Qaida militia.
- Awakening Council Commander Raad al-Mujamai was killed by a bomb attached to his vehicle in the Diyala province city of Buhriz.
- A separate vehicle bombing there killed another leader of the Awakening Council.
- A roadside bomb in Baghdad's southern Dora neighbourhood targeted the convoy of a senior transportation official. The attack killed at least two people and wounded seven others, but the ministry official was unharmed.
- Also in Baghdad, a roadside bomb wounded at least eight people when it exploded near a group from a Shiite religious party.
- In Diyala's provincial capital, Baquba, a motorcycle bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol and wounded eight civilians.

- Iraq Thursday June 24, 2010:
- At least 11 people were killed in attacks, mostly targeting security forces, across Iraq.
- Three suicide bombers and some gunmen killed at least five people and wounded at least eight in two separate attacks in the Mosul area. Two of the suicide bombers tried to infiltrate an Iraqi Army base north of Mosul, but soldiers opened fire on them, forcing them to detonate near the base's gates. The explosion killed at least one civilian and wounded five others.
- In western Mosul, gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint, clearing a path for a suicide bomber to reach the officers and detonate, killing four police and wounding three more.
- A roadside bombing killed at least two policemen and wounded at least eight more people in Baghdad. Four of the injured were civilian bystanders.
- In Baquba gunmen invaded a home, then kidnapped and killed four men leaving their bodies nearby.

- Iraqi gunmen killed four people and wounded two as they raided goldsmiths' shops in Fallujah on Saturday June 26, 2010, escaping with thousands of dollars worth of precious metals. There have been repeated attacks on jewellers and goldsmiths across the country, blamed on both criminal gangs and insurgent groups seeking to raise funds.

- A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one officer and wounded five in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul on Saturday June 26, 2010. On Thursday, three suicide bombers killed four police and a soldier in separate attacks in the city.

- Eight people have been killed, including four policemen and an Iraqi general, in a series of attacks around the country on Wednesday June 30, 2010. The policemen were killed when a car bomb detonated next to a patrol in the town of Beiji. A civilian in a nearby vehicle was also killed and seven others were wounded. Separately, an Iraqi brigadier general was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded in Kadhamiya, a mainly Shia district in northern Baghdad. And in another Shia district, Hurriya, an official with the Baghdad provincial council died when a bomb attached to his vehicle went off as drove through a security checkpoint, the council said in a press release. In a second incident in Beiji on Tuesday, gunmen opened fire on an oil tanker, killing its driver.

- Two soldiers and two members of a government-backed Sunni militia fighting al-Qaida were killed in a day of attacks on Thursday July 1, 2010.

- A female suicide bomber blew herself up at the entrance to government offices in Ramadi on Sunday July 4, 2010, killing at least four people and wounding 23 including women and children, by a female suicide bomber at the entrance to the provincial government building.

- Explosions in Iraq on Monday July 5, 2010, killed at least one person and wounded 27. One police officer was killed and another was wounded when a roadside bomb struck a police patrol in southern Baghdad. Another 18 people were wounded by a double bombing in Salaheddin province. The first bombing targeted a police convoy in the town of Shirqat wounding eight. After first responders arrived to the scene, a roadside bomb exploded, wounding 10 more people. Among the 18 wounded were seven police and two medics. A roadside bomb in southwestern Baghdad's Saydiya neighbourhood targeted a police patrol and wounded three people, two of them civilians. At least five Shiite pilgrims were wounded by a roadside bomb that detonated in the northern outskirts of Baghdad on Monday evening.

- Iraq Wednesday July 7, 2010:
- At least 41 people were killed by bomb attacks in the capital and another 174 were wounded. The vast majority of the victims were Shiite pilgrims.
- In the latest attacks a roadside bomb detonated in western Baghdad killed at least six pilgrims and wounding 30 others.
- Another bombing, in central Baghdad's Haifa Street, wounded nine pilgrims.
- A suicide bomber struck at pilgrims in northern Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Adhamiya district as they were walking toward neighbouring Kadhimiya, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had gathered to mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Musa al-Kadhim. Twenty-eight were killed and 81 were wounded.
- Two roadside bombs left at least five pilgrims dead and 36 wounded in eastern Baghdad's mostly Shiite districts of New Baghdad and al-Fudhailiya.
- A roadside bomb targeting pilgrims exploded in al-Bayaa, in southeastern Baghdad, wounding at least six.
- In central Baghdad, another five pilgrims were wounded in a roadside bomb blast.
- Soldiers at an army checkpoint west of Baghdad fired upon a vehicle driven by a suicide attacker when he refused to stop. The vehicle exploded, leaving one civilian dead and four Iraqi army soldiers and police wounded. It was unclear whether the attacker detonated the bomb or if shots fired at the vehicle triggered the explosion.
- A roadside bomb targeting an army patrol exploded in the Al-Jamia neighbourhood of western Baghdad, wounding three soldiers.
- A bomb attached to a police officer's car went off as he was driving in the Dora neighbourhood in southern Baghdad. The officer was killed.
- The attacks came a day after bombings left at least nine dead and 43 wounded. Pilgrims have been targeted since Friday.

- At least five people have been killed by bombs targeting Shia pilgrims in Baghdad on July 8, 2010. Four people died when a roadside bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, while a car bomb in southern Baghdad killed at least one more person.

- On July 9, 2010 a suicide bomber has blown up a car at an army check point in Baghdad killing at least five people. Three soldiers were among those killed in the attack in western Baghdad's mainly Sunni Ghazaliya district, once an insurgent stronghold.

- A British Royal Marine has been killed in an explosion in Afghanistan. The death took place on Thursday July 8, 2010, in the Sangin district of Helmand province. It takes the total number of British service personnel killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 314. The death -the 101st to occur in Sangin- came on the same day that a soldier from the 5th Regiment Royal Artillery was killed in the area.

- At least 11 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks in Iraq on Tuesday July 13, 2010, including three by a device which blew up in a mock coffin during a demonstration.
- Dozens of people took part in the protest in Khales to demand stiff penalties for the perpetrators of anti-Shiite attacks in the city. The demonstrators were carrying a mock coffin when a booby-trapped device exploded inside the box, killing three people and wounding seven.
- In Yusifiyah gunmen killed a leader of the Sahwa militia, which has sided with US forces against Al-Qaeda, and four family members in their home.
- In Baghdad two bombs exploded near a petrol station in the central district of Muhandicin, killing two and wounding five others.
- A man was killed in Fallujah when a "sticky bomb" attached to his car blew up.

- Militants have attacked the house of a member of a moderate Sunni Muslim sect in the country's west, killing two women and a six-year-old child in their sleep. The attackers surrounded the house of Rahal Hussein, a member of the Sufi sect, just after midnight on Tuesday July 13, 2010, in a village near the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. The militants sprayed the house with machinegun fire and threw hand grenades inside, killing the sleeping women and child. Six people were also wounded.

- Five more US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday July 14, 2010, sending Nato's death toll to 12 in 24 hours. Four soldiers were killed by a bomb in southern Afghanistan while another US soldier died in a separate attack also in the south of the country. It comes a day after three US soldiers and five Afghan civilians died in a suicide attack in Kandahar province. The latest deaths came as a major manhunt was under way in Helmand province for the rogue Afghan soldier who killed three British soldiers from the Royal Ghurkha Rifles on Tuesday. A British Royal Marine was also killed on Tuesday in a separate incident in Helmand province.

- Iraq Thursday July 15, 2010:
- A series of six attacks in Baghdad and a shooting west of the capital killed six people, including three daughters and the grandson of a Sufi Muslim order's leader. Three girls and the granddaughter of Sheikh Mohammed al-Essawi were killed. The sheikh and five others, including his wife, were wounded.
- In Baghdad half a dozen separate attacks, mostly targeting police checkpoints, killed two civilians.
- A total of 14 people -five police, a leader in the Sahwa (Awakening) militia, which with US backing took up arms against Al-Qaeda in late 2006, and eight civilians- were wounded.

- A hotel in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya burned to the ground on July 16, 2010, killing at least 29 people. Another 20 people were injured, and the death toll could climb higher. The five-story hotel, the Soma, caught fire because of an electrical short. Terraseis, a company headquartered in Dubai that works with oil companies to conduct geographical surveys and compile seismic data, said a number of its workers were staying at the hotel. The owner of the hotel, Newroz Abdulla, said that Americans, Canadians, Australians and Britons were staying in the hotel.
- Two roadside bombs hit Iraq's capital city of Baghdad Friday morning July 16, 2010, killing at least 3 people and wounding 6 others. The first blast occurred in Hameed Shihab village in Abu Graib area west of Baghdad, leaving 3 killed and 2 wounded. After half an hour, another explosion rocked the east bank of the Tigris River in Baghdad, close to the Tahrir square, wounding four people adding several shops and cars nearby were also damaged.

- On Friday July 16, 2010, a fire swept through a hotel in northern Iraq filled with foreigners, killing at least 28 people as some desperate guests jumped from windows in attempt to escape the flames. At least half of the dead were foreigners, some of whom worked in Iraqi Kurdistan's oil industry and cell phone sector. The blaze Thursday night at the five-story Soma Hotel in the city of Sulaymaniya was probably caused by faulty electrical wiring, authorities said. A lack of fire escapes contributed to the death toll, as most of the victims died of smoke inhalation.

- Two people were killed and three injured in a car bomb blast in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Saturday July 17, 2010. The bomb was attached to the car of a Kurdish family.

- Two suicide bombings targeting members of local guard forces killed at least 48 people Sunday July 18, 2010, and heightened concern about the future of the groups as the number of U.S. troops in the country is reduced. The deadliest attack occurred outside an army base in Radwaniyah, a district southwest of Baghdad, where dozens of members of the groups, known as the Awakening councils, were lined up to collect their monthly salaries. The bombing killed at least 45 people and wounded nearly 50. Shortly afterward, a militant stormed into a meeting of Awakening council leaders in al-Qaim, a town near the Syrian border, and detonated explosives. At least three people were killed. A third explosion, in a village near Radwaniyah targeting a house that Iraqi soldiers were using as a temporary base, killed two officers and three soldiers.

- A British security contractor was killed on July 18, 2010, when a suicide bomber rammed a bomb-laden car into a convoy of four armoured SUVs in western Mosul. Conflicting reports suggest that the death toll could be as high as four. Sources say that two other western contractors -believed to be Americans- and at least one Iraqi contractor were seriously injured in the attack, while five passers-by suffered moderate wounds. All the contractors worked for the British company Aegis. It is the first British fatality in Iraq in more than 12 months. Since the British Army withdrew from its garrison near the southern city of Basra in April last year, contractors - once regular targets of insurgent bombs - have been attacked far less frequently. Around 100 British officers remain in Iraq, helping to train the Iraqi Navy in the southern port of Umm Qasr.

- Seven people were killed and eight others injured when a suicide car bomber struck a group of Iranian pilgrims in Iraq's Diyala province on Tuesday July 20, 2010. The attack took place when a suicide bomber blew up his booby-trapped car at a restaurant in Qsaireen area. The attacker targeted Iranian pilgrims who enter Iraq from the al-Mundriyah Iraqi-Iranian border point through Diyala province heading to the Shiite holy sites in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

- Iraq, Wednesday July 21, 2010:
- A civilian was killed and 11 wounded in bomb and gunfire attacks in Baghdad and eastern Iraq's Diyala province.
- A civilian was killed and three others were wounded when a magnetic bomb attached to a car detonated in Baghdad's western neighbourhood of al-Ameriyah.
- Two policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in Baghdad's southern district of Doura.
- Also in Baghdad, two civilians were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in Palestine Street in eastern the capital in the morning.
- In Diyala, three family members were wounded when unknown gunmen attacked their house in the city of Khalis. The attackers opened fire on the house with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
- Separately, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint manned by an Awakening Council group, wounding one of the group members.
- In a separate incident, a roadside bomb struck a U.S. patrol outside Maqdadiyah, damaging one of the U.S. vehicles.
- Also in the province, Iraqi security force captured Ali Hassan al-Khailani, an al-Qaida leader in the town of al-Maqdadiyah. Khailani is accused of dozens of attacks and killings against civilians and Iraqi security forces.

- At least 15 Iraqis were killed Wednesday July 21, 2010, in a Diyala province car bombing, the third fatal bombing attack this week in the region northeast of Baghdad. Separately, a U.S. soldier was mortally wounded in a roadside blast in Diyala.

Gunmen have killed four people, including a Sunni cleric, in Mosul. A policeman and two civilians were killed Thursday July 22, 2010, when gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a police checkpoint in the city. Earlier Fathi al-Nuaimi, a Sunni imam, was shot dead by gunmen in a drive-by attack near his home.

- Iraq, Friday July 23, 2010:
- A series of violent attacks claimed the lives of four people in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Among the dead were a baker, a policeman and an imam.
- In nearby Kirkuk, a police officer was killed and 10 people were wounded in a suicide car bomb blast. The suicide bomber targeted the convoy of a Turkmen general who was on his way home after Friday prayers. The general was critically injured and his son, a police officer, was killed.
- In Mosul, gunmen shot dead a man while he was working inside his bakery.
- On Thursday, two police officers died in separate incidents. A roadside bomb killed one police officer and wounded four others and gunmen opened fire in a drive-by shooting on a police patrol, killing one person and wounding two.
- On the other side of the city, another roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol, wounding three people.
- Gunmen stormed the house of an imam Thursday and shot him dead.

- Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for twin suicide bombings against its former insurgent allies that killed almost 50 people and said in an Internet statement posted Friday that it hoped the attacks would inspire others to "martyrdom." In another setback in their battle with the group, we were told on Thursday July22, 2010, that four suspected al-Qaida members had escaped from a prison that the U.S. had handed over to Iraq a week earlier.

- Iraqi security forces killed a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq leader southeast of Baghdad, we were told on Saturday July 24, 2010. The raid -which took place near Salman Pak on Friday- also led to the arrests of six other al Qaeda "criminal associates." The military searched several buildings for a suspected AQI leader and the "suspect presented clear hostile intent towards security forces." Troops responded and the suspect was killed.

- A suspected Al-Qaeda suicide bomber blew up a car by the Baghdad offices of Al-Arabiya television, killing four people - three security guards and a female office assistant- on Monday July 16, 2010. That toll was confirmed by an official at Al-Yarmuk hospital in west Baghdad. An interior ministry official put the casualty toll at three dead and 16 wounded. Former deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zawbayi and two of his guards were among the wounded.

- Iraq Monday July 26, 2010:
- A suicide bomber driving a minibus blew himself up in front of the Baghdad office of a popular Arabic news station, killing six people.
- In an attack in the holy city of Karbala, militants detonated two parked cars filled with explosives about two miles apart as crowds of pilgrims passed by; 68 people were injured.
- In Baghdad, three guards were among the six killed in the suicide attack targeting the al-Arabiya station. They also said a lawmaker was alive under the rubble of his collapsed home after the attack. He was rescued and underwent surgery.

- Iraq, Wednesday July 28, 2010:
- A sandstorm has downed an Iraqi military helicopter, killing its five-member crew. The helicopter was providing aerial protection to Shia pilgrims travelling to the city of Karbala when it crashed in the sandstorm.
- A Baghdad blast has killed five Iraqis and wounded 12 others as they waited to collect their pensions. The bomb was planted on a road in the predominantly Shia Sadr City neighbourhood.
- On Monday, two car bombs exploded near Karbala, killing at least 20 mainly Shia pilgrims and wounding more than 50.
- On Tuesday, six people were killed and dozens wounded when a female bomber blew herself up near a checkpoint in Karbala.

- Shooting and five roadside bomb explosions in northeast Baghdad Thursday July 29, 2010, killed six people, including three Iraqi soldiers, and injured 14 others. Gunmen opened fire at a military checkpoint in the Adhamiya neighbourhood, killing three soldiers. Their bodies were placed outside a library, and when Iraqi police rushed to the scene, a roadside bomb exploded targeting their patrol. In a coordinated attack, four other bombs exploded at Iraqi police stations in two other locations in Adhamiya, while officials were at the first explosion site. Seven of the 14 wounded are police officers.

- Insurgents briefly raised the black flag of Al Qaeda in Iraq over a mostly Sunni neighbourhood of Baghdad on Thursday July 29, 2010, during a brazen assault that killed 16 people. Ten of the dead were from the security forces, four were members of the U.S.-allied Sunni militia Awakening, and two were civilians. In addition, at least 14 people were injured. The deaths of the seven soldiers and three policemen in Baghdad brought to 17 the total number of Iraqi security forces killed in incidents nationwide Thursday. Two Iraqi soldiers died in car bombings in Falluja, four were killed in a suicide bombing north of Tikrit, and a policeman was shot dead in Mosul.

- On Saturday July 30, 2010, Iraqi soldiers arrested two suspected insurgents behind a brazen series of attacks in Baghdad this week that killed 16 people and wounded 14 others. The pair was arrested as a result of security camera footage that showed insurgents setting alight three dead soldiers and planting Al-Qaeda's flag.

- Iraqi security forces arrested 10 suspected associates of the al-Qaeda in Iraq terrorist organization in several operations on July 30, 2010. Iraqi forces working with U.S. advisors:
- Searched several buildings in Mansuriyah for a suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq member who allegedly is responsible for building and planting bombs that attach magnetically to vehicles. Information and evidence gathered at the scene led Iraqi forces to identify and arrest four suspected criminal associates of the wanted man.
- In Ghazaliah, they arrested two suspected criminal associates.
- In Tarmiyah they arrested four suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq criminal associates while searching for a suspected financier for the terrorist group who also allegedly is responsible for planting roadside bombs targeting Iraqi and coalition forces.

- Assailants shot dead five Iraqi policemen at a road checkpoint in Baghdad on Tuesday August 3, 2010. The attacks come amid a drawdown of US forces and political instability in Iraq. Also Tuesday, in several separate incidents around the Iraqi capital, roadside bombs wounded a total of six people and mortar rounds damaged a building.
The Iraqi health ministry announced Saturday July 31, 2010, that 535 people were killed and 1,043 were wounded across the country last month.

- The death toll of two bomb explosions on Tuesday August 3, 2010, in Kut has risen to 20, while 50 others were wounded. The incident took place when a booby-trapped car and a roadside bomb went off one by one in several seconds at the al-Amil district in central Kut, the capital city of Wasit province. The death toll could continue to rise as many injured were in critical condition; around 10 shops and many cars were seriously damaged. Also on Tuesday, a group of suspected al-Qaida militants stormed a police checkpoint near al-Liqaa Square near Mansour district in western Baghdad at dawn, and opened fire from their pistols fitted with silencers, killing five policemen before they fled the scene.

- Several days before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, bomb attacks in Iraq killed more than 50 people Saturday August 7 and Sunday August 8, 2010. A suicide car bomber targeted a police patrol Sunday in Ramadi, killing more than half a dozen people. Many of the victims were reportedly retirees waiting in line for social security checks at a local post office.

- An American soldier has been killed south of Baghdad on Saturday August 7, 2010. The soldier died in Babil province. It was not immediately clear whether the soldier died in a combat operation. The death raises to at least 4,414 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

- An explosion hit a traffic police office in Iraq's capital, killing two and wounding 10 others. Monday August 9, 2010's attack on the Ghazaliyah bureau in western Baghdad came two weeks before the US ends its Iraqi combat operations. Rattled by the attacks that have killed at least 12 colleagues, traffic policemen have demanded more protection and sought armed guards for themselves.

- Weekend bombings and shootings in Iraq left at least 69 people dead from the north to the south we were told on Monday August 9, 2010.
- West of Baghdad, eight people died Sunday in a suicide bombing near a government office in Ramadi, and three more were killed in a car bombing in Fallujah targeting a police patrol.
- In the southern city of Basra, health officials raised to 43 the death toll in a triple explosion in a busy marketplace Saturday night. The bloodshed was caused by at least one bomb, which may have triggered the other blasts. It was the second time in a week that a normally quiet southern city had been targeted.
- In Mosul, the controversial governor of Nineveh province, Atheel Najafi, escaped an assassination attempt when two bombs targeted his motorcade. Najafi is a key supporter of the mostly Sunni Arab bloc led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, and has played a leading role in rising Kurdish-Arab tensions by asserting Arab claims to land controlled by Kurds.
- 14 people died and scores were injured in more than a dozen other bombings and shootings over the weekend.
- A U.S. soldier was killed in the southern province of Babil.

- Iraq, Tuesday August 10, 2010:
- Bombings and militant attacks have left seven people dead and 23 others injured across Iraq.
- The first and the most deadly bombings of the day happened in the al-Bayaa district of western Baghdad, where three consecutive bomb blasts left three people dead, including a policeman. Eleven people were injured in the explosions.
- Three others, including two policemen, were injured in the same neighbourhood when a fourth bomb exploded while they were attempting to defuse it.
- Separately, a policeman was killed and four others injured after their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb. That incident also occurred in the al-Bayaa district.
- In another incident, one policeman was killed and five others injured after a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol exploded in the Fallujah province.
- A local leader of the anti-al-Qaeda Awakening Council was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the town of Jurf al-Sakhr, a roadside bomb left another member of the anti-al-Qaeda group in the western Anbar province.

- The death toll from the house bomb explosion in the city of Sa'diyah in the eastern province of Diyala early on Wednesday August 11, 2010, rose to 10 - eight soldiers and two civilians- and five soldiers wounded. A blast occurred when the Iraqi solders stormed a booby-trapped house. In the morning, Iraqi security forces and civil a defence tram removed the debris of the collapsed house and found bodies of a man and a woman who were shot dead before the explosion of the house. The insurgents apparently attacked the house earlier at night and killed the two victims, and then they planted bombs in the house before they sent false information to the security forces saying that hostages were kept in the house.

- Explosions and gunmen in Iraq killed six people Tuesday August 10, 2010, including two members of an anti-al-Qaida group and two policemen. The attacks, which also injured 15 people, reflect the persistent violence directed at people responsible for protecting Iraq as American forces leave. The most deadly incident happened in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Baiyaa in the southwestern part of the city, which was wracked by a series of blasts.

- Iraq, Saturday August 14, 2010:
- Assailants killed four Iraqi police and a government-backed militia fighter as violence rises ahead of a U.S. troop withdrawal.
- In the first incident, the unknown gunmen shot and killed two policemen in their patrol car at a Baghdad checkpoint, then set the car on fire.
- Two other police officers were shot and killed at another checkpoint west of the city.
- Northeast of the capital, gunmen attacked a security post guarded by members of a government-backed Sunni militia, killing one.
- Two people were killed and at least 16 people were wounded in multiple bombings targeting police and anti-al Qaeda fighters in the city of Samarra Friday.
- Several bombs exploded outside the house of a police officer, severely damaging his home and setting his car on fire. When police and Sons of Iraq fighters arrived at the scene and entered the apparently booby-trapped house, it exploded, wounding eight people, including two children and a woman.
- In another incident in the al-Shuhadaa neighbourhood of Samarra, a number of bombs exploded outside the house of another police officer, wounding six members of his family and severely damaging his home.
- The home of a Sons of Iraq leader in the al-Jubairiya neighbourhood in the city was targeted in another attack. Attackers planted several bombs and gas cylinders with TNT outside his house. At least four members of his family were wounded.

- Iraq, Sunday August 15, 2010:
- A series of bombings and drive-by shootings in Iraq has killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 20 others.
- Three people, including a police officer, were killed when a bomb struck a minibus heading into central Baghdad.
- Other roadside bombs in the Iraqi capital killed three people.
- Elsewhere three Sunni worshippers were killed in a drive-by shooting as they left a mosque after morning prayers in Babil province, south of Baghdad.
- In Mosul, gunmen killed an Iraqi soldier in an attack on a security checkpoint.

- Four Iranian pilgrims and an Iraqi were killed on Monday August 16, 2010, when a car bomb exploded next to their bus north of Baghdad. The bus was on the highway just outside the town of Muqdadiyah headed towards the capital Baghdad when the car exploded. Nine other Iranians on the bus were injured.

- The toll from a suicide bombing at an Iraqi army recruitment centre on Tuesday August 17, 2010, rose to over 50 killed and 77 wounded. It was one of the bloodiest attacks in weeks, underscoring a spreading sense of gloom more than five months after an inconclusive election that has yet to produce a new government and ahead of the end of U.S. combat operations this month.

- Gunmen shot three people dead and a roadside bomb killed two more in Iraq Wednesday August 18, 2010. Gunmen killed the three people outside their homes in Diyala province and a bomb blast near a courthouse in the northern city of Tikrit killed two other people and wounded at least two more. One of the victims killed was a security officer.

- Iraq Saturday August 21, 2010:
- Clashes erupted between Kurdish security forces and a gunman hiding in a house, leaving one Kurdish security member and the gunman wounded in southern Kirkuk.
- A sticky bomb attached to a car killed an off-duty policeman in southern Kirkuk.
- Gunmen opened fire at an Iraqi police checkpoint, killing one policeman and wounding another, in eastern Mosul.
- Gunmen using silencers killed an off-duty police officer while he was driving his car in the Harthiya district of western Baghdad on Friday.
- Gunmen shot dead a government-backed Sahwa militia leader in western Baquba on Friday.

- An American solider was killed in a rocket attack in southern Iraq on Sunday August 22, 2010. The attack took place while the solider was conducting operations in Iraq's southern province of Basra. The death rises to at least 4,416 the number of U.S. military personal killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. The fatality comes three days after the last American combat unit left Iraq. Some 50,000 U.S. troops will stay another year in Iraq in what is designated as a noncombat role. They will primarily focus on training Iraq's security forces.

- Iraq, Wednesday August 25, 2010:
- A string of car-bomb attacks killed at least 45 people across Iraq.
- A car bomb struck a police station near the offices of the governor in Kut. The attack killed 16 and wounded 18.
- In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at a police station in the northeastern neighbourhood of Qahira, killing at least 15 people, including six policemen. The blast left another 60 people wounded.
- Explosions disrupted the northeastern province of Diyala. At least three people were killed when a parked car blew up by the City Council in Moqdadiya in northeastern Diyala.
- In Baqubah, Diyala's capital, a car bomb exploded near a police patrol, leaving one policeman and two civilians dead. Another 16 people were wounded in the blast.
- Insurgents also blew up the homes of three policemen and one electoral commission employee in Baqubah's outer district of Buhruz. Five people were wounded.
- In Ramadi, a car bomb struck a bus station, killing two policemen and a civilian.
- In Fallujah a council member was killed when assailants planted a bomb on his car. A policeman also died when assailants blew up his car. Another three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded during their patrol. A bomb also killed an Iraqi soldier in the centre of Fallujah.
- Militants struck in Basra, setting off a car bomb that left 11 people wounded.
- A car bomb attack in the southern pilgrimage city of Karbala by a police station left another 19 wounded.
- The attacks followed the announcement by the U.S. military on Tuesday that their troop numbers had now dropped to 49,700 soldiers as soldiers switched from a combat mission to the job of training the Iraqi army and police and assisting them when asked.

- Insurgents have killed six members of a Sunni militia allied with U.S. forces against al-Qaida. The Sahwa (Awakening) fighters were killed in a village in Diyala province Thursday August 26, 2010, a day after a string of apparently coordinated attacks killed at least 55 people across Iraq.

- Iraq, Friday August 27, 2010:
- Gunmen stormed a house in Riyadh in north Iraq, killing a child and wounding three of his family.
- A roadside bomb went off in Zaafaraniya district, southeastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding four others.
- Police found the body of a Christian man with bullet wounds to the head and chest in southwest Mosul. The man had been kidnapped five days before.
- A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed one civilian and wounded his son in western Mosul.
- One man was wounded when a mortar round landed in western Mosul.
- Iraqi security forces arrested two local leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq west of the city of Falluja. A car bomb factory was also discovered.
- Gunmen opened fire at an Iraqi army patrol late on Thursday, killing two soldiers and one officer, in Baaj.
- A roadside bomb exploded near the house of a policeman late on Thursday, wounding seven civilians, in Falluja. Three policemen were wounded when another bomb later exploded in the same place.
- Gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint run by government-backed militia, killing two members and wounding four others late on Thursday in Shirqat.

- Iraq, Saturday August 28, 2010:
- A roadside bomb wounded a U.S. service member in Basra.
- Police said they found the body of an unknown man with gunshot wounds to the chest in the town of Shura.
- A roadside bomb wounded two civilians late on Friday in Hawija.

- Iraq, Sunday August 29, 2010:
- Gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi army and police, killing one soldier and wounding three others, including one policeman, in Abu Ghraib.
- Gunmen threw three hand grenades and blew up a wooden cart as a police patrol was passing by, wounding 10 people, including one policeman, in central Mosul.
- One insurgent was killed as he was trying to plant a bomb in a small town west of Mosul.
- A roadside bomb wounded three policemen when it went off near their police patrol in the city of Falluja
- Hussein Salman, the deputy head of the Shiite Endowment, was unharmed when a sticky bomb attached to his car went off in Baghdad's northwestern district of Kadhimiya.

- Iraq, Saturday September 4, 2010:
- Five people, including four policemen, were killed in three separate shooting incidents in Mosul.
- A woman was also killed in her home in the west of Mosul,
- Suicide bombers have targeted a Baghdad military headquarters killing 12 people.

- Iraq Monday September 6, 2010:
- A string of bombings and shootings in Iraq has left at least one Iraqi military officer and five civilians dead and at least 21 people wounded.
- Gunmen killed an Iraqi brigadier general as he drove his car in al-Ameriya, in western Baghdad.
- Five Iraqi construction workers were found dead in the northern city of Samarra. Authorities discovered their bullet-riddled bodies in an apartment where they were living in the centre of the city. Two of the men were engineers and the other three labourers for a construction company refurbishing a police station and a youth centre.
- In western Baghdad's Harthiya neighbourhood, gunmen using silencers wounded a senior Ministry of Agriculture employee as he was leaving his home.
- A double bombing in western Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighbourhood wounded at least 15 Iraqis. First, a roadside bomb targeting civilians detonated, which was followed by a second blast when security forces responded to the scene. Six Iraqi soldiers, four policemen and five civilians were wounded.
- In southern Baghdad's Dora district, a roadside bomb hit a convoy of a private Iraqi security company, wounding at least two civilian bystanders and damaging one vehicle.
- At least three others were wounded in overnight violence.
- Gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint in western Baghdad, wounding a policeman, while a bomb attached to a civilian vehicle wounded its two occupants.
- On Sunday, at least five suicide bombers carried out a coordinated and complex attack on an Iraqi military headquarters in central Baghdad, killing as many as 12 people and wounding dozens.

- A prominent Iraqi state television anchorman was shot dead on Tuesday September 7, 2010, as he was driving in the capital. Riad al-Saray was killed in Mansur district -west Baghdad- as he was on his way to Karbala," a Shiite shrine city south of the capital. Traffic police saw Saray's vehicle veer off course and crash into the side of the road.

- Two American soldiers were killed and nine were injured Tuesday September 7, 2010, when a man wearing an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on them in an Iraqi commando compound in the province of Salahuddin, an attack that highlighted the danger U.S. troops continue to face in Iraq despite the formal end of combat operations announced by President Obama last week. The soldiers were members of a security detail guarding a U.S. company commander who was meeting with Iraqi security forces. The military said it wasn't clear whether the assailant was an Iraqi soldier, but Iraqi and Kurdish officials said the shooting occurred after an altercation between the American soldiers and a Kurdish Iraqi soldier. The attacker was shot and killed by an American soldier. The man opened fire on the Americans during a dispute over a volleyball game, an account confirmed by a senior Kurdish official.

- At least six people have been killed and 35 injured in two separate bomb attacks in Baghdad on September 8, 2010.Three policemen and one civilian died when a car bomb exploded near a bus station in the southern Bayaa neighbourhood. A second bomb targeting police and rescue services arriving at the blast site detonated minutes later. There were no reports on casualties from the second blast. In eastern Baghdad, two bombs near a bus station detonated simultaneously, killing two civilians and wounding 12 others. Riyad al-Saray -an anchor and a reporter- was killed as he was leaving his home in the Harthiya neighbourhood.

- One Iraqi soldier and a policeman were killed in a gunfight with insurgents in the agricultural village of Al-Hudaid on September 12, 2010. Three insurgents were also killed and 10 people wounded in the shooting. Security forces had arrested 12 insurgents in the same village that day. In the centre of Baquba two civilians were killed and a young child was wounded when a magnetic so-called "sticky bomb" was attached to a minibus that they were in. An army captain was killed and three of his family wounded when a roadside bomb detonated in front of his home in the town of Buhruz, south of Baquba.

- Iraq, Monday September 13, 2010:
- A total of 11 were killed, 12 wounded and 27 suspected insurgents captured in more than two days of clashes at an al-Qaida stronghold in the volatile province of Diyala in eastern Iraq.
- Seven al-Qaida militants and four Iraqi security members, including an army officer, were killed and 12 security members wounded in the clashes fought by Iraqi army and police forces backed by U.S. helicopters in the area of al-Hadeed, west of the provincial capital city of Baquba, which also resulted in the capturing of 27 individuals believed to be al-Qaida members.

- Seven civilians were among 18 people killed in Iraq on Wednesday September 15, 2010. They were shot dead as US and Iraqi troops tried to nab a top Al-Qaeda leader in Fallujah, sparking public anger. Two Iraqi soldiers were also killed in the fire fight while a roadside bomb in northern Iraq claimed the lives of nine other troops travelling home on leave.

- Iraq, Thursday September 16, 2010:
- Five people were killed and five others were wounded in gunfire and bomb attacks in eastern and northern Iraq, while the Iraqi security forces captured 15 suspects across the country.
- In Diyala province, a member of government-backed Awakening Council group and his wife were shot dead when gunmen stormed their house at a rural area near the town of Abu Sayda.
- Also in Diyala province, a civilian was killed and three others wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their car while travelling near a village in north of Baquba.
- The Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across the Diyala province during the past 24 hours and apprehended five suspects and wanted individuals.
- In Mosul the Iraqi police traded fire with insurgents during a raid on a safe house in the al-Thawra neighbourhood, killing two gunmen, capturing two more, and seizing a cache of weapons and ammunition.
- Elsewhere in northern Iraq, two policemen were wounded in twin roadside bomb explosions in central the city of Kirkuk.
- Also in Kirkuk, the Iraqi security forces captured eight suspects, including six wanted individuals, during raids on villages of the al-Rashad area.

- A U.S. Air Force soldier in Iraq lost his life in a non-combat incident on Wednesday September 15, 2010. The soldier, who was engaged in a routine "on-base controlled detonation" of unexploded ordnance died under the impact of a blast. Another American soldier, who sustained injuries in the explosion.

- Two car bombs in Baghdad have killed at least 23 people and more than 80 people were wounded in the blasts, which went off in short succession. The two blasts went off within moments of each other, one at a busy intersection near a security ministry building in the north of the capital. The second car bomb exploded in western Baghdad, outside a mobile phone company and close by a popular restaurant. In a third incident Sunday September 19, 2010, at least one man was killed when a home-made bomb attached to his car exploded.

- Six car bombs detonated across Baghdad on Sunday September 20, 2010, and a suicide bomber blew up a car in nearby Fallujah, killing a total of 37 people and wounding more than 100. The twin car bombings struck. In the Mansour and Kathumya neighbourhoods, killing 29 people and wounding 111. The booby-trapped vehicle in Mansour targeted a busy market area near an office of the Asiacell phone company and a popular restaurant. Ten people died. The car bomb in Kathumya, which killed 19, detonated near an office of Iraq's National Security Ministry.

- Iraq, Sunday September 26, 2010:
- Six people were killed and six others wounded in gunfire and bomb attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- A booby-trapped car parked on a main road in the town of Garma, near the city of Fallujah detonated near a passing police patrol, killing four policemen, including an officer. The blast also wounded three people, destroyed two police vehicles, and damaged several nearby civilian cars.
- In Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, two brothers were killed when gunmen stormed their house in the city of Mosul.
- In Baghdad, three people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near the office of Asiacell mobile company in Mansour district in west part of the city. A week ago, the building of mobile company was the scene of a massive bombing that killed ten people and wounded 58 others.
- Also in the capital, a car bomb exploded near the convoy of a member of the al-Iraqia cross-sectarian political bloc, headed by the former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in Mansour district. Talal al-Zoubaie, who is also a lawmaker in the new parliament, escaped unhurt by the blast which only caused minor damages to some vehicles of his convoy.
- Earlier in the day, Baghdad was the scene of separate gunfire and bomb attacks resulted in the killing of an employee of Iraq's Integrity Committee and the wounding of ten people, while two Katyusha rockets struck the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad without immediate report of casualties.
- Unidentified gunmen shot down a civilian on Saturday in front of his home in the western al-Amil neighbourhood of Mosul.
- A traffic police officer was also killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) attached to his vehicle detonated in Baghdad's central district of al-Karrada.
- In a separate incident, four civilians were injured in a blast that targeted a federal police patrol in the area of al-Zanjili in western Mosul.
- Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces said they discovered and defused five IEDs planted near a bridge east of al-Nassiriya, the capital of the southern province of Dhi Qar.
- Security forces also dismantled an 18-man terrorist cell that purportedly had links to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Iraqi forces arrested the group's leader, Mahmoud Mohannad Rasheed, along with 17 others and more than 18 kg of explosives in Sadiya in the Khanaqin district.
- Iraq's state-run television says one of its news anchors has been injured by a bomb attached to his car. Two Iraqiya reporters were killed early this month. The bomb exploded Monday September 27, 2010, as Alaa Muhsen drove through southern Baghdad. Officials at Yarmouk Hospital confirmed they were treating Muhsen.

- At least three people were killed and 10 injured on Monday September 27, 2010, in a series of attacks in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. One policeman was killed and six injured when an explosive device targeting their patrol in southern Mosul went off, while three policemen were injured in another blast in the western part of the city. A woman was killed and her brother injured during an exchange of fire between Iraqi forces and gunmen in the al-Mithaq area, eastern Mosul. In the nearby neighbourhood of al-Zohour, a teacher was shot dead by gunmen near a school.

- Iraq, Wednesday September 29, 2010:
- A high-ranking police officer was killed and eight people injured in separate attacks across Iraq.
- The police officer was shot dead by gunmen who broke into his house in Samarra.
- In central Baghdad three people were injured when a bomb exploded near the national theatre. Also in the capital, a roadside bomb left two others injured when it went off. #
- Security forces in Baghdad arrested a suspected senior member of al-Qaeda, Muhanad Mohammad Naif.
- To the north of the capital, a roadside bomb injured one person when it exploded near his house north-west of Kirkuk.
- A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up near a gathering of the Kurdish Pehsmerga security forces in the Qalaat-Diza district, north-east of the city Sulaimaniya. That attack left two security members injured. Security forces recognized the bomber and asked him to surrender, but he was able to blow himself up.

- Iraq, Sunday October 3, 2010:
- A magnetic bomb that was stuck to a civilian car detonated on the old Abu Ghraib road, near Jami'a neighbourhood, west Baghdad killing the driver.
- A magnetic bomb that was stuck to a civilian car detonated near Darwish intersection in Saidiyah neighbourhood, south Baghdad seriously injuring both the driver and the passenger.
- A magnetic bomb that was stuck to a civilian car detonated near Masbah intersection in Karrada neighbourhood, central Baghdad seriously injuring both the driver and the passenger.
- Men armed with pistols fitted with silencers attacked a police checkpoint in central Fallujah Sunday, killing one police officer and injuring another.
- Men armed with pistols fitted with silencers broke into the home of a Sahwa member in Ameen neighbourhood, central Baquba, and shot him dead.
- Two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession targeting a motorcade carrying the Director of Investigation and the Head of Intelligence in the province. The motorcade was passing through Faisaliyah neighbourhood, east Mosul. Missing their mark, the explosions caused no casualties.
- Armed men stormed a house in a village in Wanah district, to the northeast of Mosul. They killed the father and left.
- Armed men threw a home made bomb at a U.S. military convoy in Faisaliyah neighbourhood, east Mosul. No casualties were reported.
- A car bomb parked in an open-air market in Tel Afar district, west Mosul, was detected, but exploded while being defused by a bomb squad seriously injuring three bomb-squad members.
Iraq. Monday October 4, 2010:
- Five people were killed and 18 were wounded in several attacks.
- In Bagdad a roadside bomb targeting a convoy carrying the deputy minister of science and technology killed one of his guards and wounded four other people, including another guard and a police officer. The minister, Fuad al-Mussawi, was not hurt in the attack.
- In separate incidents two sticky bombs and a roadside bomb exploded in three neighbourhoods in Baghdad, wounding eight people.
- In the ethnically mixed town of Jalawla a bomb attached to a car exploded. Though no one was hurt, a second roadside bomb exploded after Iraqi police had arrived at the scene, killing three officers. Another six officers were wounded.
- A bomb attached to the car belonging to an Iraqi freelance journalist, Tahreer Kadhim Jawad, exploded as he was driving in the town of Garma. He was killed instantly.

- At least six people, including four brothers from a militia allied with the Iraqi government, were killed Monday October 11, 2010, in separate attacks. The brothers, who were all members of the Sahwa, or Awakening Councils, were kidnapped from their house in southern Baghdad. The kidnappers, all armed and wearing military uniforms, executed the four shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, in Falluja one security official was killed when gunmen broke into his house in al- Naimiya neighbourhood. Another man died and his wife was injured when a bomb went off near their car.

- Bomb blasts killed three people and injured 12 on Tuesday October 12, 2010, in Mosul. Two people were killed by a car bomb targeting an Iraqi military patrol in the north of the city. Eight people, including two soldiers, were also injured in the blast. Also, a bomb blast targeted a convoy of Mosul's top police investigator, leaving one member of his entourage dead and three injured. Last week, a senior police officer in the city was killed by gunmen. Recent arrest operation in the city led to the capture of eight suspected insurgents, including two Syrian nationals.

- Targeted explosions in Baghdad and northern Iraq wounded 28 people on Wednesday October 13, 2010, among them seven Iranian pilgrims and nine policemen. A homemade bomb targeting pilgrims returning home from Shiite shrines in Iraq wounded seven Iranians -two women and five men. Three Iraqi guards protecting the convoy of pilgrims also were hurt in the explosion, in the town of Al-Muqdadiyah. Separately, 18 people, police and civilians, were hurt in various attacks in Baghdad. Four homemade bombs set off in coordinated explosions wounded four policemen and five others in Yarmuk and five policemen in central Baghdad's Al-Wathaq Square. Also, a "sticky bomb" attached to a vehicle wounded two passengers and two passers-by in central Baghdad's Al-Wathaq Square.

- Iraq, Thursday October 14, 2010:
- Six people, including an Iraqi Interior Ministry official and four members of a leading political bloc, died in multiple explosions throughout Baghdad.
- Four people were killed when a roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying Abdul Karim Mahood, a key ally of former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The blast, apparently targeted members of Allawi's al-Iraqiya political coalition. In addition to the four fatalities, three others were wounded, though Mahood himself escaped unharmed.
- An employee with Iraq's Interior Ministry died after a sticky bomb attached to a car exploded in central Baghdad.
- One civilian was killed and another was wounded in a roadside bomb incident in the Baladiyat area of eastern Baghdad.
- Another roadside bomb struck a vehicle in central Baghdad, wounding two employees with a civilian defence unit.

- Two Iraqi police officers were killed and two others were wounded Saturday October 16, 2010, when gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in Anbar province. The attack happened in the town of Anna. Hours later, a family of four was wounded by a sticky bomb attached to the car they were riding in. The incident occurred in Balad.

- A series of jewellery store robberies in Baghdad on Sunday October 17, 2010, led to clashes with police and left at least seven people dead. Among the killed were three store owners and two police officers. Two of the 10 gunmen, who stormed three jewellery stores in western Baghdad's al-Mansour neighbourhood, were also killed as they tried to flee the area. The robbers took gold and cash, and eight remain at large.

- Iraq, Monday October 18, 2010:
- At least five people were killed in attacks across Iraq, including a member of the Baghdad provincial council, whose murder prompted accusations that he was killed because he had uncovered corruption within the council. Jassim Ali al-Saedi was killed when a parked car exploded near his vehicle in central Baghdad. At least two of his guards were injured in the attack. Mohammad al-Rubaiee, also a member of the council, accused the government of responsibility for al-Saedi's death, after the latter 'discovered several administrative cases of corruption in some official departments.' Al-Rubaiee said that al-Saedi found the corruption as part of his observatory role in the services sector for the council, the Aswat al-Iraq news agency reported.
- Also in the capital, an Iraqi civilian was killed and another injured when an improvised explosive device blew up in the northern Kafaat district.
- In Mosul, meanwhile, two soldiers were killed and five injured in two attacks.
- A group of gunmen also shot dead an elderly man when they broke into his home in the Nablus neighbourhood of Mosul.
- A day earlier, at least 11 people had been killed in attacks across Iraq, according to local media.

- A roadside bomb struck the convoy of the top United Nations representative to Iraq on Tuesday October 19, 2010, after he had finished a meeting with the country's senior Shiite cleric to discuss the continuing political deadlock. The diplomat, Ad Melkert, escaped unharmed, but one Iraqi police officer was killed and three others were wounded in the blast, which tore through their vehicle as the convoy drove to the airport outside the southern city of Najaf.

- A prominent leader of a government-backed Sunni militia has been killed in a blast near Baghdad on Friday October 22, 2010. Belonging to the Sahwa militia, he died when an explosive strapped to his car went off at Fallujah. Last week a Sahwa militiaman was killed in an IED blast in Samarra.

- At least five people were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded Sunday October 24, 2010, in a medical compound in Mosul. The compound includes a number of clinics, hospitals and the Mosul medical college.

- Two separate explosions killed at least three people and wounded several others in Baghdad Wednesday October 27, 2010. The first blast took place in northeastern Baghdad outside a compound of the Sunni Endowment, which oversees Sunni religious sites in Iraq. It killed two security guards and wounded four bystanders. The second explosion occurred when a bomb attached to a car went off in southern Baghdad. A civilian was killed and four others wounded in the attack.

- On October 27, 2010, gunmen have attacked jewellery shops at a market in Kirkuk, killing 10 people. The dead included several policemen, as well as the owners of one shop and a number of customers, including a child. The attackers, who were armed with hand grenades and other weapons, fled after a gunfight with the police. It was not immediately clear if they were insurgents or members of a criminal gang.

- A series of bomb attacks targeting Iraqi government and police officials left at least four people dead and several wounded on Thursday October 28, 2010. A suicide attack targeting federal police headquarters in the western city of Mosul killed two police officers and wounded eight others, including a civilian. Hours later, a Police Colonel was killed after a bomb attached to his car exploded in the south-western Amil district of Baghdad. Another senior police official was seriously injured in a similar attack, also in Amil district. While an employee of the Ministry of Industry was wounded after an explosion struck his car in central Baghdad, a car bomb explosion killed one civilian and wounded two others in the capital city's southern Saidiya district.

- At least 30 people have been killed and scores injured in the latest bomb explosion near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The death toll from the massive bomb blast that ripped through a crowded coffee shop north of Baghdad on Friday October 29, 2010, reached 30. Around seventy others were also wounded in the explosion that rocked adjacent neighbourhoods in the city of Balad Ruz in Diyala Province in central Iraq.

- Iraq Thursday November 4, 2010:
- Five people were killed and 15 injured in separate attacks on government and security targets.
- Three soldiers were killed by a bomb aimed at a military patrol near the city of Salah el - Din. Nine people, including civilians, were also injured in the blast.
- In Anbar province, an Iraqi government official and his driver were killed by explosives.
- Three roadside bombs exploded as Siyad Izerij, who headed the town of Kubeisa in the province, was driving to his office.
- In a separate incident, three policemen were injured when gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the area of Amreyet al - Fallujah.
- At the same checkpoint, three soldiers were injured when a bomb exploded after they arrived at the scene to offer backup.

- Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and nine others -mostly civilians, including two women - were wounded after a bomb ripped through the Iraqi city of Baquba Friday November 5, 2010. A parked car bomb detonated in the western part of the city near the civil defence headquarters, apparently targeting an Iraqi Army patrol.

- At least 25 people were wounded when three car bombs exploded in quick succession in Kirkuk. The bombs went off early Saturday November 6, 2010, in the Kurdish area of the ethnically diverse city, which is at the centre of a dispute between Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds.

- Iraq, Sunday November 7, 2010:
- A roadside bomb killed two Sunni anti-Qaeda militiamen and two Iraqi soldiers died in separate attacks north of the capital. The bomb went off near a checkpoint at Qadissiyah, close to Samarra; three other militiamen were wounded.
- Gunmen equipped with silencers killed two soldiers in an attack on a military checkpoint in an eastern district of Mosul.
- In Baiji police discovered a workshop for manufacturing car bombs before arresting 11 suspects, including two women, and seizing a large amount of explosives.

- Iraq Tuesday November 9, 2010:
- Three car bombings in mainly Shiite southern Iraq, two of which targeted Iranian pilgrims visiting holy cities, killed at least 28 people on Monday.
- Twin bombings in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala targeting Iranians killed at least 18 people, 10 of them pilgrims from Iran. At least 58 people, mostly Iranians, were wounded.
- In Karbala, a suicide bomber pulled up his booby-trapped vehicle alongside a bus carrying pilgrims from neighbouring Iran then detonated his payload. The explosion killed 10 people, four of them Iranians, and wounded another 42.
- Another car bombing targeted three buses in Najaf carrying Iranian pilgrims. A bomb blast killed eight people, six of them Iranians, and wounded 16 others.
- In the southern port city of Basra, a car bomb in a crowded market killed at least 10 people and wounded 30. The attack targeted a popular shopping district full of stores and cafes.
- In two attacks in northern Iraq on Monday, gunmen killed two policemen at a checkpoint near Mosul and an improvised bomb exploded outside a grocery store in Khalis, Diyala province, killing one person and wounding three.

- Iraq Sunday November 14, 2010:
- Violence in central and northern Iraq killed nine people, four of them troops.
- In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb killed three soldiers near Kirkuk.
- Also near Kirkuk in the town of Leylan, a drive-by shooting killed a civilian.
- In Mosul a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle at a joint police-army checkpoint killing a soldier and wounding four other people, including a soldier and a policeman.
- Gunmen also killed a shopkeeper in the city centre of Mosul while two other people were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near a police checkpoint.
- In Baghdad, a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a car killed one person and wounded four in Wathaq Square.

- A bombing in Mosul killed a Christian man and his 6-year-old daughter Tuesday November 16, 2010, the latest in a series of strikes targeting the country's dwindling Christian population. An explosive attached to a vehicle detonated killing them. Monday, attackers went into two homes occupied by Christian families in the Tahrir neighbourhood, killed the two male heads of the households, and then drove off. In central Mosul, a bomb detonated outside a Christian's home. No one was hurt in that blast, which damaged the home's exterior.

- Iraq, Wednesday November 17, 2010:
- Three civilians were killed in separate incidents and security forces arrested 34 individuals in the cities of Mosul and Baquba.
- Unknown gunmen killed a civilian near his home located in Sikr, just east of Mosul. Another civilian died in the city after police fired upon him by mistake.
- Iraqi security arrested 21 individuals they said were linked to unrest that has plagued different parts of Mosul.
- Police found two unidentified bodies in the centre of the city.
- In the Diyala province, where several Sunni politicians have been jailed, Iraqi forces arrested another 13 individuals, most of them affiliated with al-Qaeda.
- A man in Baquba was also killed when a roadside bomb exploded as police moved to impose a curfew in the area.
- These attacks come less than a day after gunmen attacked and killed two women and a man from the same family while they were home in Mosul. Gunmen this week also shot dead three Christian brothers in their home.

- Gunmen on Saturday November 20, 2010, exploded the house of a policeman in the town of Sherqat in Salahudin province killing a woman and wounding a child. The policeman himself was not at home when the bomb exploded, which also caused damages to nearby houses. In a separate incident, police bomb experts carried out a controlled explosion of a sticky bomb attached to the car of an Iraqi army officer in Sherqat, destroying the car with no human casualty.

- A U.S. soldier died Sunday November 21, 2010, from injuries sustained by enemy small arms fire. The soldier was conducting advisory operations in northern Iraq.

- Three people were killed Monday November 22, 2010 in Mosul. In one attack, two Christian brothers were killed when gunmen broke into their workplace in an industrial part of the city and shot them. The brothers were welders who owned the shop. Police found an elderly Christian woman strangled in her home in central Mosul.

- Gunmen shot and killed a young journalist at his home in front of his family on Sunday November 21, 2010. Mazin al-Baghdadi was employed as an anchor and reporter for al-Mousiliyya TV in Mosul. The gunmen told his father they were intelligence officers. His killing is the sixth of a journalist in Iraq this year. Four Iraqi journalists were killed in the whole of 2009.

- Eleven people were killed across Iraq in separate drive-by shootings and bombings on Wednesday November 24, 2010. In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb killed four people in Shirqatt. A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing no one, but as people gathered to assess the damage, a second bomb went off. Three of the dead were members of Sons of Iraq, a Sunni militia that has opposed the insurgency. In one of the other attacks, an army brigadier general was killed by a bomb attached to his vehicle southwest of the capital.

- At least three people were killed and 15 others wounded Thursday November 25, 2010, when a bomb detonated in Tal Afar. The bomb had been placed near a shop that sells birds in Tal Afar and blew up at a time when the street was busy.

- The leader of a Muslim fundamentalist militant group was among 12 arrested in connection with a deadly church siege in Baghdad last month we were told on Saturday November 27, 2010. Huthaifa al-Batawi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, was the "mastermind, direct supervisor and planner" of the October 31 attack on the Sayidat al-Nejat Cathedral, or Our Lady of Salvation Church, according to an Iraqi interior ministry statement. The attack left 70 people dead and 75 wounded, including 51 congregants and two priests. The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group that includes a number of Sunni extremist organizations and has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the Baghdad church siege.

- Iraq, Tuesday November 30, 2010:
- A series of attacks in less than a day has killed five civilians and injured dozens more.
- A bomb attached to a civilian car in the al-Qadisiya neighbourhood of western Baghdad exploded and killed the driver.
- In a separate incident a bomb attached to a civilian car exploded in al-Liqa Square in western Baghdad and wounded three civilians.
- On Monday evening, four civilians were killed and 29 were wounded when a bomb in a parked car exploded at an outdoor market in central Baquba.

- A Christian shopkeeper has been killed in Mosul on December 1, 2010, amid a wave of violence against the religious minority.

- A string of bomb attacks, two of them aimed at Iranian pilgrims, took place in Baghdad on Saturday December 4, 2010. The seven blasts struck several mainly Shiite neighbourhoods and two buses carrying Iranian religious tourists. At least 16 people were killed, and scores of others were wounded. Six Iranians were among the dead, though Iranian leaders denied this.

- Attackers gunned down an elderly Christian couple Sunday December 5, 2010, inside their Baghdad home. Gunmen broke into the couple's residence in Baladiyat, a predominantly Shiite area in eastern Baghdad, during the night and shot them dead. Earlier, Maj. Gen. Qassim Atta said that 15 "Arabs" -in Iraq, a euphemism indicating they came from outside the country- were responsible for three deadly attacks in Baghdad in recent months, including a bloody church siege.

- Seven Iranian pilgrims were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their bus in southern Baghdad on Wednesday December 8, 2010, at the start of an important Shiite religious event. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites are expected to visit the city of Karbala and shrines elsewhere around Iraq as the Muslim sect marks the anniversary of a 7th century death of Imam Hussein. He was killed in a battle near Karbala that was part of a dispute over the leadership of a young Muslim nation following the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632.

- A suicide car bomber killed 13 people and 41 dozens near government buildings in the mainly Sunni Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday December 12, 2010. The blast targeted a complex in which the provincial council is based.

- At least four people were killed and 17 were wounded in a suicide bombing north of Baghdad on Monday December 13, 2010. The suicide bomber struck a group of Shiites in the town of Balad Ruz. In addition, nine other Shiite pilgrims were wounded in two separate attacks in Baghdad. Five pilgrims were wounded when a mortar struck their procession in southeastern Baghdad, while four others were hurt in a roadside bombing.

- At least 10 Shiite pilgrims were killed and dozens wounded in attacks targeting them in Iraq on Tuesday December 14, 2010. In western Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighbourhood a roadside bomb detonated near a gathering of pilgrims killing at least 10 and wounding 21 others. To the north of Baghdad, in Diyala province, at least 14 people were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near a procession of Shiite pilgrims in Khalis.

- Iraqi forces have arrested 93 suspects, including 60 wanted men, in a crackdown on Al-Qaeda in Anbar province we were told on Thursday December 23, 2010. Ammunition had been discovered as well.

- Iraq, Friday December 24, 2010:
- Two houses were blown up, killing five people, including three children, and wounding four other people. The pre-dawn attacks occurred within four hours of each other in Qariya al-Asriya near Iskandiriya. Among those killed were a man, a woman and three children -one of them a one-year-old- and the wounded included a woman, a young man, and two children.
- Gunmen killed two policemen and burned their vehicle in an ambush in the city of Samarra.
- Four members of the Sahwa militia which opposes Al-Qaeda, including a leader, were wounded by a bomb while driving in Al-Muqdadiya.
- The number of people killed last month was the lowest in a year for the second month running, with 171 people -105 civilians, 23 soldiers and 43 policemen- losing their lives in attacks.

- Back-to-back suicide bombings Monday December 27, 2010, at a government compound in this western Iraqi city killed 19 and wounded 45. The attack heaped tragedy on the families of victims of a similar recent bombing. Family members of 13 police and security workers killed a little more than two weeks ago in a car bombing outside the Anbar provincial compound had just arrived to receive promised government compensation for their deceased loved ones when a suicide bomber drove a car loaded with explosives into the compound's front gate. Three minutes later, as emergency workers rushed to the scene, a second bomber wearing a suicide vest detonated himself amid the rescue efforts. Many of the dead and wounded were the family members of those who had lost relatives in the December 12 attack.

- An attack by three suicide bombers in Mosul killed a top police commander there and destroyed the police headquarters on Wednesday December 29, 2010. The police commander, Lt. Col. Shamel Ahmed al-Jabouri, had been hailed for taking on terrorist groups in the area. The attack was the sixth attempt on his life, and the second in the past three months.

- Two police officials were shot dead in the capital on Saturday January 1, 2011. Lt. Col. Ahsan Fadhil, an Interior Ministry official who was in charge of police checkpoints in Baghdad, was gunned down as he was driving along an eastern highway. Adel Khamas, a police commissioner, was killed when gunmen fired on his car in the Baladiyat neighbourhood, in eastern Baghdad.

- Iraq, Sunday January 2, 2011:
- Six people were killed and 17 others were injured in separate attacks.
- The most severe attack occurred at the home of a judge outside Balad. Gunmen planted a number of improvised explosive devices around the home of Balad Chief Judge Hardan Khalaf Jasim. Jasim's nephew was killed in the ensuing explosions while Jasim was critically wounded. The attack caused severe damage to the home. Eight other family members, including Jasim's wife and sister-in-law, were also injured.
- An Iraqi soldier and two civilians died when a car bomb exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in the town of al-Qaiyara. Four Iraqi soldiers were wounded in the incident.
- In eastern Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying two members of the Shaheed al-Mihrab Shiite institution, killing one person and wounding another.
- Gunmen attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in western Falluja, killing a police officer and wounding three others.

- Gunmen shot dead five people, including the sister of an Iraqi policeman, in their beds on Friday January 7, 2011. The gunmen killed the policeman's sister, her husband's mother and father, their daughter and a child in their home in Hussainiya, northeast of the capital.

- A high-ranking Iraq police officer was killed Monday January 11, 2011, in a roadside bombing in which his motorcade appeared to have been targeted. Mohamed Faisal, the chief of police in the city of Hit, in western Anbar Province, was killed and three people travelling with him were injured. In Baquba, three siblings were injured when a bomb exploded in front of their house in the city centre.

- Two U.S. soldiers were killed by small arm fire and a third injured when an Iraqi soldier opened fire on U.S. troops during training at al-Ghazlani U.S. military camp in southern Mosul on Saturday January 15, 2011. The Iraqi soldier who had opened fire was killed during the incident. Separately, another U.S. service member was killed while conducting operations in central Iraq. It gave no further details and did not specify where the incident occurred.

- On January 16, 2011, a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack in central Iraq while "conducting operations" but has not yet released further information on that incident. Meanwhile two bombings in Baghdad claimed the lives of two Iraqi policemen and wounded six other people.

- A U.S. service member was killed as a result of a non-hostile incident in northern Iraq on Monday January 17, 2011, but provided no other information. The fatalities raise the total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq so far this year to six. A total of 60 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq last year, most of who died as the result of non-hostile incidents.

- On 15 January a group of unidentified criminals entered the Rabi'a hospital, a private clinic in the Sukar district in Mosul and shot a Christian doctor (a Chaldean Catholic), Nuyia Youssif Nuyia is a specialist cardiologist, who worked there at point blank range. The gun had a silencer, and the doctor was fortunately only seriously wounded.

- A suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives and ball bearings attacked Iraqi police recruits on Tuesday January 18, 2011, in Saddam Hussein's hometown, killing up to 60 and wounding over 100. The attack took place outside a police recruiting centre in Tikrit where Iraqi men were lining up hoping to get a job.

- Iraq Thursday January 20, 2011:
- At least 32 people (this figure was later increased to 50) were killed and 150 others wounded in two explosions targeting Shiite pilgrims in Karbala.
- It was the latest of several terrorist attacks across Iraq this week that have killed at least 118 people and wounded 450 others. The attack in Karbala came as tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims are making their way to the city for Arbaeen, a religious observation.
- Another attack also targeted Shiite pilgrims: one pilgrim was killed and nine other people were wounded by a roadside bomb in southern Baghdad as they made their way to Karbala.
- On Tuesday, five Shiite pilgrims were wounded in an attack in Taji, just north of Baghdad.
- In a separate attack a suicide car bomb targeting a police checkpoint in Baquba killed at least four people and wounded 33 others. Two of the dead and nine of the wounded were police officers.
- A suicide bomber rammed a minibus loaded with explosives into the main gate at Diyala police headquarters in central Baquba.
- On Wednesday, suicide bombers hit a pair of locations in Diyala province, killing at least 16 people and wounding nearly 100 others.
- A suicide bombing that targeted a recruitment centre in Tikrit on Tuesday killed 65 and wounded 160.

- A series of bombings in and near Baghdad has killed eight people and wounded about 30 others. The blasts occurred during a three-hour period Sunday January 23, 2011. Two separate car bomb attacks in the capital targeted police patrols, while another struck a bus of Iranian pilgrims. Several people were killed in the blasts, including a policeman. Also, in the town of Taji, a car bomb killed two people.

- Two bombs tore into crowds of pilgrims in the holy Iraqi Shiite city of Kerbala Monday January 24, 2011, killed at least 12 and wounding dozens as hundreds of thousands of people streamed in for a religious rite. The first bomb exploded in a car park on the outskirts of the city where pilgrims taking part in the annual Arbain event had parked their vehicles, killing between four and six people,. Forty-nine were wounded. A few hours later a second car bomb killed another eight to 10, and wounded around 92 north of Kerbala.

- Two government-backed Sunni militiamen have been killed in a carjacking in northern Iraq. Four gunmen surrounded the car carrying the two Sons of Iraq fighters on Saturday January 29, 2011, and shot them outside the city of Kirkuk.

- Iraq, Saturday January 29, 2011:
-Gunmen fatally killed an official, Abdul-Rahman Jum'a, a senior official in the town hall in al-Abbarah area, near Diyala's capital city of Baquba.
- Iraqi security forces captured nine suspects across the province.
- In a separate incident, a civilian was seriously wounded by gunmen who stormed his house in the Sendiyah area in north of Baquba.
- In addition, Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested nine suspects, including two believed to be Qaida militants.

- Gunmen have killed an Iraqi electricity ministry employee and seven people have been wounded in a string of attacks in Baghdad on January 31, 2011. Four bombs also wounded seven other people in the capital, including two bodyguards protecting an education ministry adviser. The other people injured were a senior police officer, a justice ministry employee and three civilians.

- Two explosions wounded at least 16 people Saturday February 5, 2011, in Salaheddin province. The first explosion involved a car bomb inside a bus station used by Shiite pilgrims in central Samarra. Eleven people, most of them Shiite pilgrims, were injured there. The others were wounded in a second incident that happened when a roadside bomb struck a bus carrying pilgrims along a highway near Balad.

- At least seven people were killed and six others wounded Friday February 4, 2011, when a plane crashed at an airport in Iraq's northern Kurdish city of Suleimaniyah. The private aircraft crashed shortly after it took off from the Suleimaniyah airport due to bad weather. The plane belongs to a local giant group called Faruk, which owns a big communication company Asia Cell and a cement plant.

- Three car bombs aimed at Iraqi security forces killed at least seven people and wounded 78 in Kirkuk on Wednesday February 9, 2011. The first blast wounded an Iraqi police official, while the second was aimed at a police patrol. The third was outside a building used by Kurdish security forces. Seven people including three policemen were killed and 78 wounded in the blasts in a residential area of southern Kirkuk. Many of the wounded were policemen. Many cars and houses had been badly damaged and fire-fighters were trying to put out fires. The third explosion, which targeted a Kurdish security building, was carried out by a suicide bomber. The blast also damaged a branch office of Kurdish premier Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party.

- A car bomb exploded near a procession of Shiite Muslim pilgrims south of the holy city of Samarra on Thursday February 10, 2011, killing nine people, including one child, and wounding 39 people, 5 of them children. The procession was headed for Samarra's gold-domed shrine. In the attack the car exploded near a tent where pilgrims had stopped for water and a meal.

- A car bomb has exploded north of Baghdad, killing at least eight Shiite pilgrims. The blast on Thursday February 10, 2011, near the town of Dujail wounded at least 39 people. The victims were travelling to the city of Samarra for a religious event commemorating the death of ninth century imam Hassan al-Askari, In addition a series of explosions killed at least nine people, including seven in Kirkuk.

The death toll from a suicide bombing onboard a bus carrying Shiite pilgrims in Iraq rose to 50 on Sunday February 13, 2011. Saturday's attack occurred between Baghdad and Samarra also wounded 82 people.

-Ten protesters were wounded on Saturday February 19, 2011, in clashes with Kurdish security forces in the latest violent rally in Iraq demanding that officials combat graft and improve basic services. The rally came after two protests in as many days earlier this week left three people dead and more than 100 wounded. The confrontations broke out when protesters attempted, for the second time in three days, to storm an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional president Massud Barzani.

- Masked gunmen attacked and burned the independent television station in Iraq's Kurdistan region Sunday February 20, 2011, wounding a guard. The attack occurred as hundreds of protesters demonstrated in central Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq, following clashes with security forces in previous days that left one person dead and more than 70 injured. Most of the demonstrators opposed Massoud Barazani, Kurdistan regional president, and the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the protest occurred a few hundred meters from the KDP party office.

- A car bomb targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least 12 people and injured 30 others Monday February 21, 2011, in Samarra. The bombing was intended for a police headquarters between Tikrit and Samarra. Two people who were in a car carrying the bomb were killed. Additionally, authorities found the body of an Egyptian citizen in his apartment in Sadr city. He had been shot.

- Monday February 21, 2011, one person has been killed and 47 wounded during overnight protests in Sulaimaniyah. Around 2,000 people took part in scattered demonstrations around the city. Many Kurds are frustrated with the tight grip with which the two ruling parties control the Kurdish autonomous region.

- A suicide bomber trying to assassinate the deputy head of the provincial council in Anbar province has killed eight people. A man wearing an explosives vest blew himself up Thursday February 24, 2011, near the government official outside of a sports stadium in Ramadi. The deputy was not hurt but seven policemen and a bodyguard were killed in the attack.

- Iraq, Thursday February 24, 2011:
- Five people were killed and ten wounded in gunfire and bomb attacks in Baghdad and in the province of Diyala. Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed a house in the town of al-Sa'diyah and shot dead a man and his three sons. Iraqi security forces arrested two suspects.
- In a separate incident, a roadside bomb went off near a passing minibus near Baquba killing a civilian and wounding two others.
- Also in Diyala, Lieutenant Colonel Tha'ir al-Obiedi, deputy chief of the provincial operations command, escaped with wounds an assassination attack when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated in eastern Baquba.
- Separately, two people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Baquba's northern neighbourhood of al-Ameen.
- In Baghdad, two policemen and a civilian were wounded by a roadside bomb explosion near a police patrol in the neighbourhood of al-Hurriyah.
- Meanwhile, two more people were wounded by roadside bomb explosion in Baghdad's southeastern neighbourhood of al-Rustamiyah.

- Thousands marched on government buildings and clashed with security forces in cities across Iraq on Friday February 25, 2011, in the largest and most violent anti-government protests here since political unrest began spreading in the Arab world several weeks ago. In two northern Iraqi cities, security forces trying to push back crowds opened fire, killing six demonstrators. In the capital of Baghdad, demonstrators knocked down blast walls, threw rocks and scuffled with club-wielding troops. The protests, billed as a "Day of Rage, were fuelled by anger over corruption, chronic unemployment and shoddy public services.

- Three protestors were killed and five others wounded in a demonstration in Mosul on Friday February 25, 2011. The incident took place when hundreds of protestors tried to storm the Nineveh provincial government building in central Mosul. The shootout erupted when an unknown protestor threw a hand- grenade near the government building, setting fire to one of its rooms, prompting the guards to open fire killing three people and wounding at least five others. The security forces used water cannons to disperse the demonstrators and prevent them from storming the government building. The demonstrators demanded resignation of the provincial governor Athel al-Nujafi and the provincial council members. They also demanded better public services, fighting unemployment and corruption. Earlier in the day, angry protestors in Mosul stoned the convoy of the provincial parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi and his brother the governor of the province when they tried to reach the government building in the morning.

- One of al Qaeda leaders in Iraq, identified as the militant group's "war minister", has been killed in a raid we were told on Friday February 25, 2011. Noman Salman, also know as Al-Nasser Lideen Allah Abu Suleiman, the war minister for the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), was killed on Thursday in Hit. Iraqi security forces carried out the raid that killed him.

- A suicide bomber in the Iraqi city of Ramadi has killed at least eight people on February 25, 2011. The attack injured the deputy governor of Anbar province, Hikmet Khalaf, and killed a number of policemen

- At least eight people were wounded Saturday February 26, 2011, in Samarra during clashes between security forces and angry mourners accompanying the caskets of two people killed in protests the day before. Two protesters critically wounded in Friday protests in Tikrit died on Saturday. And a teen-aged boy died Friday night during protest in Anbar province. With those deaths, the number of those reported killed in protests across the country rose to 13. Since early February, thousands of protesters have participated in a series of demonstrations across the country, apparently inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Their protests are against corruption, restrictions on freedom of expression, unemployment and poor government services.

- At least 29 people died until now in demonstrations across Iraq and security forces detained about 300 people, including journalists we were told on Sunday February 27, 2011. Deaths -including that of a 14-year-old boy- were reported in at least eight cities, including Fallujah, Mosul and Tikrit. Security forces fired live bullets and water cannons at demonstrators Friday. Four journalists detained in Baghdad said they were blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten and threatened with execution before being released Saturday.

- Kurdish security forces killed five al-Qaida militants in the city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraq's Kurdistan on Sunday February 27, 2011. The incident took place when a counter- terrorism force raided a building believed to be used as a safe house by al-Qaida militants who planned to carry out attacks in the Kurdish semi-autonomous region. The troops traded fire with gunmen inside the house and killed four of them, while the fifth blew himself up with an explosive vest that he was wearing before being killed or captured by the troops.

- Protests in Iraq continued Sunday February 27, 2011, for a third day since the country's "day of rage" saw demonstrations in cities across the country. Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has given his cabinet 100 days to shape up or risk being fired.

- An Iraqi journalist reporting for the satellite television station al-Ittijah was among those killed in a blast that targeted a celebration in Ramadi on March 1, 2011. Over the weekend, a number of reporters were detained during and after their coverage of the mass demonstrations that took place in central Baghdad's al-Tahrir Square. They said they were handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened by security forces while held in custody for nine hours.

- A suspected suicide bomber was arrested on Friday March 4, 2011, as he was heading to protests held in Mosul. The Saudi civilian, who was wearing an explosive belt and carried two others in a black bag, was arrested in the al-Rifae district of western Mosul. Security forces defused all of the explosives he was carrying.

- Iraq, Saturday March 5, 2011:
- A member of an anti-Qaida paramilitary group, known as Awakening Council, was killed and 13 people were wounded in gunfire and roadside bomb attacks.
- In Abu Kamis area, south of the provincial capital city of Baquba, province of Diyala, gunmen in their car shot dead Jasim Zayd, an Awakening Council group member.
- In a separate incident, two people were wounded in a bomb explosion at a rural area south of Baquba.
- In Salahudin province, a roadside bomb struck the convoy of Colonel Ali al-Baiyati, police chief of the town of Tuz-Kurmato, wounding six of his bodyguards. Baiyati escaped the attack unhurt, but two of his convoy's vehicles were damaged by the blast.
- In Anbar province, five policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in the town of Amriyat al- Fallujah, near the city of Falluajh.
Masked attackers burned tents of protesters overnight in the main city of Iraq's Kurdistan region, we were told on Sunday March 6, 2011. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Sulaimaniya for another protest against Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan regional government. The unrest in northern Iraq that erupted three weeks ago has killed five people and injured 158 so far. Several empty tents erected by protesters at Bardagi-Sara central square of Sulaimaniya were set on fire before dawn. Some protesters blamed the attack on Kurdish security forces, who denied any involvement. Separately, the head of an independent Kurdish radio station said Sunday that gunmen attacked the broadcast facility and destroyed or stole equipment overnight.

- At least eight people were killed and 12 injured in a bomb attack on a small bus in Basra on Sunday March 6, 2011. The bomb, which was attached to the bus, went off around 100 metres away from a US military patrol. In Mosul, police arrested 20 gunmen and seized weapons. The gunmen were led by two Syrians affiliated with al-Qaeda network.

- Gunmen opened fire Monday March 7, 2011, in western Baghdad's Amriya Sunni neighbourhood, killing a high-school boy and a male college student. The motive for the attack was unclear. In a separate incident in southeastern Baghdad's Zafaraniya district, two police were wounded when a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police patrol. Figures compiled by the Defence, Interior and Health Ministries and released Monday show that 197 people -19 civilians, 45 police and 33 soldiers- were killed last month. Another 325 were wounded -200 civilians, 65 police and 60 soldiers.

- A roadside bomb blast has killed six people and wounded 12 others in the southern city of Basra. Sunday March 6, 2011's attack seemed to target a U.S. military convoy, but hit a civilian bus instead. Authorities say women and children are among the victims, but the number is unclear.

- A suspected top official of Al-Qaeda's network in Iraq was arrested in an army raid on his hideout Tuesday March 8, 2011. Ibrahim Muhammed Ahmed al-Juburi, the so-called "finance minister" for the Islamic State of Iraq, was seized with a large quantity of weapons and 1,000 pounds of TNT in northern Iraq. Iraqi army forces raided a home Tuesday in the northern city of Mosul where Juburi had been hiding.

- Seven Iraqi soldiers were killed on Saturday March 12, 2011, by an unknown group of gunmen near Mosul. The gunmen opened fire on a civilian vehicle transporting soldiers who were on leave from duty in the area of Badush, 20 kilometres west of Mosul. The gunmen fled the scene after the attack

- A car bomb exploded in the Kurdish neighbourhood of Rahimawa near a security station in Kirkuk and 20 people were wounded on Friday March 11, 2011. A bomb explosion late on Tuesday on an Iraq-Turkey pipeline shut down exports from oilfields in Kirkuk.

- At least 11 Iraqi soldiers were killed and some 29 people wounded in a suicide car bomb attack targeted local government compound in a town in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala on Monday March 14, 2011. The suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the entrance of the local government compound of the town of Kan'an and totally destroyed it.

- A suicide attacker rammed a truck packed with explosives into an army barracks in Diyala province on Tuesday March 15, 2011, killing at least 11 troops and wounding 14. The attack took place at an army base at Kanaan. The bomber drove the truck straight through the checkpoint at the entrance to the base and rammed the main building housing the sleeping quarters of the troops.

- Up to two people were killed and 35 others wounded on Wednesday March 16, 2011, when a car bomb explosion struck a convoy of a senior government official in the city of Kirkuk. The incident took place in al-Jamhouriyah Street in central city when a booby-trapped car detonated near the convoy of Muhammed Qader, the city's director general of water and sewage.

- Iraq Thursday March 17, 2011:
- A roadside bomb wounded three people in Baghdad's central Karrada district.
- A bomb killed one person and wounded three others in Baghdad's western Iskan district.
- A bomb planted on a bicycle went off in a market and wounded eight people in central Mosul.

- As of Tuesday, March 15, 2011, at least 4,439 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003. The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,501 military personnel died as a result of hostile action. Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 32,051 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action.

- Improvised bombs in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Tikrit killed four people on Thursday March 17, 2011, including the wife of a police officer. The woman was killed and three other people were wounded in northern Baghdad as three homemade bombs detonated simultaneously outside the homes of police officers. A similar attack in the west of the capital killed one person and wounded another. And a homemade bomb killed two farmers in the northern city of Tikrit.

- Iraq Monday March 21, 2011:
- At least seven people have been killed in separate incidents across Iraq on Monday.
- An Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast in Mosul left three people dead and two wounded.
- Elsewhere in the city, one person was killed in clashes between gunmen and security forces in eastern Tahrir area.
- In other attacks, one woman was killed and her son suffered serious injuries when gunmen attacked the car carrying the duo, as well as the woman's husband at Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad. The target was the woman's husband employed with the Iraqi Oil Ministry.
- An Iraqi Interior Ministry official was also killed in a separate incident near the Moussa al-Kadhim Mosque in northern Baghdad.
- A suicide strike in Kanaan last Monday resulted in deaths of nine soldiers.

- Two members of the police were killed on Tuesday March 22, 2011, in clashes with demonstrators in Iraq's northern Kurdish zone. The semi-autonomous Kurdish zone, dominated for decades by two political parties, has seen protests in recent weeks against corruption and a lack of freedoms, inspired by demonstrations in other parts of the Middle East and North Africa.

- Gunmen using silencer-equipped weapons killed an Iraqi Interior Ministry official as he was driving his vehicle in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad. Two of the official's security guards were wounded in the attack Tuesday March 22, 2011. Elsewhere, protests escalated into bloody, deadly confrontations between demonstrators and Kurdish security forces in Sulaimaniah. A member of the security force was killed and 10 people -mostly protesters- were wounded.

- A total of five people died in a bomb blast and an exchange of fire in Mosul on Friday March 25, 2011. Two civilians were killed and three injured when a bomb went off on a main road in the western part of Mosul. The bomb was targeting police patrols which pass through this road frequently. In a separate incident late Thursday, three gunmen were killed in clashes with the police in Mosul. Meanwhile, in the western city of Ramadi, gunmen blew up the house of a journalist on Friday. The attack left seven members of his family, including three children, injured.

- Security forces wrested control of an Iraqi government building from armed militants who attacked and seized the location and held people hostage earlier Tuesday March 29, 2011. At least 45 people died and 95 others were wounded when armed men assaulted and seized the building in Tikrit. Iraqi forces launched a raid to take back the building and free hostages, many of whom were killed by the attackers in the building. The armed militants, clad in police uniforms, clashed with the Iraqi police, and a suicide car bombing also was reported in the fighting.

- Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda were responsible for a bloody siege in Tikrit in which 56 people were killed we were told on Wednesday March 30, 2011. Tuesday's attack took place at a local government building in Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. A fierce gun-battle ended when the attackers -numbering about eight- blew themselves up. Among the dead were local government officials and an Iraqi journalist. Another 100 people were injured.

- Al-Qaida in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the March 29 attack in northern Iraq that left 58 people dead and nearly 100 wounded. The group said Saturday April 2, 2011 that five al-Qaida members used a car bomb, an explosive belt and grenades during the raid and hostage situation at the provincial council headquarters in Tikrit. Iraqi troops took back the complex after a battle lasting several hours. Also Saturday, a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad, wounding three soldiers. The attack comes a day after police said a suicide bomber killed three people during an attack on a group of soldiers stationed at an army post in Fallujah. Among the dead was an Iraqi army colonel.

- Two American soldiers died of wounds by insurgent attack. The two U.S. service members died April 2 of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with indirect fire (mortar or rocket attacks). The latest deaths brought the death toll of U.S. soldiers in Iraq since the war broke out in 2003 to 4,443. In mid 2010, U.S. troops in Iraq were reduced to below 50,000 soldiers who are conducting support and training missions.

- Iraq Saturday April 2, 2011:
- Six members of the Iraqi security forces -three soldiers and three police officers- were killed when their control post in the village of Kubisa was attacked by armed raiders. Eight other people, including four civilians, were injured in the attack in Al-Anbar province. None of the gunmen was killed or captured.
- One militiaman was killed when a control post was attacked by armed men in two cars in the village of Hawija.
- In the capital, a homemade bomb exploded as an army patrol passed in a northeastern suburb, killing one soldier and wounding three others.

- Iraq, Monday April 4, 2011:
- Five people were killed and 18 others were wounded in separate bomb attacks, including a suicide car bombing in central Iraq.
- Three policemen were killed and 13 others were wounded Sunday when a suicide car bomber struck a crowd of policemen gathered at the site of an earlier roadside bomb explosion in centre of Ramadi city.
- A roadside bomb detonated outside the house of a senior official of the Iraqi industrial ministry in Baghdad's southern district of Doura, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding three others.
- In western Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off outside the house of an Awakening Council group member in Ameriyah district, killing him and causing damages to his house and nearby buildings.
- In a separate incident, another roadside bomb went off in front of the house of Razzaq Issah, the director general of the government-owned Iraqi Investments Board, wounding him and another person.

- A U.S. service member in Iraq was killed on Monday April 4, 2011, the third this month of April. The soldier died in a non-hostile incident in northern Iraq.

- Nine people were killed in two separate attacks in Iraq on Tuesday April 5, 2011. Three civilians were killed and two injured in a suicide bombing attack in Mosul. The bomber blew up his explosive belt inside a car dealership in the city. In the southern part of the capital, six members of one family were killed and three injured when gunmen attacked their house. Three al-Qaeda suspects were arrested in Baquba.

- Seven gunmen and one civilian were killed in two separate attacks on Saturday April 9, 2011. Police forces launched a search and raid operation in the western part of the country when they received information that gunmen were holding a kidnapped businessman in the area. The gunmen killed the businessman, Yassir al-Fahd, when they realized they were surrounded by police. The ensuing fire fight left all five kidnappers dead. The abductors had been hiding between Salahaddin and Anbar provinces. In Kirkuk, police shot down two gunmen when they attacked a checkpoint run by Sahwa fighters.

- Iraq, Monday April 11, 2011:
- Violence in Iraq killed 20 people and injured 37.
- In Khan Bani Saad two roadside bombs exploded, killing 10 and wounding two. The first blast occurred outside a house. The second blast hit as residents gathered to help people wounded in the initial attack.
- An Iraqi police officer was killed and his driver critically wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car exploded in a northeast Baghdad neighbourhood.
- In Falluja, the explosions of a roadside bomb and two car bombs killed six and wounded 23. First a bomb in a trash container exploded. It caused no casualties but attracted security forces and a bomb-disposal team. Then a parked car exploded killing and wounding several. A third bomb exploded later, killing and injuring more people. At least three Iraqi security forces were among the dead in central Falluja
- In southeastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb explosion in a commercial area killed three civilians and wounded 11 others.
- One person was seriously hurt in another explosion in central Baghdad.

- Iraq, Tuesday April 12, 2011:
- Nine people were killed, including four policemen, from violence in and around Baghdad. Among those killed was a police colonel, while more than a dozen people were wounded in the attacks.
- Two of the police victims were killed by an improvised bomb that targeted their patrol overnight south of Baghdad. The third was killed in the town of Fallujah west of the capital by a "sticky" bomb that attaches to cars. Six policemen were wounded in the two attacks.
- A fourth policeman, Colonel Mustafa Said, was shot dead by gunmen using silencer pistols along the Mohammed al-Qassim highway in the centre of Baghdad.
- Along the same highway, four people -two policemen and two civilians- were wounded by gunmen.
- Sticky bombs in different regions outside Baghdad killed the leader of an anti-Al-Qaeda militia and wounded one other person.
- Two civilian contractors for the Iraqi army, both male cousins, were killed when their home west of Baghdad was targeted by dynamite. Three other family members, including a woman, were wounded.
- In the capital's districts of Yarmuk and Dora, two people were killed and two others wounded by "sticky bombs".
- Three other people, all civilians, were wounded by a mortar round that fell in the central Baghdad neighbourhood of Salhiyeh.
- Five Iraqis, including three police officers, were killed.
- In Baghdad, Col. Mustafa Saeid, an Interior Ministry official and police officer, was shot to death by gunmen while driving on a highway.
- Roadside bombs attached to civilian cars also killed drivers in southern and western Baghdad. Two bystanders were injured in the western Baghdad bombing.
- A roadside bomb attached to a car in southeastern Baghdad wounded four people, including two police officers.
- In Falluja, a sticky bomb attached to a police officer's car in the central city exploded, killing the officer instantly and wounding two bystanders.
- A sticky bomb attached to a car killed another police officer in eastern Falluja.

- The death toll from an April 8 attack by Iraqi forces on the compound of an Iranian opposition group has reached 34, the UN said Friday April 15, 2011. Dozens of bodies, of both men and women, were found in the compound after the attack. Many died of gunshot wounds. The Iraqi government has announced plans to close the compound operated by the People's Mujahidin of Iran (PMOI) organization at the Camp Ashraf compound in Baquba, Diyala province. It is currently home to about 3,000 people, including hundreds of families. The PMOI, also known as the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, was founded in 1965 to oppose the government of the shah in Iran. In 1981 it started an armed campaign against the new Islamic government that came after the shah.

- Iraq, Tuesday April 19, 2011:
- A total of six people were killed and 14 others wounded in separate gunfire and bomb attacks.
- A sticky bomb attached to the car of a government employee detonated in Fallujah killing him and wounding two bystanders.
- In a separate incident, unidentified gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead a policeman at a checkpoint in al-Jihad neighbourhood in southwestern Baghdad.
- In south of Baghdad, Jawad al-Jubouri, a member of parliamentary bloc loyal to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, survived unharmed twin roadside bomb explosions near his convoy in Mussayab. Three of Jubouri's bodyguards were wounded by the blasts, which also caused damages to two of the convoy's vehicles.
- In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, unknown gunmen opened fire and wounded a civilian near his house outside the town of Bani Sa'ad.
- Three women and a government official were killed and eight people wounded in separate gunfire and bomb attacks in Kirkuk and Baghdad.

- At least 81 people were wounded in the northern Kurdish region Monday, during a second straight day of clashes between security forces and demonstrators protesting official corruption and a lack of basic services. Police used live bullets and tear gas to break up protests in Sulaimaniya. At least 35 people were hurt a day earlier in Sulaimaniya, the hub of nearly continuous protests since February. At least seven protesters have been killed there since February 17.

- Iraq, Wednesday April 20, 2011:
- Three people were killed and 10 wounded after two roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad. The bombs exploded in quick succession near al-Rusafa Education Directorate in the Sadr City section of the Iraqi capital.
- A separate attack on a convoy carrying Iraq's deputy minister of housing and reconstruction, Istabraq Ibrahim, did not hurt him but did injure four bystanders in northeastern Baghdad.
- Another bombing in central Baghdad and one in the city of Tikrit wounded several people but caused no fatalities.

- Two U.S. service members were killed Friday April 22, 2011, during operations in southern Iraq. The military is withholding the names of the two until next of kin have been notified. There were no details on how and precisely where the incident occurred.
The number of service members to die in Iraq this year now stands at 20.

- A roadside bomb exploded near the rear entrance of a Catholic church in Baghdad after Easter services on Sunday April 24, 2011, wounding at least two police officers and two civilians. The bomb blew up outside Sacred Heart church in Baghdad's central Karrada district, shattering windows in nearby buildings and severely damaging a police pick-up truck at the church gate.

- Iraq Tuesday April 26, 2011:
- At least two people were killed and six more injured after bomb attacks targeting three houses in northern Iraq.
- The attack targeted three residences in Kirkuk city. Two of the houses are owned by police officers in Hawija district and the third belongs to a local council member in al-Riyadh district.
- Security forces managed to free three Turkish workers and an Iraqi citizen in southern Kirkuk. The men were abducted over two months ago by unknown gunmen.
- On Monday, Kirkuk witnessed clashes between the Iraqi army and Kurdish security forces which resulted in the death of two soldiers and four more injured. An Iraqi Army patrol shot at a vehicle, killing the driver and prompting elements of the Kurdish Asayish to engage in a gun fight.

- Unidentified gunmen kidnapped the son of Iraqi former deputy prime minister in the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday April 26, 2011. The gunmen stormed at dawn an apartment of Sa'ad Abid Mutlak al- Jubouri and kidnapped him in Kirkuk. Sa'ad is the son of Abid Mutlak al-Jubouri, a Sunni Arab former deputy prime minister in the Iraqi Transitional Government after the U.S.-led invasion and a former lawmaker. Jubouri is also a former major general in Saddam Hussien's army.

- At least two people were killed and dozens wounded in two unrelated attacks across northern Iraq on Tuesday April 26, 2011.There also was a bus crash in Anbar province that left eight people dead. In Kirkuk, one person was killed and 30 others were injured after three roadside bombs exploded in rapid succession. The incident occurred when a sticky bomb attached to an oil tanker exploded in the Arafa area in northeastern Kirkuk, setting the tanker ablaze. When Iraqi security forces arrived to investigate, three roadside bombs exploded, injuring at least eight police officers. In Mosul, at least one protester was killed and 21 were wounded after security forces opened fire on demonstrators. The incident occurred in the city's Bab al-Hadeed area, where throngs of people gathered in the latest demonstration after weeks of protests across the region.

- Iraq, Thursday April 28, 2011:
- A car bomb killed five people in northern Iraq, including a senior police officer, while gunmen shot dead a general in Baghdad.
- In Kirkuk, a vehicle packed with explosives detonated in the town of Shahria as a police convoy was passing nearby. The blast killed Colonel Mohammed Mohsen, three other policemen and an unidentified victim. Six others, three policemen and three civilians, were wounded in the attack.
- Brigadier General Mohammed Alaa Jassim was shot dead by gunmen while in his car on a busy throughfare in the Ghazaliyah neighbourhood of west Baghdad. The killing of Jassim, the deputy commander of the Iraqi air force's Al-Muthanna base in central Baghdad, was the fourth of a senior Iraqi official in the past week, with at least three others having narrowly escaped death in that time.
- On Wednesday, Iraq's top theatre and film official narrowly escaped assassination when a magnetic "sticky bomb" affixed to his car detonated shortly after he parked it. Shafiq al-Mehdi's two bodyguards were wounded.
- A day earlier, the deputy police chief of Kirkuk province in north Iraq himself escaped an assassination attempt that involved four explosions which killed one other security force member and wounded 30 people.

- A Sunni imam's family and four Sunni brothers were killed in separate incidents in central Iraq on Friday April 29, 2011, just hours after a suicide bomber killed 10 Shiite worshippers in a nearby mosque. Early the same day, gunmen entered the home of Basheer Mutlak, the imam of the Al-Sumaidaie mosque in the village of Imam Waiss, and killed him, his wife and his daughter.

- Iraq, Saturday April 30, 2011:
- Eight people have been killed and 19 others wounded after a suicide bomber blew himself up at an Iraqi army checkpoint next to a market in Mosul. The attack had taken place at a popular market in eastern Mosul. Five soldiers were killed and three civilians and two soldiers are among the wounded."
- In other incidents, fighters detonated bombs at the house of a judge, killing him, his wife and two daughters in Taji. Fighters using silenced weapons shot dead a policeman who was assigned to provide security for the judge, at the officer's home nearby.
- Also in Taji, eight fighters wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed the house of an industry ministry worker, killing him and his daughter. The attackers clashed with local residents when they left the house. One fighter was killed and two locals were wounded.
- A US soldier was killed on Friday while conducting operations in southern Iraq.

- Iraq, Sunday May 1, 2011:
- At least 12 people were killed in violence across Iraq on Saturday in attacks apparently targeting government and security officials.
- A suicide bomber blew himself up in Mosul, killing seven people and at least 16 others were wounded in the bombing which took place in a popular market. At least four of those killed were soldiers who were manning a checkpoint.
- Several violent attacks took place in Taji. Insurgents detonated bombs around the home of a judge, killing him along with at least one of his children. There are reports that several relatives were wounded.
- Unidentified gunmen entered the nearby home of the judge's police bodyguard, where they shot and killed him.
- Elsewhere in the city, interior ministry officials say gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms stormed the home of minister of industry official, killing him and his daughter. Officials say neighbours of the official then clashed with the gunmen, leaving one of the suspects dead.
- A high-ranking officer in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, was assassinated in Kirkuk. Colonel Nouzad Talabani was shot dead by gunmen near his home. The gunmen responsible for the attack fled the scene, and their identities or affiliation is unknown.

- Iraq's army and police went on high alert on Monday May 2, 2011, for possible revenge attacks in one of al Qaeda's major battlegrounds after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in a raid on his Pakistan hideout. Oil infrastructure, power stations and bridges could be targets of militant attacks to prove bin Laden's death has not disrupted operations in Iraq.

- A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a police station south of Baghdad before blowing it up on Thursday May 5, 2011, killing at least 21 policemen. The blast, which also wounded at least 75 policemen, left a two-metre (six-foot) crater and badly damaged the police station in the centre of the mainly Shiite city of Hilla in addition to several nearby houses and shops. Among the dead in the blast were a police captain and a first lieutenant. There were also three officers among the wounded.

- Gunmen killed five people and wounded 10 during a robbery of a money exchange office in Baquba on Saturday May 7, 2011. The attackers shot people in the office and got away with a large amount of money. As security forces arrived, a car bomb exploded, wounding some police and civilians.

- Iraq, Monday May 9, 2011:
- A roadside bomb exploded near a grocery shop and wounded two people in eastern Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb went off and wounded a teacher in the town of al-Zab near the city of Kirkuk.
- Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire and killed an off-duty policeman in Kirkuk.
- A roadside bomb in central Baghdad went off near a police patrol and wounded six people, including two policemen.
- A roadside bomb wounded seven people, including a policeman, in Sadr City, a district in northeast Baghdad.
- Two civilians were wounded by a roadside bomb in Baghdad's southern district of Doura.
- A sticky bomb attached to the car of Hassan Jasim, a leader at the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (ISCI), killed him in northeast Baghdad.
- A bomb planted in front of a liquor store in central Baghdad wounded the owner and burned down the shop on Sunday.
- A border policeman was killed in a clash with smugglers on the Iraqi-Syrian border Sunday in western Mosul.
- Gunmen using weapons equipped with silencers shot dead an electricity operator, Sunday in Tal Afar.

- Gunmen broke into a house early Sunday May 15, 2011, and fatally shot a family of three as they slept. The attack, which killed a mother, father and 13-year-old boy, occurred in the mixed Sunni-Shiite neighbourhood of Baiyaa in the southwestern part of the capital. The shooters, who were wearing military uniforms, fled before they could be captured, he said. The motive behind the deadly shooting was not immediately clear. In Baghdad's central Tahrir Square, two mortar rounds slammed into the street killing two pedestrians and injuring 10 others. Two other mortar rounds landed in central Jadiriyah district and injured five civilians.

- Iraq, Thursday May 19, 2011:
- A bomb exploded in a parking lot popular with many police and Kurdish intelligence officers, who often mingle and drink tea there. The bomb was hidden on a car. Eight people were wounded, all of them police. Officers worried about damage to their cars rushed to the parking lot and right into the plotter's trap. The attackers then detonated a second car bomb, which killed all 27 people.
- A roadside bomb also exploded wounding eight policemen in a convoy rushing to respond to the attack on the police headquarters. The dead and wounded included Arabs as well as Kurds, all of whom are represented on the province's mixed police force

- Iraq Friday May 20, 2011:
- An Iraqi Interior Ministry officer was killed and two intelligence officials were badly wounded in Baghdad. Colonel Nameer Khazal, who served in the ministry's Baghdad forensics department, was shot dead in the southwestern part of the capital. Gunmen with silencers on their pistols intercepted his car and gunned him down.
- In the Harthiya neighbourhood of west-central Baghdad, two employees of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service were in a car when they were critically wounded.
- An Awakening Council leader in Iskandariya south of Baghdad was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded. The councils are predominantly Sunni Muslim, and are made up of former militants or insurgent sympathizers who have turned against al Qaeda in Iraq.
- North of Baghdad in Baquba, a Sunni imam named Saddoon al-Mashaikhi was critically wounded by a bomb planted at the main entrance of his house. The explosion occurred after the imam entered his house following his Friday sermon at a mosque.
- In Kirkuk, 27 people were killed and 84 were wounded in a blast. Most of the people were security officers. Neighbouring Turkey, which has treated injured Iraqis in the past for humanitarian reasons, is treating 23 of the victims. The Kirkuk region has a large population of Turkmen people, who have ethnic and linguistic ties to Turks.
- A Shiite imam was killed in a bombing in western Baghdad.
- A roadside bomb killed four Iraqi soldiers south of Mosul.

- Iraq, Sunday May 22, 2011:
- At least 16 people have been killed and dozens injured after a wave of apparently co-ordinated bombings hit mostly Shia areas in central Iraq. Most of the blasts occurred in Baghdad between 7am and 8am, during rush hour on the first day of the work week, and targeted police officers and government officials, though some hit markets and injured civilians.
- The deadliest attack occurred in Taji. Police were responding a car bombing that had struck a US patrol convoy -causing no casualties- when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest amid the crowd, killing seven police officers and injuring at least 10 others.
- In Baghdad, a car bomb in the Talbiya neighbourhood near Sadr City targeted the convoy of a colonel in the Interior Ministry. The colonel, a manager in the Ministry's internal affairs department, was not hurt, but five other people, including two of his bodyguards, were wounded.
- Two other attacks occurred in Sadr City, including a roadside bomb that exploded near the General Hospital, killing two and injuring seven, and an improvised explosive device that exploded near a market, injuring six.
- Other attacks in the city targeted police: Two roadside bombs that exploded in Wathiq Square killed one person and wounded 12, including two police, two traffic police and two civil defence officers. One bomb in Beirut Square in the centre of the city targeted a police convoy and wounded six people.
- The Shia Amal neighbourhood in west Baghdad took the heaviest bombings; four improvised explosives and one car bomb detonated in a square near a federal police building, killing two people and wounded 15 others.
- Another bomb in the Sadiyah neighbourhood injured three people.
- On Thursday, a double bombing at a parking garage in the northern city of Kirkuk killed at least 27 people, almost all of them police officers. Another eight officers were wounded when a roadside bomb hit their convoy as they responded to the scene.

- Iraq, Monday May 23, 2011:
- A total of six people were killed and 27 others wounded in separate bomb and gunfire attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- Near Baghdad, a member of Awakening Council group of the town of Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated as he was passing a security checkpoint in al-Shuhadaa neighbourhood in central the town.
- In Anbar province, a police officer was shot dead when his police force clashed with unidentified gunmen on the highway at a desert area located east of the city of Rutba.
- In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a civilian was killed and two others wounded in a roadside bomb explosion in an orchard in the town of Buhruz.
- Also in the province, Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 13 suspects, including a local leader of al-Qaida terrorist organization.
- In Baghdad, a car bomb parked at a parking lot in al-Kadhmiyah district in northern the capital detonated and wounded three policemen and five civilians.
- In northern Iraq, a woman was shot dead by gunmen in military uniforms who broke into her house in a village near the town of al- Riyadh.
- Separately, three people were wounded in separate gunfire and bomb attacks near Kirkuk.
- Earlier in the day, the police reported the killing of two people and the wounding of 14 others when a car bomb struck the convoy of the police chief of al-Rashad area, just south of Kirkuk. The police chief and four of his bodyguards were among the wounded and the rest of the victims were bystanders.
- NATO says four of its service members have been killed in an explosion in eastern Afghanistan. Nato does not provide further details or the troopers' nationalities. NATO typically waits for national authorities to announce casualties before giving specifics.
- The latest deaths bring to 26 the number of NATO personnel killed in Afghanistan this month; 177 have been killed since the start of the year.
- Two U.S. soldiers died over the weekend in an explosion in Iraq. The deaths brought the number of Americans killed to at least 4,454 since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

- Iraq, Tuesday May 24, 2011:
- Violence in the province of Kirkuk killed five people Monday, the latest in a string of attacks in the region, as part of nationwide unrest that left nine dead.
- A morning car bomb targeting the convoy of a police commander in Al-Rashad, south of Kirkuk city, killed two policemen and wounded 12 other people. Major Ahmad al-Barzanji and four other policemen were among the wounded.
- On the road to Kirkuk from Tuz Khurmatu further south, a roadside bomb targeting a patrol in the early hours killed a captain and another soldier. Two more soldiers were wounded.
- Gunmen wearing army uniforms killed Habsha Ziyad Ahmad in her home. It was unclear why she was targeted.
- Seven people were killed in attacks in Kirkuk Province Saturday, two days after three bombings in the provincial capital killed 29 people in Iraq's deadliest day since late March.
- In a separate attack in the main northern city of Mosul, gunmen shot dead two Iraqi soldiers at an army checkpoint in the south of the city.
- In Baghdad, gunmen using silenced pistols assassinated police Colonel Iyad Ali Akbar in the east of the capital.
- Also Monday, a taxi driver was killed and his passenger wounded when a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to their vehicle blew up in Ghazaliyah, west Baghdad.
- Earlier, a car bomb blew up in Baghdad's eastern Zayouna neighbourhood destroying 13 shops, including seven alcohol stores. There were no casualties resulting from the attack.
- The violence came after a spate of bombings in and around Baghdad Sunday killed at least 19 Iraqis and two American soldiers.

- Iraq Wednesday May 25, 2011:
- Bombings in three Iraqi cities over the last 24 hours killed five people and wounded several others.
- A roadside bomb killed Col. Hussein Namat. Namat was driving from his home in Kirkuk to the town of Dibia, where he served as the commander of the police force.
- Over a two-hour period in and around the capital, Baghdad, three attacks wounded several people. Attackers shot and critically wounded a police colonel while he was driving near Shaab stadium in the east. Five people were wounded in a roadside bombing north of the city in Taji. And a police commissioner was wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car exploded.
- On Tuesday night, three people were killed in Baghdad when a car bomb exploded on a commercial street in the southwestern Saydiya neighbourhood. City police said 15 others were wounded.
- In Ramadi a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi police patrol, and one police officer died.
- This comes after a deadly Sunday, when 17 bombs exploded across Baghdad, killing at least 19 people and wounding more than 80. These attacks were the latest in a spate in recent weeks that have raised concerns about Iraq's ability to protect itself.

- Iraq Friday June 3, 2011:
- A bomb killed 17 people and injured at least 50 at a mosque in Tikrit, Iraq. Victims of the attack were leaving Friday prayers when the blast went off. The bomb was hidden in a barrel at the entrance to the mosque, where provincial officials often attend Friday prayers.
- This attack comes a day after Thursday's multiple blasts which killed at least nine people and injured more than a dozen in the city of Ramadi in western Iraq's Anbar province. Two improvised explosive devices [IED] exploded near the eastern gate of a local government building compound, one after the other. Shortly afterwards, a car bomb was detonated by the vehicle's driver.
- A fourth bomb, also a suicide car bomb, went off near the Ramadi hospital where military and civilian rescuers were rushing to bring the victims for treatment.

- A suicide bomber attacked a mosque filled with Iraqi politicians and policemen on June 3, 2011, and another blew himself up inside the hospital where the wounded were taken, killing 21 people in Saddam Hussein's hometown. The twin attacks, as well as the fact that the bombers were able to infiltrate areas that were supposed to be secure, left people in Tikrit feeling under siege. It was the third major attack in Tikrit this year. The first bomber struck during midday Friday prayers, blowing himself up inside a Sunni mosque packed with local officials and killing 16 people, including a police commander and a judge. The mosque was inside a government-controlled compound where many officials live, and most in attendance were security or government employees. 54 people were wounded. Hours later, another suicide bomber walked into the hospital and blew himself up near the emergency room, where family members had gathered. Five people were killed and 16 were injured. Two other deadly attacks hit the city earlier this year. In March, gunmen strapped with explosives stormed the provincial council building and held off Iraqi forces for five hours before blowing themselves up; 56 people were killed. On January 18, a suicide bomber killed 52 people among a crowd of police recruits in Tikrit. The bomber had joined hundreds of people waiting outside a police station to submit applications for 2,000 newly created jobs.

- A bomb attack on an Iraqi oil storage depot set one tank ablaze on Sunday June 5, 2011, in a rare assault on strategic southern oilfields, but the country's crude exports were unaffected. The attack underscored the complex task Iraq faces in protecting and building up its oil infrastructure as the last U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from the OPEC country at the end of the year when a bilateral security pact finishes. The attack set ablaze one tank at the Zubair 1 storage facility, but the explosion had not affected pumping to Al Fao port, where crude exports are dispatched.

- Five American soldiers were killed Monday June 6, 2011, in one of the deadliest days in two years for the American military in Iraq, a day that underscored the continuing threats American troops face as they prepare to withdraw from the country. The five service members have been killed in an attack in central Iraq after three rockets launched from a Kia pickup truck struck an American base in eastern Baghdad. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

- Iraq, Monday June 6, 2011:
- At least 25 people, including five U.S. soldiers, have died in a series of explosions across Iraq.
- The deadliest attack Monday was in Tikrit, where a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle packed with explosives into a security checkpoint staffed by Iraqi army and police, killing 11 people and wounding 17 others. Most of the casualties were Iraqi security forces. The attack occurred at the gates of a fortified compound housing a mosque and several palaces that once belonged to Saddam Hussein.
- On Friday, attacks at the compound's mosque and at a Tikrit hospital killed 23 people and wounded 60.
- The U.S. soldiers died in an attack on Forward Operating Base Loyalty in Baghdad. The soldiers who died were sleeping in their trailers when the attack occurred.
- Four relatives of an Iraqi police officer died and two others were wounded after insurgents exploded bombs they planted around his home.
- In Baghdad, two separate roadside bombs exploded in the city, wounding eight people, three of them police officers.
- In the Adhamiya Sunni neighbourhood of northeastern Baghdad, gunmen attacked three separate security checkpoints, killing an Iraqi soldier and three members of a predominantly Sunni movement composed of former insurgents or sympathizers who have turned against al Qaeda.

- Two apparently coordinated car bombings have killed six people in Mosul. The blasts took place Saturday June 11, 2011, on a busy street near government buildings. The explosions wounded at least 55 people. Meanwhile gunmen stormed the home of a school teacher in a village near Tikrit killing the teacher and four family members, including three children. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for either incident.

- Twin car bombings in northern Iraq, and separate attacks on the homes of a schoolteacher and a human rights activist left at least 11 people dead on Saturday June 11, 2011. Police and hospital officials in the northern city of Mosul said two car bombs exploded in quick succession, killing six people. At least one of the bombs seemed aimed at a police patrol. 52 people were wounded in the blast. In another attack, eight gunmen stormed the house of a schoolteacher overnight and killed his three sons and daughter.

- Attacks in Baghdad and north Iraq on Sunday June 12, 2011, killed seven people, including three who died when two bombs exploded as they were playing football. The three youths were killed and 14 were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded as they played football in the Jihad neighbourhood of south Baghdad. In the central city of Baquba three policemen were killed and four others were wounded when unidentified gunmen fired at a checkpoint. And in Qaiyara in Nineveh province, a policeman was killed and another was injured when a roadside bomb exploded.

- Insurgents briefly took over a government building in a multi-stage attack that left nine people dead in central Diyala province Tuesday June 14, 2011. A car bomb exploded near the main gate of the provincial council building in Baqubah. More than 20 insurgents armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades then attacked from both inside and outside the building. After four guards were killed at a back gate, the insurgents raided the building and took a group of civilian employees hostage. As the insurgents stormed the building, two suicide bombers blew themselves up inside. An hour-long running gun battle ensued between the hostage takers and Diyala police working with Iraqi army forces. At one point, Iraqi security officials received backup from U.S. military helicopters. Iraqi security officials, who have since regained control of the building and freed many of the hostages, reported that at least nine people were killed and 35 were injured. Many of the attackers escaped.

- Two soldiers were killed while on duty in southern Iraq on Tuesday June 14, 2011. Eight U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq so far this month. On June 6, five soldiers were killed when a rocket slammed into their base in eastern Baghdad. It was the largest death toll for the American military in Iraq in a single incident in two years. Also Tuesday, the chief attorney for Baghdad's Provincial Council was assassinated in Baghdad as he drove to work. Ahmad Hassan was gunned down while he drove across a bridge. On Monday, insurgents attacked an Iraqi police command centre in Basra. At least four people were killed in that incident, when a suicide bomber blew up a car in front of the headquarters for Basra's special forces police unit. Later Monday, a bomb detonated in front of Baghdad's al-Taliah Theatre, injuring two civilians.

- Gunmen stormed the local council offices in Baquba, Diyala province, Tuesday June 14, 2011, killing at least eight people in the latest assault on government buildings in Sunni parts of Iraq. The attack lasted almost two hours before army and police personnel took back control of the council building. The attack started when a car bomb exploded, knocking down the complex's blast walls and allowing five suicide bombers to storm the council offices. One suicide bomber set off his explosives at the main gate, while another was shot dead from a tower as he reached the building's doors. Two more died in a blast from one of the men's explosive vests, and the fifth was captured. The fatalities raised the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in Iraq since 2003 to 4,462. So far, eight American troops have been killed in action this month.

- U.S. army helicopter opened fire on suspected insurgents after they fired rockets on Basra airport in southern Iraq, killing a suspect and wounding two, we were told on Thursday June 16, 2011.The incident took place early on Wednesday when a U.S. military base stationed in the airport came under barrage of seven 107 mm rockets. A U.S. helicopter team was conducting a routine mission above the area when they received a report about the base attack. The team "viewed two males actively loading and launching the rockets and requested permission to engage".

- Iraq, Monday June 20, 2011:
- Multiple bombs detonated in Baghdad killed at least one police officer and injuring several people. The attacks were spread across Baghdad, but appeared aimed at police officers or government officials.
- In northern Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a police patrol, killing a police officer and wounding two officers as well as two civilians.
- In Baghdad's affluent Karrada neighbourhood, a roadside bomb exploded close to an armoured car that was travelling near the French ambassador's residence. Three civilians were hurt in the explosion.
- Meanwhile, in Baghdad's Jadira district, two explosions detonated simultaneously on a commercial street near the Hamra Hotel, wounding two civilians. The hotel, which once was been home to many journalists and foreigners, was closed last year after three dozen people were killed in a bombing there.
- A roadside bomb also detonated in western Baghdad injuring three police officers and one civilian.
- Sunday night a district council chairman was shot and killed in Diyala Province.
- There have also been several attacks during the past 24 hours in the Mosul area of northern Iraq, including an explosion that killed two children in a village just outside of town.
- In eastern Mosul, a teenager was gunned down in front of his house.

- A morning attack in Iraq has killed at least 22 people on Tuesday June 21, 2011. Two explosives-laden vehicles driven by suicide bombers blew up near a government compound 80 miles south of Baghdad.

- Iraq, Wednesday June 22, 2011:
- Militants attacked Iraqi police with guns and explosives and lobbed a mortar round at a security headquarters killing four people - one policeman and three civilians- and more than a dozen police were among 32 people wounded.
- The mortar shell fired at the Nineveh security centre, a headquarters used by the army and police, missed the target and hit a house, killing one person and wounding another in southern Mosul.
- Attackers threw a grenade at a police patrol in Mosul, wounding four people, and killed an officer at a security checkpoint, while a roadside bomb near a patrol killed a bystander and wounded two people, including a policeman.
- In the capital, a local police chief and five officers were wounded when two roadside bombs struck their convoy in the western Amiriya district.
- In the western Ghazaliya district, a parked car bomb exploded near a police patrol killing a bystander and wounding nine people, including three police.
- Bombs targeting police wounded three officers and five civilians in the Zayouna and Jadiriya areas.
- Near Iraq's southern oil hub, Basra, a U.S. military convoy was struck by a bomb blast, police said. No one was hurt.

- A U.S civilian contractor was killed and another American wounded in a bomb attack in eastern Baghdad on Thursday June 23, 2011. The slain American had been leaving Baghdad University's Mustansiriya campus when attackers detonated a powerful bomb, known as an explosively formed penetrator (EFP). The bombs are commonly used by Shiite militias against the U.S. military. Two civilians were wounded in the attack, including one American citizen."

- Three people were killed in two gunfire attacks in and near Baghdad on Saturday June 25, 2011, while a roadside bomb struck a U.S. convoy in the capital during the day. Gunmen with their assault rifles broke into the house of Tahir Ahmed, deputy head of local town hall in Abu Ghraib area. The attacker shot dead Ahmed and his son before they fled the scene. In a separate incident, gunmen using pistols fitted with silencers shot dead a policeman in al-Liqaa Square in Baghdad's western district of Mansour. In addition, a roadside bomb went off near a convoy of U.S. military vehicles in Baghdad's western district of Adil.

- Iraq, Sunday June 26, 2011:
- Three people were killed and 25 others were wounded in separate attacks across Iraq.
- The deadliest attack occurred when a suicide bomber disguised as a disabled man pushed his explosives-packed wheelchair inside the police station of Tarmiyah and blew it up, killing two people and wounding 19 others, including 10 policemen. Lieutenant Colonel Bashar Adnan, chief of the police station, was among the wounded.
- In Salahudin province, Faisal Ghazi, an Iraqi intelligence service officer, was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated in the town of Sulaiman Pek
- In Kirkuk, Mohammed Ahmed Hussein, the mayor of Riyadh escaped unharmed a bike bomb explosion near his convoy, wounding three people.
- In the province of Diyala, two people were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion at an orchard near Baquba.
- A civilian was wounded when his car crashed with a U.S. military vehicle in the city of Jalawlaa.
- Also in the province, Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 10 suspects, including four wanted individuals.

- The Iraqi security forces captured a suspected senior al-Qaida leader in Iraq's Anbar province we were told on Monday June 27, 2011. They captured Abdul-Qader Attia al-Fahdawi, one of the leaders of al-Qaida terrorist group in Iraq, and believed to be the minister of electricity for the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). The arrest occurred on Sunday in Sufiyah area just south of Anbar's capital city of Ramadi when a police force spotted a suspect in his 30s disguised as an old man and captured him for interrogation. Fahdawi was wanted for involvement in a number of armed attacks against the Iraqi security forces and other crimes in the province.

- Three U.S. service members were killed in southern Iraq on Thursday June 30, 2011, making June the deadliest month for American troops in Iraq in three years. The three deaths brought to 14 the number of U.S. personnel who have died in hostile incidents this month.

American officials said on July 3, 2011 that there is strong evidence that Shiite militias in Iraq are using Iranian weapons to attack U.S. troops. Materials found following recent attacks against U.S. troops "have been traced back to Iranian origin. The claim supports the U.S. military position that the militias are backed by Iran, a charge Tehran has long denied.

- Iraq Monday July 4, 2011:
- Bombings and booby-trapped vehicles targeting police and Iraqi soldiers killed at least 10 people and injured dozens more.
- In Baghdad's Mansour district, an explosion killed three police officers and injured four others.
- Another explosion in the city's Durra district injured one police officer and three civilians.
- A suicide bomber also blew himself up in the Bab al-Muadham district as Iraqi soldiers tried to capture him; five soldiers were injured.
- A sticky bomb exploded beneath a car in the same area, killing two and injuring two others, officials said.
- In Abu Ghraib a booby-trapped car killed two Iraqi soldiers and injured another nine.
- Also in Abu Ghraib, an explosive charge killed a leader of the Sunni Awakening movement and his wife.
- In Anbar province, a booby-trapped car killed three police officers and injured four civilians north of Fallujah.
- Another suicide bomber detonated his vest outside the Haditha police station, injuring two police officers.
- Elsewhere, targeted assassinations, an increasingly common form of violence, also continued. In Baghdad, gunmen using silencer pistols assassinated a police trainer near a gas station on Baghdad's busy Palestine Street.
- An employee of the Al-Mustansiriya University, a predominantly Shiite institution, was shot and killed a short time later.

- On Tuesday July 5, 2011, two bombs have exploded outside a government building north of Baghdad, killing at least 35 people. A car bomb and another explosive went in the town of Taji. They say more than two dozen people were wounded in the blasts. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. In another attack a rocket hit Baghdad's fortified Green Zone late Monday, killing at least four people. Earlier Monday, a wave of attacks targeting Iraqi police and soldiers killed at least eight people.

- A car bomb and a smaller explosive device detonated Tuesday July 5, 2011, close to a parking area for municipal employees in a town outside Baghdad, leaving 36 people dead and 54 wounded. The blasts occurred as people reported to work at the municipal building in Taji. Monday, at least three more people were killed and 13 wounded when a Katyusha rocket was fired into Baghdad's Green Zone enclave, home to embassies and the Iraqi government. The rocket hit trailers for the construction crew working on the Rashid Hotel, a landmark building in the capital that is being renovated. In Taji, the two explosions occurred within minutes during rush hour, and ambulances were not able to quickly evacuate the injured.

- Iraq Thursday July 7, 2011:
- Six people were killed and three wounded in separate bomb and gunfire attacks.
- In the province of Kirkuk, unidentified gunmen using silenced weapons late on Tuesday attacked a checkpoint manned by Awakening Council group members in the town of Hawijah.
- Near Baghdad, a roadside bomb went off near an Iraqi army patrol in Abu Ghraib area killing a soldier and wounding another.
- In a separate incident, Muhsin al-Ameri, deputy head of Abu Ghraib's town council, was seriously wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated while he was driving in central of the town.

- Also in Abu Ghraib area, a sticky bomb detonated in a civilian car while moving in al-Risala district in central of the area, killing the driver.

- In the eastern province of Diyala, gunmen using pistols fitted with silencers shot dead an ex-member of a local Awakening Council group outside his home near the provincial capital city of Baquba.
- Separately, a civilian was seriously wounded when unidentified gunmen attacked him in eastern Baquba.
- Also in the province, Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 10 suspects, including four wanted individuals.

- Two American soldiers were killed in central Iraq Friday July 8, 2011, the first fatalities since June, the deadliest month for U.S. service members in two years when fifteen U.S. troops died. It was the highest number of military deaths in the country since May 2009 when American forces were still operating in Iraqi cities.

- Iraq, Friday July 15, 2011:
- Gunmen shot dead a man in his house in west of Baghdad on Thursday, while four people were wounded in a police raid on gunmen safe house in north of the capital.
- Gunmen disguised as Iraqi security forces broke into a house in Abu Ghraib area and shot dead a man before they fled the scene. The victim is an ex-Awakening Council group member, or al-Sahwa in Arabic, who fought al-Qaida group militants in the Sunni Arab areas during the years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
- In north of Baghdad, two policemen and two gunmen were wounded in a clash erupted between gunmen and an Iraqi police force during a raid on a safe house used by insurgents in the village of al- Hajaj near the city of Tikrit, the capital of Salahudin province. The police arrested the two wounded gunmen and ten others at the scene for interrogation.

- Iraq, Saturday July 16, 2011:
- An American soldier has been killed while conducting military operations in southern Iraq.
- Two separate blasts killed five people and wounded nearly three dozen Saturday.
- The first bomb, hidden in an empty rickshaw, blew up near Shiite pilgrims headed to the holy city of Karbala, killing two people and wounding 26.
- In Baghdad, a bomb in a minibus parked outside a restaurant and nightclub in the Karradah neighbourhood killed three passers-by and wounded at least nine.

- At least two Iranian Kurdish rebels and one member of Tehran's elite Revolutionary Guards were killed during clashes along the Islamic Republic's border with Iraq on Sunday July 17, 2011. The fighting came less than a week after Iran warned that it reserved the right to attack the bases of the PJAK, or the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, in neighbouring Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

- Two people were killed and three wounded in bomb attacks in and near Baghdad on Sunday July 17, 2011, while a police officer escaped with wounds a gunfire attack in Iraq's northern central province of Salahudin. A roadside bomb went off in the morning near a car in Baghdad's western district of Amriyah, killing two civilians and wounding another. Near Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a civilian car in the town of Mahmoudiyah. In Salahudin province, Brigadier General Ahmed Bdeiwi, head of the provincial major crimes department, escaped with wounds an attack by gunmen on his convoy while travelling near a village at the edges of the city of Sherqat. The attack occurred in the early morning as Bdeiwi was heading to his work in Tikrit; Bdeiwi's bodyguards and security forces at a nearby checkpoint traded fire with the attackers who fled the scene.

- Iraq Saturday July 23, 2011:
- Separate bomb and gun attacks on Friday killed five Iraqi policemen and a doctor and wounded 17 other people in Baghdad, Baquba north of the capital, and Kirkuk.
- In Baghdad's western Mansur district, a roadside bomb killed two policemen, including a captain. Eight people were also wounded, among them four policemen. The explosion happened when the police went to check on an earlier explosion outside a liquor shop which had inflicted no casualties. Liquor stores are frequent targets of insurgents, attacked because they are usually owned by Christians, and because drinking alcohol is forbidden by Islam.
- In Baquba gunmen sprayed policemen guarding the compound of a Turkish company involved in a garbage collection project, killing three and wounding one. All the gunmen fled, leaving behind a vehicle that exploded shortly afterwards, wounding eight people, including a woman.
- In the oil city of Kirkuk a paediatrician was killed in his car. Ibrahim Shaeer Jabbar al-Jumaili, 55, who also teaches medicine at the university, was murdered after he resisted attempts by four people to kidnap him.

- Iraq, Sunday July 24, 2011:
- Two policemen and a civilian were killed and nine people wounded in separate attacks in central and eastern Iraq.
- A policeman was killed and two others wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near Ramadi. The blast also wounded a passer-by.
- In Baghdad, gunmen in their car shot dead a traffic policeman in Baghdad's central district of Karrada.
- Earlier in the day, the police reported the wounding of two policemen and a civilian in a roadside bomb explosion near a police patrol in Nidhal Street in Baghdad's central district of Karrada.
- The police reported the killing of a civilian and the wounding of three people in separate roadside bomb and gunfire attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
- Also in Diyala, a joint U.S. and Iraqi force dropped by helicopters in the early hours of the day on houses at al-Edheim area and captured six suspects.
- The Iraqi security forces conducted search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested seven suspects, including an individual wanted for terrorism charges.

- A bomb strapped to a motorcycle has killed three people and wounded 14 others in a town northeast of Baghdad on Tuesday July 26, 2011. The bomb was detonated by remote control as the explosives were packed on a motorcycle that was parked near a hospital.

- A car bomb and a suicide attacker struck security forces outside a central Iraqi bank on Thursday July 28, 2011, killing 12 people and wounding 30 others. Police officers and soldiers were lining up outside of the state-run al-Rafidain bank in Tikrit to pick up their monthly salaries. Six soldiers and three police officers were among the 12 killed and nine police officers and eight soldiers were among the 30 wounded. Police believe the suicide attacker parked an explosives-laden car outside the bank. After that bomb went off, the attacker walked among security forces and set off his explosives vest.

- Iranian shelling of a Kurdish border village has killed a 13-year-old boy in northern Iraq. The boy was killed late Thursday July 28, 2011, as he was tending his sheep near the Kurdish village of Tabas. Iranian forces have been shelling the area in an attempt to target Kurdish rebels who operate on both sides of the volatile border.

- On Friday July 29, 2011, twins blasts involving a car bomb and a suicide attack in Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown in central Iraq, killed 12 people near a bank and a market, as shoppers stocked up for Ramadan. Another 31 people were injured in the blasts ahead of the holy Muslim fasting period and with just months to go before US forces must withdraw completely from Iraq.

- Iraq, Saturday July 30, 2011:
- A policeman was killed and ten others wounded in separate attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala on Saturday.
- Gunmen shot dead a policeman and wounded a local Awakening Council group member in western the provincial capital city of Baquba.
- In a separate incident, six people were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion at a marketplace in the town of Qara-Tapa.
- In addition, three people were wounded when gunmen opened fire on civilians in Sherwin area.
- Also in the province, Iraqi security forces carried out search operations across the province during the past 24 hours, and arrested seven suspects, including five wanted for charges of terrorism.

- In a coordinated effort to generate fear among Iraqi Christians, Kirkuk witnessed another attack outside a Syrian Catholic Church on Tuesday August 2, 2011. At least 23 people were wounded in the attack, mostly from surrounding homes. The church's parish leader, Imad Yalda, was inside the church during the bombing and was also among the wounded. Two other car bombs were also found outside Kirkuk's Christian Anglican Church and the Mar Gourgis church. The bombs were defused by security forces prior to their explosion.

- Six people have been killed and at least 11 wounded in a bomb attack on homes in a town south of Baghdad. Two children were among the dead. Police did not say Sunday August 7, 2011, what might be the motive behind the overnight attack in Iskandariyah.

- Iraq Friday August 12, 2011:
- Twin bomb attacks in western Iraq killed three people Thursday while a string of four explosions in Baghdad wounded 10 others. A total of 39 people were wounded in violence on Thursday.
- In the capital, two bombs went off near alcohol shops in the commercial district of Karrada in central Baghdad, wounding four civilians. The two explosions, which were followed by sirens and gunfire, could be heard in central Baghdad.
- Another bomb targeted an army patrol in Dura in the south of the capital, wounding three soldiers, while a fourth exploded in Al-Amil neighbourhood in south Baghdad, wounding three civilians.
- In the western predominantly Sunni city of Ramadi, meanwhile, two explosions against the home of a police officer killed three and wounded 24 others.
- Five people were also wounded on Thursday by a roadside bomb in Baladruz.

- Two roadside bomb explosions in Baghdad have killed at least five military personnel - two army officers and three soldiers- and wounded 11 others, including eight civilians. The bombs went off by the Anter Square in Baghdad's northern district of Adhamiyah on Sunday August 14, 2011. The roadside bombs exploded one after the other. The second bomb went off when security personnel arrived on the scene after the first explosion. Three soldiers and eight civilians had also been wounded in the two blasts.

- Iraq Monday Auguat 15, 2011:
- Insurgents across Iraq launched their most significant and wide-ranging attacks in months killing 68 people and wounding over 300, in the most violent day in Iraq this year.
- In all, there were 37 attacks, more than double the daily average this year, nearing the level of violence at the height of the sectarian conflict here in 2006 and 2007. The attacks included 11 car bombs, 19 improvised explosive devices and 2 suicide bombers.

- The most lethal attack occurred in the city of Kut where a series of explosions including a car bomb inside the city's main market killed 35 people and wounded 71.
- In Diyala Province there were at least a dozen explosions that left 6 dead and 29 wounded. One blast struck near the convoy of the mayor of Baquba injuring him and three of his guards.
- Gunmen attacked two checkpoints in Baquba, killing five members of Iraq's security forces.
- Two suicide bombers in Salahuddin Province attacked an Iraqi counterterrorism unit in the city of Tikrit, killing a high-ranking officer and two other members of the unit and wounding at least 10.
- Two car bombs were detonated in Najaf, killing 8 and wounding 20.
- In Baghdad, a car bomb was detonated near a government convoy in the neighbourhood of Mansur, wounding five people, including two security guards.
- A policeman who was wounded in Taji, said that he had opened fire on a suicide bomber who was driving toward him. The car struck Mr. Ahmed and knocked him to the ground, then he stood up and fired again. Seconds later, the attacker detonated the car bomb. Another policeman being treated at the hospital.
- At least three policemen were killed and more than 10 wounded when two suicide bombers attacked the counter-terrorism headquarters in the city of Tikrit. The two suicide bombers entered the headquarters with faked IDs in an attempt to enter the main building, but were discovered and traded fire with the guards. One bomber was killed and the other blew up an explosive vest. One of the three killed officers was a Lieutenant Colonel, deputy chief of the headquarters.

- Gunmen wearing military uniforms pulled seven people from a Sunni mosque south of Baghdad and then shot and killed them, execution-style. The killings happened Monday August 15, 2011. The gunmen walked into the Sunni mosque in Youssifiyah during evening prayers, took the seven men outside and shot them. The men were all members of an anti-al-Qaida militia.

- Iraq, Wednesday August 24, 2011:
- At least five people, including a woman and a child, were killed and nine wounded in a series of attacks in the central province of Diyala.
- In the worst attack, four people were killed and seven wounded when insurgents detonated bombs at the homes of three town criers whose job was to awaken people for the Ramadan pre-dawn meal, at around 3:00 am in the town of al-Hudaid, west of provincial capital Baquba centre. Among the dead were a woman and a child, and two women and a child were among the wounded. None of the three town criers, who awaken people for early morning meals and dawn prayers before the daily Ramadan fast, were among the casualties.
- In the centre of Baquba, meanwhile, an anti-Qaeda militiaman was gunned down by insurgents equipped with silenced pistols. The militiaman was a member of the Sahwa, made up of Sunni tribes that sided with the US military against Al-Qaeda from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's bloody insurgency.
- Also in Baquba, a roadside bomb targeting police Lieutenant Colonel Hamid al-Karkhi left the officer and his driver wounded.
- Meanwhile, in Baghdad, three people were wounded when a roadside bomb struck against an Iraqi army patrol in Allawi, in the west of the capital.

- A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives attacked a police checkpoint west of Ramadi on Wednesday August 24, 2011, killing seven people, including five police officers, and wounding four other officers and a civilian.

- Iraq, Thursday August 25, 2011:
- Fifteen people -most of them police officers- have been killed in a series of attacks over a 24-hour period in Iraq's Anbar Province.
- Four attacks around Fallujah killing six people. They came a day after seven policemen died and nine were wounded when a suicide bomber blew up a minivan at a checkpoint near Ramadi.
- A car bomb at the Karma district police station near Fallujah killed five police officers, wounded six others and almost levelled the building.
- One Iraqi soldier was killed and another wounded when a gunman threw a grenade at their Army patrol, on manoeuvres south of Fallujah.
- Army and police patrols were also targeted by bombs in downtown Fallujah, leaving 11 injured.
- A roadside bomb outside Ramadi killed two bodyguards of an Iraqi Army commander and injured a third.
- A car bomb exploded in Eastern Baghdad, killing another soldier and wounding 15 others.

- On Thursday August 25, 2011, seven Bulgarian and 28 Ukrainian construction workers are reported in distress in the Iraq capital Baghdad. They are surviving only on food and water brought them by humanitarian workers. There is one woman among them. The workers came on the promises of good pay for building facilities for the Arab League summit, but the nightmare began after the latter was postponed indefinitely and the project frozen. The 35 workers live in the top security "green zone" in Baghdad, cramped in 3 rooms without any pay. They have deposited between USD 300 and 500 to land the jobs in Iraq with the promises of making USD 2 000 to 2 500 a month. After their arrival between December 2010, and February 2011, they were told to not expect anything exceeding USD 1 800 as a wage, but nevertheless, since they lacked any choice, they signed the contract with Noblehus -a company owned jointly by a Bulgarian and a Swede with Iraqi origins. The company became a subcontractor of the Turkish Salar Group, which was the successful bidder for a contract worth USD 38.5 M to build 22 villas. The workers have not received any pay since January. In April, they stopped work and demand they receive a total of USD 286 000 owed to them. One of them is quoted saying "they all live like animals" in the 3 rooms with bunk beds, stinking toilets and showers working for 3 hours a day when there is electric power. The workers are afraid to leave the security zone over fears of being arrested since their employers never provided the promised visas. At least six are ill over the poor conditions. Bulgarian authorities have raised the issue with both Turkey and Iraq, pointing out the country brought back, in the beginning of the month, scores of Bulgarians from oil facilities in Basra after their Iraqi employer failed to pay them as well.

- Iraq Sunday August 28, 2011:
- A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Sunni mosque in Baghdad, killing an MP and at least 27 others in an attack - and 37 were wounded in the attack- that was blamed on Al-Qaeda. Among the dead were Khaled al-Fahdawi, an MP from western Anbar province allied with the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc.
- A car bomb and four roadside blasts in other areas of the capital killed one person and wounded 20 others.
- Separate gun attacks in the central province of Diyala left five people dead, including two policemen.
- In Mosul, a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a police car in the centre of the city killed a policeman and wounded four others.
- Two policemen were also wounded when explosives attached to a motorcycle blew up near a petrol station in town of Tuz Khurmatu.

- Dozens of prisoners escaped from an Iraqi prison following a deadly August, though the U.S. military said it was its best month since the start of the war. Iraqis, Thursday September 1, 2011, recaptured 21 of the 35 prisoners who escaped from a detention centre in northern Ninawa province. All of the prisoners were in jail on terrorism charges. One Iraqi soldier was killed and two others were injured by unknown militants in Salah ad Din province and similar accounts were reported in a bombing attack in Baghdad. Roughly 100 Iraqis were killed in various bombings throughout the country in August.

- While sophisticated roadside bombs have taken a heavy toll on American troops over the course of the war here, suicide bombings have largely been a hallmark of sectarian warfare. Independent researchers have now tried to quantify their damage, poring through data compiled from death reports to conclude that more than 12,000 Iraqis have been killed in at least 1,000 suicide attacks since the American-led invasion (September 2, 2011).

- A young Kurdish shepherd was killed Saturday September 2, 2011, by an Iranian sniper. Both Iranian and Turkish forces have increased shelling and airstrikes this summer against Kurdish rebels with bases in Iraq who for years have battled for autonomy in Iran and Turkey. Iran also shelled the border. The shelling appeared to target bases of the Iranian Kurdish rebel group PEJAK, which has been involved in sporadic cross-border clashes with Iranian forces in recent years. PEJAK says it's fighting for greater rights in Iran.

- Insurgents attacked a minibus filled with Iraqi soldiers in Anbar Province on Tuesday September 6, 2011, killing all nine people aboard in a storm of gunfire. The minibus, which was transporting soldiers back to work from days off, approached two vehicles that were blocking the main highway near the district of Haditha. As the minibus slowed, gunmen fired on it, killing eight soldiers and the driver. The gunmen then burned the bus and fled.

- Iranian shelling has killed the deputy military leader of The Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), a north Iraq-based Kurdish separatist group. "Majid Kawian, known as Comrade Samkou, deputy commander general of the forces of eastern Kurdistan in the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, was killed in heavy Iranian shelling" on Saturday September 3, 2011. Kawian had been engaged in "terrorist operations inside Iran" since 2003.

- On September 8, 2011, Hadi al-Mahdi, a popular radio journalist often critical of the government, was killed at his home in Baghdad. The killing of Hadi al-Mahdi sadly highlights that journalism in Iraq remains a deadly profession. Witnesses at the crime scene told Human Rights Watch that they saw no evidence of a struggle or theft, suggesting that the killing was deliberate. Al-Mahdi's cell phone, laptop, and other valuables were left in the house untouched. Al-Mahdi, a freelance journalist and theatre director, had been openly critical of government corruption and social inequality in Iraq.

- Gunmen killed 22 Shiite Muslim pilgrims Monday September 12, 2011, as they travelled through Iraq's western desert to Syria. Gunmen stopped a bus of pilgrims at a fake security checkpoint in Anbar province. They asked the women and children to get off the bus and fatally shot 22 Shiite Muslim men. The pilgrims had planned to travel from Iraq's southern Shiite city of Karbala to visit a shrine in Syria. It is unclear if the group was on their way to Syria or returning to Karbala when the gunmen attacked.

- Iraq, Wednesday September 14, 2011:
- Terrorist attacks across Iraq killed more than 20 people.
- In Anbar, a bomb exploded inside a bus carrying Iraqi soldiers to a restaurant at Camp Habbaniya, a military base east of Ramadi. Six soldiers were killed, and 10 were wounded.
- In Babil Province, south of Baghdad, a parked car packed with explosives was detonated in front of a busy restaurant. The restaurant was crowded with travellers who had stopped for breakfast. The blast had killed 13 people and wounded 46 more, including women and children.
- The bodies of three Shiite men believed to have been labourers were found along a highway in Babil Province. The men's hands had been tied, and they had been shot multiple times.
- In Baghdad, gunmen killed two police officers at a security checkpoint and wounded a third.

- At least two people were killed and 10 wounded in three suicide bomb attacks in Ramadi on Tuesday September 20, 2011. Three suicide bombers almost simultaneously blew up their explosive vests outside the provincial council compound and nearby police headquarters. The blasts were followed by heavy gunfire; the casualty could rise.

- Insurgents dressed in military uniforms launched a coordinated attack on a government compound in the western city of Ramadi on Tuesday September 20, 2011, but the assault was partly foiled by local police, who had taken over security of the compound from the Iraqi army four months ago. Two police officers, one civilian and a leader of the Sons of Iraq, a Sunni counterinsurgency coalition, were killed by twin suicide bombs. Fifteen policemen were injured in an ensuing firefight with five gunmen who breached the perimeter of the compound after the explosions. Police shot and killed the gunmen. They also fatally shot a third would-be suicide bomber before he could trigger his device. One suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the eastern gate of the compound and another blew up his car at the western gate. Police then cordoned off the compound, and gunfire could be heard inside. The compound houses the headquarters of the Anbar police department, government and counterterrorism bureau. Among the dead Tuesday was Khalid al-Alwani, one of the leaders of the Sons of Iraq.

- Elsewhere Tuesday September 20, 2011, three Iraqi policemen were killed by gunmen using silencer pistols at a checkpoint in the Shiite district of Shaab, in northern Baghdad, and a district police commander was injured by a bomb attached to his car in the city of Baqubah.

- Iraq Saturday September 23, 2011:
- Five people were killed and twelve others wounded, including women and children, in bomb explosions targeting three houses in Gazaliya, western Baghdad.
- In Mosul, a soldier was killed in an armed attack on a military checkpoint in Al Kahira neighbourhood.
- In Ma'amoun neighbourhood southern Mosul, a woman was shot to death on her house's rooftop.
- A security force arrested seven people including a suspect for charges of terrorism in a security operation in separate regions of the province.
- A joint force uncovered a weapons cache during a security operation eastern Baquba.

- Four coordinated explosions killed 15 people and injured at least 113 Sunday September 25, 2011, in the Shiite holy city of Karbala. The first charge detonated in front of a government building that issues IDs and badges. Three more explosions followed as police and emergency workers gathered. The explosions sheared off the facades of several buildings. The dead include five Iraqi policemen. Four children and many Iraqi security officers were wounded. Sunday's attacks were executed by al-Qaeda in Iraq. Within the past week, an official with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was shot and killed in western Baghdad by gunmen wielding pistols with silencers, Iraqi police partly foiled an insurgent assault on a provincial compound in Ramadi, and a booby-trapped car exploded near a Shiite mosque in Babil province, killing five and injuring 19 policemen and civilians.

- Iraq Monday September 26, 2011:
- A roadside bomb in northern Iraq killed three people. The blast struck a car carrying four people near the city of Kirkuk. One person was wounded in the explosion.
- In Baghdad gunmen wounded two government officials in failed assassination attempts. Gunmen shot judge Munir Hadad in his hand during a drive-by shooting on a highway in central Baghdad. Hadad served as the spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal formed to prosecute Saddam and his aides. Also, senior Finance Ministry official Mohammed Ali al-Safi was wounded in western Baghdad after assailants opened fire on his car.

- Iraq Tuesday September 27, 2011:
- Eight people were killed and 22 wounded in separate attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- Two policemen were killed and two others wounded when a land mine detonated near their vehicle in the city of Sherqat.
- A policeman and 13 civilians were wounded when gunmen in their car hurled three hand grenades on a police checkpoint at a crowded marketplace in central the city of Mosul.
- In Baghdad, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead a government official in a drive-by shooting while he was driving his car in Jamia district.
- Earlier in the day, the police reported the killing of five people, including two policemen, and the wounding of six people in separate gunfire and bomb attacks in Iraq's western province of Anbar.

- Iraq, Wednesday September 28, 2011:
- Eight people were killed, including five family members, and nine wounded in separate gunfire and bomb attacks.
- In Iraq's western province of Anbar, two civilians were killed and another wounded when a sticky bomb attached to their car detonated in the provincial capital city of Ramadi.
- In Diyala province, a civilian was killed when gunmen attacked him with their assault rifles in front of his house in the town of Hibhib near the provincial capital city of Baquba.
- Also in Diyala province, Iraqi security forces carried out search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 12 suspects, including nine wanted individuals, and found three caches of weapons and explosives.
- In Baghdad, a traffic police officer, was seriously wounded by gunmen using silenced weapons in Baiyaa district in southern Baghdad.
- The police reported the killing of five family members and the wounding of seven others in the early morning hours when gunmen dressed in Iraqi army uniforms opened fire on the house of Hameed al-Zoubaie, leader of the local Awakening Council group of a village in Abu Ghraib area.

- On Wednesday September 28, 2011, five people, including two children, were killed when a group of unidentified gunmen attacked a pro-government house. In addition, several others suffered injuries. The group of armed men stormed the pro-government al-Sahwa (Awakening) Force house located south of Falluja. The al-Sahwa Force leader was not at the house at the time of the attack. The group of gunmen subsequently fled to an unknown destination as investigators continue to look into the situation.

- A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-packed car Thursday September 29, 2011, near a bank where policemen were picking up their pay checks in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing two people -a policeman and a civilian- and wounding as many as 60 mainly policemen.

- Iraq, Friday September 30, 2011:
- An American soldier was killed in a separate incident that marks the first U.S. combat death since July. The U.S. military did not identify the soldier, pending notification of next of kin. The soldier was about to go on a military operation when he was hit by indirect fire in northern Iraq. It brings to 4,478 the number of American troops who have died in Iraq since the war started in 2003.
- A police officer was killed Thursday by gunmen in Baghdad.
- An employee for Iraq's government-run TV channel died from wounds he sustained in an attack late Wednesday.
- A former electricity minister who was arrested on Wednesday for questioning about alleged corruption was released a day later.

- A car bomb exploded Friday September 30, 2011, near a mosque in southern Iraq as mourners gathered for the funeral of a tribal sheik, killing at least 17 people and wounding 70. The blast took place in a town outside Hillah as the mourners gathered in a hall near the mosque. The explosion set cars ablaze and damaged several nearby buildings. Many local officials, including the chief of provincial council, his deputy and some judges, were at the ceremony but were not among the dead or injured.

- Four anti-al-Qaida fighters died Sunday October 2, 2011, when two roadside bombs exploded as their patrol passed by. The first bomb went off next to a passing patrol of the Sahwa or Awakening Councils, a network of predominantly Sunni Arab militias allied with the Iraqi government. The second bomb hit another patrol rushing to the scene a few minutes later, killing two others. Three Sahwa fighters were injured in the blasts. The attack took place near the town of Mishahda.

- Security forces stormed a police station where gunmen were holding police and civilians hostage on Monday October 3, 2011, leaving three people dead and bringing an end to the standoff. All of the gunmen also died. The gunmen were disguised as police officers when they entered the station in the town of al-Baghdadi in western Iraq and took police officers as well as civilians working there hostage. They immediately opened fire upon entering and one of the insurgents blew himself up. Among the hostages was the mayor of al-Baghdadi, whose office is on the second floor of the police station. Around 15 people had been held inside the building. It was not immediately clear whether the attackers had made any demands.

- Iraq, Monday October 3, 2011:
- At least six people were killed in two back-to-back roadside bomb blasts near Baghdad Sunday.
- Meanwhile at least 10 people died when forces stormed a government compound where several people, including a mayor, were being held hostage.
The target of the roadside bombs were two members of the Sunni paramilitary group "the Awakening Council" who were killed when their car detonated a roadside bomb in Al-Nibaie area.
- A second roadside bomb exploded minutes later when another vehicle carrying militiamen rushed to the scene. It killed four other people.
- Among the 10 who died in the hostage drama were five policemen.
The incident took place in al-Baghdadi town of Anbar province. Thirteen people, including the mayor of the town, Mohanad Zbar Mutlag, were taken hostage by gunmen.

- A string of explosions targeting security officials -and people who rushed to the scene to help the injured- killed at least 10 people in western Baghdad Monday October 10, 2011. The first explosion came from a roadside bomb in a Shiite neighbourhood, targeting an Iraqi army patrol. Minutes later, a second bomb exploded nearby, targeting a passing police patrol. As fire-fighters arrived on the scene of the first blast, the third bomb went off. At least 19 people were also wounded in the attacks. In another incident, six members of a land mine removal team died when a controlled detonation of old land mines went wrong. The accident happened near the city of Basra on Saturday. As the troops went to investigate, the explosion erupted, killing three Iraqi soldiers and three explosives experts.

- A land mine explosion on Monday October 10, 2011, in southern Iraq and attacks on security forces in Baghdad killed 19 people. In southern Iraq, near Basra, six soldiers were killed as they tried to clear land mines.

- A series of bombings targeted Iraqi police in Baghdad on Wednesday October 12, 2011, including blasts by two suicide bombers who tried to ram their vehicles through police station gates. 25 people died and dozens more were wounded in the carnage. The blasts were aimed at the police. In the southern Karradah neighbourhood, 13 people died and 25 were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on a police station. Smoke could be seen rising from the blast site as ambulances rushed to the scene, their sirens wailing. Iraqi army helicopters circled overhead. In the mainly Shiite neighbourhood of Hurriyah, a suicide car bomber targeted a police station and killed nine people. Twenty-seven people were wounded in that blast. The suicide bombers both exploded their vehicles at the outer entrances into the police stations.

- Five explosions targeting local police shook the capital within the span of an hour Wednesday October 12, 2011, two days after Iraq's leaders requested that at least 5,000 U.S. military trainers remain into 2012 to advise the country's fledgling security forces. The bombs killed at least 25 people and injured more than 70, many of them police officers, in attacks across the city. Car bombs rocked two police stations after two suicide bombers drove separate cars to the entrances of stations in Hurriyah, in northwest Baghdad, and Karrada, in the western part of downtown. Fourteen people were killed in Karrada and four in Hurriyah, the Interior Ministry said.

- A bomb blast near a Baghdad liquor store killed seven people and wounded 18 on Monday October 17, 2011. Three of the dead and five of the wounded were police officers. It was not immediately clear whether the primary target was the liquor store, a target of conservative Shiite militants, or the police officers, a target of Sunni militants. A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing one civilian.

- Roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad, on the second morning in a row in which traffic patrols appear to have been targeted by insurgents. One policeman died and eight others were wounded when their patrols were hit in three separate roadside bombings eastern and northeastern Baghdad on Tuesday October 25, 2011. Two passers-by also were injured in the attacks.

- Iraq Wednesday October 26, 2011:
- Eleven people were killed and 24 wounded in separate bomb attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- One of deadliest attacks occurred when two booby-trapped cars went off in the east of Mosul city killing a total of nine people and wounding 16 others. Two soldiers and three policemen were among the wounded people. Some of the wounded were in critical conditions.
- In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and two others injured when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in Abu Ghraib area.
- In Iraq's northern-central province of Salahudin, a roadside bomb detonated near a police patrol in the southwest of the provincial capital city Tikrit killing a policeman and wounding another.
- Also in the day, two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb went off outside a popular restaurant in Bab al-Sharji district in central Baghdad.
- In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, three Iranian Shiite pilgrims were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near their bus on a main road in Imam Wies area in northeast of the provincial capital city Baquba.
- In addition, Iraqi security forces carried out search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 17 suspects, including 14 wanted individuals.

- The death toll from twin bombings in Baghdad has risen to at least 32, almost double the number of fatalities reported after the Thursday October 27, 2011, blasts. At least 71 people were wounded in the bombings in a mostly Shiite neighbourhood. The explosions took place a few minutes apart. The second blast occurred as rescue workers arrived at the scene to treat victims of the first explosion. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

- A roadside bomb killed a traffic policemen in Baghdad. One policeman died and eight others were wounded when their patrols were hit in three separate roadside bombings eastern and northeastern Baghdad on Tuesday October24, 2011. Two passers-by also were injured in the attacks. On Monday, four separate attacks against traffic police in Baghdad killed two policemen and three civilians.

- Iraq Wednesday October 25, 2011:
- Eleven people were killed and 24 wounded in separate bomb attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- One of deadliest attacks occurred when two booby-trapped cars went off in the east of Mosul city killing a total of nine people and wounding 16 others. Two soldiers and three policemen were among the wounded people; some of the wounded were in critical conditions.
- In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and two others injured when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in Abu Ghraib area.
- In Iraq's northern-central province of Salahudin, a roadside bomb detonated near a police patrol in the southwest of the provincial capital city Tikrit killing a policeman and wounding another.
- Also in the day, two civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb went off outside a popular restaurant in Bab al-Sharji district in central Baghdad.
- In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, three Iranian Shiite pilgrims were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near their bus on a main road in Imam Wies area in northeast of the provincial capital city Baquba.
- Iraqi security forces carried out search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 17 suspects, including 14 wanted individuals.

- The death toll from twin bombings in Baghdad has risen to at least 32 after the Thursday blasts. The revised number of Friday October 28, 2011, also said at least 71 people were wounded in the bombings in a mostly Shiite neighbourhood. The explosions took place a few minutes apart. The second blast occurred as rescue workers arrived at the scene to treat victims of the first explosion. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

- Up to 10 people were killed and 25 wounded Thursday November 1, 2011, in suicide bomb attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala. The first attack took place when a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest among a group of the Awakening Council members in front of an Iraqi army base in the Um al-Edham area near the provincial capital city of Baquba. Minutes later, a booby-trapped car went off at a garage outside the base when Iraqi security forces arrived at the scene of the first blast. The victims were gathering at the entrance of the base to collect their salaries when the suicide bomber attacked them, the source said. The two blasts set ablaze six civilian cars and three police vehicles at the scene.

- Three serial bomb blasts have rocked Basra, killing eight people and injuring dozens others. The bombs also damaged buildings in the area of the blasts. The blasts happened on Wednesday November 2, 2011, when people were enjoying traditional water pipes and playing dominoes and backgammon outside cafes on a street in central Basra.

- An American service member has been killed while conducting military operations in northern Iraq. The death occurred Thursday November 3, 2011. The death raises to at least 4,484 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

- Four bombs exploded near the home of a local leader of a government-supported Sunni militia north of Iraq's capital on Saturday November 5, 2011, killing four people and wounding eight others. The four bombs exploded near a house in Taji, a mixed area of Shiites and Sunnis that was once a battlefield for al Qaeda and the Mehdi Army Shiite militia.

- At least 10 people were killed and 26 wounded when three bomb blasts rocked a busy market in Iraq's capital on Sunday November 6, 2011, where people were shopping for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. The blasts occurred in Shurja, an important commercial district in central Baghdad where shop owners and vendors sell clothes, electronics, textiles, food and other goods. Iraqi forces are preparing to take full responsibility for security by year-end when all U.S. troops pull out of the country, nearly nine years after the U.S.-led invasion.

- Two Iranian pilgrims visiting Shiite shrines in Iraq were killed when a bomb went off next to a minibus they were travelling in. Nine other Iranians and eight Iraqis were wounded in the explosion Wednesday November16, 2011. The Iranians were travelling from the northern city of Samarra, which is home to a holy Shiite shrine, to another Shiite shrine in the Kazimiyah neighbourhood in Baghdad.

- Two UK soldiers have been killed on Thursday November 17, 2011, when a bomb hit their vehicle in Afghanistan. The pair, from the 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards, were providing security in Nahr-e Saraj, Helmand province at the time of the explosion. The deaths bring the total number of British military personnel killed in operations in Afghanistan since 2001 to 388.

- Bombs targeting security personnel in and around the Iraqi capital killed nine people Friday November 18, 2011. In the first attack, several bombs exploded at dawn outside a policeman's house in Saqlawiyah. The blasts killed five members of his family, including his elderly mother and two children. Two other members of the policeman's family were wounded. The policeman was not home at the time of the attack. Hours later, bombs planted near three mosques exploded minutes apart in and outside the Sunni-dominated Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing four people, including three policemen. Eighteen others were wounded. Those bombs were targeting members of the security forces guarding worshippers heading to perform Friday prayers.

- Four civilians were killed Sunday November 20, 2011, when unknown gunmen attacked a residential area in the city of al-Hilah. Three women and one man died in the attacks. No one has claimed responsibility. On Saturday, five policemen were killed when gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the city of Ramadi.

- A series of deadly bombings claimed more than a dozen lives in Iraq Saturday November 26, 2011. Seven people were killed and 28 others wounded when three roadside bombs exploded mid-morning in the busy Bab al-Sharji commercial district of central Baghdad. Another six men died and 10 others were injured when a roadside bomb hit a minibus carrying young labourers and construction workers in al-Annaz area in eastern Falluja. The blast occurred in a predominately Sunni area.

- A taxi with bombs blew up at the front gates of a prison north of Baghdad on Monday November 28, 2011, killing at least 13 people, many of them security guards or civilians waiting to visit jailed family members. It was the third attack in less than a week and the latest in a deadly streak that has killed about 50 Iraqis. Later in the day, inside the fortified heart of Iraq's governing complex, another explosion apparently aimed at assassinating the speaker of Parliament wounded a lawmaker and several security guards.

- An explosion Monday November 28, 2011, in Baghdad's Green Zone that Iraqi officials at first attributed to a rocket that had landed in a parking lot was in fact a suicide car bomb that detonated at the entrance to the parliament building and killed five people, we were told on Tuesday. The admission that a suicide car bomber had penetrated the fortified Green Zone, the first suicide attack there since April 2007, sent a wave of concern across the capital about the abilities, and loyalties, of Iraq's security agencies. The attack targeted the speaker of parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi. The speaker was uninjured.

- Two separate attacks killed 17 people on Thursday December 1, 2011. The marketplace car bombing and the assault on the home of an anti-al Qaeda militia leader came on the third day of a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, in advance of the withdrawal of American troops at the end of the year. A parked car bomb exploded in the town of Khalis as morning shoppers were starting to arrive, killing 10 persons and wounding 22 others. Also in Diyala, gunmen stormed the home of an anti-al Qaeda Sunni fighter at dawn and killed seven people. The victims of the attack in the town of Buhriz included the local leader of the pro-government Sahwa or Awakening Councils movement and six members of his family, four of whom were women.

- The U.S. military passed a milestone in its pending withdrawal from Iraq on Friday December 2, 2011, vacating its vast main base near Baghdad airport that once housed the American war operations hub and hosted a captive Saddam Hussein before his execution. The handover of Victory Base to Iraq's government was a big step in the U.S. pullout from Iraq as Washington consolidates its presence in Baghdad at its sprawling embassy on the Tigris River in the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone. Fewer than 500 U.S. troops remain in the capital. About 12,000 troops are still in Iraq, down from a peak of about 170,000 at the height of the war. All of the remaining forces are due to leave by the end of this year, except for a small contingent of under 200 attached to the U.S. embassy.

- Iraq, Friday December 2, 2011:
- Bomb and gun attacks in Iraq killed nine people, including four anti-Qaeda militiamen, and wounded 30 others.
- Four people were killed and seven wounded in two attacks by roadside bombs in the Taji area," just north of Baghdad. The first attack targeted the home of Nadhem Karim Mohammed, a leader of anti-Qaeda Sahwa militia forces in Taji, killing him and his mother. When police arrived at the scene, another bomb went off, killing two police and wounding seven others.
- Three roadside bombs exploded in Kirkuk, killing a woman and wounding 15 other people.
- A roadside bomb killed a policeman and wounded six people, including three police.
- Unknown gunmen attacked a Sahwa checkpoint in the Al-Sharqat area killing three Sahwa members and wounding two others.
- Police had freed Ibrahim Zaki Khalaf al-Ajili, the teenage son of a prominent contractor in Tikrit, who was kidnapped on Thursday.

- A series of bombs tore through crowds of Shiite pilgrims celebrating a major ritual across Iraq on Monday December 5, 2011, killing at least 32 people, mostly women and children, and wounding scores more. The attacks, at the height of Ashura, which commemorates the death of Prophet Mohammad's grandson Imam Hussein and defines Shiite Islam, underscored Iraq's fragile security as the last U.S. troops withdraw from the country by the end of the year. In the first attack, a car bomb blasted the end of one procession in the city of Hilla, killing 16 mainly women and children, wounding 45 others and leaving bloody pools, shoes and torn clothes scattered across the street. A second attack involving two roadside bombs killed at least six more people at another procession in Hilla and wounded 18 more.

- Iraq Tuesday December 6, 2011:
- Five people were killed and 15 others injured in separate bomb attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol at the area of Imam Wies killing a policeman and wounding two others.
- In a separate incident, an Iraqi army officer was killed and a soldier wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near their patrol in the city of Saadiyah.
- Also in Diyala, Iraqi security forces carried out search operations across the province during the past 24 hours and arrested 37 suspects and seized two caches of weapons and explosives.
- In Iraq's western province of Anbar, gunmen broke into the house of a police officer in central the city of Ramadi killing a family member and wounding three others. The officer himself escaped the attack unharmed as he was not at the house when the attack occurred. The attackers planted three bombs at the house and blew them up before they fled the scene.
- In a separate incident, a civilian was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated in central the city of Fallujah.
- Earlier in the day, the police reported the killing of a Shiite pilgrim and the wounding of nine others in two bomb attacks on processions of mourners marking a major Shiite ritual in Iraq's northern city of Kik.

- Iraq Saturday December 10, 2011:
- A spate of gun and bomb attacks across northern and central Iraq killed seven people and left four others wounded.
- In the disputed northern city of Kirkuk, a Shiite Turkman chemicals specialist for the state-owned North Oil Company was killed by a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car. Hussein Mohsen Maqsud, a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa Party, had just left his home when the explosion occurred.
- Also in Kirkuk, a civilian was killed in a gun attack in the north of the city.
- In the Iraqi capital, an anti-Qaeda militiaman was killed and a policeman was wounded by a gun attack on a checkpoint in Saidiyah, south Baghdad. The militiaman was a member of the Sahwa, or Awakening Council, which is comprised of Sunni Arab tribesmen who sided with the US military against Al-Qaeda from late 2006, helping turn the tide of Iraq's bloody insurgency.
- In Babil province, south of Baghdad, a civilian was killed by gunmen in a village northeast of provincial capital Hilla
- . In a separate incident in Babil, three people were wounded by two katyusha rockets that had been intended for a nearby US military base.
- Two men were also killed in Diyala province, north of the capital, in separate attacks. Taha Yasin was killed by gunmen in Abu Garma village, east of Diyala capital Baquba, while Internet cafe owner Hussein Tamimi was killed by shooters using silenced weapons in Baladruz, southeast of Baquba.
- In Mosul, police said a taxi driver was killed by gunmen in the west of the main northern city.

- Iraq Tuesday December 13, 2011:
- Eight people died in Iraq as shootings and explosions targeted judges, security forces and liquor stores over the last 24 hours.
- Gunmen in Falluja attacked a minibus carrying Justice Ministry officials and wounded six people, including three judges. When police arrived minutes later, two roadside bombs exploded and four people died. Three of them were police officers. The judges were headed to Ramadi, where they work. One of them is the chief judge of the criminal court there.
- In the northern city of Mosul, Police Lt. Col. Ayad Mohammed was shot dead by gunmen while he was about to leave his house for work.
- In Baghdad, a member of a local Awakening Council was shot dead by gunmen outside his house in the Abu Ghraib district in the western outskirts of the capital. His wife was critically wounded.
- Gunmen in Baghdad assassinated two Iraqi Interior Ministry officials in two separate incidents Monday night.
- Gunmen also opened fire on three liquor stores and wounded five people Monday night.

- The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday December 18, 2011, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and left a country grappling with political uncertainty. The war launched in March 2003 with missiles striking Baghdad to oust President Saddam Hussein closes with a fragile democracy still facing insurgents, sectarian tensions and the challenge of defining its place in an Arab region in turmoil. As U.S. soldiers pulled out, Iraq's delicate power-sharing deal for , Sunni and Kurdish factions was already under pressure. The Shiite-led government asked parliament to fire the Sunni deputy prime minister, and security sources said the Sunni vice president faced an arrest warrant. The final column of around 100 mostly U.S. military MRAP armoured vehicles carrying 500 U.S. troops trundled across the southern Iraq desert from their last base through the night and daybreak along an empty highway to the Kuwaiti border.

- A series of bomb blasts hit the Iraqi capital Thursday December 22, 2011, leaving at least 63 dead and more than 180 wounded. The attacks came as Iraq is gripped in a political crisis between Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Sunni political rivals in the government. The multiple explosions targeted mostly Shiite areas. The coordinated attacks occurred as people were heading off to work. Four explosions were of car bombs, while 10 were the result of roadside bombs. Baghdad's security chief said police found and disabled six other car bombs before they exploded. There was also a failed assassination attempts against a top central bank official and a police general, and a rocket attack in a Shiite neighbourhood.

- At least six people killed and 34 others wounded in suicide bomb attack in Baghdad following series of blasts on Thursday December 22, 2011. At least six people have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack on Iraq's interior ministry. The blast occurred when the bomber drove his vehicle into a security cordon outside the interior ministry in central Baghdad, detonating an explosion that left dead and wounded on the ground and set fire to nearby vehicles.

- On Saturday December 31, 2011, gunmen carrying silenced weapons attacked a checkpoint manned by government-backed Sunni militiamen and killed all five of them in the province of Diyala. The attack occurred in the town of Khan Bani Saad. An attack of this size, in which the five killed makes up the total number of staff at the checkpoint, indicates that al Qaeda sleeper cell groups are now re-activating their movements."

- A convoy carrying a leading Sunni government official was hit by a roadside bomb Sunday January 1, 2012, injuring his bodyguards. Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi survived the blast, which occurred in the Salahuddin province north of Baghdad.

- A string of explosions targeting Shiite Muslims that killed at least 71 people -and wounded more than 100- bore the hallmark of Sunni Arab insurgents who have a history of trying to capitalize on tensions among Iraqi politicians to reignite the communal violence that nearly tore the country apart. The bombings Thursday January 5, 2012, in the south of Iraq and in mainly Shiite neighbourhoods of the capital, Baghdad, were the second major wave of attacks since the last U.S. troops departed from Iraq less than three weeks ago.

- Three schoolboys were among at least 10 people killed on Tuesday January 10, 2012, extending a wave of bloody attacks that have rocked the country since American troops pulled out. Several of the Tuesday attacks struck predominantly Sunni areas north of Baghdad, though an evening blast in the capital appeared to target Shiite pilgrims commemorating a holy period known as Arbaeen.

- Iraq, Wednesday January 11, 2012:
- Gun attacks in Baghdad and predominantly Sunni west Iraq left five policemen and a town mayor dead. Insurgents attacked a police station near the Syrian border and killed three policemen, including a captain. Police killed one of the gunmen who carried out the attack in the town of Al-Qaim, in mostly Sunni Anbar province west of Baghdad, and wounded another. A third escaped.
- Also in Anbar province, gunmen murdered the mayor of Heet as he was leaving the mosque. Saeed Hamdan Ghazal, who had just completed evening prayers, was shot dead by attackers on a motorcycle who then fled the scene.
- In Baghdad, gunmen armed with silenced pistols killed two policemen in the Baghdad Jadidah (new Baghdad) neighbourhood in the capital's east.

- Gunmen wearing military uniforms bombed an equipment storage yard belonging to Angola's national oil company near an oilfield in northern Iraq. No one was hurt in the attack, which occurred on Wednesday January 11, 2012, near the Najmah field in Nineveh province. The gunmen ordered the guards to leave the equipment yard and planted bombs that damaged nine machines.

- At least 20 people were wounded, some critically, in a double bombing Friday January 13, 2012, in Kirkuk. The two car bombs targeted the homes of police officers in different parts of the city and detonated within half an hour of each other. One targeted an officer's home in the centre of the city, close to the governorate building. The other was in the northern part of Kirkuk. Most of the wounded were civilian bystanders. The explosions also caused severe damage to nearby buildings.

- A bomb killed at least 53 Shiite pilgrims near Basrah on Saturday January 14, 2012. The attack happened on the last of the 40 days of Arbaeen, when hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims from Iraq and abroad visit the Iraqi city of Karbala, as well as other holy sites. The blast occurred near the town of Zubair as pilgrims marched toward the Shiite Imam Ali shrine on the outskirts of the town. The shrine is an enclave within an enclave -- a Shiite site on the edge of a mostly Sunni town in an otherwise mostly Shiite province.

- At least seven people were killed when insurgents stormed a police building in Ramadi on Sunday January 15, 2012. The two-hour siege was preceded by multiple car bomb attacks in the city. At least a dozen were injured during the assault on the building, which houses an anti-terrorism unit and a prison. Five gunmen wearing military uniforms and explosive-rigged vests stormed a compound. The compound houses Ramadi police headquarters and several federal security agencies, including an anti-terrorism police task force and a detention facility where terrorism suspects are held and interrogated during the investigation process. At least one of the attackers detonated his explosives at the entrance to the compound, as four others shot their way in. Security forces have surrounded the building and are exchanging fire with the gunmen.

- Gunmen killed two Iraqi soldiers and two police officers in a series of shootings on Saturday January 21, 2012. The two soldiers were killed when assailants fired on an Iraqi military patrol in the former al-Qaida stronghold city of Fallujah.

- Police killed a senior leader of Al-Qaeda's front group in Iraq in clashes while attempting to arrest him on Saturday January 21, 2012. Majid Hassan Ali, head of the Islamic State of Iraq's operations in the main northern city of Mosul, was killed and 19 Al-Qaeda fighters, two of them Palestinian, arrested in the gunfight south of the city. Ali, who is also known as Abu Ayman, was hiding in the village of Rufaila, just outside Mosul when federal police forces conducted an assault on the area.

- Authorities detained a senior Sunni official on terrorism charges on Friday January 20, 2012. Security forces took Ghdban al-Khazraji, the deputy governor of Diyala Province, into custody. Mr. Khazraji had been detained on terrorism charges.

- Gunmen attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint in the town of al-Asoud, north of Baquba, Sunday January 22, 2012, leaving five people dead. Two police officers and a member of the pro-government Sons of Iraq militia were killed, as were two of the attackers. At least one person was killed in another incident -a car bombing in the al-Dawasa commercial neighbourhood of central Mosul. Three people were wounded in the bombing, including two police officers.

- At least 13 people have been killed and 62 wounded in four separate car bomb attacks in Shia districts of Baghdad on Tuesday January 24, 2012. Eight died when a bomb blew up close to day labourers waiting for jobs in Sadr City. Minutes later, a blast about 3km away killed another two. Later, car bombs exploded in Shula and Hurriya, killing three.

- At least 19 people were killed in Iraq on Tuesday January 24, 2012, as insurgents targeted day labourers, government workers and an antiterrorism police captain amid a continuing surge of violence, according to security officials. At least 80 people were injured. Gunmen stormed the home of Captain Hassan Abdulla al-Timimi in the Abu Ghraib area, west of Baghdad, killing him, his wife and their three children. After leaving the house, the insurgents set off two explosions, injuring four of Timimi's neighbours
A leader of a Sunni militia that turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and sided with the U.S troops to fight the militants has been killed in Baghdad. Mullah Nadhum al-Jubouri died in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad on Tuesday January 24, 2012. Before joining the pro-government group known as Awakening Councils, al-Jubouri fought Americans alongside al-Qaeda militants. In 2009, al-Jubouri was detained in a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid on suspicion of carrying out attacks three years earlier, including downing a U.S. helicopter. He was later released.

- Bomb attacks in Iraq on Thursday January 26, 2012, killed 13 people, including 10 who died in a bomb attack on the home of two brothers who were policemen. In the deadliest attack, a bombing in Mussayib struck the home of policemen Ahmed and Jihad Zuwaiyin as they and their families slept. The explosion killed 10 members of the family -the two officers, their wives, and six children aged 10 or younger.

- A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad on Friday January 27, 2012, killing at least 32 people -half of them policemen who were guarding the march. The bomb exploded. in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Zafaraniyah, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 65 people were wounded in the attack, including 16 police.

- A suicide car bomber has struck a Shiite funeral procession, killing 33 people. The powerful Friday January 27, 2012, blast set nearby stores and cars ablaze alongside scattered flesh and mutilated bodies. It shattered windows and damaged walls in the local hospital, wounding a nurse and four patients. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Zafaraniyah in southwestern Baghdad. But the bombing resembled previous attacks by al-Qaida in Iraq. Minutes after the explosion, gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint in Zafaraniyah, killing two police officers.

- Militants have bombed an Asiacell equipment building near Mosul, damaging the mobile phone operator's network and knocking out service in some northern. The attackers, some of whom wore military uniforms, held guns to the heads of security guards late on Thursday February 2, 2012, and planted four large explosives in the building, which houses routing and switching equipment. One of them exploded and caused severe damage to the network. The other three were dismantled. No one was hurt in the blast.

- Iraq Tuesday February 14, 2012:
- Gunmen assassinated an Iraqi army general in one of several incidents that left at least four people dead and 28 wounded. General Aziz Hamzah died after being attacked while driving in western Baghdad.
- Two roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad, one in the al-Mashtal neighbourhood of southeastern Baghdad and the other in the al-Bayaa neighbourhood in the southwestern part of the city. Six people were injured in the al-Mashtal explosion. Two suffered injuries in the al-Bayaa bombing.
- Gunmen fired on a Health Ministry official in the al-Dora district of southern Baghdad. The official was wounded.
- In Mosul a car bomb exploded outside a popular restaurant in the eastern part of the city, killing three people and wounding 19. Most of the dead and wounded were civilians. Three Iraqi soldiers were among the wounded.

- Wednesday February 15, 2012, gunmen wearing military uniforms killed the wife and two children of an Iraqi policeman in an attack on his home south of Baghdad. The gunmen stormed the house in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar. Among the dead was a one-year-old girl. The policeman was seriously wounded and taken to a nearby hospital.

- A suicide bomber detonated his car Sunday February 19, 2012, as a group of police recruits left their academy in Baghdad, killing 20. The suicide bomber was waiting on the street outside the fortified academy near the Interior Ministry. As the crowd of recruits exited the compound's security barriers around and walked into the road, the bomber drove toward them and blew up his car. Five policemen were among the dead; the rest were recruits. An additional 28 recruits and policemen were wounded. Also deadly attacks were reported in and around the city of Baquba. Four police informants were killed by suspected al-Qaeda gunmen in the centre of Baquba. Gunmen also attacked a checkpoint in Abu Khamis, north of Baquba, killing one policeman and two members of the Sahwa (Awakening) militia.

A rapid series of attacks spread over a wide swath of Iraq killed at least 55 people on Thursday February 23, 2012, targeting mostly security forces in what Iraqi officials called "frantic attempts" by insurgents to show civilians that their country was doomed to violence for years to come. The coordinated bombings and shootings unfolded over hours in the capital Baghdad -where most of the deaths occurred- and 11 other cities. They struck government offices, restaurants and one in the town of Musayyib hit close to a primary school. At least 225 people were wounded.

Bombs and deadly shootings relentlessly pounded Iraqis on Thursday February 23, 2012, killing at least 55 people and wounding more than 225. Cars burned, school desks were bloodied, bandaged victims lay in hospitals and pools of blood were left with the wounded on floors of bombed businesses after the daylong series of attacks in 12 cities across Iraq.

Iraq Wednesday February 29, 2012:
- Bombings killed eight people. The latest bloodshed comes a month before Baghdad hosts an Arab summit.
- In Baghdad, a car bomb in the eastern Ameen neighbourhood killed three people and wounded at least nine.
- Another car bomb in the town of Tuz Khurmatu struck as an army-police patrol was passing. Four security force members -an army lieutenant colonel, another soldier and two policeman- were killed, and two soldiers, a policeman and a civilian were wounded.
- In Mosul, a roadside bomb against a police patrol killed one policeman and wounded three others.
- Three people were wounded by a car bomb against a police patrol in the town of Al-Baaj west of Mosul.
- Meanwhile, shepherd Abdel Karim Abdel Hamid was killed and two of his brothers wounded by a landmine north of Kirkuk.
- In Diyala province north of the capital, gunmen attacked a checkpoint east of the provincial capital Baquba late on Tuesday, killing a member of the Sahwa anti-Qaeda militia and wounding two others.

- An American teacher at a Christian school run by U.S. evangelicals in Sulaimaniya in the semiautonomous Kurdish region was shot dead in class Thursday March 1, 2012, by one of his students following a heated argument between a male American teacher and a male Kurdish Muslim student in the 11th grade. The student then took his own life with the same weapon used to kill the teacher.

- Gunmen disguised as police raided checkpoints and homes in Anbar province, western Iraq, on Monday March 5, 2012, killing at least 27 members of the security forces. Gunmen dressed in uniforms of the security forces had driven from checkpoint to checkpoint slaughtering police in Haditha. The 27 dead included a lieutenant colonel and a captain who were dragged out of their homes in Haditha and killed. A curfew was imposed on the town and its exits were sealed off. One gunman was killed in the attacks. Three policemen survived the attacks with wounds and were being treated at Haditha hospital.

- Iraqi authorities arrested at least 13 alleged Al-Qaeda fighters on Tuesday March 6, 2012, in connection with a shooting spree that left 27 policemen dead, including two officers killed execution-style. The men, apparently led by an ex-officer in the late Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guards, were arrested in Salaheddin and Anbar provinces. Another man blew himself up when cornered by security forces, and three were killed in clashes.

- Two bombs exploded in swift succession killing 14 people Wednesday March 7, 2012, near a crowded restaurant in Tal Afar , a mid-sized city in Iraq's north. A car parked outside a popular downtown restaurant exploded in the early afternoon. As people rushed to the scene to help, a suicide bomber in the crowd detonated his explosives belt.

- On Wednesday March 7, 2012, Iraqi Construction and Housing Minister Mohammad Saheb al-Darraji escaped unharmed when a car bomb exploded near his convoy in Baghdad, injuring six of his bodyguards. Two vehicles from the minister's convoy were burned by the explosion in the western part of the Iraqi capital.

- On Monday March 12, 2012, Iraq is deploying an unprecedented number of security forces to protect the capital for an upcoming meeting of the Arab world's top leaders even as insurgents proved their continued threat by killing 14 people. In a pre-dawn raid in the city of Tarmiyah gunmen in at least two cars attacked the local mayor's office. Three policemen were killed. The mayor was not in his office at the time. A half hour later and a few miles away, gunmen targeted a police patrol in a drive-by shooting. Two policemen were killed. A few hours later, two carloads of robbers armed with grenades and guns killed nine people and wounded 14 in a coordinated strike on an eastern Baghdad gold market. The militants simultaneously attacked jewellery stores and a nearby checkpoint. The gunmen stole gold and cash after the late-morning heist, which the insurgents pulled off despite a gunfight with nearby security forces. One of the gunmen was arrested but the rest escaped.

- More than 30 bombs struck cities and towns across Iraq on Tuesday March 20, 2012, killing at least 52 people and wounding about 250, despite a massive security clampdown ahead of next week's Arab League summit in Baghdad. The deadliest incident occurred in the southern Shiite Muslim holy city of Kerbala, where twin explosions killed 13 people and wounded 48 during the morning rush hour. The second explosion caused the biggest destruction. Blasts also struck in the capital, in Baiji, Baquba, Daquq, Dibis, Dhuluiya, Kirkuk, Mosul, Samarra, Tuz Khurmato, Khalis and Dujail to the north, in Falluja and Ramadi to the west, and Hilla, Latifiya, Mahmudiya and Mussayab to the south. Police defused bombs in Baquba, Falluja and Mosul. Most of the blasts targeted police checkpoints and patrols.

- Al Qaeda's front group in Iraq claimed responsibility Wednesday March 21, 2012, for a wave of attacks that killed 46 people across the country this week and said the violence exposes how weak government security is ahead of the upcoming Arab League summit in Baghdad. In all, insurgents struck eight cities in just under six hours, killing 46 people and wounding 200.

- Nineteen prisoners, most facing terrorism charges, escaped from a temporary prison in Kirkuk through a ventilation window on Friday March 23, 2012. Police patrols had been deployed around the city and a search was on for the escapees.

- Iraq detained 22 policemen on Saturday March 24, 2012, after 19 inmates, including two men on death row, escaped from a prison in Kirkuk a day earlier. Authorities have opened an investigation into the prison break, and security forces rearrested one of the 19 men in the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil. The escaped prisoners included 11 charged with terror-related offences, and some of them had been held in custody since 2006. They apparently drugged guards and fellow inmates using narcotic-laced dates that put them to sleep before breaking out of the jail. The prisoners were alleged Al-Qaeda insurgents and fighters belonging to Ansar al-Sunna, a Salafist group that has claimed several attacks against US and Iraqi security forces.

- Iraq's foreign minister said Monday March 26, 2012, that the body of an Iraqi-American woman who was found brutally beaten next to a note saying "go back to your country, you terrorist" will be flown to Baghdad as lawmakers in her native country demanded a thorough investigation. Shaima Alawadi, 32, was taken off life support on Saturday, three days after her 17-year-old daughter found her unconscious in the dining room of the family's El Cajon home in suburban San Diego. Investigators said they're exploring all aspects of her slaying, including the possibility that the attack was a hate crime.

- A car bomb killed a police officer and wounded two others in western Baghdad on Tuesday March 27, 2012 despite tight security ahead of this week's Arab League summit in the Iraqi capital. The bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint in the western neighbourhood of Ghazaliya. In Falluja hundreds of people joined tribal and religious leaders to welcome the Arab leaders and call on them to pressure Iraq's government for reforms. Residents of the Sunni Muslim city said they want Iraq's Shiite-dominated government to establish a sectarian balance in government institutions, particularly the army and police, and to stop the "politicization" of the judiciary system.

- Three rockets exploded around Baghdad on Thursday March 29, 2012, despite a massive security operation as Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki hosted the country's first Arab League summit in two decades. One rocket exploded on the edge of the fortified Green Zone -close to the Iranian Embassy- where the Arab leaders were meeting. There was no casualties. Two other rockets struck central and western Baghdad, but no casualties were reported.

- On Sunday April 8, 2012, Iraqi security forces have arrested members of an al-Qaida-linked insurgent cell responsible for deadly attacks and robberies in Baghdad. The dismantled 25-person cell belongs to Ansar al-Islam, a radical Sunni Arab group linked to al-Qaida. Ansar al-Islam had previously threatened to attack the Arab League summit in Baghdad and any political or business officials associated with it. The summit, held last month, was almost violence-free.

- Gunmen travelling in cars without license plates opened fire on a police patrol in Iraq on Thursday April 12, 2012, killing two officers and three others. The attack south of Kirkuk also wounded five people, including three policemen. The shooting followed a bombing late Wednesday that killed the Shiite mayor of the town of Mafraq near Baqouba. Police said the blast also killed the man's wife, two sons and daughter. Leaflets were distributed earlier this week in Baqouba telling Shiites to leave the city or face death.

- Iraq, Friday April 13, 2012:
- Armed men killed seven Shiite pilgrims in ambushes on Friday.
- On Friday, two cars blocked a bus carrying pilgrims from Baghdad to a key Shiite shrine in the northern, mainly Sunni, city of Samarra. Some seven gunmen opened fire, killing five and wounding six of them in the attack near Tarmiya.
- A second incident occurred in the southern outskirts of Baghdad when gunmen killed two Shiite pilgrims en route to the holy Shiite city of Kerbala. Six others were wounded.
- On Wednesday, militants targeting Shiite families in Baquba killed five people in bombings that occurred after leaflets were distributed telling Shiites to leave the neighbourhood or be killed.

- A roadside bomb targeting a security patrol has killed two policeman in the western province of Anbar. The blast Saturday April 14, 2012, also wounded a policeman and destroyed a police vehicle in the Sunni-dominated town of Khaldiyah. A medic at nearby al-Ramadi general hospital confirmed the casualties.

- At least one person was killed and 14 others wounded on Saturday April 14, 2012, when a sticky bomb exploded near a vegetable market in Baiji, Iraq's mainly Sunni Salahuddin province. The bomb had been attached to a vegetable cart belonging to a police officer who worked at the market when he was off duty. Earlier on Saturday, two police officers were killed when a roadside bomb targeting their patrol blew up on the outskirts of Ramadi. In Mosul in the north, two gunmen were killed after exchanging fire with Iraqi army forces, while one civilian was seriously wounded in a separate incident in Mosul when armed men opened fire in front of his house. On Friday, seven Shiite pilgrims were killed by armed men while bombings targeting Shiite families killed five people on Wednesday.

- Attacks across the country including a car bomb in Kirkuk have left five people dead. An explosion near the city's university killed one and wounded 15, one of three attacks Sunday April 15, 2012. A roadside bomb hit the car of a leader in the Sahwa anti-al-Qaeda Sunni militias, killing his son, in the town of Hawija. Meanwhile, gunmen blew up a Shiite family's house in the Sunni-dominated Taji area, killing three and wounding two others.

- Gunmen have shot dead four Shiite farmers working in an orchard just north of Baghdad. Two carloads of attackers opened fire Monday April 16, 2012, on the farmers pollinating date trees in the predominantly Sunni village of Rashidiyah. Four other farmers were wounded in the attack

- More than 20 bombs hit cities and towns across Iraq on Thursday April 19, 2012, killing at least 36 and wounding almost 150 raising fears of sectarian strife in a country whose authorities are keen to show they can now maintain security.
- In Baghdad, three car bombs, two roadside bombs and one suicide car bomb hit mainly Shiite areas, killing 15 people and wounding 61.
- Two car bombs and three roadside bombs aimed at police and army patrols in Kirkuk killed eight people and wounded 26.

- Two blasts have killed four people in northwestern Baghdad on Saturday April 21, 2012, two days after a series of attacks claimed the lives of 30 in the capital and across the country. The first bomb exploded inside a minibus in the Shiite neighbourhood of Ishkouk. Seconds later, a roadside bomb exploded a few meters away, hitting another civilian car. Four people including a woman were killed and 13 others were wounded in the two blasts.

- The governor of eastern Iraq's Diyala province Saturday April 21, 2012, survived a roadside bomb explosion that targeted his convoy. Governor Hisham al-Hiyali was travelling near the provincial capital city of Baquba. Three of Hiyali's bodyguards were wounded in the blast, which also damaged one of his vehicles. In other bomb attacks, at least three people died and 17 others were injured. Two roadside bombs went off near two mini-buses in the Shia neighbourhood of Chikook in Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 12 others. In the western Anbar province, two policemen were injured when a sticky bomb attached to their car detonated near provincial capital Ramadi.

- Twin explosions ripped through a crowded cafe northeast of Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding 21. The attack occurred late Thursday April 26, 2012, in the village of Garma, near the city of Baqouba in Diyala province. A suicide car bomber set off the first explosion outside the packed cafe. A few minutes later, another bomb went off inside the cafe.

- Monday April 30, 2012, a mother and three children were found stabbed to death in their house in eastern Baghdad in what they say was an apparent robbery. The four were found early morning in their house in the mainly Shiite area of Kamaliyah. The children ranged in age from four to 10 years old. The criminals escaped with some money and jewellery.

- A bodyguard working for one of the main parties in Iraq's Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, which has clashed politically with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, was killed on Tuesday May 1, 2012. Latif Ramadan Jassim was on duty near the headquarters of the Wifaq (Accord) party in Zeitun, west Baghdad, when he was stabbed to death.

- Gun and bomb attacks struck the Baghdad area where Iraq's fugitive Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi was to go on trial in absentia Thursday May 3, 2012, on charges he says are politically motivated. Al Hashemi, the country's top Sunni official, stands accused along with several of his bodyguards of running a death squad but the vice president will not attend the trial in Baghdad, having left Iraq weeks ago. Hours before the trial was due to open, shootings and bombings erupted in the Harithiyah neighbourhood where the Central Criminal Court of Iraq is situated. The shooting left an Iraqi soldier dead, while at around the same time, three roadside bombs wounded two police bomb disposal experts.

- A bomb left inside a minibus has killed two commuters and wounded nine others in Baghdad. The bomb exploded when the bus reached the northern Shiite neighbourhood of Kazimiyah. on Monday May 7, 2012.

- A suicide bomber targeting a police checkpoint in Baghdad killed at least three people while car bombs hit army and police patrols in two other cities, killing three others we were told on Sunday May 13, 2012. Police opened fire when the suicide bomber refused their orders to stop at a checkpoint in the western Baghdad district of Mansour before he detonated his load, killing three officers. In Falluja a car bomb hit a passing Iraqi army patrol, killing two soldiers and wounding six people, while in Ramadi another car bomb killed a police officer, and wounded six people.

- Iraq, Sunday May 13, 2012:
- A pair of bombings killed four people Sunday in attacks targeting Iraq's security forces.
- The first bomb exploded near a security patrol in Ramadi, killing one police officer and wounding seven people.
- Hours later, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a security checkpoint in the Mansour neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing three people -including two police officers- and wounding nine more.

- Iraq Monday May 14, 2012:
- Six people were killed in attacks in central and northern Iraq including five who died in a spate of bombings in the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah.
- In Fallujah three bomb attacks in close succession killed five people and wounded 18 others. An initial car bomb detonated in the centre of the city, killing five people and wounding eight. Two more attacks -a motorcycle bomb and a roadside bomb- in the east and west of the city respectively wounded 10 more people, including two traffic policemen. Explosives experts defused one more car bomb and two roadside bombs.
- Another attack in Kirkuk left intelligence service First Lieutenant Abbas Fatih Ahmed dead when a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car detonated shortly after he left his house.

- Three roadside bombs exploded Friday May 18, 2012, in quick succession at an outdoor pet market in Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 31 others. The bombings took place at a market where young men buy and sell pigeons in Husseiniya, a poor Shiite neighbourhood in southeastern Baghdad. A series of bomb and gun attacks have taken place in different Iraqi cities this week, including a blast in a popular restaurant in southeastern Baghdad on Thursday evening that killed three people and wounded 10 others. In April, 126 people were killed in attacks across the country and 271 people were wounded.

- An Iraqi anti-terror officer, his wife and three children have been shot dead by gunmen in north Baghdad . The family was murdered on Friday May 18, 2012, taking to 10 the overall death toll from violence in the Iraqi capital a day ago, and 15 in the past two days, a notable increase from what had been a relative calm. The killings came on the day when three near-simultaneous bomb blasts at a pet market in east Baghdad killed five people, and a day after a bomb attack at a restaurant in the capital's southeast left five others dead.

- Gunmen have killed three policemen in an attack on a security checkpoint north of Baghdad. The attack early Monday May 21, 2012, took place when gunmen in two speeding car opened fire on a security checkpoint in Taji area. Three other policemen were wounded in the attack.

- A pair of attacks killed five people in Iraq on Wednesday May 23, 2012, including three Lebanese Shiite pilgrims. A bus carrying Lebanese pilgrims struck a roadside bomb on a highway near the city of Ramadi. Three people were killed and seven people wounded in the blast. The pilgrims had travelled through Syria and were on their way to Shiite holy sites in southern Iraq. Hours earlier, gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying day labourers who were on their way to a construction site near the city of Baqouba, killing two people and wounding seven.

- Iraq, Saturday May 26, 2012:
- Attacks north of Baghdad killed four people, including three soldiers who died in a bombing. In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb against an Iraqi army patrol in the town of Badush, just outside the main northern city of Mosul, killed three soldiers.
- A bomb attack and a shooting in the town of Abu Saidah, central Diyala province, left one labourer dead and five people, including a soldier, wounded. Gunmen opened fire on a truck carrying workers, killing one and wounding four others.
- A separate roadside bomb exploded close to a passing Iraqi army patrol, leaving one soldier wounded.
- Two more roadside bombs near the home of a Kurdish family in Jalawla, also in Diyala, left two young men wounded.

- A bus full of Shiite pilgrims from Pakistan was struck by a roadside bomb Sunday May 27, 2012, leaving 24 wounded. The incident took place near Falluja. The pilgrims were travelling from Najaf to Samarra to visit the al-Askari shrine when the explosion took place in Saqlawiya.

- Iraq, Thursday May 31, 2012:
- Bombs exploded at a crowded Baghdad restaurant and a near police patrol, among attacks that killed at least 18 people and wounded 53 in Iraq's bloodiest day in more than a month. Five blasts hit the capital, and the northern city of Mosul was the scene of a fatal shooting attack.
- In northwest Baghdad, a parked car exploded outside a busy restaurant in the Shiite neighbourhood of Shula, killing 13 people and wounding 37.
- Elsewhere in Baghdad, a parked car blew up near the home of Jamal-Din Mohammed, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, killing a civilian and wounding four people, including two guards protecting Mohammed's house.
- Earlier, explosions hit two adjacent homes of Baghdad policemen in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhood of Amariyah, killing two people and wounding nine, among them three children. One of the policemen was killed and the other was wounded.
- A fifth attack targeted a police patrol in Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding three officers.
- In Mosul, a police major was killed when gunmen sprayed his car with bullets in a drive-by-shooting.

- A drive-by shooting and a roadside bomb have killed a motorist and a government official in Baghdad. The off-duty Interior Ministry official was killed Friday June 1, 2012, when gunmen sprayed his car with bullets as he was driving. They say that an hour later, a roadside bomb hit a pickup truck on another main street, killing the driver and wounding two passengers.

- A suicide bomber detonated an explosive-rigged car outside Iraq's main religious affairs office for Shiite Muslims on Monday June 4, 2012, shearing off the facade of the three-story building and killing at least 23 people in the deadliest single attack in the country in three months. More than 70 people were wounded in the explosion that shattered nearby windows and damaged cars in Baghdad's central Bab al-Muadham area. Fire-fighters searched the debris for survivors. In apparent retaliation, a mortar shell hit close to Iraq's main office for Sunni Muslim religious affairs in northeastern Baghdad later Monday, but caused no damage or injuries.

- Iraq, Saturday June 9, 2012:
- In western Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on the car of a colonel in the civil defence forces, killing him and his wife and wounding their three children.
- In another ambush of a car in the capital, assailants killed an aide to Qusai al-Suhail, the deputy speaker of parliament.
- Elsewhere, an Iraqi soldier was killed and four were wounded by a roadside bomb in Bala Ruz.

- Two mortar bombs struck a square filled with Shiite Muslim pilgrims in Baghdad on Sunday June 10, 2012, killing at least six people and wounding 38. The attack occurred in Quraish Square in Baghdad's northwestern Kadhimiya district, where pilgrims were gathering ahead of a religious festival to mark the anniversary of the death of mediaeval Shiite imam Moussa al-Kadhim.

- Iraq, Tuesday June 12, 2012:
- Gun and bomb attacks killed three policemen and a soldier and wounded six other people in Iraq on Monday. Gunmen opened fire with light weapons on a checkpoint in the Hamam al-Alil area north of Mosul, then fled the scene. Gunmen also shot dead a soldier in Baquba.
- A roadside bomb against a police patrol wounded three police in Khales, 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad, a police major and a medical source said.
- Gunmen wounded a police first lieutenant in the Karrada area of central Baghdad.

- Iraq Wednesday June 13, 2012:
- Bombers struck at Shiite pilgrims celebrating a religious festival in Baghdad and across Iraq killing more than 70 people and wounding more than 200 in one of the bloodiest days since the last U.S. troops left the country in December.
- At least 30 people were killed when four blasts hit pilgrims across Baghdad as they marched through the city to mark the anniversary of the death of Shiite imam Moussa al-Kadhim, a great-grandson of Prophet Mohammad.
- One car bomb exploded outside a Baghdad Shiite mosque while another blast tore into groups of pilgrims as they rested at refreshment tents along the route to a shrine in Kadhimiya district.
- In a separate attack in the mainly Shiite southern city of Hilla, two simultaneous car bombs, including one detonated by a suicide bomber, exploded outside restaurants used by security forces, killing 22 people.
- One person was killed when two bombs also hit offices of an ethnic Kurdish party in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- In total, more than 21 bombs exploded in Baghdad and the southern Iraqi cities of Kerbala, Balad, Haswa.

- Car bombs targeting religious processions in Iraq's capital killed at least 26 people Saturday June 16, 2012, on the last day of a Shiite pilgrimage already hit three times. The blasts were latest in a fierce wave of terror attacks on the annual pilgrimage that sees hundreds of thousands visit the shrine to an eighth-century Shiite imam in northern Baghdad. Al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq on Saturday claimed responsibility for that attack.

- A roadside bomb has killed one security contractor and wounded three others working for a Turkish security company in the country's north. The bomb exploded Sunday June 17, 2012, as a two-vehicle convoy was travelling in Kirkuk. The four victims were Iraqis working for a Turkish company providing security for a Turkish construction project.

-Iraq Sunday June 17, 2012:
- Bombings killed five people and wounded 34 others.
- A car bomb targeting an army patrol killed one soldier and wounded three others in Fallujah.
- A roadside bomb in Fallujah also killed a child and wounded three other people.
- In Al-Sharqat a car bomb that exploded near a police station among a line of cars waiting for petrol killed two people and wounded 26.
- A roadside bomb north of Kirkuk, a city in north Iraq, killed Murad Mohammed, an Iraqi employee of a Turkish security company, and wounded two others, a high-ranking security official said.

- A roadside bomb went off in Fallujah city on Monday June 18, 2012, killing a child and wounding three civilians. In another attack in the city, three soldiers were injured. A policeman was killed in Shirqat city, near Tikrit, the capital of Salahudin province, when a car bomb went off near a gas station. Over 20 others, including seven policemen, were injured. Another policeman was killed in a bomb attack in Tuz-Khurmato city.

- Militants attacked electrical transmission towers and lines in Iraq's Diyala province on Wednesday June 20, 2012. Insurgents bombed seven pylons in Udhaim in northern Diyala disrupting a line. Power supplies to the town of Khalis and parts of Iraq's capital were completely shut down.

- A car bomb blast Wednesday June 20, 2012, wounded a judge who oversees terror cases, killing two people and injuring 15 others. The explosion went off just as Judge Aziz Ibrahim was arriving at his office near a police station in downtown Kirkuk. Besides the judge, two of his bodyguards were among the wounded, and three policemen also were injured. The blast also set at least one shop on fire and knocked people to the ground. A few hours later, a second bomb exploded, apparently targeting an electricity line between Kirkuk and the Sunni-dominated town of Hawija. No injuries were reported, but power was cut in several nearby villages.

- Two bombs tore through a market full of shoppers in Baghdad on Friday June 22, 2012,, killing 14 people and wounding more than 100. The explosions, timed within minutes of each other, came in the open-air market in the mostly Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of Husseiniyah in the northeast part of Baghdad.

- Nine young soccer players and fans were killed when a bomb exploded near a pitch in southern Iraq, on Tuesday June 26, 2023. The explosion in a predominantly Shiite Muslim area of the city of Hilla came the same day a roadside bomb killed five people near a pet shop popular with young people in a Sunni Muslim area of the northern city of Baquba.

- Bombs targeting the homes of Shiite cleric and a member of a Sunni militia that fights al-Qaida killed at least 11 people, including four teenagers, Wednesday June 27, 2012, in Baghdad. The first blast. blew out the front wall of the home of a Shiite cleric who was prominent in the southeastern suburb of Wahda, damaging surrounding houses. The explosives appeared to have been planted just outside the home. A second explosion at the site minutes later killed one man and wounded three others. The attack killed eight people, including the cleric's teenage son and daughter, and wounded 19. In a separate incident in western Baghdad, a bomb exploded inside a house, killing three women and wounding two people.

- Iraq, Thursday June 28, 2012:
- Bombings and shootings around Iraq killed 22 people and wounded more than 50 on Thursday.
- The deadliest strike came in the Shiite Muslim neighbourhood of Washash in western Baghdad. A taxi exploded outside a local market. Eight people died and 26 were injured.
- Two more attacks on Shiite enclaves in northwest Baghdad wounded five more people.
- In Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province another car bomb wounded seven people in the parking lot of the provincial council.
- In the Sunni city of Taji two cars exploded outside the office of the local mayor. The mayor was not in his office at the time, but the blast killed five people and wounded 18, leaving craters in nearby homes.
- In the province of Diyala, gunmen walked into a butcher shop in the provincial capital of Baqouba and shot dead two former Sunni militiamen who fought against al-Qaida. A separate attack on a checkpoint killed two more militia members and two police.
- Gunmen in two cars also opened fire on a checkpoint in Baqouba killing two police officers and two Sahwa militiamen.
- Two more Sahwa members were shot and killed while manning a checkpoint in the central city of Samarra.

- Iraq, Thursday June 29, 2012:
- Bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least 21 people and wounded over 100.
- In the deadliest incident, at least eight people were killed and 30 wounded when a bomb in a parked taxi exploded at the entrance of a Baghdad market in the mainly Shiite Muslim district of Washash. Most of the victims were vendors setting up their produce in the early hours before shoppers arrived.
- In the central Iraqi city of Baqubua, at least six people were killed and 51 others wounded when a bomb concealed in a parked car exploded near shops and cafes in a mainly Shiite area.
- A separate car bomb attack in Taji killed four and wounded 20. The bomb in the mainly Sunni town was targeting a government building, which was severely damaged.
- Another roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one and wounded five in Abu Dsheer, a Shiite area in southern Baghdad.
- Bombers also struck Falluja in the Sunni Muslim province of Anbar. A suicide bomber killed two police officers and wounded four others after an attack targeting a government compound.
- Three more police officers had suffered injuries in a separate attack to the south of the city when a bomb in a parked car blew up.

- Four Awakening Council members were killed and four others were wounded Friday June 29, 2012, when gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Diyala province. The checkpoint was manned by members of the local Awakening Council in the town of Khan Bani Saad. In another attack, seven people were killed and 45 others wounded when three explosions hit central Balad on Friday. The first attack was a suicide bomber who detonated his explosive vest in a busy outdoor market in the town of Balad north of Baghdad. A few minutes later, two motorcycles rigged with explosives exploded near government offices, including a post office and a police station. Most of the victims were from the suicide attack in an outdoor market near a Shiite Shrine

- Bombers killed four people in two Iraqi cities, we were told on Sunday July 1, 2012. Three coordinated bomb attacks within minutes of each other Sunday morning hit the central city of Tikrit. A civilian walking by was killed and two others were wounded. The bombs went off near a middle school where students were taking exams, but authorities said none of the students was hurt. Further south, three policemen died when a suicide car bomb and three roadside bombs exploded at a security checkpoint on Saturday in Samarra.

- Iraq, Monday July 2, 2012:
- A bomb has killed a traffic policeman and wounded eight other people in western Baghdad. The roadside bomb missed a police patrol that was moving through an intersection in Mansour neighbourhood.
- Bombers killed four people in two Iraqi cities and gunmen assassinated a judge, on Sunday.
- Three coordinated bomb attacks within minutes of each other hit the central city of Tikrit. A civilian walking by was killed and two others were wounded. The bombs went off near a middle school where students were taking exams.
- Further south, three policemen died when a suicide car bomb and three roadside bombs exploded at a security checkpoint Saturday in Samarra.
- The death toll for June was at least 237, the second-bloodiest month since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in mid-December.
- In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen killed criminal court judge Abdul-Latif Mohammed in a drive-by shooting as - he was returning home from work.

Bombs killed at least 44 people at markets on Tuesday July 3, 2012, and authorities said they bore the hallmarks of sectarian attacks on Shiite Muslims by al Qaeda Sunni militants. A bomb in a small truck exploded in a market in the city of Diwaniya, killing 40 people, and other blasts killed four more near the city of Kerbala. The Diwaniya bombing was near a Shiite mosque where pilgrims gather on their way to Kerbala to celebrate the birthday of one of their most important imams, al-Mahdi, this week. 75 people had been wounded.

- A car bomb killed at least three people and wounded more than 10 in a busy morning market in the mainly Shiite Muslim Iraqi town of Zubaidiya on Wednesday July 4, 2012.

- Iraq, Thursday July 5, 2012:
- At least three people were killed and 15 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a barber's shop popular with police in Mosul.
- In a separate attack, in Samarra, a bomb in a parked car wounded two people when it destroyed the side of a government-run bank.
- In Baiji bombs attached to fuel tankers wounded three drivers.
- Late on Wednesday, gunmen bombed a Baghdad Municipality employee's house, killing his wife and two of his daughters and wounding him and two other children.

- A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged belt at a gathering of his own family in western Iraq, killing his pro-government cousin and six other relatives on Friday July 6, 2012. The blast targeted a leader in the Sahwa militias in the city of Ramadi. The bomber entered the home of his cousin, the local Sahwa leader, on Friday night as the extended family was gathered for a meal. He approached the militiaman and detonated his explosives, killing his target as well as his wife, three of their teenage children, his brother and another relative.

- A suicide bomber blew up his car in central Iraq on Friday July 6, 2012, killing 11 people including himself, and wounding 37 others. The violence took place in Ramadi. The car was parked at a house where people had gathered to celebrate the first day of a friend's marriage. The groom is a police officer. It was not immediately clear whether he was among the victims.

- Iraq Tuesday July 10, 2012:
- Three people have been killed and 13 injured in separate bomb and gunfire attacks in central and northern Iraq.
- In Diyala province, a roadside bomb went off near the house of an Iraqi army officer in Al-Tahrir district in Baquba city killing one civilian and wounding two others.
- In a separate incident, four civilians were wounded when a sticky bomb attached to their truck detonated near Muqdadiyah town.
- Also in the province, two sticky bombs attached to two civilian cars separately exploded in two areas outside Baquba, wounding five people.
- In Baghdad, gunmen using silence weapons opened fire on the car of an army officer in northern the Iraqi capital, killing his driver.
- In northern Iraq, a civilian was killed and two wounded when a roadside bomb struck their car in Mosul city.
- A bomb in a bus killed three people and wounded 14 in Baghdad. The explosion occurred in Sadr City, a Shiite district in northeastern Baghdad.

- Iraq Monday July 23, 2012:
- At least 107 people were killed in bomb and gun attacks, a day after 20 died in explosions, in a coordinated surge of violence against mostly Shiite Muslim targets. At least 268 people were wounded by bombings and shootings in Shiite areas of Baghdad, the Shiite town of Taji to the north, the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and many other places. No group has claimed responsibility for the wave of assaults but a senior Iraqi security official blamed the local wing of al Qaeda, made up of Sunni Muslim militants hostile to the Shiite-led government, which is friendly with Iran.
- Gunmen using assault rifles and hand grenades killed at least 16 soldiers in an attack on an army post near Dhuluiya.
- In Taji six explosions, including a car bombing, occurred near a housing complex. A seventh blast there caused carnage among police who had arrived at the scene of the earlier ones. In all, 32 people were killed, including 14 police, with 48 wounded, 10 of the police.
- Two car bombs struck near a government building in Sadr City, a vast, poor Shiite swathe of Baghdad, and in the mainly Shiite area of Hussainiya on the outskirts of the capital, killing a total of 21 people and wounding 73.
- Nine people, including six soldiers, were killed in attacks in the northern city of Mosul.
- In Kirkuk, five car bombs killed six people and wounded 17, while explosions and gun attacks on security checkpoints around the province of Diyala killed six people, including four soldiers and policemen, and wounded 30.
- Other deadly attacks occurred in the towns of Khan Bani Saad, Udhaim, Tuz Khurmato, Samarra and Dujail, all north of Baghdad, as well as in the southern city of Diwaniya.
- The orchestrated spate of violence followed car bombs on Sunday in two towns south of Baghdad and in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf that killed 20 people and wounded 80.
- Two more bombs killed nine people late on Monday taking to 116 the death toll in a string of coordinated bomb and gun attacks against mostly Shiite Muslim targets.
- A car bomb exploded near a cafe in the Shiite Ameen district in southeastern Baghdad, killing six men and wounding 24 others as they sat smoking shisha water pipes and drinking tea.
- Three other people died when a roadside bomb went off near their mini-bus. Seven others were wounded in the blast.
- The attacks took to at least 299 the number of people wounded in the bloodiest day of violence to hit Iraq this year.

- Militants downed an Iraqi army helicopter on Thursday July 26, 2012 in clashes that have killed at least 19 people including 11 policemen. Militants opened fire on the Iraqi army helicopter, killing one soldier, wounding another and forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing. The rest of the crew was unharmed. The helicopter was called in to provide surveillance for security forces battling militants since an attack Tuesday on a security checkpoint in a rural area near Hadid,. Despite police efforts to seal off the area, gun battles raged overnight Wednesday, killing 11 policemen. Seven militants also were killed in the clashes and eight were arrested.

- Two bombings and a drive-by shooting Sunday July 29, 2012, killed seven Iraqi police in the western part of the country. The attacks around the city of Fallujah also wounded nine police. Two explosives-packed cars blew up within a few minutes of each other in Fallujah and the nearby village of Karma as security patrols drove by, killing three policemen. Fifteen minutes later, a gang of gunmen fired on a Karma police station, killing four. The gunmen escaped.

- Two car bombs ripped into a busy intersection and a public square in Baghdad on Tuesday July 31, 2012, killing at least 19 people. Clouds of dark smoke rose above the centre of the capital where the bombs exploded just minutes - apart, leaving dead and wounded lying in the street and slumped inside a damaged minibus.

- Iraq Friday August 3, 2012:
- Unknown attackers killed five members of Iraq's security forces in three drive-by shootings in Baghdad.
- The first attack took place at dawn, when gunmen in speeding cars opened fire at an army checkpoint just outside Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing three soldiers and wounding five.
- Unknown attackers targeted a joint patrol of Iraqi police and military in a nearby neighbourhood minutes later. That attack killed a policeman and injured four others.
- In Baghdad's northern al-Waziriyah area after noon, drive-by shooters with silenced pistols attacked a police patrol, killing a policeman and injuring two others.

- Four policemen were killed in two separate attacks on Sunday August 5, 2012. Gunmen opened fire on a security checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killing three policemen. The gunmen escaped unhurt after the attack. Hours earlier, a car bomb exploded on a police patrol in the Iraqi capital, killing one policeman and wounding five people, including three policemen.

- An explosion from a bomb attached to the underside of a minibus has killed four people and injured five others south of Baghdad. The sticky bomb blew up late on Monday August 6, 2012, as the minibus was travelling in Haswa. Two policemen who were guarding the road were among the dead.

- On Wednesday August 8, 2012, gunmen have shot dead eight members of a family inside their house north of - Baghdad. The assailants broke into the home of a well-known lawyer in the city of Beiji. They killed him, his wife, his five sons and a relative. The police did not know the motive.

- Iraq Friday August 10, 2012
- A string of insurgent attacks, including a car bomb targeting a Shiite mosque, killed 10 people on Friday August 10, 2012.
- The car bomb struck a Shiite mosque as worshippers were performing Friday prayers in a village near Mosul. Three people were killed and 35 wounded in that attack.
- Hours earlier, gunmen opened fire on a group of so-called Sahwa fighters manning a checkpoint near the town of Dujail.
- Elsewhere, a roadside bomb exploded on a police patrol in Muqdadiyah. Three policemen were killed and two were wounded in that blast.

- A bomb attack and a drive-by shooting against security forces and government employees in and around Baghdad killed five people and injured five others on Sunday August 12, 2012. A roadside bomb went off next to a police patrol in the town of Jurf al-Sakhar, killing three policemen. Another bomb went off a few minutes later and hit a police patrol en route to the scene, injuring three policemen and two civilians. In Baghdad's western Jihad neighbourhood, gunmen in a speeding car killed two employees at the so-called Sunni endowment, a department that supervises Sunni religious administration including holy sites and mosques. The two dead were neighbours leaving their houses in a car when the gunmen showered them with bullets.

- Iraq, Tuesday August 14, 2012:
- Shootings and a bombing killed three people, including an anti-corruption investigator.
- In Mosul, attackers gunned down Iyad Hussein Ahmed, an investigator in the Integrity Commission, Iraq's anti-graft watchdog. Ahmed was shot dead outside his home when he was about to set off for work. He suffered multiple gunshots.
- Also in Mosul, a civilian was killed by gunmen outside his home. It was not immediately clear why the victim was targeted.
- And in Diyala province a bomb exploded inside the home of an Iraqi soldier in the town of Baladruz. The soldier's 15-year-old son was killed, and his wife and another son were wounded.
- The latest violence brings the number of people killed in attacks in Iraq so far this month to at least 131, including 61 security force members.

-Iraq, Thursday August 16, 2012:
- Insurgents unleashed a relentless wave of attacks from before dawn until late at night, killing 59 people and wounding many more in a deadly show of force aimed at undermining the government's authority. The bomb and shooting attacks made for the country's deadliest day in more than three weeks. More than 150 people have been killed in violence across the country since the start of August. Five of the attacks accounted for more than half of the casualties.
- A car bomb in Baghdad's northeastern and mostly Shiite neighbourhood of Husseiniyah killed seven people and wounded 31.
- Another car bomb struck near the headquarters of local security forces in the northern city of Daqouq. As police rushed to the scene, a roadside bomb exploded, killing seven policemen. Another 35 people were hurt.
- Gunmen in cars opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint near the town of Mishada, killing seven soldiers and wounding eight.
- A suicide bomber walked into a teashop and blew himself up in Tal Afar. The explosion killed seven and wounded 10.
- In Kut, a Shiite city southeast of Baghdad, a parked car exploded near a market and several restaurants late in the evening, killing 7 and wounding 25 people.
- Thursday's carnage began when militants planted four bombs around the house of a military officer near the northern city of Kirkuk. The officer escaped unharmed, but his brother was killed and six other family members were wounded.
- Hours later, a bomb in a parked car exploded near a string of restaurants, killing one and wounding 15. The blast seriously damaged the eateries' storefronts, scattering shattered glass and debris across the sidewalk.
Iraqi officials said Friday August 17, 2012, that a blistering string of attacks across the country the previous day killed at least 93 people and wounded many more, as the extent of the violence grew clearer and mourners began to bury their dead.

- Gunmen killed six people on Saturday August 18, 2012, raiding two homes in Mosul. The slayings was "terrorist attacks." They are still investigating why gunmen stormed the houses, killing a husband and wife and two others in the first attack, and two men in the second house.

- A bomb struck the convoy of a senior Sunni cleric in western Baghdad on Sunday August 19, 2012, killing four and critically wounding the anti-extremist Muslim leader. The blast in the capital's Yarmouk neighbourhood left Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaie badly hurt. The cleric had just finished leading prayers at a nearby mosque to mark the beginning of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which follows the holy month of Ramadan. Al-Sumaidaie has sided with the government against Sunni extremists. Earlier this year, he called for a unified religious authority to bridge the gap between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites. Insurgents often target Sunni clerics seen as working closely with the Shiite-led government. Four of the cleric's bodyguards were killed and three others were wounded.

- A mortar attack targeting Shiite worshippers killed three people in eastern Baghdad on Friday August 24, 2012, and authorities were investigating whether attackers set off explosions that sparked an early morning fire at a nightclub that left six dead. In the mortar attack, an explosive shell landed near a mosque shortly after the start of Friday prayers in the Shiite district of Sadr City. The sermon there was delivered by a backer of the Shiite firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Eight people were wounded, including the preacher.

- Separate shootings in Iraq's main northern city of Mosul on Saturday August 25, 2012, left three people dead, including a local councillor. In one attack, gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint in Mosul killing a policeman and a civilian. In another incident, city councillor Ibrahim Yunis was gunned down outside his home in southeastern Mosul. Four Iraqi soldiers, including a colonel, were wounded in a gun attack on their patrol near the town of Dhuluiyah, north of Baghdad, on Friday. The unrest takes to 246 the number of people killed in attacks nationwide this month.

- Iraq, Sunday August 26, 2012:
- Attacks by insurgents killed eight police and soldiers.
- Gunmen in a moving vehicle opened fire from silenced weapons at a police patrol in Ur, a predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad. Two policemen were killed and a third was wounded.
- Several hours later, gunmen also using pistols fitted with silencers killed three private security guards at an amusement park in eastern Baghdad.
- In the western province of Anbar, two roadside bombs went off on an army patrol near Fallujah, killing three soldiers.

- Three people, including two soldiers, have been killed in a pair of attacks targeting the country’s security forces. The first attack took place early Tuesday August 28, 2012, in the city of Fallujah, where a bombing on the house of a police major killed a neighbour and wounded seven people, including four of the officer’s relatives. In the second attack, gunmen shot dead an army officer and a soldier at a security checkpoint in northern Baghdad.

- Attackers killed six Iraqi security officials including an army general on Wednesday, August 29, 2012. The deadliest attack of the day came in the city of Kirkuk, where three policemen were killed and six wounded when their convoy hit a roadside bomb. The general died in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad. Police said Brig. Gen. Nadhum Tayeh was driving to work in the morning when a carload of gunmen opened fire, killing him. Hours later, an off-duty army colonel was killed in a roadside bombing in northern Baghdad. In a third attack, gunmen with silenced weapons shot and killed an off-duty policeman as he was walking near his house in eastern Baghdad

- A car bomb exploded outside a Baghdad coffee shop Saturday September 1, 2012, killing two people and wounding 11 others. The blast happened in the al-Shurta al-Rabaa neighbourhood, a predominantly Shiite section of southwestern Baghdad. 164 people had been killed throughout the country in August.

- A roadside bomb explosion has killed four off-duty soldiers near a city northeast of Baghdad. The Tuesday September 4, 2012, blast hit their car as they headed to their unit near Tuz Khormato. Security forces sealed off the area and started a search operation to find the attackers.

- Bombings and shootings in northern Iraq, mostly targeting security forces, left eight people dead on Tuesday September 4, 2012, including six soldiers and a police general. In the deadliest attack, two near-simultaneous roadside bombs detonated as a military convoy was passing along the road between the town of Tuz Khurmatu and nearby Al-Adhaim. The blasts killed six soldiers and wounded two others. In the ethnically-mixed northern city of Kirkuk, gunmen killed a police adviser to the provincial council and wounded two of his bodyguards while they were in a shop. Major General Adnan al-Bayati died instantly when the attackers opened fire with machine guns, and his bodyguards were seriously wounded. Just northwest of Kirkuk, authorities found the mutilated corpse of a teenage boy believed to have been killed earlier on Tuesday. Ali Mohammed Ali, whose identity papers listed him as a 16-year-old Arab, was found with his hands, feet and head cut off, and with two gunshot wounds to his body.

- Attacks on Iraqi officials and security forces killed three people and wounded four others on Wednesday September 3, 2012. In the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu two people -a female judicial investigator and a police sergeant- were shot dead as they left the town’s court. Also north of the capital, an anti-Al Qaida militiaman was shot dead and another was wounded in a gun attack on a checkpoint in Samarra. Three other militiamen were wounded by a bombing targeting their car in the town of Baladruz.

- Six blasts targeting Shiite mosques in the disputed Iraqi city of Kirkuk killed at least eight people and wounded 67 during prayers on Friday September 7, 2012. Two roadside bombs exploded outside the Imam Ali Husseiniya in the city, while one roadside bomb and one car bomb each detonated outside both the Khazaal Al-Timimi Husseiniya and the Al-Mustafa Husseiniya. A 'Husseiniya' is a Shi'ite mosque. Buildings and cars near the blasts were damaged and corpses lay in the streets, a Reuters witness said. No group has claimed responsibility for Friday's attacks.

- Iraq, Sunday September 9, 2012:

1. At least 58 people were killed in attacks across Iraq including a car bomb outside a French consulate.
2. The most serious of the bombings, blasts and shootings happened near the city of Amara when two car bombs exploded outside a Shiite shrine and a market place, killing at least 16 people.
3. Overnight in Dujail gunmen and a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a military base, killing 11 soldiers and injuring seven.
4. Later, a car bomb killed eight people queuing for jobs as police guards for the Iraqi North Oil Company in Kirkuk.
5. Kirkuk was hit by several other blasts. A car bomb and a bomb packed into a motorcycle detonated outside a crime investigation office, killing seven and wounding 40.
6. More people were killed in several other blasts across the country, including in the towns of Baquba, Samarra, Basra and Tuz Khurmato.
7. The car bomb that exploded outside the French consular building in Nassiriya killed a police guard and wounded four other guards. The consul, an Iraqi citizen, was not at the office at the time of the attack.
8. Two other people were killed and three wounded by a separate car bomb in the city.

- A suicide car bomber killed seven Iraqis and wounded 11 others, including a member of parliament, close to an entrance to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone on Monday September 17, 2012, where several Western embassies are located. The attack was close to the July 14th suspension bridge which leads into the central area, known officially as the International Zone, which houses diplomatic missions including the U.S. embassy. Two of the seven killed were soldiers.

- Five Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb explosion north of Baghdad on Saturday September 22, 2012, as suspected Sunni militants, seeking to undermine the Shiite-led government continue to target the country's security forces. The attack on a two-vehicle military convoy occurred near Duluiyah. Four other soldiers were wounded in the blast.

- Attacks killed five people in Iraq’s capital on Sunday September 23, 2012, targeting security forces and Shiite. The victims were top targets of Sunni insurgents. In the deadliest attack Sunday, a minibus exploded in the Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City. Three passengers were killed and seven wounded. Several hours later, gunmen killed a federal police general and his aide in a drive-by shooting on a western Baghdad highway. Police said Brig. Gen. Naif Abdul-Razzaq and his driver were headed home from work when they were shot. The gunmen escaped before they could be caught.

- A suicide car bomb went off near a school in Iraq’s western Anbar province on Monday September 24, 2012, killing four children. The car exploded in the centre of the town of Hit shortly after a police patrol passed by. He said six children were also wounded in the blast.

- Attacks against police checkpoints in central Iraq have killed four policemen, including a lieutenant colonel. The first attack took place early Wednesday September 26, 2012, when gunmen in two cars opened fire on policemen manning a checkpoint south of Baghdad. Two policemen and their commander died in that attack. Later, a policeman was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his post in Balad. And gunmen killed a civilian in Mosul.

- A prison break in central Iraq has killed 10 guards and two inmates and that many prisoners, including suspected al-Qaida fighters, escaped after hours-long clashes with security troops inside the facility. Several convicts broke into a prison storeroom in Tikrit late on Thursday night, September 27, 2012, seized weapons and overpowered prison guards. Several hours of clashes followed and that scores of prisoners had escaped by Friday morning when security troops regained control of the prison.

- Iraq Sunday September 30, 2012:

1. Coordinated bomb attacks killed more than 32 people across Iraq.
2. In Taji bombs in three parked cars went off separately, killing 11 people and wounding 24, including several policemen.
3. In Baghdad, three separate bombs killed eight people, including a police officer.
4. In Kut a suicide bomber driving a car blew himself up, killing four policemen.
5. Another attack targeted a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims as it passed through the town of Madaen. Two passers-by were killed.
6. Two more policemen were killed when a car bomb went off in Balad Ruz.
7. A bomb planted in a parked car in Mosul killed a civilian.
8. Further attacks around the country killed a further four people and left scores wounded.

- Iraq Tuesday October 2, 2012:

1. Iraqi authorities ordered an Iranian cargo plane heading to Syria to land in Baghdad for a search, and then allowed the flight to proceed after no weapons were found.
2. Five people were killed in two incidents near Kirkuk, which is home to a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, who all are competing to control the city.
3. Three street sweepers stumbled onto a bomb as they were trying to empty a garbage bin in the nearby village of Zab. The blast killed the three workers.
4. Also in Kirkuk, police found two bodies, one a district administrator in al-Wihda village. The two were shot dead and that an investigation was under way.

- On Friday October 5, 2012, Al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq claimed responsibility for a stunning jailbreak last week that was followed by a wave of deadly attacks across the country that left 26 dead. The group, also called the Islamic State of Iraq, has said that both the freeing of its prisoners and the assassination of officials are top priorities, part of a general offensive intended to retake Sunni towns and districts that were once al-Qaida strongholds. Last Sunday’s coordinated blasts, stretching from the northern city of Kirkuk through Baghdad to Iraq’s Shiite-dominated south, mostly targeted Shiite neighbourhoods and Iraqi security forces. In all, at least 26 people died.

- Roadside bombs have killed five people in and near Baghdad. The first explosion went off around noon on Saturday October 6, 2012, targeting an Iraqi army patrol in the Sunni town of Taji just north of the capital, killing one soldier and wounding three others. Meanwhile, another bomb exploded near vendors selling vegetables and fruits in a main street in Baghdad's southwestern neighbourhood of Saidiyah, also a Sunni area, killing four people including a woman. Eleven others were wounded including three women.

- Iraq Tuesday October 9, 2012:

1. A series of attacks across Iraq killed six people, including three soldiers and a judge.
2. A roadside bomb struck an army patrol in Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib killing three soldiers and wounding three others.
3. In Mosul, gunmen fatally shot judge Abbas al-Abadi in a drive-by-shooting. Three policemen were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in the western part of the city.
4. Another roadside bomb explosion killed two Kurds from the Kurdish Democratic Party as they were driving their car near the town of Tal Afar.
5. A parked car bomb exploded as a mini-bus drove by it in the central town of Sulaiman Bek, wounding 10 passengers.

- Iraq Monday October 15, 2012:

1. A spate of shootings and bombings targeting Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad killed at least eight people, while a prisoner on death row escaped from a police station south of the capital.
2. The attacks, which killed four policemen and three anti-Qaeda militiamen, came after a deadly bombing targeted Iraqi police on Sunday night.
3. The heaviest toll came in the town of Tuz Khurmatu. Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the town centre, killing two policemen and wounding two more before fleeing the scene.
4. Also in Tuz Khurmatu, a car bomb at one of the main entrances to the town killed a policeman and wounded six other people -five civilians and a policeman.
5. In another gun attack, militants broke into the home of two brothers, both of them anti-Qaeda militiamen, in the desert region west of the city of Samarra. They killed them and their father. The brothers were members of the Sahwa (Awakening) militia, comprised of Sunni Arab tribesmen who sided with the US military against Al-Qaeda from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's insurgency.
6. Another Sahwa fighter was killed by a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to his car in the town of Hawijah.
7. In Kirkuk, two car bombs near the provincial government headquarters killed a policeman and wounded eight other people.
8. In Baghdad, a shooting at an army checkpoint in the south of the city wounded three soldiers. One of the three died.
9. Two bombings late on Sunday near Baquba and Mosul killed a policeman and wounded four other people.
10. A prisoner, who was on death row in the city of Kut, escaped from a police cell in the nearby town of Sheikh Saad, where he was being held ahead of a court hearing.
11. Four policemen were arrested in connection with Uday Fadhel Salman's escape. Salman had been serving one life sentence and had been sentenced to death for his role in violent attacks.

- Iraq Saturday October 20, 2012:

• Back-to-back bomb blasts in a crowded Baghdad market near a revered Shiite shrine and a string of shootings targeting government officials killed at least 17 people.
• The bombings, which happened within about a minute of each other, appeared be aimed at intimidating Iraq's Shiites, who are a frequent target of Sunni insurgents. At least 11 people were killed and 35 were wounded. The blasts struck about 500 meters from a shrine where two revered imams are buried, damaging nearby shops and buildings. The attacks came as many shoppers were out buying new clothes in anticipation of the Eid al-Adha holiday, which begins in about a week.
• Earlier in the day, gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in the Shiite neighbourhood of al-Shaab, killing two policemen and wounding another.
• Gunmen shot dead a police lieutenant colonel who worked with the State Identity Directorate late Friday in the capital's Karradah district.
• Near Mosul, gunmen attacked a police checkpoint and killed three officers.
• Gunmen also shot and killed a prison official in a drive-by-shooting during the morning rush hour in eastern Baghdad.

- Iraq. Wednesday October 24, 2012:

• A 9-year-old schoolboy was among at least 12 people that insurgents killed across Iraq. The child, Ahmed al-Obeidi, was killed when a parked motorcycle packed with explosives went off near a local politician’s passing convoy in Kirkuk. The boy and his brother were on their way to buy clothes for the holiday of Eid al-Adha, which begins later this week. Four other people were wounded in the attack. Politician Ali al-Hashemi, an ethnic Turkomen and the apparent target of the blast, escaped unharmed. Members of the security forces  were also among those killed.
• In Baghdad’s western Mansour neighbourhood, militants in a speeding car killed two soldiers at an Iraqi army checkpoint.
• A roadside bomb exploded shortly afterward as police headed to the scene, killing one policeman and wounding six people.
• Shortly before dawn, a sniper shot and killed a police officer in the capital’s eastern Mashtal neighbourhood.
• In the afternoon, gunmen ambushed a minibus carrying employees of a state-run car parts manufacturer in Mishada, north of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding two.
• Two other people were killed when gunmen sprayed their car with bullets near Baqouba, in central Iraq.
• In Tuz Khormato a roadside bomb struck a police patrol, killing a policeman and wounding three others.
• Also Wednesday, Supreme Judicial Council spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar said authorities have begun summoning employees of the central bank to give testimony as part of a probe into alleged financial wrongdoing. None has faced arrest. The questioning follows the issuing of arrest warrants for 16 bank officials, including longtime governor Sinan al-Shabibi, a politically independent economist who has led the institution since 2003.

- A bombing near a playground and other insurgent attacks killed 18 people including several children in Iraq on Saturday October 27, 2012. The deadlier of two blasts in Baghdad struck near a playground and a small market in the neighbourhood of Bawiya in eastern Baghdad. Eight people were killed, including four children. Another 24 people, including children, were wounded.

- Iraq, Saturday October 27, 2012:

1. Iraqi insurgents unleashed a string of bombings and other attacks primarily targeting the country's Shiite community on Saturday, leaving at least 40 dead.
2. The deadliest attacks struck in the evening in the Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City. A car packed with explosives blew up near a market, killing 12 people and wounding 27.
3. Half an hour later, a second car bomb went off in one of Sadr city's bus stations, killing 10 and injuring 31.
4. Earlier in the day, a bomb exploded near playground equipment that had been set up for the holiday in a market on the capital's outskirts in the eastern neighbourhood of Bawiya. Eight people were killed, including four children. Another 24 people, including children, were wounded.
5. A bomb attached to a bus carrying Iranian Shiite pilgrims killed five people and wounded nine. The bomb, hidden on the underside of the bus, detonated as the pilgrims were heading to a Shiite shrine in Baghdad to mark the holiday.
6. In Mosul, gunmen broke into the houses of two Shabak families, killing a boy and his parents in one and a mother and daughter in the other. A bomb exploded near the house of another Shabak family, wounding six family members.
7. In Tuz Khormato a car bomb exploded near in a neighbourhood with a Turkomen Shiite majority. Mayor Shalal Abdoul said 11 people were wounded, including three children.

- No weapons were found in an Iranian cargo flight bound for Syria. The Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority said it found only humanitarian aid, such as food, medical supplies and tents, and allowed the plane continue after ordering it to land at Baghdad International Airport for inspection. The inspection was the second by Iraq's Shiite-led government this month of an Iranian cargo plane headed to Syria. The first one was October 2. No weapons were found on that plane either.

- Gunmen have killed two government employees and two road construction workers in separate attacks in Iraq. The first attack took place Wednesday morning October 31, 2012, in eastern Baghdad, when gunmen fatally shot two employees working in the Industry Ministry. Later in the day, gunmen killed two labourers working on a road construction site near the city of Mosul.

- Insurgents have gunned down three soldiers at a checkpoint near the country's capital. The early Saturday November 3, 2012, shooting took place in Taji; two other soldiers were wounded.

Insurgents have gunned down three soldiers at a checkpoint near the country's capital. The early Saturday shooting took place in Taji. Two other soldiers were wounded.

- A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives detonated the vehicle near an Iraqi military base as soldiers changed shifts north of Baghdad on Tuesday November 6, 2012, killing at least 33 people and wounding 56. The blast struck as troops were leaving the base in Taji. Twenty-two soldiers were among the dead, and several vehicles were damaged. The casualty toll was high because the attacker blew up the car while large numbers of soldiers were walking to and from a parking area for waiting minibuses that take them to work.

- Iraq, Thursday November 8, 2012:
- Three car bombs in towns south of Baghdad killed four people and injured 16 others. The first bombing took place early in the morning in a residential area of the predominantly Shiite town of Mahmoudiya, killing two people and wounding four.
- Another car bomb went off seconds later at a parking lot near a government agency for electricity, killing one person and wounding three. In the southern city of Hillah, a parked car bomb went off in a commercial area, killing one civilian and injuring nine others. The target was unknown to the police.
- Two car bombs in a predominately Yazidi town near Mosul killed two people late Wednesday. Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking sect and religious minority. The bombings in the town of Baashiqa also wounded 12 people.

- On Wednesday November 14, 2012, at least 17 people have been killed and dozens wounded in bombings across Iraq, on the eve of the Islamic New Year and the holy month of Muharram. Six car bombs and roadside devices exploded in the capital, Baghdad, and four other cities. In the deadliest attack, at least three bombs went off simultaneously in Kirkuk, killing at least five people.

- Seven people, including three Iranian pilgrims, were killed when an explosives-laden car detonated as they were exiting a rest stop north of Baghdad. 30 other people were wounded in Saturday November 17, 2012, blast in the town of Balad. The wounded were Shiite pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and Pakistan. They were travelling from a shrine in the northern city of Samarra to another in nearby Balad.

- A car bomb explosion in central Iraq has killed three people and wounded 16 others on Sunday November 18, 2012. A suicide car bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a police check point in the town of Khalis, killing two civilians and one policeman. 16 other people were wounded.

- On Monday November 19, 2012, police inspector Qassem Abdellatif was killed along with one of his brothers in a car bomb explosion in Kirkuk. Official figures show that September was the bloodiest month in Iraq in almost two years, with attacks killing 365 people, the highest monthly death toll since August 2010. 182 civilians, 88 police officers, and 95 soldiers were killed in attacks in September.

- At least 12 Iraqis have suffered injuries when two bombs went off in quick succession in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Tuesday November 20, 2012. The first blast took place in the al-Tesaeen neighbourhood of the city when an explosives-laden car was detonated. Moments later, an improvised explosive device was set off as police forces and civil defence brigade arrived at the scene of the first explosion. Twelve civilians were hurt in both attacks.

- Iraq Tuesday November 27, 2012:

1. At least four people were killed and 41 others wounded when three car bombs exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk.
2. The first car bomb exploded near the al-Shorja outdoor market, the second exploded near a fuel station, and the third near the local offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP. All three occurred in the northern part of Kirkuk, which is a mainly Kurdish area.
3. In Anbar province, two car bombs exploded in two areas, killing six people and wounding 13 others. The first bomb exploded at an Iraqi police patrol in central Ramadi killing six people and wounding 10 others. The second exploded at a security convoy in southern Falluja, wounding three people.
4. In another string of car bombings, at least 19 people were killed and 72 others wounded in three separate explosions outside three Shiite mosques in the capital of Baghdad.
5. The first exploded outside the Zahraa Shiite mosque in the Shulla neighbourhood in northwestern Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 21 others. The second exploded outside the Ali-Basha Shiite mosque in the Sbaa-Abkar district in northeastern Baghdad, killing six and wounding 32. And the third exploded outside the Sodani Shiite mosque in the Hurriya neighbourhood in northwestern Baghdad, killing five and wounding 19. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the explosions bear the hallmark of al Qaeda in Iraq.

- Gunmen stormed a home in a rural town north of Baghdad Wednesday November v28, 2012, killing seven members of a family -including five children- as they slept. The motive for the attack in the predominantly Sunni community of Tarmiya was unknown. Also, two Iraqi soldiers died and three were critically wounded when a sticky bomb attached to the military vehicle they were driving exploded in the predominantly Sunni town of Falluja.

- Iraq, Thursday November 29, 2012:

1. Back-to-back explosions tore through tents housing Shiite pilgrims in southern Iraq Thursday that killed at least 43 people nationwide.
2. The attacks in Hillah began with a roadside bombing near tents set up for Shiites commemorating the 17th century death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Imam Hussein. That was quickly followed by a car bomb targeting emergency response teams. The explosions, which occurred in a busy commercial area, killed at least 29 people and wounded as many as 90.
3. Just hours earlier, a parked car exploded near the shrine of Imam Hussein in the Shiite city of Karbala, killing six people and wounding 20.
4. A suicide bomber also drove his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint in the mainly Sunni city of Fallujah killing three policemen and wounding 11 others.
5. In Mosul, a parked car bomb went off as a police patrol passed, killing two people and wounded two, police said.
6. Another police patrol was hit by a roadside bomb in the town of Balad Ruz killing one policeman and wounding six others.
7. A roadside bomb killed an Iraqi soldier and wounded five others in Taji.
8. A parked car bomb struck a restaurant in Madain killing a civilian and wounding 12 others.


- Masked gunmen hijacked a bus carrying 20 police recruits in northern Iraq on Friday November 30, 2012, and took them to a remote area bordering Syria where al-Qaeda operates. The kidnappers, armed with machineguns and rocket propelled grenades, seized the vehicle on the road from Mosul to the capital Baghdad and took the recruits to Anbar province.

- Gunmen broke into the house of an anti-al-Qaida militiaman north of Baghdad and killed him and his two sons. The killings took place early Sunday December 2, 2012, when gunmen, armed with pistols fitted with silencers, rushed into the house near the city of Samarra. The pro-government group known as Sahwa, of which the man was a member, joined forces with U.S. troops at the height of the Iraq war to fight al-Qaida. Ever since then, it has been a target for Sunni insurgents who call its members traitors.

- A bomb exploded near the house of an anti-al-Qaida militiaman south of Baghdad, killing him, his 8-year-old son and another family member. The blast hit early Sunday December 9, 2012, in the town of Iskandariyah. The Sunni fighter's wife and two daughters were also wounded.

- Iraq Wednesday December 12, 2012:

1. Shootings and bombings killed six Iraqi security forces members and an academic.
2. An inmate detonated explosives in a Baghdad prison in an attempted suicide attack wounding three guards and a fellow prisoner. The prisoner was able to gather the explosives over a number of days” and apparently formed them into an explosive belt. The bomber survived the blast and was taken to Al-Kindi hospital. The bomber, named as Ahmed Majid Hamid al-Shammari, had been sentenced to death under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law, and that he used fuel from cigarette lighters in the attack.
3. Gunmen killed four police near Fallujah.
4. Gunmen in Mahmudiyah shot intelligence service Captain Muntasser Abdul Rizzaq. Rizzaq later died in Mahmudiyah Hospital.
5. Gunmen armed with silenced weapons killed a policeman at a checkpoint east of Mosul.
6. A magnetic “sticky bomb” killed a department head in the College of Agriculture on the Tikrit University campus.

- Two bombings have killed six people and wounded eight others in the centre of the country on Thursday December 13, 2012. The bloodiest attack took place when a car bomb went off in a commercial street in western Baghdad, killing four people and wounding eight others. In Anbar province, two soldiers were killed after another bomb exploded near their observation post in the city of Fallujah.

- At least two Iranian pilgrims have been martyred and 20 others wounded in four roadside bombs in the Iraqi city of Samarra. The explosions took place on Friday December 14, 2012, after the bus carrying the Iranian pilgrims hit the bombs. The two victims of the terrorist attack were both women. Medical teams from the Iranian Red Crescent Society have been dispatched to the area immediately after the terrorist incident.

- Iraqi authorities say a car bomb has killed five people and wounded eleven others in the country's north, the second day in a row in which blasts have targeted disputed regions there.
 
- There was an explosion in al-Mouafaqiyah, a village inhabited by families from the Shabak ethnic group. The region near the city of Mosul is claimed by Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds. The Shabak have their own distinct language and belief system. Sunday December 16, 2012's attacks left at least eight killed and dozens wounded.

- Bombs planted inside a car killed two Kurdish Peshmerga military recruits on Sunday December 16, 2012, in a disputed region of northern Iraq where Baghdad and autonomous Kurdistan are caught up in a military stand-off. No one claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing in the ethnically mixed town of Jalawla near a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party (PUK) office when Kurds were being recruited into Peshmerga forces.

- Iraq Sunday December 17, 2012:

1. A wave of bombings hit ethnically disputed northern areas and other parts of Iraq on Monday, killing 25 people and wounding dozens.
2. The deadliest attacks took place in al-Mouafaqiyah, a village inhabited by families from the Shabak ethnic group. Seven people were killed and 11 were wounded in the bombing, according to police officials. The village lies near the city of Mosul and is claimed by Arabs, Turkomen and Kurds. The Shabak have their own distinct language and religious beliefs.
3. Elsewhere in the north, two car bombs went off in a majority Turkomen neighbourhood in the city of Tuz Khormato, killing five people and wounding 26. Like the area near the other attack, Tuz Khormato has a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen competing for control of the city. He said that the targets in these two provinces were "carefully selected" as part of the efforts to undermine the national unity.
4. A roadside bomb hit a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims near Samarra, killing one Lebanese national and the Iraqi driver and wounding eight others, including five Lebanese.
5. A car bomb went off on a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims heading to Samarra, killing two, including an Iranian national.
6. Another car bomb went off in a commercial area in downtown Baghdad in the afternoon, killing three people and wounding 10.
7. A car bomb exploded near an open-air car market in northeastern Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 30 others.

 
- Iraqi security sources have arrested 66 members of the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq network as they were planning attacks against Shia Muslims marking Arbaeen, the 40th day after the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein.
 
- On Sunday December 24, 2012, we were told that the terrorists were rounded up during sweep operations in the central province of Karbala. The Iraqi police had also seized various kinds of weapons and munitions in the operations. 35,000 security soldiers have been deployed to Karbala to provide security for people taking part in Arbaeen ceremonies for Prophet Muhammad's grandson, scheduled for January 3.

- Bodyguards for Iraq's deputy prime minister wounded two people when they fired warning shots at Sunni protesters who pelted his convoy with bottles and stones on Sunday December 30, 2012. The incident took place in the city of Ramadi in the western province of Anbar, to where Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq had travelled to address people in an attempt to defuse sectarian tensions. Thousands of Iraqi Sunnis have taken to the streets and blocked a main highway over the past week in protest against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whom they accuse of discriminating against them and being under the sway of non-Arab neighbour Iran.

- Iraq Monday December 31, 2012:

1. Explosions killed more than 16 people and wounded 76 across Iraq.
2. The latest violence followed more than a week of protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by thousands of people from the minority Sunni community.
3. No group claimed responsibility for any of Monday's attacks, which targeted government officials, police patrols and members of both the Sunni and Shi'ite sects.
4. Seven people from the same Sunni family were killed by a bomb planted near their home in the town of Mussayab, south of Baghdad.
5. In the Shi'ite majority city of Hilla, also in the south, a parked car bomb went off near the convoy of the governor of Babil province, missing him but killing two other people.
6. In the capital Baghdad, five people were killed and 20 wounded by a parked car bomb targeting pilgrims before a Shi'ite religious.
7. A roadside bomb injured six pilgrims in the capital’s Baiyaa neighbourhood.
8. Two other Shiite pilgrims were killed and 16 wounded in the town of Khalis when two bombs exploded simultaneously.
9. In the town of Latifiyah one pilgrim was killed and 11 wounded when two mortar rounds exploded nearby.
10. Four policemen were killed in Kirkuk while trying to defuse a bomb in the centre of the city.
11. Another a policeman was killed when a bomb hit a police convoy in the town of Tuz Khormato.

- Iraq, Wednesday January 2, 2013:

1. Five people have been killed in a string of attacks across the country.
2. In the first attack, gunmen fatally shot a policeman and his brother who is a member of anti-al-Qaida group north of Baghdad.
3. In the western province of Anbar, a car bomb targeting the house of a police colonel in Fallujah killed the officer's neighbour but left the colonel unharmed.
4. Another car bomb struck a group of Shiite pilgrims heading to the holy city of Karbala, killing two people.
5. One person is killed and 10 others injured in three bomb explosions in the town of Tuz Khormato. The blast caused serious damage to nearby houses and a petrol station.

- A car bomb explosion tore through a crowd of Shiite pilgrims returning home Thursday January 3, 2013, from a religious commemoration, killing at least 20. The blast erupted in the town of Musayyib. It targeted worshippers returning from the Shiite holy city of Karbala following the climax of the religious commemoration known as Arbaeen. Children were among the 20 people confirmed killed. At least 50 people were wounded. The explosion went off in the middle of a gathering of pilgrims changing buses coming from Karbala on their way to other destinations in the country.

- Attackers killed at least 32 pilgrims in Iraq on Thursday January 3, 2013. At least 28 people were killed and 35 were wounded when a car bomb exploded in central Musayyib. The apparent targets were pilgrims returning from the holy city of Karbala. In another attack in southeast Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded as a minibus carrying Shiite pilgrims passed, killing 4 people and wounding 15.

- Two separate bombings south of Baghdad killed 10 people and wounded another 24 on Monday January 7, 2013. The deadliest attack was in the town of Musayyib. Militants planted bombs around two houses, one belonging to a police officer. Two women and two children aged 11 and 14 years old along with three men were killed, while three others were wounded in the pre-dawn blasts. In the city of Hillah, a parked car bomb exploded in a busy street where local government offices are located, killing three people and wounding 21.

- Iraq Thursday January, 10, 2013:

1. A series of bombings and shootings in central and eastern Iraq killed at least nine people and wounded 16.
2. Thousands of pro-government Shiite protesters took to the street this week to counter Sunni demonstrations following the arrests of Finance Minister Rafei el-Essawi's bodyguards. El-Essawi is Sunni.
3. Among those targeted Thursday was the president of Diyala University, Abass al-Dulaimai, who was wounded when two roadside bombs hit his convoy in Baquba. Two of al-Dulaimai's bodyguards were killed in the explosions and three others were wounded.
4. An Iraqi army officer was killed when gunmen broke into his home in Baquba and opened fire.
5. Two members of a local Awakening Council were killed when bombs exploded outside their homes north of Baquba.
6. Among the attacks in Baghdad was a bus bomb that exploded near a police station in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Hurriya, killing at least three people and wounding 11.

- A dozen prisoners including al-Qaida-linked death row inmates escaped from a prison near Baghdad on Friday January 11, 2013. The brazen prison break happened hours before thousands of mostly Sunni protesters rallied in the capital and other parts of the country, keeping pressure on the Iraqi government. Among the demands of the three-week wave of protests are the release of detainees held in Iraqi jails and changes to a tough counterterrorism law that Sunnis believe unfairly targets their sect. The prisoners managed to escape through windows in their cells early in the morning and then seized the weapons of guards manning two observation towers. All of the prisoners had been convicted on terrorism charges and that some were awaiting execution.

- Insurgent attacks in separate parts of the country have killed four people including a 7-year-old boy and wounded five others. The first attack took place early Sunday January 13, 2013, when gunmen attacked an army checkpoint near the city of Samarra, killing three soldiers and wounding two others. In the western province of Anbar a roadside bomb went off on a security patrol in the city of Fallujah, killing the boy who was walking near the patrol. Three policemen were wounded also in the attack.

- Iraq's finance minister, who has been locked in dispute with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, has escaped an apparent assassination attempt when his convoy was struck by a roadside bomb. Rafa al-Essawi's convoy had been travelling between the towns of Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, when the bomb went off on Sunday January 13, 2013. His car was not hit and he is safe, but two guards were wounded.

- A suicide bomber assassinated a Sunni lawmaker in western Iraq on Tuesday January 15, 2013. The awmaker Ifan Saadoun was killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the restive city of Fallujah. Saadoun was inspecting a project when his attacker approached and pretended that he was trying to shake hands, then blew himself up. Two of the lawmaker's bodyguards were killed as well, and four other people were wounded. The parliamentarian was part of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, which holds some posts in Iraq's loose power-sharing government but is at the same time the main force in opposition to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration. He was also one of the main key founders of Fallujah's branch of the Sahwa, a group of Sunni Arabs who joined forces with the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida at the height of Iraq's insurgency.

- Iraq, Wednesday January 16, 2013:

1. A suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives blew himself up outside the offices of a major Kurdish party in northern Iraq. The car bomb outside the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in downtown Kirkuk caused widespread damage, mangling cars and tearing apart storefronts on a busy commercial street. 19 people were killed in the blast.
2. Another car bomb that exploded nearby killed another two people. At least 185 were wounded in the two attacks.
3. Another car bomb struck the local headquarters for Kurdish security forces in Tuz Khormato, killing five and wounding 36.
4. The attacks came as hundreds of mourners gathered in the western city of Fallujah to bury a prominent Sunni lawmaker, Ifan Saadoun al-Issawi, assassinated by a suicide bomber on Tuesday. A bomb went off as mourners gathered to mark al-Issawi’s death, wounding three of them, authorities said.
5. In Baghdad, gunmen killed three policemen as they were sitting in their patrol car.
6. A roadside bomb killed two other officers on a highway in the capital.
7. Gunmen shot dead an army officer at a checkpoint.
8. One policeman was killed and four others wounded when a roadside bomb struck their car in Hawija.

- Iraq, Thursday January 17, 2013:

1. Insurgents unleashed a string of bomb attacks mainly targeting Shiite Muslim pilgrims across Iraq killing at least 24 people. The worst attack was near Dujail where a pair of car bombs exploded near pilgrims who were walking to a shrine in the town of Samarra, 11 people were killed and more than 60 were wounded.
2. The attacks in Dujail came hours after a car bomb struck a bus carrying foreign pilgrims near the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala. Four people were killed and 12 were wounded in that attack.
3. In the town of Qassim a bomb placed in a parked car exploded near a bus stop, killing seven people and wounding 28. The casualties included Shiite pilgrims who were heading to Karbala.
4. In northeastern Baghdad, a roadside bomb apparently targeting an army patrol struck a civilian car instead, killing two passengers and wounding two others.
5. Bomb attacks killed three people and wounded 36 others, including eight believed to be Pakistani pilgrims.
6. In Hilla, a car bomb killed two people and wounded 10 others while two other car bombs in Dujail left one dead and nine wounded.
7. A magnetic bomb attached to a bus also wounded 17 people on the outskirts of the city of Karbala, south of Baghdad.

- Iraq, Saturday January 19, 2013:

1. Four people, including two off-duty policemen, have been killed in Iraq.
2. The first attack occurred when gunmen shot and killed the two policemen in a drive-by-shooting near Mosul. Another policeman was wounded.
3. In Kirkuk, a civilian driver was killed when his truck hit a roadside bomb.
4. Another roadside bomb exploded just south of Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding three others while they were on patrol.

- Iraqi security forces have killed nine members of the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq network and captured 10 others in an operation in the Northern Province of Salahuddin. 12 policemen sustained injuries in the Monday January 21, 2013, operation.

- Iraq Tuesday January 22, 2013:

1. A string of attacks, including three car bombings in and around Baghdad, killed at least 22 people.
2. The attacks began when a parked car exploded at a security checkpoint in Mahmoudiya. The blast killed five people, including two soldiers who were manning the checkpoint, and wounded 15.
3. A second car bomb, this one detonated by a suicide attacker, went off near a checkpoint in the northern Baghdad suburb of Taji, killing seven people and wounding 26.
4. Later in the day, another parked car loaded with explosives blew up in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Shula in northwestern Baghdad, killing five and wounding 15. The blast left several cars charred and mangled.
5. Gunmen killed two government employees and three guards as they were transporting salaries between oil facilities near Beiji. Police have launched a manhunt for the assailants, who made off with the money.

- A suicide bomber struck a packed funeral ceremony at a Shiite mosque in northern Iraq on Wednesday January 23, 2013, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 90. The bomber detonated his explosives at the Sayyid al-Shuhada mosque in Tuz Khormato as mourners marked the death of a government employee who was killed in a drive-by shooting a day earlier. A number of provincial officials were among those hurt in the attack.

- Iraqi troops shot dead at least four people during clashes with Sunni Muslim protesters in Falluja on Friday January 25, 2013, in escalating unrest against Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Troops initially fired in the air to disperse crowds, but then some soldiers fire towards protesters who had approached their military vehicles and set one of them on fire.

- Iraq Saturday January 26, 2013:

• Gunmen killed two Iraqi soldiers and abducted three others in Fallujah as hundreds of mourners gathered for the funeral of protesters killed during a shooting by army troops a day earlier. The attacks and kidnappings appeared to be in retaliation for the deaths of protesters in clashes Friday.
• One of the soldiers killed was hit by a sniper on the outskirts of the city. Another was shot dead when gunmen attacked a military post where soldiers were packing up their equipment on the northern edge of the city.
• Gunmen ambushed the car of three off-duty soldiers on the outskirts of Fallujah and kidnapped them. Authorities have launched a manhunt for the missing men.

- A suicide car bomber attacked a provincial police headquarters in Kirkuk on Sunday morning February 3, 2013 killing at least 36 people and wounding 105. Three other suicide attackers who tried to enter the police headquarters after the blast were killed by the police. Security forces cordoned off the site and closed government buildings and the main roads in Kirkuk as ambulances took the wounded to a hospital. The commander of the Kirkuk police was among those wounded and was taken to Erbil for treatment. After the blast, other insurgents attacked the police headquarters on foot. The police opened fire on them and killed them immediately.

- A suicide bomber attacked a government-backed militia in Iraq on Monday February 4, 2013, killing at least 22 people in an apparent attempt by Sunni insurgents to provoke unrest against Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Dressed in civilian clothes, the bomber infiltrated a meeting of Sahwa tribal fighters and detonated his explosives as they picked up salaries in Taji. It was the seventh suicide bombing in a month in Iraq, indicating insurgents are intent on stepping up violence a year after U.S. troops pulled out of the country, where Shiite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish factions still struggle over how to share power. The Sahwa or "Sons of Iraq" are former Sunni insurgents who rebelled against al Qaeda in the Sunni heartland province of Anbar at the height of the Iraq war and helped American troops to turn the tide of the conflict. No group claimed responsibility for Monday's attack but al Qaeda's affiliate, Islamic State of Iraq, has often targeted Sahwa, pledging to take back ground lost to American and U.S. forces, and has urged Sunnis to rise up against Maliki.

A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives at an Iraqi army checkpoint in Taji on Tuesday February 5, 2013, killing at least three people in an apparent attempt to destabilize the Shiite-led government.

- Assailants opened automatic fire on police checkpoints in central and northern Iraq early on Wednesday February 6, 2013, killing four officers and wounding five. In one attack, gunmen in two speeding cars sprayed policemen with machinegun fire in the town of Musayyib. Two officers were killed and four were wounded there. In the other attack, militants on foot exchanged fire with police at a checkpoint in the city of Mosul killing two policemen and wounding one.
 
- Iraq Friday February 8, 2013:

1. Five car bombs killed at least 34 people in Shiite areas of Iraq as sectarian and ethnic tensions intensify ahead of provincial elections in April.
2. Two car bombs were detonated simultaneously at a bus stop near a street market selling birds and other pets in the Shiite district of Kadhimiya in Baghdad, killing at least 16 people and wounding another 44.
3. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, is facing mass protests by disenchanted Sunni Muslims and is at loggerheads with ethnic Kurds who run their northern region autonomously from Baghdad.
4. The prospect of the election is hardening the divisions as political leaders appeal to their constituencies with often hostile rhetoric that rejects compromise.
5. In the Shiite city of Hilla 15 people were killed in two car bomb explosions at a vegetable market.
6. Another three people were killed by a parked car bomb in Kerbala.

At least five people were killed and more than 25 wounded in a rocket attack on an Iranian dissident camp in Iraq's capital Baghdad on Saturday February 9, 2013. The dissident group Mujahadin-e-Khalq (MEK) said six people including a woman died after its camp was hit by mortars and missiles. The attack struck the group's base in the former U.S. military compound "Camp Liberty" in the western part of the capital, where most of the group was relocated by Iraqi authorities last year from a base given to them by Saddam.

- Iraq, Sunday February 10, 2013:

1. Gunmen killed four people in three attacks in Mosul.
2. Assailants fired at a police checkpoint in the centre of Mosul, killing two policemen.
3. Later in the day, gunmen killed an off-duty soldier at a car repair shop in the city.
4. In a third attack, gunmen fired at a van carrying oil workers, killing one and wounding three.
5. The head of the Nalia satellite TV station in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region confirmed that a bomb exploded on the roof of the station, causing no casualties. The bomb went off on Saturday.
6. A mine exploded on a road in northern Iraq as a car carrying Poland's ambassador drove past but no one was injured. The blast occurred on Saturday "as two vehicles with several people including ambassador Lech Stefaniak drove through on their way to Baghdad. The incident took place south of the northern city of Kirkuk.

 
- A suicide car bomber and unidentified gunmen killed at least 12 people in the Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday February 11, 2013, as sectarian and ethnic tensions build ahead of elections in April. The bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives up to a military checkpoint in Mosul and detonated it, killing eight people and wounding 18, among them soldiers. In a separate incident in Mosul, gunmen using silenced weapons killed the bodyguard of a Kurdish member of the city's provincial council and three others.

- A French journalist detained in Iraq last month has been freed. Nadir Dendoune was detained in Baghdad on January 23 for allegedly taking photos in restricted areas without necessary permits. Nadir Dendoune left Iraqi custody Thursday February 14, 2013. Dendoune's assistant Haqi Mohammed was also freed.

- Iraq Saturday February 16, 2013:

1. A suicide bombing killed a senior Iraqi intelligence officer and two guards near Mosul, while other blasts left two more dead. Brigadier General Aouni Ali, the head of the country’s main intelligence academy, and two of his guards were killed in the bombing outside his home in Tal Afar, near Mosul.
2. Also north of Baghdad, a judge was killed by a magnetic “sticky bomb” attached to his car in the village of Sulaiman Pak. Ahmed al Bayati, a Sunni Arab who was a judge handling civil cases, had previously received threats while he was working as an anti-terror investigator, and had to pay kidnappers a $150,000 ransom after his son was snatched last year.
3. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb killed an army lieutenant and wounded two other soldiers in Heet, northwest of the capital.

- At least 26 people have been killed in a spate of car bomb attacks in Baghdadid. The bombs reportedly targeted mainly Shiite regions of the city. A series of car bombs were detonated in the mainly Shiite districts of Ameen, Sadr City, Habibiya and Qahira on Sunday February 17, 2013, killing at least 26 people and wounding dozens more. The bombings mostly struck busy commercial streets or outdoor markets. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks. The latest violence comes a day after multiple attacks killed five people, including the head of Iraq's intelligence academy. One suicide bomber targeted Brigadier General Awni Ali's residence in the northern city of Tal Afar, detonating his explosives near the intelligence officer's car.

- Gunmen attacked an army checkpoint north of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding four others.  The gunmen in two cars sprayed the checkpoint with bullets early on Thursday February 21, 2013, in the town of in Duluiayah. The checkpoint commander was among the wounded.  

- Three suicide bombers targeted checkpoints in Iraq's northern city of Mosul late on Thursday February 21, 2013, killing three policemen. Two of the bombers drove cars into checkpoints in the city of Mosul.

- Gunmen have shot dead seven members of a government-backed militia near the northern town of Tuz Khurmato in an attack Friday February 22, 2013; an eighth militia member was very seriously wounded.  Gunmen dressed in military uniforms gathered the militiamen in a group at a checkpoint took them to another area and shot them. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants in the past have carried out attacks on the militia members, who are pro-government Sunnis known as Sahwa and viewed by the militants as traitors.

- Iraq Saturday February 23, 2013:

1. The governor of Iraq's Diyala province was wounded in a suicide car bombing. The suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at Governor Omar al-Humairi's house in Baquba, the capital of Diyala province, wounding him, killing two of his guards and injuring six more.
2. Sheikh Hassan Hadi al-Janabi, a provincial elections candidate in Babil province, was killed south of Baghdad by a magnetic "sticky bomb" along with two of his relatives.

- Iraq Thursday February 28, 2013:

1. A series of bombings struck Baghdad and towns south of the Iraqi capital  killing at least 22 and wounding dozens in areas that are home to mostly Muslim Shiites .
2. The attackers struck a day before tens of thousands of Sunni Muslims are expected to take to the streets in what have become weekly protests against the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The rallies are exacerbating long-simmering tensions between Iraq's Sunnis and the Shiite majority nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion.
3. The deadliest attack occurred when a pair of bombs exploded nearly simultaneously in Shula in northwestern Baghdad. One was a car bomb that was detonated outside a fast food restaurant and the other blast occurred near a soccer field. The twin bombings killed 15 people and left at least 40 wounded.
4. Earlier a car bomb tore through the crowded livestock market in the town of Aziziyah. That attack killed three people and wounded eight.
5. A few hours later, a roadside bomb missed a passing police patrol in western Baghdad but killed a bystander and wounded eight people.
6. In the evening, explosives hidden beneath produce in the back of a pickup truck exploded in the town of Mahmoudiya. That blast killed three policemen and wounded six.
7. Meanwhile, Iraqi authorities released a new batch of inmates from a Baghdad prison in a move aiming at calming the Sunni protesters. Deputy Prime Minister Hussain al-Sharistani announced the release of 160 prisoners, including 13 women.  4,000 prisoners have been released since a government committee was set up earlier this year to consider protesters' demands.

- Two car bombs exploded in a sheep market south of Baghdad on Friday March 1, 2013, killing five people and wounding dozens of others, at least 45.

- Iraq Sunday March 3, 2013:

1. Three separate attacks in Shiite-dominated areas in central Iraq have killed at least four people and wounded 14.
2. The deadliest was in the Husseiniya area northeast of Baghdad, where three roadside bombs went off simultaneously, killing three civilians. He said 11 others, including three policemen, were wounded.
3. A soldier was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded in the northern Utaifiya neighbourhood of Baghdad.
4. In Karbala a suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden belt near the two revered Shiite shrines and wounded three people.

- At least 42 Syrian soldiers were killed in a well-coordinated ambush Monday March 4, 2013, after seeking refuge across the border in Iraq following clashes with rebels in their home country. The attack in Iraq's western province of Anbar is likely to significantly raise concerns that Iraq could be drawn into the Syrian civil war. The attackers appeared to have been tipped off about the soldiers' movements and prepared a well-coordinated attack involving roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. They finished off the attack by spraying the vehicles with bullets. At least seven Iraqi soldiers who were escorting the Syrians were also killed.

- Iraq Tuesday March 5, 2013:

1. A local leader of anti-al-Qaida militiamen was shot dead in western Baghdad, one of eight people killed in violence in different parts of Iraq.
2. The leader of the pro-government militiamen, known as the Sahwa group was driving through Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib when drive-by shooters sprayed his car with bullets, killing him.
3. Another group of drive-by shooters shot and killed a municipality official in the capital's southern Saydiyah neighbourhood.
4. Also in Baghdad, gunmen broke into a real estate office in the northern Sabi al-Boor neighbourhood, killing two and wounding two.
5. In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a car bomb exploded on a police patrol, killing two policemen and wounding 16 others, including eight civilians.
6. A car bomb went off near a youth soccer field during a local match in the town Khan Bani Saad, killing two people and wounding 16 others.
7. In Irbil a bomb attached to a car belonging to the Kurdish regional forces exploded and wounded a colonel.

 
- An anti-government protest organizer has been killed in a drive-by-shooting in the country's north. Gunmen shot and killed Bunyan Sabar al-Obeidi Sunday March 10, 2013, as he was driving his car in Kirkuk. al-Obeidi, who is also a spokesman for the Sunni protesters in Kirkuk, escaped an assassination attempt last week. Last Friday, police opened fire on Sunni demonstrators in the northern city of Mosul, killing one protester and wounding five others. Sunnis have been staging mass protests since last December following the arrest of bodyguards assigned to a Sunni minister.

- Iraq Monday March 11, 2013:

1. A suicide attacker drove his explosives-laden car into a police station in northern Iraq, killing five people while attacks elsewhere in the country killed six more Iraqis. The dead in the suicide attack in the town of Dibis near Kirkuk included two policemen and three civilians. Thirty-six others, including some students from a nearby school, were wounded in the blast.
2. In Baghdad, militants launched a wave of attacks that killed six people.
3. In the northwestern neighbourhood of Shula, gunmen broke at dawn into a house, killing a man and his wife. In the northern Sabi al-Boor neighbourhood, another group of assailants killed a minimarket owner.
4. An off-duty policeman in the western Ghazaliya area was gunned down in his car by drive-by shooters.
5. A civilian was shot dead in the southern Saydiyah neighbourhood.
6. An anti-al Qaeda militiaman was killed in southwestern Amil district.

- Iraq, Thursday March 14, 2013:

• A coordinated string of bombings and a brazen assault on a ministry near Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone killed 18 people and at least 30 wounded.
• At least three bombs went off in Allawi neighbourhood, near the foreign and culture ministries and offices of the communications ministry.
• At around the same time, militants staged an apparently unsuccessful assault on the nearby justice ministry.
• Three fighters were killed inside the justice ministry building; no ministry employees were hurt in the assault.
• A bombing targeted a candidate in Iraq's upcoming provincial elections, after another was kidnapped along with his father and other relatives north of Baghdad the night before. A magnetic "sticky bomb" exploded on a car carrying Khaled Hussein al-Daraji, a candidate in Salaheddin province, killing his driver and wounding three nearby workers, although Daraji himself escaped unharmed.
• A tribal sheikh, Qais Abdul Karim al-Janabi, was kidnapped along with his son, Salaheddin provincial elections candidate Abdul Karim, and five other relatives in Siniyah, north of the capital.

- A car bomb exploded at a bus terminal in Iraq's predominantly Shiite Muslim south on Sunday March 17, 2013, killing at least nine people. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomb exploded in the town of Garmat Ali, around 20 km north of Basra. Another car bomb went off in a car park for government offices in the city of Basra itself, wounding two people.

- Iraq Tuesday arch 19, 2013:
- More than a dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore through Shiite Muslim districts of Baghdad and other areas killing nearly 60 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.
- One car bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market, three detonated in the Shiite district of Sadr City and another near the entrance of the heavily fortified Green Zone that sent a plume of dark smoke into the air alongside the River Tigris.
- A suicide bomber in a truck attacked a police base in a Shiite town south of the capital.
- Another bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant to target a police major in the northern city of Mosul.

- Iraq Tuesday March 26, 2013:

1. Shootings and blasts killed five people.
2. Two local politicians in a town north of Baghdad died when a bomb attached to their car exploded. The head of Tuz Khormato's local council and a council member were killed and a third official, a mayor, was wounded.
3. In Bagdad, another bomb attached to a minibus in the northern Kazimiyah neighbourhood killed one commuter and wounded five.
4.  Later that day, gunmen with pistols fitted with silencers killed a police officer in a drive-by shooting in the east of the capital.
5. Another policeman was killed and five people were wounded when their checkpoint came under fire from gunmen in two speeding cars in a second drive-by shooting in western Baghdad.

- Iraq Wednesday March 27, 2013:
- Two attacks in different parts of the country have killed five people and wounded 25.
- A parked car bomb ripped through a residential area in the town of Musayyib, killing three civilians and wounding 14.
- A bomb targeted a restaurant in the town of Madain, killing two people and wounding 11.


 - Iraq Wednesday March 27, 2013:

• A series of attacks near Baghdad and north of the capital killed four people.
• Separate bombings south of Baghdad -one inside a restaurant and the other a car bombing near a police checkpoint- killed two people and left 26 others wounded.
• Three gun and bomb attacks in restive cities north of the capital killed two more people and wounded two others.
• The attacks come ahead of provincial elections scheduled for April 20, due to be held in 12 of Iraq's 18 provinces, the country's first polls since a parliamentary vote in March 2010

- Iraq, Friday March 29, 2013:

1. Sectarian violence flared anew as bombers struck several Shiite mosques, killing at least 18 worshipers and wounding scores more.
2. Five of the attacks -all of them car bombs- targeted five mosques in Baghdad, killing at least 14 people and wounding 30.
3. One of the blasts struck worshipers leaving the al-Mustafa Mosque in the al-Jihad neighbourhood of southwestern Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding eight.
4. In the al-Binook neighbourhood in southeastern Baghdad, four people were killed and five were wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque as worshipers were departing.
5. In the al-Qahira neighbourhood of northeastern Baghdad, two people were killed and five wounded when a car bomb detonated outside the Ahal al-Bayt Shiite Mosque.
6. A car bomb exploded outside a Shiite mosque in eastern Baghdad's Talabiya neighbourhood, wounding 10 people.
7. In Kirkuk four people were killed and 60 wounded by a car bomb followed by a suicide blast that targeted a Shiite mosque (al-Mustafa). Most of the casualties were Shiite worshipers.
8. The attacks came as thousands of Sunni demonstrators took to the streets for the third consecutive month in the cities of Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul, Baiji, Samarra, Tikrit and Baquba, in the provinces of Anbar, Nineveh, Salaheddin and Diyala. The protesters have been denouncing what they call second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government.

- Iraq, Sunday March 31, 2013:

1. Attacks mostly targeting security forces in and around Baghdad and in northern Iraq, one of them a suicide bomber, killed four people.
2. The suicide bomber blew up a car at a military checkpoint in Abu Ghraib killing two people and wounding 11. Among the victims were one soldier who died and four who were hurt.
3. On the capital's northern outskirts, a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a car detonated near a checkpoint, killing the vehicle's driver.
4. Five shootings and bombings in Kirkuk and Mosul killed one person and wounded six. All of the injured were policemen or soldiers.

- A suicide bomber drove a fuel-laden truck into a police station in Tikrit on Monday April 1, 2013, killing seven policemen and wounded more than 30. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the attack was typical of al-Qaida's Iraq branch, the Islamic State of Iraq. The militant Sunni group frequently uses car bombs, suicide bombers and coordinated blasts to target Shiites and those working with the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

- Gunmen attacked a contracting company in Iraq's Akkas gas field on Monday April 1, 2013, killing at least three local workers and kidnapping two more before burning their camp in the remote western desert. Akkas, operated by Korea Gas Company (KOGAS) in Anbar province near the Syrian border, is still not producing gas. Gunmen in vehicles attacked the headquarters of a local company hired by KOGAS to do work in the field. They killed an engineer and two workers and kidnapped two more. Before they left they set fire to vehicles and offices.

- Gunmen burst into the offices of four independent newspapers in Baghdad, smashing their equipment, stabbing and beating employees, and even hurling one reporter from a roof in the most brazen attack against journalists in Iraq this year we were told on Tuesday April 2, 2013. Two editors said they believed their assailants were members of a Shiite militia, saying the raids came after their newspapers published stories criticizing their hardliner cleric-leader. It underscored the dangers facing the media in Iraq, one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters.

- Iraq Friday April 5, 2013:
-  Attacks near Baghdad and in central Iraq killed five people.
- A roadside bomb near a fruit and vegetable stall in a small village south of the capital in Babil province killed three people.
- Just west of Baghdad in Abu Ghraib, two soldiers were killed and two others were wounded by another bombing targeting a passing military vehicle.
- In Baquba, north of the capital in Diyala province, 13 people were wounded by an explosion near a Sunni mosque as worshippers were exiting after weekly Friday prayers.
- The rise in violence, which left 271 Iraqis dead last month, the highest such figure since August 2012.

- A coordinated attack involving a suicide bomber at an open-air election campaign meeting in central Iraq killed 25 people and 60 others were wounded on Saturday April 6, 2013. Supporters of Muthanna Ahmed Abdulwahid, a Sunni Arab candidate for the Azimun Ala al-Bina had been gathered in Baquba. A militant threw a grenade before a suicide bomber then blew himself up.

- A pair of bombs struck in quick succession outside a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad on Friday April 12, 2013, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 30. The attack was in the town of Kanaan, Diyala province. The blasts struck as worshippers were leaving after midday prayers from the town's Omar Bin Abdul-Aziz mosque. Minutes after the Kanaan attack, a bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in western Baghdad, wounding eight. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attacks.

- Iraq Monday April 15, 2013:

1. At least 31 people have been killed and more than 200 others wounded in a series of early-morning explosions in cities across Iraq. Attacks were reported in Baghdad, as well as Tuz Khurmatu and Kirkuk in the north and Nasariyah in the south. Several cities were hit, including Fallujah, Tikrit, Samarra and Hilla. The explosions were caused by 20 cars packed with explosives and three roadside bombs.
2. Three car bombs went off minutes apart in Tuz Khurmatu, killing six people and wounding more than 60.
3. A number of attacks were also reported in Baghdad.
4. In one incident, two car bombs claimed two lives and wounded 17 at a checkpoint at the heavily guarded airport.
5. In the northern city of Kirkuk, nine people were killed when six car bombs went off simultaneously. Three of the bombs exploded in Kirkuk's city centre -one in an Arab district, one in a Kurdish area, and a third in a Turkomen district.
6. Other blasts were reported elsewhere in the city, which is home to a mix of ethnic groups with competing claims.
7. Gunmen armed with pistols fitted with silencers shot and killed a police officer while he was driving his car in the town of Tarmiyah.
8. No group has admitted carrying out Monday's attacks.

- Iraq Wednesday April 17, 2013:

1. Bombings killed five people and wounded 18.
2. In the deadliest attack, a car bomb exploded near an army checkpoint in Abu Ghraib killing two people and wounding six>
3. Another car bomb in the Jihad area of south Baghdad killed one person and wounded six.
4. Gunmen armed with pistols shot dead Muthanna Shakir, a former translator for American forces, in his restaurant in Samarra.
5. A magnetic “sticky bomb” killed a secondary school teacher in Ramadi.
6. A roadside bomb targeted a convoy carrying an MP from the secular, Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc in Madain wounding four people but not the politician>
7. A “sticky bomb” wounded two people in Mansur in west Baghdad.

- A total of nine people were killed and 20 others injured when a roadside bomb struck a popular restaurant in central Iraq on Sunday April 21, 2013. The bombing attack in downtown Fallujah also caused material damage to the restaurant and nearby shops. No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack.

- Iraqi security forces backed by helicopters raided a Sunni protest camp before dawn on Tuesday April 23, 2013, prompting clashes that killed at least 36 people. The fighting broke out in the former insurgent stronghold of Hawija. Like many predominantly Sunni communities, the town has seen months of rallies by protesters accusing the government of neglect and pursuing a sectarian agenda. In an apparent response to the morning raid, militants tried to storm two army posts in the nearby town of Rashad, and six of them were killed. Seven other militants were killed while trying to attack military positions in Riyadh. Outrage also spread through other Sunni parts of the country, including the western Anbar province, where demonstrators took to the streets and clashed with police.

- Iraq Wednesday April 24, 2013:
- Clashes erupted between the Iraqi army and armed Sunni tribesmen who sealed off a central Iraqi town, leaving nearly two dozen dead in an outbreak of violence that killed 28 people around the country. The fighting came a day after security forces stormed a Sunni protest camp in the town of Hawija, sparking deadly clashes and a spate of other attacks, mostly targeting Sunni mosques that killed at least 56 people.
- Wednesday's fighting broke out after tribesmen blocked roads leading to the Sunni town of Qara Tappah. Iraqi troops arrived to try to clear the city. Fierce clashes erupted, and helicopters fired at the gunmen. Police say 15 gunmen and seven soldiers were killed.
- In other violence, three gunmen were killed when they attacked a security checkpoint near the former al-Qaida stronghold of Mosul.
- Later, a car bomb struck a police patrol north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and two civilians.

- Iraq Thursday April 24, 2013:

1. More than 40 people were reported killed in fighting in northern Iraq and gunmen took over a town elsewhere in the country raising concerns that unrest roiling Sunni areas is spreading.
2. Iraq’s prime minister appealed for calm following three days of violence that has left more than 150 dead.
3. Clashes erupted late Wednesday in Mosul between gunmen and police in some districts before security forces managed to bring the situation under control before midday Thursday. 31 militants and 10 police were killed in the fighting in Mosul. Many residents were still staying home out of fear, although the city was largely quiet by evening.
4. The latest unrest began on Tuesday when fighting broke out in the northern town of Hawija during a security crackdown on a protest encampment. Three members of the Iraqi security force and at least 20 other people were killed. The government said gunmen fired on the security forces as they entered the camp to make arrests related to an earlier incident.

- Iraq, Friday April 26, 2013:

1. Clashes erupted In Mosul late Wednesday between gunmen and police in some districts before security forces brought the situation under control before midday Thursday. Police said 31 militants and 10 police officers were killed in the fighting.
2. Meanwhile gunmen have taken control of the police station and other government buildings in Suleiman Beg, and were deployed in the streets there. On Wednesday, police and hospital officials reported fierce clashes in the town that resulted in the deaths of four soldiers and 12 others, including some gunmen. The mayor of the city of Tuz Khormato, to which Suleiman Beg is administratively annexed, said security forces had laid siege to the small town and sporadic clashes were continuing.

- On Friday April 26, 2013, gunmen killed 10 people, including five soldiers, near the main Sunni protest camp west of Baghdad. The attack on the army intelligence soldiers in the former insurgent stronghold of Ramadi drew a quick response from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led government has been the target of rising Sunni anger over perceived mistreatment. The attackers stopped a vehicle carrying the soldiers near the protest camp, prompting a gun battle that left the five soldiers dead and two of the attackers wounded.

- Iraq Monday April 29, 2013:

1. Car bombs and blasts in cities across Iraq, including two explosions at a checkpoint outside Baghdad's international airport, killed at least 23 people.
2. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Tuz Khurmato and other towns to the north to south, but al Qaeda's local wing is waging a campaign against Shiites and the government to stoke sectarian confrontation.
3. Monday's attacks were mostly car bombs, including two blasts that killed two passengers at an outer checkpoint as they were on their way into the Baghdad airport site.
4. The most deadly attack was in Tuz Khurmato where four bombs targeting police patrols killed five people and wounded 67.

- Iraq Wednesday May 1, 2013:

1. Two separate car bomb attacks in central Iraq killed at least eight people and wounded 27.
2.  The first attack took place in Baghdad’s eastern suburb of Huaasinya when a parked car bomb went off early in the morning, killing four civilians. Twelve people, including four policemen working at a nearby checkpoint, were wounded in the bombing. The Shiite-dominated district is located some 25 kilometres east of the centre of the Iraqi capital.
3. Another parked car bomb exploded near a group of anti-al-Qaida Sunni fighters near the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. The pro-government militiamen had gathered outside a military post to receive their salaries. The explosion killed three of the fighters and one civilian. The blast also wounded 15 people.
4. The group, known as Sahwa, is made up of Sunni Arabs who joined forces with the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida at the height of Iraq’s insurgency. They have since been regularly targeted by Sunni insurgents who see them as traitors

- A bomb attack outside a Sunni mosque on Friday May 3, 2013, killed seven worshippers as Sunnis continued to hold demonstrations in Iraq to protest what they say is second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government. Sunni mosques have been targeted in several recent attacks amid rising sectarian tension in Iraq following a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest site in Hawija town last month. Since then, violence have been on the upswing, raising concerns that the nation is on a return to bloody fighting in the past decade that approached a state of civil war. The attack on the Sunni mosque occurred as worshippers were leaving mid-day prayers at al-Ghofran mosque in a primarily Sunni area of Rashidiya. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

- Iraq Monday May 6, 2013:

1. Bombings and shootings in five different areas of Iraq killed 10 people and wounded 27 others on Monday May 6, 2013.
2. In the deadliest attack, two car bombs exploded northeast of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 20.
3. A roadside bomb near a restaurant in the Dura area in south Baghdad killed two more people and wounded six.
4. In Muqdadiyah, northeast of Baghdad, gunmen killed one fighter from the Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda militia in an attack on a checkpoint.
5. In the northern city of Mosul, a bomb near the local headquarters of the National Alliance killed one of its employees and wounded another.
6. A gunman killed a man near his house in the town of Hawijah, also in northern Iraq.
7. Security forces moved against an anti-government protest near Hawijah in late April, sparking clashes in which dozens of people died.

- Iraq Wednesday May 8, 2013;

1. At least eight people were killed and nearly 40 were wounded in separate attacks across Iraq.
2. The first attack took place in the western city of Fallujah when gunmen in a speeding car sprayed a police checkpoint with bullets, killing three policemen.
3. That shooting was followed by attacks in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, where a parked a car bomb exploded near the offices of a Kurdish party, wounding 20 people.
4. A suicide car bomber hit a checkpoint manned by Kurdish security forces in the city, killing one Kurdish security member and wounding six.
5. In the Iraqi capital, a bomb attached to a minibus killed three commuters and wounded eight.
6. And in the northern city of Mosul a suicide bomber with an explosive-laden belt blew himself up in a carpenter’s workshop, killing one person and wounding four people.

 
- A suicide tanker truck packed with explosives blew up outside the home of an army intelligence officer, killing three people and wounding 18 others in the country's north. The Saturday May 11, 2013, blast heavily damaged the house of Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri in al-Shurqat. al-Jubouri's son and nephew were among the dead, but the officer himself was not home at the time.

- Iraq Sunday May 12, 2013:

• Two gunfire attacks in and near Baghdad have killed four people and wounded three.
• Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an outdoor vegetable market in the town of Mishahda, killing three civilians and wounding three others.
• Drive-by shooters killed a police officer driving his car in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Shaab.
• The police found five bodies in execution-style near the town of Hamam al-Alil in southern Mosul city. The five victims were handcuffed and blindfolded with bullet holes in different parts of their bodies.
• Gunmen broke into a house in Karrada district in central Baghdad and shot dead four women.
• Gunmen using weapons fitted with silencers seriously wounded Jumaa Yousif, a director general in the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, while he was driving on a highway near the district of Shula in northern Baghdad.

- A car bombing and shooting have killed four people in the country's north and west on Tuesday May 14, 2013. A suicide car bomber struck an army checkpoint near Ramadi, killing three soldiers and wounding seven others. Earlier Monday, drive-by shooters killed Abdul-Elah Hadi, a local council member in the town of Riyadh.

- Iraq Wednesday May 15, 2013:

1. Two car bombs struck a disputed northern Iraqi city as a series of attacks across the country killed at least nine people.
2. An explosives-laden car parked in Kirkuk city centre exploded killing three civilians and wounding eight.
3. An hour later, another parked car bomb exploded in the same area and killed two children and their parents as they were travelling in a car nearby.
4. In the town of Tarmiyah a suicide bomber rammed his motorcycle into a police patrol, killing two policemen and wounding eight other people.

- On Tuesday May 14, 2013, gunmen have opened fire on a row of alcohol stores in Baghdad, killing at least 12 people. The attackers were in four cars that stopped in the area when they struck shortly after sunset. Five people were reported to have been injured. Nobody claimed responsibility, although Islamic extremists have frequently targeted drink stores in Iraq.

- Iraq, Thursday May 16, 2013:

1. A car bomb exploded near a bus station in Baghdad's main Shiite district Wednesday, the deadliest in a series of explosions that killed at least 33 people nationwide. The bloodshed came amid growing tensions between the Shiite-led government and minority Sunnis following a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in the country's north.
2. An explosives-laden car parked in the centre of Kirkuk killed three civilians and wounded eight.
3. Another parked car bomb exploded in the same area, killing two children and their parents as they were travelling in a car nearby.
4. Several bombs struck within a 90-minute time frame as Iraqis were heading home from work or doing errands in mainly Shiite areas of Baghdad.
5. In Sadr City a car bomb exploded near a crowded bus stop killing at least seven people and wounding 20. The blast also damaged several shops and cars in the area.
6. A car bomb also struck firefighters minutes after they arrived on the scene to extinguish a burning car in the mainly Shiite Kazimiyah district in northern Baghdad, killing two and wounding nine others.
7. At least six other bombings occurred in rapid succession near other bus stops or outdoor markets across the Iraqi capital, killing 15 people and wounding nearly 50 people.
8. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck a police patrol, killing two officers and wounding eight other people in the town of Tarmiyah.

- Iraq Friday May 17, 2013:

1. A suicide bomber attacked Shiite mourners in north Iraq Thursday, killing 12 people, and 13 died in other violence.
2. The suicide bomber tried to enter Al-Zahraa husseiniyah, a Shiite place of worship in the city of Kirkuk, where relatives of victims from violence the day before were receiving condolences. But the attacker was stopped by police.
3. The bomber then detonated an explosives-rigged belt at the entrance, killing 12 people and wounding 40.
4. In Mosul a suicide bomber driving an explosives-rigged vehicle killed two soldiers and wounded three, while a car bomb wounded two police and three civilians.
5. Gunmen also shot dead the brother of a Sunni MP in the Bayaa area of the capital on Thursday.
6. More than 60 (perhaps up to 76) people have been killed and dozens hurt in several bomb attacks apparently targeting Sunnis, in Iraq's worst day of violence for months.
7. In the first attack, in Baquba at least 41 people were killed when two bombs detonated outside a Sunni mosque. The first bomb went off as worshippers were leaving a Sunni mosque after Friday prayers. As people went to aid those injured, a second bomb was remotely detonated. Some 56 people were injured.
8. Eight died at a Sunni funeral in Madain. At least 20 people were wounded in the bomb attack.
9. 14 more were killed in two blasts in a Sunni-majority commercial area of western Baghdad.
10. A series of bombings targeted Shia areas across Iraq on Wednesday and Thursday. More than 120 people in total have died over the three days.
11. Other deadly attacks struck Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and Dora to the south of the capital.

- Iraq, Saturday May 18, 2013:

1. A string of attacks killed at least 16 people while gunmen abducted eight policemen guarding a post on the country’s main highway to Jordan and Syria.
2. Gunmen broke into the house of an anti-terrorism police captain in the southern suburbs of Baghdad, killing the officer and his family in their sleep. Police officials identified the dead as Cap. Adnan Ibrahim, his wife and two children, aged eight and 10. The attackers fled the scene, and killed another policeman who tried to stop them at a nearby checkpoint.
3. In the western Sunni province of Anbar, gunmen kidnapped eight policemen who were guarding a post on the main highway linking Iraq to both Jordan and Syria.
4. Earlier in the day, security forces and gunmen clashed in the area after police tried to arrest a Sunni tribal sheik suspected of being behind the killing of three army intelligence soldiers stopped by gunmen near a protest site in the city of Ramadi last month. Iraqi authorities had offered a bounty for the arrest or information leading to the arrest of the sheik, Khamis Abu Risha, and two other people they say were linked to the killings.
5. The fighting near Abu Risha’s house north of Ramadi left three people wounded. No arrests were made. Later, gunmen deployed near the main entrance of Anbar Operations Command headquarters in Ramadi.
6. Hours later, Ramadi police said a bomb placed under stalls in a small stadium exploded, killing four people who were watching a local soccer match.
7. Shortly before sunset, a car bomb went off near a small market in the town of Latifiyah south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 12.
8. In the predominantly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq, gunmen shot and killed a Sunni cleric, Assad Nassir, as he was leaving his house.
9. Two Iraqi soldiers were also killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb struck a group of soldiers arriving to inspect the scene of a blast that took place earlier in the northern city of Mosul.
10. A roadside bomb hit a police patrol in the northern suburbs of Baghdad, killing one policeman and wounding two others.

- Iraq Monday May 20, 2013:

1. More than 60 people were killed in a series of car bomb explosions targeting Shiite Muslims across Iraq. The attacks brought the number killed in sectarian clashes in the past week to over 200, and tensions between Shiites, who now lead Iraq and minority Sunni Muslims, have reached a point where some fear a return to all-out civil conflict.
2. Nine people were killed in one of two car bomb explosions in Basra, a predominantly Shiite city.
3. Five other people were killed in a second blast inside a bus terminal in Saad Square, also in Basra.
4. In Baghdad, at least 30 people were killed in car bomb explosions in Kamaliya, Ilaam, Diyala Bridge, al-Shurta, Shula, Zaafaraniya and Sadr City, all areas with a high concentration of Shiites.
5. A parked car bomb also exploded in the mainly Shiite district of Shaab in northern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 26 others.
6. In a separate incident a parked car blew up near a bus carrying Shiite Muslim pilgrims from Iran near Balad killing five Iranian pilgrims and two Iraqis who were travelling to the Shiite holy city of Samarra.
7. In the western province of Anbar, the bodies of 14 people kidnapped on Saturday, including six policemen, were found dumped in the desert with bullet wounds to the head and chest.
8. Three Sahwa members were killed in a car bomb explosion as they collected their salaries in the city of Samarra.

- Iraq Monday May 20, 2013:

1. A wave of attacks killed at least 86 people in Shiite and Sunni areas pushing the death toll over the past week to more than 230 and extending one of the most sustained bouts of sectarian violence the country has seen in years.
2. The worst violence took place in Baghdad, where ten car bombs ripped through open-air markets and other areas of Shiite neighbourhoods, killing at least 48 people and wounding more than 150.
3. In the bloodiest attack, a parked car bomb blew up in a busy market in the northern Shiite neighbourhood of Shaab, killing 14 and wounding 24.
4. The predominantly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq was also hit with two car bombs there —one outside a restaurant and another at the city's main bus station— killing at least 13 and wounded 40.
5. In the town of Balad a car bomb exploded next to a bus carrying Iranian pilgrims, killing 13 Iranians and one Iraqi.
6. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but the fact that they all occurred in Shiite areas raised the suspicion that Sunni militants were involved. Also, Sunni insurgents, particularly al Qaeda in Iraq, are known to employ such large-scale bombings bear.
7. The violence also struck Sunni areas, hitting the city of Samarra north of Baghdad and the western province of Anbar.
8. A parked car bomb in Samarra went off near a gathering of pro-government Sunni militia who were waiting outside a military base to receive salaries, killing three and wounding 13, while in Anbar gunmen ambushed two police patrols near the town of Haditha, killing eight policemen.
9. Also in Anbar, authorities found 13 bodies dumped in a remote desert area. The bodies, which included eight policemen who were kidnapped by gunmen on Friday, had been killed with a gunshot to the head.

- Iraq Tuesday May 21, 2013:

• A series of bomb and gun attacks across Iraq killed more than 40 people.
• Five bombings and clashes between soldiers and gunmen killed eight people.
• In Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, clashes between Iraqi soldiers and gunmen and a suicide bombing killed three soldiers and wounded at least seven.
• Two car bombs exploded in a Turkmen Shiite area of Tuz Khurmatu, a north Iraq town in Salaheddin province, killing three people, wounding 44 and causing extensive damage to 10 houses.
• Two roadside bombs detonated in a sheep market in the northern city of Kirkuk, killed two people and wounding 25. The explosions also killed a number of sheep, seen lying at the site.
• A car bomb exploded near a Sunni mosque in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad killing 11 people and wounding 21.
• Another bomb outside a cafe in the Doura district of southern Baghdad killed six more and wounded 18.
• In Diyala province at least eight people, including two policemen, were killed in bombs and shootings.
• In Kanaan, also to the northeast, two roadside bombs detonated in quick succession claiming three lives.
• Two car bomb blasts killed three people in a residential part of the town of Tuz Khurmato.
• North of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed three soldiers at a checkpoint in Tarmiya and in Khalis gunmen broke into a house and killed and man and his wife, both of them Sunni Muslims.

- Iraq, Thursday May 23, 2013:

1. A total of 11 people were killed and 26 others wounded in separate attacks.
2. Unidentified gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles attacked a checkpoint manned jointly by the army and a pro-government militia in the town of Garma near Fallujah. The attack resulted in the killing of three soldiers and the wounding of 18 others, including seven fighters whose group is known as Awakening Council.
3. In a separate incident, an Awakening Council member was critically wounded when a roadside bomb struck his car in Abu Ghraib area.
4. Gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead a civilian in the eastern suburb of Mosul.
5. Four soldiers were killed and five wounded when unidentified gunmen opened fire on an Iraqi army checkpoint in Taji area.
6. In the eastern province of Diyala, three people were killed and two wounded in a bomb explosion at a mobile phone shop in the town of Kanaan near Diyala's capital of Baquba.

- Iraq Sunday May 26, 2013:

1. A string of attacks killed at least 12 people in the latest violence of what has been a particularly bloody month in the country.
2. The deadliest attack took place in Mosul, where a car bomb went off at a house early in the morning while a joint army-police unit was conducting door-to-door searches. The blast killed three policemen and one soldier. Twenty people, including four civilians, were wounded.
3. In Mosul, militants gunned down a policeman in his car in the city centre.
4. Moreover again in Mosul authorities found a body floating in the Tigris river, shot at close range with hands bound behind the back.
5. In northern Baghdad’s Kazimiyah district, militants in a speeding car went on a shooting spree that killed three civilians and wounded another.
6. In Anbar province three soldiers were killed and five wounded in two separate attacks by roadside bombs on their patrols.

- Iraq, Monday May 27, 2013:

1. A wave of car bombings tore through mostly Shiite Muslim neighbourhoods of the Baghdad area on Monday afternoon, leaving at least 57 dead in the latest outburst of an unusually intense wave of bloodshed roiling Iraq.
2. One attack happened when back-to-back blasts struck an open-air market in the predominantly Shiite al-Maalif area, killing six and wounding 12 others.
3. The attack came less than an hour after another car bomb exploded in the busy commercial Sadoun Street in central Baghdad. It killed five civilians and wounded 14 others. Among the wounded were four policemen who were in a nearby checkpoint. Several shops were partially damaged or burned.
4. A car bomb went off in the capital's eastern New Baghdad area as they were waiting for explosives experts to dismantle it, killing a civilian and wounding nine others.
5. In the northern Sabi al-Boor neighbourhood eight civilians were killed and 26 wounded when another car bomb exploded in a market.
6. In the southwestern neighbourhood of Bayaa, another car bomb explosion in a market killed six civilians and wounded 16.
7. In northern Baghdad's Kazimiyah district, a car bomb blew up near a bus and taxi stop, killing four and wounding 11 others.
8. In Baghdad's central Sadria area, a car bomb went off in a market and killed three civilians and wounded 11.
9. At least 12 people were killed and 35 wounded when two bombs exploded in the eastern Habibiya neighbourhood.
10. In the eastern Jisr Diyala area, a car bomb killed 5 and wounded 12.
11. In the northern Shaab area, a car bomb killed four and wounded nine.
12. In Madain a car bomb killed three and wounded nine.

- Iraq Tuesday May 28, 2013: BAGHDAD:

1. Violence in Iraq has killed more than 500 people in May as authorities struggled to contain a wave of unrest that has raised fears of all-out sectarian conflict.
2. As of Tuesday, 507 people were killed and 1,287 wounded, making May the deadliest month in at least a year.
3. May is the second month in a row in which more than 400 people have been killed, for a total exceeding 960 people in less than two months.
4. A bomb exploded on a bus in Sadr City, a Shiite area of north Baghdad, killing four people and wounding at least 14.

- Iraq Wednesday May 29, 2013:
- Violence in Iraq killed 27 people as the country's cabinet discussed how to curb unrest that has left over 500 dead this month and raised fears of all-out sectarian conflict.
- A bomb exploded on a bus in Sadr City, a Shiite area in the capital's north, killing at least six people and wounded more than 30.
- A suicide truck bomber killed four people and wounded eight in Tarmiyah.
- Three relatives of the deputy head of the Salaheddin provincial council were gunned down near Baiji.
- Gunmen also killed two Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda militiamen and wounded two more near Tikrit.
- A third was shot dead in the northern city of Kirkuk.
- In Mosul, four police and four gunmen died in clashes, and gunmen also shot dead a tribal sheikh in the northern city.
- A bombing near Mosul killed police intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Faris al-Rashidi and wounded three other police.
- A suicide bomber driving an explosives-rigged vehicle killed a soldier and wounded two south of the city.

- Iraq Thursday May 30, 2013:

• A series of bomb explosions, including one targeting a provincial governor, killed at least 20 people and injured dozens of others. Most of Thursday’s blasts went off in Baghdad.
• Car bombs killed four in the northeastern Shiite neighbourhood of Binouq.
• Three died in a bombing at a market selling spare car parts in central Baghdad.
• In Baghdad’s eastern Shiite Ur neighbourhood, a parked car bomb went off next to an army patrol, killing four and wounding 17.
• A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in the largely Shiite central commercial district of Karradah, killing three people.
• In the largely Sunni neighbourhood of Azamiyah in the capital’s north, a car bomb struck near a military convoy, killing three people, including two soldiers. Another 14 people were wounded in that attack.
• A police patrol was struck in the southern neighbourhood of Saydiyah, injuring six.
• In Anbar province, the provincial governor escaped an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into his convoy. The governor escaped unharmed, but four of his guards were wounded.
• In Mosul, two police officers said a suicide bomber killed three when he blew himself up on a federal police checkpoint.
• The attacks came hours after bomb blasts tore through two Baghdad neighbourhoods Wednesday evening. At least 30 people were killed, including several members of a wedding party in the mixed Sunni—Shiite Jihad neighbourhood.

- Iraq has captured a suspected al Qaeda cell that planned to produce chemical poisons such as mustard gas to attack Iraqi forces and to ship overseas for attacks on Europe and the United State we were told  on Saturday June 1, 2013. The announcement was made as investigators look into allegations over the use of sarin nerve gas in next-door Syria where rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces have blamed each other for using chemical weapons. During the height of the Iraq war, al Qaeda in Iraq used chlorine gas in its explosives to poison areas where their bombs detonated and Saddam Hussein used chemical gas to attack Iraqi Kurdish villages in the north. Five men were caught before they could manufacture any gas or chemical weapons in makeshift factories in Baghdad and another province.

- On Saturday we were told that 1,045 civilians and security personnel were killed last month, which surpasses the 712 killed in April, and making it the deadliest month recorded since June 2008. More than half of those killed were in the greater Baghdad area. Car bombs and other explosives were responsible for the bulk of the casualties across the country.

- Iraq Sunday June 2, 2013:
-    Attacks killed seven people in Iraq's western province of Anbar while gunmen kidnapped five others.
-    The dead included three Syrian truck drivers. Armed men killed the truck drivers and set their vehicles on fire near the town of Al-Rutba, close to the Syrian border. A civilian and a policeman were kidnapped near the site where the truck drivers came under attack
-    Three police were among those kidnapped.
-    Armed men abducted two more police and a civilian north of Al-Rutba.
-    In separate attacks in and around Fallujah, meanwhile, four people were killed, including two soldiers and a policemen, while three others were wounded.

- Gunmen ambushed a group of travelers at a fake checkpoint at a remote desert site in western Iraq on Wednesday June 5, 2013, and killed at least 14 of them. The gunmen, apparently looking for Shiites to kill, struck near the town of Nukhaib. The assailants manning the fake highway checkpoint checked the identities of travelers, presumably to identify their sect based on their names. Police said they found blood-stained IDs on the ground identifying some of the dead as coming from Karbala. The 14 victims were shot in the head. The dead included police and soldiers, as well as civilian residents of the overwhelmingly Shiite Karbala.

- Three bombings in Baghdad, including a car bomb in a market, killed five people Thursday June 6, 2013. Twin roadside bombs in southwest Baghdad killed three people, while a car bomb in a market in the capital’s southeast killed two others.

 

- A suicide bomber rammed his car into a bus carrying Iranian Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims in Iraq on Friday June 7, 2013, killing at least nine people; 27 were wounded in the attack likely carried out by Sunni Muslim insurgents trying to ignite sectarian conflict. In the attack in Muqdadiya the bomber targeted a convoy of three buses carrying Iranian pilgrims, who often visit Iraq's Shi'ite shrines in the south of the country.

- Five people have been killed by two car bombs. One of the bombs detonated in a Baghdad Shia neighbourhood and the other exploded close to an Iraqi police convoy. The first of the two attacks occurred on Saturday morning June 8, 2013, in a commercial street in the al-Ameen district, killing four people and wounding 18 others. Several shops were damaged in the attack. One policeman was killed and two others were wounded after a car bomb struck a police convoy in Mosul.

- Iraq Monday June 10, 2013:

• A wave of attacks mostly targeting security forces in Sunni areas of Iraq killed at least 73 people. The attacks wounded more than 250 people.
• No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bloodshed, but Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda have in the past launched coordinated nationwide bombings in a bid to undermine confidence in the security forces and the Shiite-led authorities.
• The deadliest violence hit the predominantly-Sunni Arab city of Mosul, with a series of five car bombings mostly targeting security forces killing at least 29 and wounding 80 others.
• Attacks near Saddam Hussein's birthplace of Owja, the town of Dour and in Taji -all predominantly Sunni areas- killed a further 13 people.
• 12 more people died in violence in the northern province of Kirkuk and the nearby towns of Tuz Khurmatu and Suleiman Bek.
• Blasts in the confessionally-mixed town of Madain and Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad killed six more people.
• Three near-simultaneous bombings in a mostly-Shiite town in restive Diyala province killed 13.

- The governor of Iraq’s northern Sunni-dominated province of Ninevah has escaped an assassination attempt that left two people killed and three others wounded. The Thursday night June 13, 2013, attack occurred when a car bomb went off next to the motorcade of Atheel al-Nujaifi in Mosul. The governor, the brother of parliament speaker Osmam al-Nujaifi, escaped unhurt but two civilian passers-by were killed.

- Gunmen have killed a provincial election candidate in a drive-by shooting. The attack on Muhanad Ghazi occurred Friday June 14, 2013 as he was walking home in the city of Mosul. Ghazi was running as a member of a party supported by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Ghazi was running as a member of a party supported by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

- A deadly rocket attack struck a camp near Baghdad housing Iranian exiles on Saturday June 15, 2013, killing two residents. It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack. A police colonel put the toll at three dead and 11 wounded from six mortar blasts. The official version is that two people were killed -one woman and one man- and more than 30 others wounded.

- Iraq Sunday June 16, 2013:

• A blistering string of apparently coordinated bombings and a shooting across Iraq killed at least 40 and wounded dozens. Most of Sunday’s car bombs hit Shiite-majority areas and caused most of the casualties. The blasts hit half a dozen cities and towns in the south and centre of the country.
• There was no claim of responsibility for any of the attacks, but they bore the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq.
• A parked car bomb exploded in the industrial area of the city of Kut, killing six people and wounding 15 others.
• Another car bomb outside Kut targeted construction workers. It killed five and wounded 12.
• In the oil-rich city of Basra in southern Iraq, a car bomb exploded on a busy downtown street. As police and rescuers rushed to the scene of the initial blast, a second car exploded. Six people were reported killed.
• A parked car bombs ripped through two neighbourhoods in the southern city of Nasiriyah killing two and wounding 19.
• In the Shiite holy city of Najaf a blast struck a produce market, killing eight and wounding 28.
• Blasts were also reported in the communities of Hillah, Mahmoudiya and Madain, all south of Baghdad, killing seven in total.
• In the northern city of Tuz Khormato, a roadside bomb targeted a passing police patrol, killing two policemen.
• In Mosul gunmen attacked police guarding a remote stretch of an oil pipeline, killing four and wounding five.

- A Shiite militia leader on Monday June 17, 2013, claimed responsibility for a rocket attack over the weekend that killed two members of an Iranian exile group near Baghdad. Saturday's attack on the sprawling Camp Liberty also killed an Iraqi and wounded nine Iranians and seven Iraqis. The group, the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, is the militant wing of a Paris-based Iranian opposition movement that opposes Iran's clerical regime and has carried out assassinations and bombings in Iran. Cleric Wathiq al-Batat, who leads the Mukhtar Army, said that a total of 18 rockets were fired at the camp. He vowed that his group will continue to attack the Iranians until they leave Iraq.

- Iraq Tuesday June 18, 2013:

• At least 31 people have been killed in a double suicide bomb attack at a Shia mosque in Baghdad. Close to 60 people were also wounded in the attack.
• Two bombers blew themselves up inside the mosque in the eastern al-Qahira district. The two suicide bombers shot dead the guards standing outside the Habib ibn Mathaher mosque shortly after midday prayers, and then blew themselves up inside the mosque.
• Tuesday's attack comes a day after bombings near Baghdad killed at least 10 people in the cities of Taji and Fallujah, and included a blast in a roadside restaurant.
• Two days ago, a string of bombings struck cities in southern, central and northern Iraq, but fewer people were killed in those attacks than in Tuesday's attack on the mosque.
• Last month was the bloodiest in Iraq since June 2008, with 1,045 civilians and security officials killed.

- A suicide bombing in northern Iraq on Wednesday June 2013, killed the leader of a provincial political party and four relatives on the eve of elections his bloc was to participate in. Yunus al-Ramah, head of the United Iraq party, had been hosting a social gathering at his home in the town of Al-Hadhr, in Nineveh province, when the attack took place. The suicide bomber targeted people gathering in Ramah's garden. Five people were killed -Ramah and four of his relatives- and six others wounded.

- Also on Wednesday June 19, 2013, bombings also killed eight youths near a football pitch in a town northeast of Baghdad. In Diyala province, back-to-back roadside bombs near a popular football pitch in Muqdadiyah killed eight youths. Another 25 people were wounded in the evening attack. The attack on Ramah came ahead of Thursday's elections in Nineveh and Anbar, two Sunni-majority provinces where polls had been delayed by officials over security concerns.

- Iraq Saturday June 22, 2013:

• A suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Shi'ite mosque in northern Baghdad killing at least 12 people during evening prayers in the deadliest of a series of attacks that claimed more than 30 lives across Iraq. A further 25 people were wounded in the attack, which took place in the Sab al-Bor district near Taji.
• Scattered attacks across the country throughout the day killed at least 22 others, around half of them in or near the northern city of Mosul, where a suicide bomber killed four people at a police checkpoint.
• In the western province of Anbar, which shares a border with Syria, militants detonated two car bombs near a checkpoint and attacked it with rocket-propelled grenades, killing five policemen.
• Two people were killed when gunmen hurled a hand grenade at a gathering of labourers in Tikrit.
• A roadside bomb near some restaurants in the centre of the capital killed two more.

- Iraq Sunday June 23, 2013:

• Three car bombs, including a suicide attack, a mortar round and a shooting killed at least seven people most of them in northern Iraq.
• In Riyadh, west of Kirkuk, three policemen were killed and 14 people were wounded when a suicide attacker set off a minibus rigged with explosives outside the police headquarters. Among the wounded were nine policemen, including local police chief Major Mundher Ahmed.
• Another person was killed and 27 were wounded by two car bombs targeting Shia Turkmen areas of Tuz Khurmatu.
• In central Baghdad a mortar round hit the Allawi neighbourhood, killing two people and wounding five.
• An off-duty soldier was gunned down by militants while he was in a barbershop in the main northern city of Mosul.

- Iraq Monday June 24, 2013:

• A series of evening bombings near markets in and around Baghdad and other blasts north of the capital have killed at least 42 people and wounded dozens of others. 
• One of the deadliest attacks came at night when two bombs placed near a market blew up less than a minute apart in Baghdad's mostly Shi'ite neighbourhood of Husseiniyah, killing 10 people and wounding 30 others. Police said the second bomb went off among a group of people who had gathered at the scene to help the victims of the first blast.
• Earlier two car bombs exploded within minutes on a commercial street in the mixed neighbourhood of Jihad in western Baghdad, killing nine people and wounding 21 othes.
• Four people were killed and nine others were wounded when a car bomb exploded near a line of shops in the Shi'ite-dominated area of al-Shurta al-Rabeaa.
• A car bomb exploded near a supermarket on a main commercial street in the Shi'ite Karrada neighbourhood, killing five people and wounding 16.
• A car bomb went off near an outdoor market in the Shi'ite suburb of Nahrawan, killing four civilians and wounding 15 others.
• Minutes later, a car bomb went off near a market in the Shi'ite-majority neighbourhood of New Baghdad with three people killed and 10 others wounded.
• A second car bomb hit a bus stop in the same neighbourhood, killing two people and wounding eight others.
• Two people were killed in a car explosion in the Christian-Shi'ite neighbourhood of Garage al-Amana in southeastern Baghdad.
• In Ninevah a suicide attacker rammed his explosives-laden car into an army patrol in the city of Mosul, killing a soldier and a police officer. Seven people, including two civilians, were wounded.
• A second bomber blew set off his explosive-rigged belt inside a university campus in the city of Tikrit, killing a police officer.

- Iraq Tuesday June 25, 2013:

• Demonstrators in an ethnically disputed northern city and a minibus carrying Shiite pilgrims to the holy city of Karbala were among the latest targets of Iraqi militants in a string of bombings that killed 20 people.
• At least one suicide bomber blew himself up near Turkomen protesters who had set up tents in the city of Tuz Khormato. The protesters were demanding tighter security for the community following a deadly car bombing Sunday. The bombing killed at least 11 people and wounded 42. Among those killed were two Turkmen leaders, Ahmed Abdel-Wahed and Ali Hashem Mukhtar Oglou.
• In another attack, five Shiite pilgrims were killed after their bus was struck south of Baghdad while it was traveling between the towns of Musayyib and Iskandariyah.
• Tens of thousands of Shiites are gathering in the holy city of Karbala for the annual festival of Shabaniyah marking the anniversary of the birth of the ninth-century Shiite leader known as the Hidden Imam.
• Earlier gunmen in a speeding car fired on a church in Baghdad’s southeastern al-Amin neighbourhood, wounding three guards.
• A bomb struck a teashop late the previous night in Mosul, killing four people and wounding 15.

- Iraq Friday June 28, 2013:

• Attacks targeting Iraqi police and anti-Al-Qaeda militiamen killed 15 people.
• The deadliest attack struck on the southern outskirts of Ramadi, capital of western Anbar province. Two explosions went off at around midday, the first being a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to the car of a Sahwa fighter.
• As onlookers gathered at the scene, another device detonated, a common tactic used by militants in Iraq to maximise the number of casualties.
• Overall, nine people were killed and 21 wounded. Most of the victims were Sahwa fighters.
• The Sahwa are a collection of Sunni tribal militias who turned against Al-Qaeda and joined forces with the US military from late-2006 onwards, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's bloody insurgency. They are paid by the government, and officials have pledged to integrate them into the civil service or security forces. But they are often targeted by Al-Qaeda-linked militants who regard them as traitors.
• A Sahwa officer was found dead south of Baghdad after being kidnapped a day earlier.
• One Sahwa fighter was killed and four others wounded in a shooting in Sharqat, north of Baghdad.
• A series of bombs near a bakery, at a funeral, inside a senior police officer's car and at a football stadium killed at least 22 people across Iraq.
• Twin blasts at a neighbourhood football stadium killed five players in Madaen.
• A roadside bomb near a bakery shop in the west of the capital left three people dead.
• A senior Iraqi police officer was killed when a bomb exploded inside his car and a second blast came five minutes later as police and bystanders gathered near the wreckage of the vehicle in the city of Ramadi in Anbar province. Ten people died in those blasts.
• A suicide bomber attacked a funeral in the mainly Shi'ite city of Dujail, killing at least four others.

- Iraq Saturday June 29, 2013:

• Bombs and a shooting targeted a marketplace and off-duty policemen in Iraq killing at least eleven people.
• The first bombing took place near an outdoor market in the morning in the capital’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing four people and wounding 12 others.
• Attackers using guns fitted with silencers killed three off-duty policemen in a drive-by shooting near Fallujah.
• A bomb went off at a cafe in the Fadhil area of downtown Baghdad as soccer fans were watching a match, killing four people and wounding 17 others.
• Dozens of soccer fans in Iraq have been killed during the past few days in attacks on cafes and a soccer field.

- Iraq Sunday June 30, 2013:

• A string of attacks across Iraq killed 15 people Sunday, including nine in a bombing at a football pitch
• Attacks on Sunday struck in Mosul, Dawr, Sharqat and Hilla, but the deadliest violence hit the capital.
• In the Nahrawan neighbourhood of southeast Baghdad, a bomb went off as a group of youths were playing football at a popular pitch. The blast killed nine and wounded 25 others. The victims were mostly boys under 16.
• Attacks outside the capital killed four people.
• Officials also found the bodies of two men who had been shot dead.

- The number of people killed in militant attacks across Iraq reached 761 in June 2013, lower than the multi-year high hit the previous month we were told on Monday July 1, 2013. Most casualties were civilian, with 131 policemen and 76 members of the Iraqi security forces also killed. The worst-affected region was Baghdad, where 258 people were killed and the death toll in Salahuddin, Diyala, Nineveh and Anbar provinces each exceeded 100.

- Iraq Monday July 1, 2013:

• Police discovered the bodies of eight former members of a government-backed Sunni militia who had been killed execution-style and dumped near the town Tarmiya.
• Three people were killed and another was injured in separate attacks in Mosul, some 400 km from Baghdad, a local police source said.
• In an incident, a man was killed and his brother injured when a roadside bomb targeting an army patrol exploded in Mosul's Algeria area.
• Unidentified gunmen stormed a power station in Mosul's al-Arbajiah area, killing one of the employees.
• Another armed attack on a checkpoint killed one soldier in the al-Najjar area of the city.
• In Hilla city a sticky bomb placed in a car exploded in the Jamiah district, killing the driver and wounding another person.
• A 17-year-old girl was killed by a roadside bomb near Dawr, north of Baghdad.
• A suicide bomber set off his explosives-rigged vest in the middle of a packed funeral for an Iraqi soldier being held in a husseiniyah, or Shiite religious hall. The blast in the town of Muqdadiyah killed 23 people and wounded 27.
• In Baquba, capital of Diyala province, another blast at a cafe in a Shiite neighbourhood killed 10 people and wounded 22.

- Iraq Tuesday July 2, 2013:

•  A wave of attacks, mostly targeting Shiite Muslims, including a spate of market bombings, killed 47 people.
• According to the UN more than 2,500 people died from April through June.
• The deadliest violence struck the capital, with several car bombs ripping through markets, mostly in Shiite areas of Baghdad, where 34 people were killed. Vehicles rigged with explosives went off minutes apart in packed shopping districts of the Shuala, Kamaliyah, Shaab, Hurriyah and Abu Tcheer neighbourhoods.
• Car bombs also went off in the predominantly Shiite southern cities of Basra, Amara and Samawa, killing a total of three people and wounding nearly 50 more.
• Shootings elsewhere in Baghdad killed four more people.
• Bombings in the cities of Abu Ghraib, Kirkuk, Baquba and Mosul killed six people and wounded 24.
• A car bomb was defused in Hilla, south of the capital.
• The violence came a day after a series of attacks north of Baghdad left 49 people dead, among them 23 people killed in a suicide bombing at a funeral in a Shiite religious hall.

- Iraq Wednesday July 3, 201:

• Attacks killed 14 people on Wednesday, the latest in a wave of bloodshed mostly targeting Shiite Muslims that has left 123 dead in the past three days amid fears the country is slipping back into all-out war.
• The surge in violence has also wounded more than 320 others.
• No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but Sunni militants linked to Al-Qaeda often target Shiites, whom they regard as apostates.
• A bomb went off in the Nahrawan area of southeast Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding at least 14 others.
• Elsewhere, two car bombs in Mosul killed four people.
• Other attacks around Iraq left three dead.
• Three militants were also killed in separate incidents.

- Iraq Friday July 5, 2013:

• A car bomb explosion has killed four civilians and wounded 6 others north of Baghdad. The explosives-laden vehicle was parked near a protest camp in the city of Samarra when it exploded.
• A bombing against a Shiite hall in Baghdad killed 15 people and 32 others were wounded. This deadly attack struck the Husseiniyah Ali Basha in the Graiat area of north Baghdad.
• Elsewhere bombs primarily targeting town squares killed eight people.
• In Samarra, a predominantly Sunni town north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near Al-Haq square. The attack took place just before mid-day Friday prayers near the Al-Razzaq mosque, killing seven people and wounding nine others. The bomber wore an army uniform.
• In the mostly Shiite town of Kut, south of Baghdad, a bomb set off in Al-Amil square killed one person and wounded 17 others.
• Two militants also died in the northern town of Hawijah when the bomb they were trying to plant unexpectedly went off.

- Bombings north of Baghdad on Saturday July 6, 2013, killed five people, including a police officer. A roadside bomb killed four people west of the northern city of Kirkuk, while another bomb in Tikrit killed a police officer and wounded two others.

- Iraq, Monday July 8, 2013:

• Attacks around Iraq have killed at least 21 people.
• The deadliest strike hit the town of Madain where a bomb exploded near a youth center, killing six civilians and wounding three.
• In Mosul, a car bomb exploded in a commercial area, killing one civilian and wounding five others.
•  Another parked car bomb explosion killed five civilians and wounded seven.
• Also in Mosul, three militant groups shot and killed a police officer, a provincial spokesman and a civilian in separate attacks.
• Late Sunday, gunmen stopped a family of a policeman while they were driving home from a wedding party in a remote area near the town of Musayyib, killing the policeman, his parents, wife and two young children. An 8-year child was wounded.

Iraq Monday July 8, 2013:

• Attacks around Iraq have killed at least 21 people.
•  The deadliest strike hit the town of Madaen, southeast of Baghdad, where a bomb exploded near a youth centre, killing six civilians and wounding three.
• In Mosul, two car bombs killed six civilians and wounded 12 others.
• Also in Mosul, militants shot and killed three people.
• Late Sunday, gunmen killed a family of six near Musayyib.

Iraq Thursday July 11, 2013:

• Insurgents launched two days of bloody assaults on security force posts in Iraq's restive Anbar province, killing at least 16 at the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
• The deadliest attack happened at sundown Wednesday as Iraqis were marking the end of the first day of Ramadan fasting. Gunmen launched their assault on the army checkpoint near the town of Barwana. Three soldiers were killed and four were wounded in that attack.
• The attackers then made their way to a trailer not far away that is used by special oil industry police assigned to protect a nearby pipeline. The gunmen shot up the trailer and then set it on fire before making their getaway. Eleven police were left dead.
• A police station in the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi came under attack by militants in the morning in an assault that left two policemen dead. Gunmen opened fire on the police station after a car bomb exploded nearby and the militants tried to ram their own explosives-laden car into the police post.#
• Militants clashed with security forces outside a police station in nearby Fallujah in an assault that included mortar rounds launched at the facility. At least two civilians and a police officer were wounded.
• A parked car bomb went off near a courthouse in the northern city of Tuz Khormato, wounding 30 people.
• Another parked car bomb exploded in a village outside the nearby ethnically disputed city of Kirkuk, wounding seven civilians.

Iraq Thursday July 11, 2013:

• Bombers and gunmen attacked policemen and a wake in Iraq among other targets, killing at least 44 people across the country.
• Gunmen opened fire on two checkpoints guarding oil installations on the road between Haditha and Baiji killing 11 people.
• In the town of Muqdadiya a further 11 people were killed when a car bomb exploded at a wake. As survivors gathered to evacuate the wounded, a suicide bomber blew himself up.
• In eastern Baghdad, a car bomb killed four people.
• Three roadside bombs targeted police patrols in the city of Tikrit, killing three policemen.
• In Mosul, three suicide car bombs targeted checkpoints killing four policemen.
• Earlier in the day, seven policemen were killed in attacks in the western province of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni heartland.
• 60 km southwest of Kirkuk, gunmen attacked a checkpoint, killing three members of a government-backed Sunni militia known as Sahwa.
• In Kirkuk itself, a roadside bomb killed a fourth Sahwa member.

Iraq Friday July 12, 2013:

• Attacks across Iraq killed at least 27 people with the deadliest incident a suicide bombing at a cafe in the north that killed 18.
• The suicide bomber struck in the city of Kirkuk as people thronged the streets after the iftar meal that breaks the fast during the holy month of Ramadan. At least 18 people were killed in the explosion and 28 wounded in the blast at the cafe in the Wahad Hozeran district. The attacker, wearing an explosives belt, blew himself up.
• The Kirkuk explosion came after attacks mainly targeting security forces killed nine people, including a police brigadier general, earlier on Friday.
• Gunmen shot dead Brigadier General Sabri Abed Issa on his way to a mosque near Sharqat, northwest of Baghdad.
• Other gunmen killed a retired policeman outside his home in Muqdadiyah, northeast of the capital.
• In Mosul, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a police checkpoint, killing four policemen and wounding two more.
• A magnetic "sticky bomb" also killed a civilian in Mosul.
• A roadside bomb south of the city killed a policeman and wounded another.
• A "sticky bomb" killed an anti-Al-Qaeda militiaman and wounded another person near Baquba.
• In Thursday's single worst incident, gunmen shot dead 11 police charged with protecting the country's vital oil infrastructure and three soldiers on the road between Haditha and Baiji.
• In another attack, a car bomb ripped through a funeral tent where family members of a Shiite man were receiving condolences in Muqdadiyah, northeast of Baghdad, and a suicide bomber detonated explosives when emergency personnel arrived.

Iraq Saturday July 13, 2013:

• Attacks in Iraq including bombings targeting a cafe and mourners killed at least 22 people.
• In the deadliest attack, a roadside bomb exploded near a cafe in the Dura area of south Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding at least 32.
• In the village of Zahra, north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near a funeral tent where family members of a deceased Shiite man were receiving condolences. Five people -one civilian and four police- were killed and 10 wounded in the blast.
• A roadside bomb in a Shiite area of Muqdadiyah killed two people and wounded five, while another exploded when people gathered at the scene, wounding four more.
• In Madain, south of Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting young men playing a game popular during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing two people and wounding at least seven.
• In Baquba, north of the capital, gunmen killed a shop owner.
• Other gunmen shot dead an army officer in the northern city of Mosul.
• Gunmen killed a soldier and wounded another in Kirkuk.
• Gunmen also crossed into western Iraq from Syria and clashed with border police, leaving one dead and five wounded.

Iraq Sunday July 14, 2013:

• A series of bombings across Iraq left at least 40 people dead and dozens wounded. In recent months Iraq has had its worst wave of violence in years. This month, more than 300 people have been killed.
• In Karbala, just before Muslims were breaking their Ramadan fast in the evening, a blast near a downtown market killed 9 people and wounded 22 others.
• Earlier in the day, 11 people were killed and 68 were wounded in Kut, southeast of Baghdad, when a bomb exploded while they were shopping in a market. When the provincial governor visited the site after the explosion, angry bystanders threw stones and shoes at him.
• In Babil, south of Baghdad, four people were killed when two car bombs exploded near a government office.
• In Nasiriya, southeast of the capital, a car bomb exploded close to a hotel, killing 2 people and wounding 12 others.
• In Falluja, west of Baghdad, two people walking near a cemetery were killed by unidentified gunmen using silencers.
• Two blasts killed four people and hurt seven in Basra, southeast of Baghdad.
• Eight people died in attacks in Mosul: a local official and his son, who struck a roadside bomb; four police officers, also killed by a roadside bomb; and two soldiers, who were shot at an army checkpoint.

 

Iraq Monday July 15, 2013:

• Attacks across Iraq killed nine people including a 10-year-old boy out swimming with friends.
• The deadliest attack was a mortar barrage near a group of people trying to escape the blistering summer heat by swimming in the Tigris River near Samarra. The shelling killed four people, including the boy, and 11 others were wounded.
• Other attacks and bombings in Kirkuk and just south of Baghdad killed five people.

Iraq Wednesday July 17, 2013:

• Attacks in Iraq targeting diners in two cafes and swimmers in a stream killed at least 10 people as violence surges during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. More than 2,800 people have been killed since the start of April.
• The deadlier of the two attacks took place late at night when a bomb went off inside a cafe packed with people in Mosul, killing five and wounding 14.
• Shortly before midnight, a bomb exploded inside a cafe in Baghdad’s northern neighbourhood of Azamiyah, killing one person and wounding six others.
• Hours earlier, police said a bomb exploded near a group of people who were swimming in a stream in Wajihiya killing two swimmers and two passers-by.
• Earlier this week, a mortar attack on swimmers in the Tigris River killed four people

Iraq Thursday July 18, 2013:

• Three farmers were among nine people killed in attacks.
• A magnetic "sticky bomb" killed a man and his wife, both farmers, in the Dujail area as they drove to work.
• Another farmer was shot dead by gunmen near Balad.
• Another four people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded as police arrived at the scene of the Balad attack.
• The deadliest attack, however, was when a roadside bomb killed three young men in the town of Wajihiyah, northeast of Baquba, the capital of Diyala province.
• Another bomb exploded south of Baghdad near an army checkpoint, killing two people and wounding at least five.
• Gunmen killed a woman in her home to the west of the north Iraq city of Kirkuk.
• The latest unrest brings the number of people killed in attacks in July to more than 430 and upwards of 2,690 since the beginning of the year.

A bomb ripped through a full Sunni mosque in central Iraq during midday prayers Friday July 19, 2013, killing at least 17 people. The attack struck while Iran's outgoing president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrapped up a two-day trip to Iraq with visits to the Shiite Muslim holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, south of the capital, Baghdad. There was no indication the mosque blast was related to his trips. The explosion hit the Abu Bakir Al Sidiq mosque in the town of Wijaihiya.

Iraq Saturday July 20, 2013:

• A coordinated wave of seven car bombs tore through bustling commercial streets in Shiite areas of Baghdad, part of a relentless wave of violence that killed at least 46 inside and outside the capital.
• The car bombs detonated after the iftar meal that breaks the daily fast of the holy month of Ramadan. Many people head out to shop or relax in coffee shops in the cooler evenings after fasting ends.
• Bombings and other attacks have now killed more than 250 people since the start of Ramadan on July 10.
• The blasts began with an explosion in a busy shopping street that shook buildings in the central Baghdad neighbourhood of Karrada. This attack killed nine and wounded 17, and left several shops and food stalls damaged.
• Similar car bombs struck the northwestern Tobchi district, killing eight and wounding 29.
• Also in Baiyaa in western Baghdad, an attack killed three and wounding 13.
• Another blast struck Zafaraniyah in southeastern Baghdad, killing six and wounding 15.
• Two separate car bombs exploded in the New Baghdad neighbourhood in the southeast, killing five people and wounding 17.
• Yet another car bomb exploded in a Shiite part of the religiously mixed western neighbourhood of Shurta, killing four and wounding 12.
• Hours before the Baghdad blasts, gunmen in pickup trucks shot and killed the local leader of a local Sunni militia opposed to al-Qaida and two of his bodyguards near the city of Baquba. The official, Bassem Mahmoud, headed a Sunni group known as Sahwa, which joined the fight against al-Qaida during the height of Iraq war.
• The day before a deadly bombing at a Sunni mosque in Diyala killed 22 people and wounded dozens.
• Another Sahwa member was killed along with four others when a bomb went off near his house in Madain. Four people were wounded in that attack.
• In the restive northern city of Mosul a suicide bomber blew himself up near a military post, killing one woman and wounding 25 people, many of them soldiers.
• Gunmen near the city also kidnapped three off-duty policemen and their driver, killing two of the men and seriously wounding the other two.

Iraq Monday July 22, 2013:

• Hundreds of inmates have escaped from two Iraqi prisons after gunmen stormed two jails near Baghdad. Fighting raged for several hours after the jails -Abu Ghraib to the west of the capital and Taji to the north- came under attack. Mortar fire and suicide bombs were used to gain access to the jails, whose inmates include al-Qaeda prisoners.
• At least 20 members of the security forces were killed as they struggled to regain control.
• About 500 prisoners had escaped from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Most of them were senior members of al-Qaeda who had been sentenced to death.
• Gunmen fired mortar rounds at the prisons, and then used car bombs at the entrances. The situation was eventually brought back under control on Monday morning, with the use of military helicopters.
• The attack against Taji jail was carried out by nine suicide bombers and three car bombs driven by suicide bombers. The attackers also lobbed more than 100 mortar shells.
• Two attacks on security forces in Mosul killed 33 people. A man drove a vehicle packed with explosives up to a military convoy. A group of soldiers and at least two passers-by were among the dead.
• A second attack was launched on a group of policemen, several of whom were killed when gunmen stormed their checkpoint.
• More than 200 people have been killed since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and 2,500 Iraqis have died in violent attacks since April.

Iraq Wednesday July 24, 2013:

• Insurgents assaulted a police headquarters in northern Iraq killing nine policemen as part of a series of attacks that left at least 14 dead.
• The attack took place in the town of Bashmaya outside the city of Mosul. Nine policemen were killed and two wounded in the initial attack.
• An ambulance rushing to the scene was hit by a roadside bomb, wounding the driver and his assistant.
• A car bomb exploded as an army patrol passed by outside Kirkuk, killing an officer and a solider. Five soldiers were wounded.
• In Baghdad, police found three bullet-ridden corpses across the city.
• In the northern city of Tuz Khormato a bomb hidden in a motorized cart exploded in a residential area, wounding 35 people and damaging several houses.

Armed men have opened fire on a police station in northern Iraq, killing nine police officers. Two other policemen were wounded in the assault south of the city of Mosul on Wednesday July 24, 2013. Police fired back but it is not clear whether any attackers were hurt. A roadside bomb targeted emergency personnel responding to the incident.

Iraq Thursday July 25, 2013:

• Militants have ambushed a truck convoy carrying Shiites in a remote area in northern Iraq killing 14 people. The attackers first fired mortar rounds at a nearby military base and bombed a communication tower to draw security forces' attention away before intercepting the convoy. All the casualties were Shiite truck drivers from Baghdad and their helpers. Their bodies were found with gunshots to the head. The attack happened near the city of Tuz Khormato.
• A bomb was detonated in Noufel cafe in Muqdadiyah, a town north of the capital, killing 16 people and leaving 20 injured.
• Elsewhere in Baghdad, a wedding party was interrupted by a deadly explosion that killed four people.
• Gunmen working singly shot down four young men.
• A roadside bomb in the town of Madeen killed three people.
• In Mosul a police officer was killed by militants, a child died in a roadside blast, and a civil worker was gunned down.

On Sunday July 28, 2013, a suicide bomber blew up his car in Tuz Khurmatu close to a three-vehicle police convoy and killed eight Kurdish police officers. The attack took place in the town of Tuz Khurmatu south of Kirkuk. Nine officers were also wounded.

Iraq Monday July 29, 2013:

• A wave of over a dozen car bombings hit central and southern Iraq during morning rush hour killing at least 51 people.
• The blasts, which wounded scores more, are part of a months-long surge of attacks that is reviving fears of a return to the widespread sectarian bloodshed that pushed the country to the brink of civil war after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
• Suicide attacks, car bombings and other violence have killed more than 3,000 people since April, including more than 500 since the start of July.
• A total of 12 parked car bombs hit markets and parking lots in predominantly Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad within one hour.
• The deadliest were in the eastern Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, where two separate explosions killed nine civilians and wounded 33 others.
• Ten other bombs around Baghdad, mostly Shiite-dominated suburbs as well as the town of Mahmoudiya killed 31 people.
• Back-to-back explosions by two parked car bombs in an outdoor market and near a gathering of construction workers killed seven civilians and wounded 35 others in the city of Kut.
• In Basra four other people were killed and five wounded when a parked car bomb ripped through a market.

Iraq, Tuesday July 30, 2013:

• Violence killed 22 people among them seven police as an Al-Qaeda front group claimed a wave of attacks that killed dozens the day before.
• Gunmen killed three police and wounded two in an attack on a checkpoint south of Baghdad.
• Bombings in Kirkuk province killed a policeman and a civilian, and wounded four people.
• Gunmen killed three more policemen in the northern city of Mosul.
• A bomb also exploded at a Sunni mosque in Tuz Khurmatu, north of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 15.
• Bombings in Baghdad province killed seven people and wounded 19.
• A bomb in a cafe in Baquba killed four people and wounded 16.

Iraq Wednesday July 31, 2013:

• Attacks killed nine people and wounded 19 as the country witnesses its deadliest violence since 2008.
• Gunmen killed five people and wounded eight in two attacks in Baghdad province.
• Two bombings in Kirkuk province wounded five soldiers and a policeman.
• Gunmen armed with automatic weapons shot dead two people near Baquba.
• A car bomb also wounded five people south of Tikrit.
• With the latest violence, more than 850 people have been killed in July, and more than 3,100 since the beginning of the year.

Iraq Saturday August 3, 2013:

• Gunmen shot dead a woman and her two daughters. The woman and her two adult daughters were killed in their home near Baquba. A Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda militiaman said the women may have been informants for the security forces.
• A roadside bomb killed a man and his son.
• Nine died in other attacks.
• Gunmen also killed two brothers who were former Sahwa members near Baquba, where a bomb in the city killed one person and wounded five. Sunni militants consider Sahwa militiamen, who joined forces with the United States from late 2006, helping to turn the tide of the war, to be traitors and frequently attack them.
• In Tikrit a roadside bombing killed a man and his 11-year-old son as they walked in the city centre.
• Gunmen also killed a judge's two bodyguards in the northern province of Nineveh. The judge was not with the guards when they were killed.
• Militants attacked a police checkpoint with automatic weapons, killing a policeman.
• An explosion near a market in Baghdad and another on a main road killed three people and wounded 10.
• A top Iraqi army officer said he survived a bombing that killed nine soldiers during an operation against Al-Qaeda militants north of Baghdad.

Iraq Sunday August 4, 2013:

• A series of attacks across Iraq killed 15 people, including a random shooting and the killing of a judge.
• The deadliest attack took place late Sunday night when gunmen in a speeding car opened fire randomly on a gathering of people on a street in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, killing four people and wounding three.
• A bomb exploded inside a cafe in western Baghdad killing three and wounding 12, police said.
• A roadside bomb struck an army patrol near the northern city of Mosul, killing three soldiers.
• In Tikrit a car bomb killed Judge Sajid Abdul-Amir as he was driving to his work.
• In eastern Baghdad, two people were killed in a blast.
• Mortar rounds landed on houses in the capital’s western suburbs, killing two people.
• A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives blew himself up near a Kurdish security forces patrol killing at least eight of them. The attack took place in Tuz Khurmato.

Iraq Monday August 5, 2013:

• The deadliest attack took place as people lined up in the afternoon to buy bread from a bakery in the mainly Shiite area of Kamaliyah in eastern Baghdad. Four people died and 14 were wounded in that attack.
• A car bomb exploded in a busy street in the town of Tal Afar killing three people and wounding 12 others.
• Gunmen shot and killed the owner of a neighbourhood power generator along with his son in the town of Madian.
• Iraqi security forces killed 11 people suspected of being militants and arrested dozens of others in a large military-led operation north of Baghdad.

Iraq, Tuesday August 6, 2013:

• A series of bombings across Baghdad were the deadliest in a spate of nationwide attacks that killed 47 people on Tuesday.
• At least eight car bombs and several roadside bombs struck the capital just before Iraqis broke their daytime Ramadan fast.
• In Baghdad, bombings hit a variety of targets including shops and a market, in mainly Sunni and mainly Shiite districts as well as confessionally mixed neighbourhoods. In all, 31 people were killed and 120 wounded.
• In the central commercial district of Karrada, a car bomb killed five people and badly damaged store fronts and a nearby vehicle.
• Ten other people were killed by a late night car bomb that ripped through a packed commercial street just north of Baquba.
• Elsewhere in Iraq six people were killed.
• Gunmen stormed the home of a policeman's sister to the south of the northern city of Mosul, took him outside, and executed him.
• Shootings and bombings in Fallujah and Khanaqin left three others dead.
• In Diyala, north of the capital, security forces killed two militants driving explosives-laden vehicles.

An Al-Qaeda inmate who escaped from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison led militants who killed his own brother and 10 others we were told on Thursday August 8, 2013. The attack was the first attributed to one of more than 500 former prisoners, including senior Al-Qaeda members, who escaped last month in a major security breach that analysts say may bolster militant groups. On Wednesday night, a group of militants went to the house of a policeman in Tikrit took him into the garden and executed him. The policeman's brother, an Al-Qaeda member whose name was not given, led the group of killers, apparently in revenge for being informing on. The militants then bombed the house and left a car bomb at the scene which exploded after a crowd of people arrived, killing 10 and wounding 58. A file indicated the policeman had informed on his brother, who was arrested three years ago for multiple bombings and killings and given two death sentences, but who escaped during a mass breakout in July.

Iraq Wednesday August 7, 2013:

• Attacks including a shooting and bombings at a policeman's home killed 17 people.
• The deadliest attack hit Tikrit where militants armed with automatic weapons shot dead a policeman at his home, then set off a bomb to draw people to the scene. When people arrived, a car bomb exploded, killing at least nine people and wounding at least 35.
• Near Dhuluiyah, also north of Baghdad, a bomb killed three more policemen and wounded a fourth.
• A magnetic "sticky bomb" on a bus killed one person and wounded two in the Mussayib area, south of the capital.
• Another bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul, killing a young girl.
• Police killed two militants attempting to plant a bomb.
• Other attacks, including a car bomb that exploded near a Kurdish political party office in Kirkuk, wounded dozens more.

Iraq Saturday August 10, 2013:

• A wave of car bombings targeting those celebrating the end of Ramadan across Iraq killed 69 people. This year's Ramadan was the most violence since 2007, with 671 people killed.
• Many of the attacks occurred within an hour of each other, suggesting a level of coordination in the assaults. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though security forces and civilians are frequently targeted by al Qaeda's Iraq branch.
• The deadliest of the attacks took place when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a residential area in the town of Tuz Khormato, killing eight people and wounding dozens.
• A car bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Baghdad's southeastern suburbs of Jisr Diyala shortly before sunset, killing seven people and wounding 20.
• Also in southeastern Baghdad a car bomb went off inside a parking lot in the mainly Shiite New Baghdad neighbourhood, killing three people.
• Another car bomb exploded in a busy street in the Shiite neighbourhood of Amil, killing three people and wounding 14.
• Another car bomb in Amil killed 3 people and wounded 14.
• In the holy Shiite city of Karbala four people were killed in a car bomb attack near a cafe at night.
• Four people were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a cafe in Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Abu Dashir.
• In northern Baghdad, a car bomb hit a restaurant in the Shiite area of Khazimiyah, killing five people and wounding 14.
• Five people were killed when a car bomb exploded near a cafe in Baghdad's southwestern neighbourhood of Baiyaa.
• Six people were killed and 15 were wounded in a car bomb explosion in the Shiite neighbourhood of Shaab in northeastern Baghdad.
• A car bomb hit near restaurant in the city's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing seven people and wounding 15.
• A car bomb explosion in a commercial street in the Dora area in southern Baghdad killed five and wounded 15.
• Earlier four people, including two children, were killed when a bomb exploded near a park just south of Baghdad.
• Later, a car bomb exploded in a busy street in Nasiriyah city in southern Iraq, killing four people and wounding 41 others.
• In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a car bomb hit near a Shiite mosque, killing one person and wounding 20 others.

Iraq Sunday August 11, 2013:

• Seven people were killed and 15 wounded in separate shooting and bombing incidents.
• Three members of an anti-terrorism force were killed and six others wounded late Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy in Mahaweel.
• A soldier was killed in front of his house by gunmen in Shirqat city.
• In Diyala province, two government-backed Sahwa group fighters were killed and two others wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in Buhruz south of the provincial capital city of Baquba.
• In another incident, a police explosive expert was killed and two policemen were wounded while the expert was trying to defuse an improvised explosive device in Maqdadiyah city.
• Two policemen and three civilians were also wounded in separate roadside bomb attacks.

Iraq Monday August 12, 2013:

• Bombers killed 24 people on this day alone.
• A suicide bomber struck a cafe in the town of Balad killing 16 people also wounding more than 35.
• In Muqdadiyah a bomb exploded near a football field, killing four people and wounding 14, among them three children.
• In the nearby Diyala provincial capital Baquba, a bomb exploded in a market, killing four people and wounding 20.
• The attacks came a day after Al-Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed attacks that killed more than 70 people on Saturday.

Iraq Tuesday August 13, 2013:

• Attacks in Iraq killed 13 people while militants bombed a major oil pipeline, halting exports.
• In the deadliest attack a car bomb exploded after midday prayers at Al-Zahraa husseiniyah, a Shiite place of worship south of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 14.
• In the northern province of Kirkuk, another car bomb killed three police.
• Bombings also killed a soldier, a Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda fighter and two civilians in Salaheddin province, north of the capital.
• In Nineveh province, also in north Iraq, gunmen shot dead a former soldier and a civilian.
• Militants also bombed a major pipeline carrying oil from northern Iraq to Turkey, near the town of Albu Jahash in Nineveh province.

Iraq Thursday August 15, 2013:

• A series of car bombs in Baghdad killed at least 33 people and wounded more than 100 with one attack close to the green zone diplomatic complex. The attacks targeted districts in central, eastern, northern and southern Baghdad, including Shia areas.
• One bomb exploded outside Baghdad's international zone, close to Iraq's foreign ministry, killing four and wounding 12 people.
• An attack in Baladiyat, east Baghdad, killed five people and wounded 17 when a car bomb exploded near a traffic police station.
• Another attack in al-Shurta al-Rabaa district used a bomb on the trailer of a tractor carrying gas cylinders. It killed four and wounded 18.
• In Husseiniya, a district on the north-east outskirts of Baghdad, three people were killed and fourteen wounded when a mini bus driver left his vehicle armed with a bomb in a repair shop.

Iraq Saturday August 17, 2013:

• A truck bomb exploded at Iraq's main commodities port near the oil-exporting southern city of Basra, wounding four people but shipping traffic at the Umm Qasr docks was not affected.
• Gunmen killed four policemen and three soldiers.
• A senior Al-Qaeda-linked militant was killed according to the Iraqi government.
• In the deadliest attack, gunmen killed four police, who were buying ice near Tikrit.
• Gunmen killed three soldiers in an attack on a patrol in Muqdadiyah area of Diyala province.
• A bomb attack halted the flow of crude oil through a pipeline running from Kirkuk oil fields to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey on Friday. The attack took place near the al-Shura area. Repair work would be complete in around 48 hours.
• Gunmen killed 12 Iraqi policemen and soldiers. Gunmen opened fire on an army post in the town of Madain in a pre-dawn strike that left five soldiers dead and three others wounded. Among the dead was a lieutenant colonel.
• North of Baghdad, militants shot dead four police who were buying ice near the city of Tikrit.

On Monday August 19, 2013, seven people were killed in different attacks in and outside the northern city of Mosul. Six of them were civilians who were killed in shootings and bomb attacks, while the seventh was a policeman killed when a bomb hit his convoy.

Attacks on Monday August 19, 2013, killed six people. These attacks were concentrated in Mosul. Three workers in a carpentry shop were shot dead by militants, while two policemen were gunned down in a predawn attack on a checkpoint. Gunmen also killed a man from the small Kurdish sect known as Shabak outside his house in Mosul. The 30,000-strong Shabak community is present in 35 villages in Nineveh province near the border with Turkey, with many members wanting to join the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq. The Shabak people speak a distinct language and largely follow a faith that is a blend of Shiite Islam and local beliefs.

Iraq Tuesday August 20, 2013:

• Violence killed 35 people including 15 civilians. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed to press ahead with operations to try to stem the bloodshed, which has claimed more than 3,500 lives already this year.
• Six car bombs south of the capital killed six civilians and a policeman and wounded 98 people. Two car bombs hit a bus and taxi station in Amara. Two more hit near Hilla, while the others struck in Nasiriyah.
• Another bomb struck a cafe in a village north of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 15 others.
• Two separate bombings at a livestock market and a police station north of Baghdad killed three people, including a policeman, and wounded nine others.
• Gunmen also killed two senior police officers and a civilian in the country's north, while a magnetic "sticky bomb" exploded on a university employee's car, killing him.
• Sixteen militants were killed north of the capital. Nine died and four were wounded in an apparent dispute between two militant groups, when a bomb targeting a vehicle exploded south of the ethnically-divided northern oil hub of Kirkuk. The slain militants were Al-Qaeda loyalists and included one Kurd and a Turkmen. Seven other militants were killed by security forces north of Baghdad in two separate clashes.
• Security forces arrested 116 militants, including dozens of Al-Qaeda-linked fighters, destroyed six of their vehicles, two training camps and a site where car bombs were being made.

Iraq Thursday August 22, 2013:

• Insurgent attacks across Iraq killed at least 24 people.
• A suicide bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives to a military headquarters in western Iraq and blew himself up outside it on Thursday, killing at least 14 people. The attack took place near the city of Ramadi. Most of the victims were soldiers.
• In an attack southeast of Baghdad, gunmen shot dead three government-backed militiamen and wounded another two in Madaen.
• In Mosul, gunmen attacked a military checkpoint and shot dead two soldiers.
• Another group of gunmen shot dead two women in the west of the city.
• A Sunni sheikh was killed by a bomb planted on his car.
• A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a wedding party for a Shiite family, killing nine people and wounding 27 in Dujail.

Iraq Friday August 23, 2013:

• A suicide bomber has attacked a crowded park in northern Baghdad. The suicide bomber struck a park in the Qahira neighbourhood of Baghdad. The bomber detonated his explosives in a crowd of people, killing at least 26 people and wounding 55.
• Later in the night, gunmen in Baghdad's northern Azamiyah neighbourhood killed four men walking down a street.
• Elsewhere in the country gunmen broke into a house of a Shiite merchant in Dujail, killing him, his wife and elderly mother.
• Bombs exploded near Sunni mosques in two neighbourhoods in Baghdad as worshippers were leaving after Friday's sermon, killing three people and wounding 18.

Iraq Sunday August 25, 2013:

• At least 46 people were killed across Iraq, including five soldiers who were shot dead by gunmen who then burned their bodies.
• In the biggest attack suspected militants ambushed two taxis carrying soldiers in Qaiyara town. One of the cars escaped the ambush but the second one could not and the militants shot dead five soldiers and burned their bodies after they killed them.
• Seven people were also killed and 28 others were injured in two separate explosions in Madaen and in a Shi'ite district of the Iraqi capital.
• Another two explosions took place in commercial areas in western and eastern Baghdad, killing three people and wounding another ten.
• Three people died and 15 were wounded when a car bomb exploded in Balad.
• Two people were shot dead near their homes in eastern Mosul.
• Roadside bombs also killed two members of a displaced Shi'ite family who had recently returned to their home. The attack wounded nine others in central Baquba.
• On Friday, a suicide bomber killed 25 people and wounded more than 50 in Baghdad when he detonated his explosives inside a busy cafe near a park.
• In Mosul, other gunmen in a speeding car shot and killed a grocer. The grocer was a member of the Shabak ethnic group, which has its own distinct language and religious beliefs.
• A car bomb exploded as a judge drove past in the northern town of Balad, killing three nurses and a man who had been walking nearby. Thirteen other people were wounded, including the judge, his brother and a driver.
• A bomb exploded near a police officer’s house in Baquba, killing his 8-year old son and wounding 11 other people. The police officer was unharmed. Later in the day, a parked car bomb went off in a residential area in the city, killing seven and wounding 34. Yet another bomb exploded next to a wedding party convoy, killing four and wounding 17.
• Three civilians were killed and six wounded when a bomb attached to a car exploded while passing through the capital’s eastern Zayona neighbourhood. Another bomb went off in a commercial area in the western Ghazaliya area, killing two people and wounding seven others, officials said.
• A bomb tore through a coffee shop, killing eight and injuring 27 in Baghdad’s northern Shaab neighbourhood.

Iraq Wednesday August 28, 2013:

• More than a dozen bomb blasts ripped through Shiite districts in and around Baghdad. Overall, violence in Baghdad and towns just south of the capital left 57 dead, while four others were killed in attacks in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. More than 190 people were wounded nationwide.
• The deadliest attack struck in the Jisr al-Diyala neighbourhood of southeast Baghdad, with at least nine people killed and 27 others wounded in twin bombings. After the blast, local residents ran down a man suspected of planting the second car bomb, stabbed him to death, set his corpse on fire and hung it from a lamppost.
• Another car bomb in the Baghdad Jadidah area left three dead, also badly damaging nearby cars and shopfronts.
• Further blasts went off in other major Shiite neighbourhoods including Sadr City, while five members of a Shiite family were shot dead in their home south of the capital.
• More than 600 people have already been killed so far this month.
• The northern neighbourhood of Kazimiyah, home to a prominent Shiite shrine, was among the worst hit. Two bombs went off in a parking lot, followed by a suicide car bomber who struck onlookers who had gathered at the scene. The attack killed 10 people and wounded 27.
• In one particularly brutal attack, a Shiite family was shot dead at home in the largely Sunni town of Latifiyah. Four children, ages eight to 16, were killed along with their parents and an uncle.

Iraq Thursday August 29, 2013:

• A bomb hidden inside a pickup truck loaded with vegetables exploded in a market in Samarra killed 18 and wounded 32 people in Iraq.
• Another car bomb went off in Abu Ghraib killing six and wounding 15. Abu Ghraib is the site of the prison made infamous by prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel following the 2003 invasion.

Iraq, Friday August 30, 2013:

• Friday’s deadliest attack struck after nightfall in a Kurdish neighbourhood in the ethnically mixed town of Tuz Khormato. Insurgents there set off a non-lethal stun bomb apparently designed to attract a crowd before detonating a real bomb that killed 12 and wounded 10.
• Gunman on a speeding motorbike opened fire on Sunni worshippers as they were heading to a mosque to perform Friday prayer in the Sunni neighbourhood of Adel in western Baghdad, killing two worshippers and wounding two others.
• Five more people killed and eight wounded in attacks in Baghdad the previous night.

A total of 804 Iraqis were killed and another 2,030 wounded in violence and acts of terrorism in August, the U.N. said Sunday September 1, 2013. The capital Baghdad was the worst affected. July was the deadliest month in Iraq. According to figures released by the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, 1,057 Iraqis were killed and another 2,326 were wounded in acts of terrorism and violence in July.

Deadly violence erupted at a contentious Iranian exile camp inside Iraq early Sunday September 1, 2013, leaving international observers scrambling to determine the cause of the bloodshed and the number of casualties. The dissidents alleged that more than 50 were killed and accused the Iraqi government. Baghdad said an internal dispute was to blame.

Iraq’s prime minister ordered an investigation Monday September 2, 2013, into the slaying of half of the roughly 100 remaining residents at an Iranian dissident camp north of Baghdad. A special committee is being set up to investigate what happened at the camp.

Iraq Wednesday September 4, 2013:

• Attacks around Baghdad killed 18 members of a Shiite family on Wednesday September 4, 2013, the latest bloodshed in a nationwide surge of violence.
• The unrest came a day after a wave of bombings targeting Shiites in Baghdad and shootings and bombings elsewhere killed 61 people. The violence struck towns on the outskirts of Baghdad as well as predominantly Sunni cities in the north of the country, with the deadliest attack hitting south of the capital.
• A senior aide to Izzat al-Duri, the highest-ranking member of executed dictator Saddam Hussein's regime still on the run has been arrested.
• Militants bombed adjacent houses belonging to Shiite Muslim brothers in the town of Latifiyah. A total of 18 people were killed, including five women and six children, and a dozen others were wounded.
• Last week, another attack on a Shiite family in the same town killed at least five people.
• Separate attacks in Besmaya, Iskandiriyah and Tarmiyah, also on Baghdad's outskirts, killed nine people, including seven soldiers.
• A shooting and bombings in three Sunni-majority cities north of the capital killed eight people, including five policemen who died in a suicide car bombing against a police station in Mosul.
• A car bomb attack took place at the Karrada neighbourhood of Baghdad.

Iraq Monday September 9, 2013:

• Twin bombings near an oil refinery north of Baghdad were among a series of attacks that killed eight people.
• The attacks came days after an Al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for a recent spate of car bombs that struck the capital last week, killing 50.
• Two near-simultaneous roadside bombs went off along a main road near the Baiji oil refinery, which lies within Salaheddin province north of Baghdad, leaving two people dead and three wounded.
• Gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint near Tikrit, also in Salaheddin, killing three policemen.
• Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left three people dead, including an alleged militant linked to Al-Qaeda, in Baghdad and north of the capital.

Iraq Tuesday September 10, 2013:

• A new wave of bombings and a shooting killed at least 24 civilians.
• The deadliest attack took place in the town of Youssifiyah when gunmen stormed a house and shot dead two women and four men as they were ritually cleansing the body of a Sunni man ahead of his funeral.
•  In the nearby town of Latifiyah, a bomb hidden inside a coffee shop killed four and wounded 14.
• Near Baqouba, three car bombs targeting outdoor markets killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 34.
• In the capital, shortly before sunset, a bomb exploded near a soccer field in the southeastern Shiite-majority suburb of Nahrwan, killing three people and wounding 14 others.
• In Mosul one person was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car exploded.
• Authorities unexpectedly shut Mosul’s airport, but they gave differing accounts of why: maintenance reasons, unspecified technical matters or security reasons.

Iraq Wednesday September 11, 2013:

• A suicide bombing against a Shiite mosque as worshippers streamed out was the bloodiest of attacks that left at least 39 people dead. Dozens were wounded in the violence, and locals exacted a grim revenge on one man suspected of being a second attacker in the mosque bombing.
• The worst violence struck the confessionally mixed north Baghdad neighbourhood of Waziriyah, where a suicide bomber blew himself up at a mosque as worshippers were exiting following evening prayers.
• At least 30 people were killed and 55 others wounded. Several nearby shop fronts were also badly damaged by the blast.
• Immediately after the bombing, locals spotted a man they suspected was about to blow himself up as well, and gunned him down before setting his corpse ablaze.
• Violence elsewhere in the country killed nine people, including four in the northern province of Nineveh.
• In three separate attacks in the province, which remains one of Iraq's least stable, gunmen killed three people, among them a school principal who was shot dead at his house.
• In Mosul, a magnetic "sticky bomb" attached to a car killed another person.
• Three attacks in and around the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk left two dead, including a senior security official. A Sunni anti-Qaeda militiaman escaped assassination.
• A sticky bomb killed one person in south Baghdad.
• Another died in a roadside bombing in a town on the capital's southern outskirts.
• A gunman on a motorcycle killed a Sunni imam near the southern port city of Basra.

At least 30 people have been killed and 25 wounded in a bomb attack on a Sunni mosque on the outskirts of Baquba. Two bombs were detonated as worshippers left the al-Salam mosque after Friday prayers in the village of Umm al-Adham. In Friday September 13, 2013's attack, the bombs exploded outside the mosque in Umm al-Adham in quick succession. The first device targeted worshippers leaving the building, while the second was detonated as a crowd gathered at the scene to help. Both Sunnis and Shia had attended Friday prayers at the mosque.

On Friday September 13, 2013, a bomb exploded inside a Sunni mosque that was full of worshipers in the village of Umm al-Adham on the outskirts of Baquba. The blast killed 30 people and wounded at least 45. The bomb had been hidden inside a window air-conditioner.

A suicide attack north of Mosul on Saturday killed at least 36 people and wounded 48 others. The bomber, wearing an explosive vest, blew himself up at a funeral of a member of the Shabak, an ethnic minority group. The Shabak people are Muslims, and 65% of them are Shiite, with the remaining 35% Sunni. The attack took place in Baashiqa, whose majority is Shiite Shabak. The Shabak people number about 250,000 in Nineveh province and have their own language, Shabaki, as well as style of dress.

Iraq Sunday September 15, 2013:

• Car and roadside bombs in Baghdad and predominantly Shi'ite provinces of Iraq killed at least 21 people.
• The deadliest attacks were in the city of Hilla, where two parked car bombs exploded simultaneously near a busy market and a third blew up near a vehicle repair workshop killing nine people.
• Another explosion took place in the oil-exporting southern city of Basra, where a car bomb blew up near another vehicle repair workshop killing five people.
• In the capital, three security personnel were killed when a car bomb exploded near the convoy of the deputy head of Baghdad provincial council.
• Two more were killed in a roadside bomb blast near a commercial street in a western district.
• About 800 Iraqis were killed in August with more than a third of the deadly attacks happening in Baghdad.
• In Iskandariya a car bomb hit a parking lot, killing four civilians and wounding nine.
• Another bomb went off in an industrial area of Karbala, killing at least four.
• Another nine died in and around Kut, another Shia-dominated city
• In Baghdad three security personnel were killed when a car bomb exploded near the convoy of the head of provincial council official in the Sunni-dominated Azamiya district.
• Two more civilians were killed when a bomb hit a police patrol in Baghdad's western suburbs.

Iraq Monday September 16, 2013:

• Violence in Iraq killed 11 people as an army official escaped an assassination attempt. Monday's blasts and shootings mostly struck areas north of the capital and came a day after nationwide attacks which killed 60 people.
• In the deadliest new attack, a roadside bombing targeting an army patrol in the northern city of Mosul killed four soldiers.
• Also in Mosul, a suicide bomber blew himself up at an army checkpoint, killing a soldier and wounding 10 others, among them the provincial army intelligence chief Brigadier General Ismail al-Juburi.
• Separate shootings in the city left two others dead.
• And in Muqdadiyah, a town north of Baghdad, militants stormed a Shiite shrine and captured a family inside. They separated two of them, a father and a son, and killed them before bombing the shrine. Both the victims were employees of the shrine.
• And in the predominantly-Shiite southern port city of Basra, gunmen killed two Sunnis in separate attacks prompting a senior Sunni leader to suspend prayers until further notice.

Iraq Tuesday September 17, 2013:

• As many as 49 people were killed and 148 wounded in various attacks across Iraq including a wave of bombing in the capital city.
• Eight people were killed and 20 others wounded when a car bomb exploded in Baghdad’s Husseiniya area.
• Six people were killed and 18 wounded when two car bombs exploded in the Sadr City.
• Another car bomb in the city’s Zaffaranya area killed six people and wounded 11 others.
• Four people were killed and 16 wounded, when a car bomb went off at Naser Square in central Baghdad.
• Three people were killed and 18 wounded when two car bombs struck the Bataweein area in central Baghdad.
• Two people were killed and 14 wounded when a car bomb exploded in the city’s Amel district.
• A car bomb in the Saedea area in southwestern Baghdad killed one person and wounded 13 others.
• In Fallujah city three policemen and four gunmen were killed and 12 policemen injured when unidentified gunmen attacked a police station.
• Earlier in the day, six people were killed and 13 wounded in separate bombings and shootings in central Iraq.
• A civilian was killed and seven were wounded when a roadside bomb ripped through Tarmiya area.
• Two policemen were killed and two wounded in a mortar barrage on a police station in Mashahdah area.
• In Baghdad, Ali Ahmed Kamel, a senior official in the governorate, was shot dead when gunmen using silenced weapons opened fire on his car in Baghdad’s Shaab district.
• A policeman was killed and a civilian wounded in a shootout between some gunmen and a police force in Fallujah city.
• In Diyala province, an army force exchanged fire with a gunman and shot him dead in the Maqdadiyah city.
• Also in the province, three soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in al-Udhaim area.

Iraq Wednesday September 18, 2013:

• Three car bombings killed at least six people and wounded 45.
• Two car bombs exploded in central Baghdad, killing four and wounding 15.
• In Tuz Khurmatu on the edge of Iraqi Kurdistan two people were killed and 30 wounded when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle.
• In Mosul four soldiers were wounded in another explosion.

Two bombs exploded in a Sunni mosque as worshippers entered for prayers on Friday September 20, 2013, killing 16 people. The bombs, which hit the Musab bin Omair mosque near Samarra also wounded 15 people. The blasts came a day after the bodies of 10 young men who had been shot dead were found in Baghdad.

Iraq Saturday September 21, 2013:

• A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car near a funeral tent packed with mourners and another bomber on foot blew himself up nearby in a Shiite part of Baghdad the deadliest assault in a day of attacks that claimed at least 65 lives in Iraq. The attack happened in the densely populated Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad. At least 54 people were killed and more than 70 were wounded. One bomber was able to drive up near the tent before detonating his deadly payload, and another on foot blew himself up nearby.
• The attack happened hours after insurgents launched a suicide attack on a police headquarters in the city of Beiji, killing seven policemen and wounding 21 others. Four suicide bombers stormed a base for police commandos. Guards managed to kill one suicide bomber, but the three other bombers were able to set off their explosive belts inside the compound. Most of the members of the commando unit were not in the compound at the time of the attack because they were carrying out a security operation outside the city. Casualty figures would have been higher had they been inside.
• Gunmen shot and killed two prison guards after storming their houses in a village near the city of Mosul.
• Also in Mosul, two soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their convoy.

 

Iraq Saturday September 21, 2013:

• Two suicide bombers, one in an explosives-laden car and the other on foot, struck a cluster of funeral tents packed with mourning families in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, the deadliest in a string of attacks around Iraq that killed at least 96 people.
• The attack on the funeral happened shortly before sunset in the densely populated Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad. At least 72 people were killed and more than 120 were wounded in that attack. One bomber was able to drive up near the tent before detonating his deadly payload, and another on foot blew himself up nearby.
• Another car bomb blast struck a commercial street in the nearby Ur neighborhood, killing nine people and wounding 14.
• Gunmen later shot up a shop that has been discretely selling liquor in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, killing four people.
• Insurgents launched a suicide attack on a police commando headquarters in the city of Beiji. Guards managed to kill one suicide bomber, but the three others were able to set off their explosive belts inside the compound, killing seven policemen and wounding 21 others.
• In other violence, gunmen shot and killed two prison guards after storming their houses in a village near Mosul.
• Two soldiers were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their convoy in Mosul.

 

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt among Sunni mourners attending a funeral in Baghdad on Sunday September 22, 2013, killing 16 people and wounding 35 others. The evening attack took place when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt inside a tent where the funeral was being held in Baghdad's southern neighborhood of Dora. Two other attacks in the country's north left two policemen dead and 37 others wounded.

Afghanistan Monday September 23, 2013:

• An overnight Taliban assault on a border post near the border with Pakistan in southern Afghanistan left 11 police officers dead.
• In the north of the country gunmen assassinated a district intelligence chief on his way to work. The attack took place late Sunday night in the Shorabak district of Kandahar province.
• Two Romanian soldiers serving with the NATO coalition died in a roadside bombing in the east. They died after stepping on a bomb during a patrol in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday. The two were transported by helicopter to a military hospital near Kabul where they died of their injuries later in the day.
• In the latest ambush, gunmen sprayed official Abdul Hussain with bullets as he was riding on his motorcycle near the city of Kunduz. Hussain, who was heading to his work in Chardara district, died of his wounds.

 

Iraq Tuesday September 24, 2013:

• At least 12 people, mostly police, died and another 17 agents were wounded in several attacks in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.
• A car bomb exploded at a checkpoint near the mayor's residence in the town of Ana, followed by an armed attack on his home. The explosion and attacks killed four policemen and the mayor's brother, while wounding four cops. Four of the armed men who took part in the clashes also died and their bodies were taken to a forensic center for identification.
• In another incident, a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle right inside the Ana police station, killing two officers and injuring another three, as well as causing material damage.
• Four mortar shells hit the police station in the city of Rawa near Ana, leaving one police officer dead and seven wounded.
• A high security official of Anbar, Ziad Tariq, emerged unhurt from an assassination attempt after a roadside bomb blew up when his convoy drove over it near the city of Ramadi. Three of his bodyguards were injured in the attack and one of the vehicles in the convoy was destroyed.

Iraq Thursday September 26, 2013:

• Bombs ripped through outdoor markets in and near Baghdad killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens.
• Three bombs went off simultaneously in the Shiite village of Sabaa al-Bour. The explosions —two at the market entrance and one inside the shopping area— went off as the place was packed with shoppers, killing 16 people and wounding 41 there. Three women and two children were among those killed.
• Earlier, a bomb blast hit the Athorien market in Baghdad’s southern neighborhood of Dora, killing seven people and wounding 17.
• More than 4,000 people have been killed in violence during the last few months. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bear the hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq.

Iraq Saturday September 28, 2013:

-    Violence that included attacks on security forces and their families killed 14 people.
-    In Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, militants blew up four houses belonging to police and soldiers as people slept inside, killing four including a soldier, and wounding 15.
-    To the southeast, a roadside bomb in a market killed one person and wounded eight.
-    A magnetic "sticky bomb" on a police vehicle killed a policeman and wounded another.
-    In Baghdad another "sticky bomb" killed an electricity ministry employee.
-    Two bombs exploded near a cafe, killing at least one person and wounding six.
-    A roadside bomb also killed a civilian in Baiji.
-    Two gunmen and a soldier were killed when militants attacked a checkpoint near the town.
-    Gunmen also attacked a local council member's convoy near Baquba, north of Baghdad, killing one of his guards and wounding two.
-    Militants also shot dead a primary school teacher near the city.
-    The latest violence brings the death toll to more than 740 people in September and upwards of 4,550 this year.
-    Three civilians died when their minivan was struck by a roadside bomb as they were driving from Dayak district to Ghazni city. Another eight people were wounded, including two women and two children.
-    In a second explosion, two men died when their car ran over a bomb.

Four car bombs had been detonated near the headquarters of Iraqi Kurdish security services, followed by gunfire. Unlike the rest of Iraq, Irbil has benefited from stable security and foreign investment. The blasts come a day after results were announced in the region's parliamentary elections. Two people were killed in Sunday September 29, 2013's explosions and eight wounded.

Dozens of people were killed in southern Iraq on Sunday September 29, 2013, after a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shia funeral. The explosion at a mosque in Mussayab caved in the ceiling, killing at least 46 people and injuring 50. The funeral was for a man who had been killed a day earlier by militants. Some victims could still be trapped underneath the rubble.

Iraq Tuesday October 1, 2013:

• A wave of car bombs struck mainly in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad killing at least 51 people and wounding dozens more. The country's Interior Ministry blamed Al Qaeda-linked insurgents.
• The deadliest of the day's bombings was in the eastern Sadr City district, where a parked car bomb tore through a small vegetable market and its parking lot, killing seven people and wounding 16.
• That was followed by a total of 10 parked car bombs, which went off in quick sequence in the Shiite neighborhoods of New Baghdad, Habibiya, Sabaa al-Bour, Kazimiyah, Shaab, Ur, Shula as well as the Sunni neighborhoods of Jamiaa and Ghazaliyah.
• The 10 other explosions also struck at outdoor markets or parking lots, killing 44 people and wounding 139.

 

The United Nations mission in Iraq said Tuesday October 1, 2013, that 979 people were killed there in September, most of them civilians. Since April, more than 5,000 people have been killed. The report said the worst-affected part was the capital, Baghdad, where 418 people were killed in September. It said 2,133 people were wounded last month.

Iraq Wednesday October 2, 2013:

• Attackers set off three car bombs and engaged security forces in the country's north killing nine people.
• The brazen assault in the town of Hawija started with the car bombs at the local council building, where an hour-long firefight then ensued. At least one of the car bombs was driven by a suicide attacker. He put the death toll at seven civilians and two soldiers in addition to 21 others wounded. Four militants were killed while the rest fled.
• Earlier in the day in Baghdad's northern Shaab neighborhood, gunmen armed with weapons fitted with silencers broke into the house of an Interior Ministry employee, killing him, his wife, mother-in-law and three children. The children were aged three, six and eight years old.
• In another attack, gunmen ambushed off-duty soldiers traveling through the town of Taji north of the Iraqi capital, opening fire on their car and killing two. Three others were wounded, he added.

 

Nine ringleaders of the al-Nusra Front terrorist group were among the detainees who were attempting to infiltrate into Syria through Iraq's Ramana Village on Tuesday October 1, 2013. In another development, the Iraqi forces also arrested 20 terrorists affiliated to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Mosul.

A bomb has exploded near a soccer field while teenagers were playing south of Baghdad, killing at least five people. The blast struck Thursday evening October 3, 2013, in the town of Madain. At least 13 people were wounded in the attack.

Iraq Saturday October 5, 2013:

• A suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of Shiite pilgrims passing through a mainly Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad and another detonated his explosives inside a cafe north of the capital, the deadliest of several attacks across Iraq on Saturday that killed at least 66 people. The killings included attacks on journalists and anti-extremist Sunni fighters.
• The bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint in the northern neighborhood of Azamiyah as the pilgrims en route to a prominent Shiite shrine in the nearby neighborhood of Kazimiyah. At least four policemen manning the checkpoint were among the dead. At least 42 people were killed and another 80 were reported injured.
• Another suicide bomber blew himself up in a cafe in the town of Balad, a largely Shiite town surrounded by Sunni communities. Balad Mayor At least 13 people were killed and 22 were wounded in that attack. The cafe was the same one hit by a deadly suicide bombing in August.
• A hidden bomb also exploded inside a cafe in the religiously mixed Baghdad neighborhood of Baiyaa, killing three people and wounding 13.
• Earlier in the day, gunmen shot dead a reporter and a cameraman for the privately owned al-Sharqiya TV channel while they were working on a report in Mosul. Al-Sharqiya identified the correspondent as Mohammed Karim al-Badrani and the cameraman as Mohammed Ghanem. It was not immediately clear why they were targeted.
• At least six members of Sunni militias opposed to al-Qaida were also killed. The militiamen were members of the Sahwa, which joined U.S. troops in the fight against al-Qaida at the height of Iraq war.
• Gunmen attacked a two car convoy carrying local Sahwa leader Issa al-Sabeel in the predominantly Sunni town of Hawija. The militia leader survived but three of his bodyguards were killed.
• A bomb also hit a checkpoint manned by Sahwa members in the town of Youssifiyah, south of the Iraqi capital, killing three of the fighters and wounding five other people.

 

Iraq Sunday October 6, 2013:

• Deadly attacks in Iraq killed at least 33 people including a dozen children slain when a suicide bomber detonated the explosives-laden car he was driving near their elementary school in the north of the country.
• The blasts began in the Shiite Turkomen village of Qabak, just outside the town of Tal Afar. One car bomb in the tiny village targeted an elementary school while children ages 6 to 12 were in class as another struck a nearby police station. The dead included 12 children, the school principal and two policemen. Another 90 people were wounded.
• Another suicide bomber, this time on foot, blew himself up hours later as Shiite pilgrims walked through the largely Sunni neighborhood of Waziriyah in the north of the Iraqi capital. At least 12 people were killed and 23 wounded in that attack.
• A suicide bombing in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah late Saturday killed 51, as authorities revised the death toll upward.
• A bomb hidden in a parking lot exploded in Baghdad al-Jadidah, a district in the east of Bagdad. That blast killed six and wounded 12.

 

Iraq Monday October 7, 2013:

• A wave of explosions rattled the Iraqi capital killing at least 30 people as al-Qaida claimed responsibility for a spate of rare suicide attacks last month in the northern, relatively peaceful self-ruled Kurdish region. Attacks on anti-Qaida fighters earlier in the day claimed another five lives.
• A powerful blast, a car bomb explosion in the Bab al-Sharji neighborhood killed three and wounded 11 and rattled windows in central Baghdad.
• The deadliest attack happened when a car bomb and roadside bomb exploded in a market and nearby parking lot in the northern Shiite district of Husseiniya, killing six and wounding 13.
• Car bombs also hit the mainly Shiite neighborhoods of Zafaraniyah, with four killed and 11 wounded, Alam, with two dead and 10 wounded, Obeidi, with two killed and eight wounded.
• A roadside bomb hit a commercial street in Kam Sarah, killing three and wounding eight, and the eastern Baghdad al-Jadidah, killing three and wounding 17.
• Another car bomb exploded in shopping streets in the mainly Sunni neighborhood of Dora, killing four and wounding eight, and in the mostly Sunni area of Sadiyah, killing three and wounding 10.
• al-Qaida claimed responsibility for a spate of rare suicide attacks last month in the northern, relatively peaceful self-ruled Kurdish region, underlining the terror group's growing strength across the country.

A car bomb in Baghdad and attacks on security forces in the north of the country have killed at least 9 people on Tuesday October 8, 2013. The blast in front of a restaurant in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, killed three and wounded 10. A military convoy was ambushed by gunmen after an explosion south of the city of Mosul, with three soldiers dead and three others wounded. A policeman was shot dead and a police patrol was hit by a bomb south of the city, leaving two dead and three wounded.

A pickup truck packed with explosives blew up at an Iraqi vegetable market on Saturday October 12, 2013, killing 17 and wounding dozens in the latest outbreak of violence to hit the country. They bombing in Samarra also wounded at least 35 people and damaged several shops.

Iraq Sunday October 13, 2013:

• A string of bombings across Iraq, many in Shiite-majority cities, killed at least 42 people and wounded dozens. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attacks, but waves of bombings are frequently used by Al Qaeda's Iraq branch.
• The deadliest of Sunday's attacks, many of which struck busy commercial areas, happened in the southern city of Hillah. Back-to-back car bombings hit an outdoor market there, killing eight people and wounding 22.
• Two parked car bombs ripped through a commercial area in the city of Suwayrah killing five people and wounding 14.
• Two other car bombs exploded simultaneously in the city of Kut killing four and wounded 16.
• In Samawah four people were killed and 13 wounded when two car bombs exploded.
• Two other car bombs killed three and wounded 13 in the city of Diwaniyah, 130 kilometres south of the capital.
• Samarra was struck twice Sunday, a day after a car bombing in the Sunni-dominated city left 17 dead. Two people were killed and 15 were wounded in the morning when a car bomb exploded near a group of mourners at a funeral for some of the previous day's dead. A suicide bomber struck a security checkpoint near the shrine in the Sunni-dominated city later in the day, killing four and wounding 10.
• Five people were killed and 34 wounded in the southern city of Basra and the central towns of Mahmoudiyah and Madain.
• In the western Baghdad neighbourhood of Sadiyah a bomb went off near a row of shops, killing two people and wounding nine others.
• Three others were killed in a blast near a soccer field in Baghdad's mainly Shiite southeastern suburb of Nahrwan.
• Yet another bomb exploded in the western Amariyah neighbourhood, killing two and wounding 10. ---

A bomb has ripped through a crowd of Sunni worshippers coming out of a mosque in northern Iraq after prayers at the start of a major Muslim holiday, killing 12 people and wounding 24. The attack took place in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as worshippers were leaving the al-Qodus mosque after morning prayers for the beginning of the Eid holiday.

Iraq Thursday October 17, 2013:

• A barrage of car bomb and suicide bomb blasts rocked Baghdad and two northern Iraqi communities killing at least 61 people during a major holiday period.
• The bulk of the blasts struck in mainly Shiite Muslim parts of the Iraqi capital shortly after nightfall. Authorities reported nine car bomb explosions across Baghdad, including one near a playground that killed two children.
• The bloodshed began early in the morning when a suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car among houses in an ethnic minority village in the Shabak village of al-Mouafaqiyah near the restive city of Mosul; it killed at least 15 and wounded 52.
• Another suicide bomber struck hours later, setting off an explosives belt inside a cafe in Tuz Khormato, killing three and wounding 28.
• The Baghdad explosions went off in quick succession after sunset as families were heading out to parks, coffee shops and restaurants.
• Back-to-back car bombs exploded about two blocks apart in the mainly Shiite neighborhood of Husseiniyah, killing a total of 11 and wounding 22.
• Other mainly Shiite neighborhoods hit were the southeastern New Baghdad, where four died and 12 were wounded, and the eastern Sadr City, where a car bomb near a playground killed five, including two children, and wounded 16.
• Another car bomb exploded near a restaurant in the northeastern Shiite neighborhood of Gareat, killing seven and wounding 14.
• Elsewhere, a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a police checkpoint in the southern district of Dora, killing five people, including three police officers, and wounding nine.
• Two parked car bombs exploded near an outdoor market and shops in the mixed Shiite and Christian neighborhood of Garage al-Amana, killing eight and wounding 15.
• The predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Shurta also was hit, with three killed and 12 wounded when a car bomb exploded in a commercial street.
• The U.N. reported 979 people killed violently in Iraq last month. At least 350 more have died in attacks in Iraq so far this month.

 

Iraq Sunday October 20, 2013:

• Twin bomb attacks on a Baghdad cafe killed dozens of people in one of nine suicide attacks across Iraq. Nationwide a total of 49 people were killed across Iraq.
• The deadliest attack -a roadside bomb followed by a suicide bombing- hit a cafe in the Shiite-majority Al-Amil area of south Baghdad, killing at least 34 people and wounding 50 others. The roadside bomb drew people to the scene outside the cafe, after which a suicide bomber detonated explosives.
• Eight suicide bombers struck Rawa, a town located northwest of Baghdad near the Syrian border, killing eight people and wounding 28. The dead included three members of the local council for the Rawa area of Anbar province, three police, a child and another person, while 28 people were wounded. Two suicide bombers on foot and another driving an explosives-packed vehicle attacked local police headquarters. Another bomber struck an army checkpoint at the town's entrance. Meanwhile three bombers on foot and a fourth in a vehicle attacked the local administrative headquarters while officials were meeting inside.
• A roadside bomb and a car bomb exploded near the convoy of a police officer north of Baghdad, killing six people and wounding seven.
• A man who sold meat from a stand south of the Iraqi capital was shot dead, while a roadside bomb in the Ghazaliyah area of west Baghdad wounded six people.
• With the latest attacks, more than 480 people have been killed so far this month, and almost 5,200 since the beginning of the year.
• A study released this month by academics based in the United States, Canada and Iraq said nearly half a million people have died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.
• At least six people were killed and five wounded in a car bomb explosion near the house of a police chief. The bomb exploded near the house of Nafie al-Azzawi, a police chief in Salahudin province. Azzawi was unharmed as he was not at home but several policemen guarding his house were among the victims. The blast destroyed some part of Azzawi's house and damaged several houses nearby.

 

On Monday October 21, 2013, six gunmen died when Iraqi security forces stormed an office in Fallujah, where they were holding three people hostage. Police and Special Forces freed the employees of the electricity board in the city. Some of the gunmen blew themselves up using bomb belts. The incident came after security forces imposed a blanket curfew in Fallujah, in the wake of an attack by bombers and gunmen that killed two policemen at the police headquarters. The surviving assailants in that attack reportedly took refuge in the local electricity board building, taking staff hostage. Police were in full control of the security situation. A seventh gunman had been tracked down and killed on a nearby rooftop. Two roadside bomb attacks north of Baghdad claimed the lives of a policeman and two civilians.

Iraq Tuesday October 22, 2013:

• At least 17 people were killed and 20 wounded in bombings and shootings.
• Iraqi army forces backed by helicopters clashed with an Al Qaeda militant hideout in the Himreen mountain range. The fierce clashes resulted in the killing of four militants and the capture of seven others, all of whom were wanted for terrorism charges. A helicopter pilot was also wounded by the gunmen during the operation.
• A farmer was killed and his relative wounded when gunmen fired at them near a bridge located in northeast of Baquba.
• A worker in a Sunni mosque was wounded by gunmen who fired at him in front of his house.
• A suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car at the entrance of the house of Waqass Adnan, mayor of the city of Aana. The blast was immediately followed by a coordinated attack on the guards of the house, apparently in an attempt to break into the house. The battle resulted in the killing of four policemen and the brother of the mayor, and the wounding of four policemen, while the mayor himself escaped unharmed. Four gunmen were also killed in the clashes.
• Another suicide bomber rammed his explosive-packed car into the entrance of Aana police station and blew it up, killing two policemen and wounding three others.
• In a separate incident, gunmen fired mortars at a police station in Rawa city killing a policeman and wounding seven others.

 

Iraq Thursday October 24, 2013:

• Bombings and shootings across Iraq, including the killing of a television cameraman, left 10 people dead as a wave of violent attacks striking the country raged on.
• The deadliest attack happened when gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on a small fast food restaurant in Baghdad's western neighborhood of Amariyah, killing four people and wounding seven.
• A bomb exploded near a cafe in the town of Madain. The blast killed two people and wounded seven.
• In Mosul gunmen killed Bashar al-Nuaimi, a cameraman working for local TV channel al-Moussilyah, as he was walking near his house.
• Also in Mosul, a suicide bomber set off his explosive belt at an army checkpoint, killing three soldiers and wounding seven. A suicide bomber blew up an explosives-laden car among houses in an ethnic minority village, the Shabak village of al-Mowafaqiah, in northern Iraq killing at least 13 people. The blast leveled houses in the community and wounded at least 52 people. Rescue workers were searching the rubble to look for additional survivors who may be trapped underneath. Shabaks are ethnically Turkomen and Shiite by religion. Most Shabaks were driven out of the Mosul area by Sunni militants during the sectarian fighting that raged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The attack comes as Muslims around the world this week mark the major religious holiday of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice. It is often a time for family celebrations and outings.

 

Iraq Friday October 25, 2013:

• Bombings in central Iraq that targeted a market, a cafe and the homes of police officers killed 13 people.
• The deadliest attack took place when a bomb went off inside a crowded outdoor market in the town of Youssifiyah, just south of Baghdad. The attack killed five shoppers and wounded 15 people.
• Earlier bombs exploded near several houses belonging to police officers in Baquba, killing four people, including a woman. The explosives appeared to have been planted just outside the homes. Ten people were wounded in that attack.
• In Baghdad's eastern Basmaya district, a bombing at a cafe killed four people and wounded 15.

 

Iraq Sunday October 27, 2013:

• A series of attacks including car bombings in Baghdad, an explosion at a market and a suicide assault in a northern city killed at least 66 people. Sunday's attacks were the deadliest single-day series of assaults since October 5, when 75 people were killed in violence. The bombs in the capital, placed in parked cars and detonated over a half-hour period, targeted commercial areas and parking lots, killing 42 people.
• The deadliest blasts struck in the southeastern Nahrwan district, where two car bombs exploded simultaneously, killing seven and wounding 15.
• Two other explosions hit the northern Shaab and southern Abu Dashir neighborhoods, each killing six people.
• Other blasts hit the neighborhoods of Mashtal, Baladiyat and Ur in eastern Baghdad, the southwestern Bayaa district and the northern Sab al-Bor and Hurriyah districts.
• In Mosul, a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a group of soldiers as they were sealing off a street leading to a bank where troops were receiving salaries, killing 14. At least 30 people were wounded.
• Also in Mosul, gunmen shot dead two off-duty soldiers in a drive-by shooting.
• A bomb blast killed four people and wounded 11 inside an outdoor market in the Sunni town of Tarmiyah.
• Mortar shells landed on homes in a Shiite district of Madain, a town just south of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding nine.

 

Iraq Thursday October 31, 2013:

• Five car bombs north of Baghdad killed 19 people while attacks elsewhere in Iraq left seven more dead.
• In the deadliest attack, twin car bombs in a residential area in Tuz Khurmatu, a disputed town north of Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 42 others. Three of the dead were from the same family. As emergency responders rushed to the scene of the attack, a third bomb went off, but did not cause any casualties.
• Two more near-simultaneous car bombs went off in Khales, a town north of Baghdad, as a police patrol was passing, killing five people, including a policeman. The attack also wounded 15 others, including four policemen.
• Another car bomb in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad, killed four people.
• Police meanwhile found the bodies of three blindfolded women bearing multiple gunshot wounds to the head, execution-style, at an empty plot in a Shiite-majority neighbourhood in northeast Baghdad.
• A gunmen killed a soldier and wounded two others in an attack targeting their patrol in Mosul.
• A roadside bomb targeting an army patrol northwest of the city left a soldier dead and two others wounded.
• Two separate gun attacks and a roadside bombing north of the capital killed five people, including an anti-Qaeda militiaman.

 

Iraq Sunday November 3, 2013:

• Attacks in Baghdad and north Iraq killed five security personnel and a civilian.
• In northern Nineveh province, a suicide bomber drove through a police checkpoint and detonated a car rigged with explosives, killing two policemen and wounding three others and a civilian who was nearby.
• Two other suicide bombers tried to enter the police station after the first blast, but they were stopped by police guards.
• Also in Nineveh, gunmen opened fire on an army checkpoint in the provincial capital Mosul, killing two soldiers.
• An election commission worker was gunned down elsewhere in Mosul.
• In south Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed a police major and wounded three policemen.
• Violence so far this year has left more than 5,450 dead, the country's worst violence since 2008.
• A suicide car bomb attacked a police checkpoint in Tall Afar killing two policemen and wounding three others and a civilian.
• An army officer was killed and three soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb targeted an army patrol in the area of Yusufiya.
• A civilian was killed and two others were injured when a roadside bomb exploded near the Diyala Bridge in southeastern Baghdad.
• An engineer with the Iraqi ministry of agriculture was killed by unidentified gunmen in the Ghazaliya area in the western part of the capital city.

 

Iraq Tuesday November 5, 2013:

• Attacks in Iraq killed 13 people most of them security personnel.
• More than 5,500 people have been killed this year despite several major military operations and tightened security measures.
• In the northern province of Nineveh, two separate roadside bombs targeting army patrols killed three soldiers and wounded four others.
• In Mosul, a policeman and a militant were killed in a shootout at a checkpoint.
• A policeman was shot dead in a separate incident, police and a doctor said.
• A car bomb targeting a police patrol in west Mosul wounded five people, including a policeman.
• A suicide bomber also detonated a vehicle rigged with explosives near a police checkpoint on the outskirts of Fallujah, killing three policemen and wounding three others.
• Just north of Baghdad, the local head of an anti-Qaeda militia and his son were killed by gunmen.

 

Iraq Wednesday November 6, 2013:

• A suicide bomber tried to ram an explosives-laden truck into a police headquarters outside Baghdad killing at least seven policemen and wounding 14. The truck exploded when it hit a concrete blast wall outside the building in the town of al-Salam.
• A separate attack in Baghdad's northern Sab al-Bor neighbourhood killed three and wounded 15 others when a bomb went off at an outdoor market.
• A sniper also killed a policeman at a checkpoint in the capital's eastern Sadr City neighborhood.
• In Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib, a bomb hit a patrol of a pro-government, anti-al-Qaida militia, killing one and wounding three others.

Iraq Thursday November 7, 2013:

• A series of attacks, including a double suicide car bombing targeting a military base, killed 30 people across the country.
• The deadliest attack took place when the two suicide bombers drove their explosive-laden cars into a military base in the town of Tarmiyah killing at least 19 soldiers and wounding 41.
• Soldiers guarding the base opened fire on the first car bomber as he approached, but he still was able to detonate his explosives against a gate at the facility. Two minutes later, the second suicide bomber rammed his car through the gate and exploded when he reached a crowd of soldiers who gathered after the earlier blast.
• Earlier a bombing at a tent serving food to pilgrims on their way to Karbala, killed four people and wounded six.
• Before that a suicide bomber detonated an explosive-laden car at an army post, killing three soldiers and wounding six in the town of Ana.
• Another bomb blast killed two persons in a town just south of Baghdad.
• In Mosul a bomb struck an outdoor market killing two people and wounding eight.

 

Iraq Friday November 8, 2013:

• A bomb exploded on a busy street filled with shoppers in northern Iraq, part of a series of attacks that killed at least 19 people.
• The explosion struck a commercial street in Mosul, killing 12 people and wounding 30.
• Earlier Friday, a bomb exploded just after Friday prayers as Sunni worshippers left the Ali Bin Abi Talib mosque in Baghdad's western Shurta district.
• A second bomb, planted further down the street, exploded seconds later as worshippers tried to flee from the first blast. The two bombings killed five people and wounded 15.
• In Fallujah gunmen opened fire on a security checkpoint, killing two police officers and wounding two.

 

Iraq Wednesday November 13, 2013:

• At least 27 people were killed in bomb attacks targeting Iraqi police and pilgrims just before the end of a Shi'ite Muslim religious festival.
• In the deadliest attack, 10 people were killed when a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into a police checkpoint in the town of al-Alam near Tikrit.  A truck driver reached the checkpoint and when asked by police to pull over, a powerful blast happened, killing two policemen and eight innocent passers-by.
• Near the city of Baquba, three roadside bombs exploded near a group of Shi'ite pilgrims commemorating Ashura, killing nine and wounding 35.
• The mayor of Falluja, Adnan Hussein, was assassinated by a sniper.
• In Karma, south of Falluja, an improvised bomb exploded near a police officer’s house. When a group of neighbors gathered outside, three more hidden bombs exploded, killing four of them.
• West of Baghdad in Abu Ghraib, an improvised bomb killed three policemen on patrol and wounded eight.
• In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint, killing two policemen.

 

A suicide bombing that ripped through a religious procession, killed 39 people in Iraq Thursday November 14, 2013. The bloodshed came as a flood of worshippers, including tens of thousands of foreign pilgrims, thronged the central shrine city of Karbala for the climax of Ashura. The suicide bomber struck in a Shiite-majority area of confessionally mixed Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing 30 people and wounding 65. Earlier, coordinated blasts in the town of Hafriyah, south of the capital, killed nine people, while twin bombings in the northern oil city of Kirkuk wounded five.

Iraq Saturday November 16, 2013:

• A series of attacks in Baghdad and north Iraq left four policemen dead and a dozen people wounded.
• In Baghdad, two separate bombings targeting police patrols killed three policemen and wounded 11 other people.
• And in Mosul, militants opened fire on a police checkpoint, killing one policeman and wounding another.

 

Iraq Sunday November 17, 2013:

• Attacks across Iraq killed at least 20 people, as gunmen attacked a militia leader and bombs targeted police officers and civilians.
• In the capital's eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, a parked car bomb missed a police patrol but killed three civilians and wounded 10.
• A car bombing in Baghdad's eastern Sadr City neighborhood killed one person and wounded 11.
• In the Baghdad's southwestern suburb of Radwaniyah, a bomb went off in a commercial area, killing three civilians and wounding 10.
• In the town of Tarmiyah a bomb exploded near soldiers on patrol, killing two and wounding five.
• At dawn militants attacked a local leader of pro-government, anti-al-Qaida Sunni militia in his house in the town of Madain killing his brother and wounding one guard. Two militants were killed in the clashes and two others were wounded.
• In Baghdad's southern Dora neighborhood, a car bomb exploded in a vegetable market, killing three civilians and wounding 12.
• A bomb exploded inside a car showroom in Baghdad's eastern suburbs, killing four and wounding 11.
• Three other civilians were killed and 11 wounded when a car bomb exploded near liquor stores in Baghdad's central Karrada area.
• A series of bomb attacks, including two suicide bombings, struck the city of Tuz-Khurmato in northern Iraq killing at least three people and wounding dozens of others. The attacks occurred before noon when two suicide bombers and nine roadside bombs ripped through Tuz-Khurmato.

 

Iraq Monday November 18, 2013:

• Attacks across Iraq killed at least 20 people as bombs targeted police officers and civilians.
• In the capital's New Baghdad neighbourhood, a car bomb killed three civilians and wounded 10.
• A car bomb in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood killed one person and wounded 11.
• In the suburb of Radwaniyah, a bomb killed three civilians and wounded 10.
• In Tarmiyah, a bomb killed two and wounded five.

 

Iraq Wednesday November 20, 2013:

• A wave of attacks, most of them car bombs targeting Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad, killed 49 people. At least eight explosions, including seven car bombs, went off mostly against Shiite Muslim neighbourhoods of the Iraqi capital, killing 36 people and wounding nearly 100.
• One car bomb also went off in the Sunni-majority neighbourhood of Adhamiyah in north Baghdad.
• The blast in Karrada struck near a car dealership as Shiites were gathering to mark the anniversary of the death of a venerated figure in Shiite Islam, when Sunni militants often step up their attacks.
• In a separate attack in the normally peaceful northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, gunmen assassinated President Jalal Talabani's chief bodyguard. The trio of attackers entered Colonel Sarwat Rashid's home and shot him three times in the head in front of his wife.
• Multiple separate attacks in Baghdad and the main northern city of Mosul, along with bombings in Abu Ghraib and Buhruz, left a dozen others dead.
• North of Baghdad, near the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba, police found the bodies of three men killed by gunshots to the head and chest.

 

Iraq Thursday November 21, 2013:

• A bombing at a market north of Baghdad was the deadliest in violence that killed 41 people Thursday, as the year's death toll topped 5,800 amid a surge in unrest.
• In the deadliest attack, a car bomb went off in a fruit and vegetable market in the Diyala town of Saadiyah. At least 32 people were killed and 40 wounded in the blast. Saadiyah is populated mostly by Faylis, or Shiite Kurds, and lies in a tract of territory that Kurdish leaders want to incorporate in their autonomous region in the north over the objections of the central government.
• Another blast in Diyala killed one person.
• Shootings and bombings in and around Baghdad left six people dead.
• Authorities in Diyala also found the bodies of a dozen residents snatched by kidnappers purporting to be members of the security forces. The 12 were executed and their bodies thrown into a nearby river.
• Investigators searching for the gunmen behind the assassination of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's chief bodyguard, meanwhile, got into a firefight with one of the suspected killers in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah. The suspect and a policeman were both killed in the exchange.

Iraq Friday November 22, 2013:

• Militant bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 23 people.
• Back-to-back bombings in a commercial area in Baghdad's southern Dora neighborhood killed seven and wounded 18.
• A bomb went off at an outdoor market in Baghdad's southeastern suburb of Nahrawan, killing three shoppers and wounding 10.
• Another bomb targeted worshippers as they were leaving a Sunni mosque after Friday prayers in the capital's southwestern Saydiyah neighborhood, killing three and wounding nine.
• In two other Baghdad areas, a doctor was killed when a bomb attached to his car exploded.
• A police officer was shot dead while driving his car.
• In Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, one worshipper was killed and six others were wounded when a bomb went off near a Sunni mosque.
• To the north of the Iraqi capital, a bomb targeted a patrol of pro-government anti-al-Qaida Sunni militiamen in the town of Tarmiyah, killing three and wounding two.
• Militants attacked a police station and an army patrol near Mosul, killing two policemen and two soldiers and wounding seven.

 

Iraq Saturday November 23, 2013:

• Twin suicide bombings at a Shiite mosque in north Iraq were the deadliest in attacks nationwide that killed 15 people.
• Attacks on Saturday struck mostly in the north, although Baghdad was also hit.
• The deadliest violence was in Tuz Khurmatu, where a suicide car bombing followed by a suicide attack targeting a Shiite mosque killed at least 10 people and wounded 45.

 

Iraq Monday November 25, 2013:

• A double bombing at a market and other attacks across Iraq killed at least 27.
• Twin explosions went off shortly after sunset at the entrance of an outdoor market in downtown Baghdad, killing 16 shoppers and wounding 35 others.
• Three civilians and a policeman were killed and 30 others were wounded when a roadside blast hit a passing police patrol in Mosul.
• In southern Baghdad, three policemen and a civilian were killed while four other policemen were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a police checkpoint at noon.
• Also, gunmen killed a Justice Ministry employee in a drive-by-shooting as he was driving home from work in Baiyaa district in western Baghdad.
• A roadside bomb struck a car carrying two anti-al-Qaida Sunni militiamen in Baghdad's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing them both.
• Today's attacks bring the death toll across the country this month to at least 360. Many deaths may go unreported.

 

Iraq Tuesday November 26, 2013:

• Suicide bombings at a military base and a police station killed 13 members of the Iraqi security forces north of Baghdad.
• In the deadlier of the attacks, two bombers struck: one blew himself up at the gate of the army facility in Tarmiyah town, and then the second set off his explosive belt among a crowd of soldiers who gathered after the earlier blast. The explosions killed nine soldiers and wounded another 24 people.
• Half an hour later another suicide bomber blew himself up inside a police station in Baghdad's northern suburbs of Taji, killing four policemen and wounding nine others.

 

Iraq Wednesday November 27, 2013:

• Attacks across Iraq including a suicide bombing at a Sunni funeral killed at least 36 while police found 13 bodies at two different locations with gunshot wounds to their heads.
• Eight of the corpses were found dumped in farmland in the Sunni-dominated Arab Jabour district. All of the dead, men believed to be between the ages of 25 to 35, suffered gunshot to their heads.
• Another five corpses were found in a vacant lot in a residential area of the capital's predominantly Shiite northwestern Shula neighborhood. The slain men, all in their 30s, had their hands and legs tied and suffered gunshots in heads and chests. Officers found no identification on the corpses.
• 11 mourners were killed and 25 others were wounded when a suicide bomber set off his explosive belt inside a tent where the Sunni funeral was being held in Baghdad's western suburbs of Abu Ghraib.
• The other attacks ranged from a home invasion to a drive-by shooting to a complex assault on a police station involving a suicide bomber, a mortar strike, and a team of gunmen.
• Gunmen armed with silencer-fitted pistols broke into the house of a Sunni family in the predominantly Shiite northern Hurriyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad, killing the parents, two sons and a daughter.
• Elsewhere in Baghdad, a bomb exploded in the southern Dora neighborhood, killing two civilians.
• Mortar rounds landed in a street in the southwestern Albu Eitha neighborhood, killing another two.
• Gunmen fired on a crowd in the southeastern Bayaa neighborhood, killing one.
• Outside of Baghdad, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a checkpoint manned by the Kurdish security forces in the town of Khanaqin north of Baghdad, killing three.
• Another suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden belt at the gate of a police station in the town of Habbaniyah west of Baghdad, allowing another to enter and blow himself up inside the building. The blast killed five police officers.
• Also to the west of Baghdad, militants fired two mortar rounds at a police station outside the city of Ramadi, which was then attacked by a suicide attacker on foot and gunmen. That attack killed four officers, while police killed two of the gunmen.
• A drive-by shooting also killed two school teachers in the town of Hadra, between the northern city of Mosul and western Anbar province.
• In Mosul, gunmen shot dead a government employee as he was walking near his house.

 

Iraq Friday November 29, 2013:

• Men dressed as Iraqi soldiers abducted 18 Sunnis, whose bullet-ridden corpses turned up in farmland just south of Baghdad.
• Authorities found the bodies early Friday in farmland near the Sunni town of Mishahda north of Baghdad. Gunmen in four cars abducted the men, who included two army officers, a local Sunni tribal sheik, the sheik’s son and Mishahda’s mayor, from their homes late Thursday. It appeared the men were killed by gunshot wounds to the head.
• The killings come after police officers found the bodies of 13 men Wednesday in two locations around Baghdad, all killed by what appeared to be close-range gunshots. Some had their hands and feet tied
• Officers discovered the beheaded corpses of three men in Baghdad’s eastern suburbs, their hands tied behind their backs, part of attacks that killed 25 others Friday.
• A bomb exploded inside a sheep market in Baghdad’s southeastern suburb of Nahrawan, killing three and wounding six.
• In the western Abu Ghraib suburb, a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five.
• Also gunmen killed a government employee in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad.
• A bombing near a soccer field in Baghdad’s southwestern suburb of Radhwaniy killed five people and wounded six.
• Gunmen carrying guns fitted with silencers broke into a house in Ghadeer neighborhood, killing six women police described as prostitutes.
• Bombs stuck to cars killed a government employee and a city employee around Baghdad.
• Near the northern city of Mosul, a roadside bomb killed the mayor of Hamam al-Alil.
• In Mosul, gunmen shot dead a government employee.
• Gunmen also broke into a house and killed a man and his wife in the town of Sinjar. ---

A suicide bombing at the funeral of the son of a tribal leader and anti-al-Qaeda militiaman killed 12 people and wounded 25 others in central Iraq on Sunday December 1, 2013. The funeral had been for Mudher al-Shallal al-Araki, who was killed in a roadside bombing near his family's home in the restive city of Baquba the previous evening. The blast struck at the graveyard where the procession, which included relatives and members of the family's tribe, was due to bury the body.

Iraq Tuesday December 3, 2013:

• Attacks in mostly Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad as well as northern and western Iraq killed at least 18 people. The rise in violence has killed more than 6,200 people this year.
• In the deadliest attack, twin roadside bombs exploded near municipal offices in Tarmiyah. When onlookers gathered at the scene, two suicide bombers blew themselves up. Overall, seven people were killed and 15 wounded.
• A car bomb in Bayaa, a predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of west Baghdad, killed six people, while five more were wounded by a blast in mostly Sunni Amriyah district.
• Attacks in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, west of the capital in Anbar province, killed three people.
• Bombings in Mosul and in and around Baquba killed two more.

 

Security forces early Thursday December 5, 2013, ended an hours-long siege at a mall in the northern city of Kirkuk but not before militants killed nine people. The attack Wednesday involved a car bomb and would-be suicide bombers; it came amid a surge in unrest that has claimed more than 6,200 lives this year. Attacks by militants were also launched Wednesday in Baghdad, Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah, but the assault on the Jawaher Mall in Kirkuk was the deadliest. A car bomb went off early afternoon in front of a branch of police intelligence, and was swiftly followed by a firefight between security forces and militants who were ostensibly trying to take over the security station. As the clashes continued, gunmen, some of them wearing suicide vests, stormed the adjacent mall, took shoppers hostage and moved up the five-storey complex to the roof, from where they opened fire on security personnel who attempted to enter. At around midnight, security forces finally stormed the mall, which contains more than 100 shops including stores specialising in women’s fashion and cosmetics, as well as men’s clothing and other goods. They managed to release the 11 hostages unharmed, but nine people were killed in the attack, including eight members of the security forces, while at least five militants were also shot dead.

Iraq Saturday December 7, 2013:

• Gunmen attacked 12 liquor stores in Baghdad killing nine people.
• The attackers approached the stores in SUVs and shot dead people inside shops and supermarkets and wounded two. Most of the victims were members of Iraq's Yazidi Kurdish minority who tend to staff alcohol stores.
• Even though many Iraqis shun alcohol, forbidden under Islamic law, the country is a generally less conservative Muslim society than neighbours such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, thanks to its mix of Shi'ites, Sunnis, ethnic Kurds and Christians.
• Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allowed shops to sell alcohol legally, although bars and nightclubs were banned towards the end of his rule. Shops with licences that are still valid can sell alcohol now but there are also illegal outlets.
• In a separate incident gunmen shot dead a son and nephew of a prominent Sunni sheikh in Ramadi. The sheikh is a known supporter of the government.
• Another civilian was killed and six were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in the Sunni district of Doura, in south Baghdad.
• A bomb went off inside an outdoor market in Mosul killing two shoppers and wounding 15 others.
• One hour later two people were killed and seven others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on a road frequently used by military convoys in Mishahda village, just north of the capital.

 

Iraq Monday December 9, 2013:

• A car bomb exploded near a cafe in northeastern Iraq killing 11 people and wounding 23. The explosion took place in Buhriz close to a cafe popular with members of the government-backed Sunni Muslim Sahwa militia.
• Earlier this month a suicide bomber in another area of Diyala province, blew himself up at the funeral procession of a prominent tribal sheikh linked to the Sahwa, killing 10 people.
• Three more bombings around the country killed an additional six people. A roadside bomb targeted an army patrol just south of the capital, killing one Iraqi soldier and wounded two others.
• In Baghdad’s eastern Basmaya district a bomb at an outdoor market killed three people and wounded seven.
• In a village just north of Baghdad, three policemen were killed and 10 were wounded when a car bomb exploded near their checkpoint.
• And in the southwestern suburbs of Baghdad, a roadside bomb struck a car carrying anti al- Qaeda Sunni fighters, killing two and wounding three.

 

Iraqi forces battled gunmen trying to infiltrate the country from neighboring Syria on Monday December 9, 2013, while attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital killed more than 20 people. Twenty sport utility vehicles and more than two dozen motorcycles carrying gunmen tried to enter Iraq in Anbar Province, but Iraqi border forces turned them back after a two-hour clash.

Iraq Wednesday December 11, 2013:

• Eight people were killed and four wounded in violent acts across Iraq.
• In the northern central province of Salahudin, police found the heads of two members of the Sahwa paramilitary group, who were kidnapped Monday night from a village near the city of Baiji.
• Separately, the police found the body of an owner of a perfume shop who was kidnapped by gunmen Tuesday night in Salahudin's provincial capital city of Tikrit.
• The mayor of Mosul, Hussein Ali, escaped with wounds after an attack by gunmen on his convoy in his city. The attack resulted in the killing of two of Ali's bodyguards while three others sustained injuries.
• In a separate incident, gunmen broke into the house of a policeman in a village near Mosul and shot him dead before fleeing the scene.
• In Diyala province, two policemen were killed in an explosion at their checkpoint in the city of Maqdadiyah.
• According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, 8,109 Iraqis were killed in the country from January to November this year.

 

Iraq Friday December 13, 2013:

• Violence in Iraq including an attack by gunmen on gas pipeline workers from Iran killed 37 people while "terrorism" suspects escaped a Baghdad detention facility.
• Gunmen in three vehicles attacked the gas pipeline workers near Baladruz, northeast of Baghdad, killing 15 Iranians and three Iraqis. The attack also wounded five Iranians and three Iraqis.
• South of Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in Madain, killing at least six people and wounding at least 13.
• Another car bomb near a fish market in Nahrawan killed four people and wounded at least 12.
• In Baghdad itself, at least 22 "terrorism" suspects escaped a detention facility in Kadhimiyah. Detainees had seized weapons from guards early on Friday, killing two, after which 26 people arrested for "issues related to terrorism" escaped. Security forces killed one escaped detainee and captured 14. Medical official confirmed two guards and a detainee had been killed.
• In the Ghazaliyah area of west Baghdad, gunmen shot dead two people on Friday, one of them a trade ministry employee.
• Gunmen killed a woman in her home near the capital.
• A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near a group of security forces members in Ramadi killing a civilian and two soldiers and wounding four policemen and three soldiers.
• The daily attacks have shown no sign of abating, and violence has killed more than 6,400 people since the beginning of the year.

 

Iraq Sunday December 15, 2013:

• Attacks across the country left a total of 20 dead.
• Gunmen broke into the home of a Health Ministry employee in a town north of Iraq's capital and killed him and his family. The attackers used guns fitted with silencers killed the employee, his wife, two sons and a 10-year old daughter as they slept in their home in Sadiyah.
• A bomb attached to a bus killed two commuters and wounded seven in Waziriyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad.
• In Mosul, a roadside bomb missed an army patrol but killed two civilians and wounded four.
• Also in Mosul, gunmen shot dead Nawras al-Nuaimi, a female TV presenter working for a local channel, as she was walking near her house.
• A car bomb exploded near a restaurant, killing three people and wounding four others in eastern Baghdad.
• Four people were also killed and six wounded in a car bomb explosion targeting a commercial street in Baghdad's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah.
• Three people were killed and eight others wounded when a sticky bomb attached to their bus went off in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr city.

 

Iraq Monday December 16, 2013:

• Car bombs ripped through Shiite pilgrims near Baghdad while militants attacked a city council headquarters and a police station, in Iraq-wide violence that killed at least 66.
• In the Rashid area south of Baghdad, two car bombs targeted Shiite pilgrims, killing at least 22 people and wounding at least 52. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them on foot, make pilgrimages to the holy city of Karbala during the 40 days after the annual commemoration marking the death of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, Hussein.
• In Tikrit, militants detonated a car bomb near the city council headquarters and then occupied the building, with employees still inside. Iraqi security forces surrounded the building, and then carried out an assault that Counter-Terrorism Service spokesman Sabah Noori said freed 40 people who were held inside. A city council member and two police were killed, though it was unclear whether they died during the initial attack or the later assault by security forces.
• Suicide bombers struck a police station in the town of Baiji, also in Salaheddin province. One bomber detonated a car bomb at the gate of the station, after which three entered, shot dead an officer and a policeman, and waited inside. Special Forces then attacked, killing one of the militants, while the other two blew themselves up, killing three police.
• Gunmen also killed three soldiers guarding an oil pipeline near Tikrit
• Two oil protection police were killed and three wounded by a bomb south of Kirkuk.
• Bus passengers gunned down the second-deadliest attack on Monday was in the northern city of Mosul, where militants gunned down 12 people on a bus.
• Also five other car bombs and a magnetic "sticky bomb" on a vehicle exploded in and around the Iraqi capital, killing at least 17 people and wounding at least 43. One of the car bombs went off in a car park near the Baghdad provincial council headquarters, killing at least four people.
• The attacks came after another series of bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least nine people on Sunday night, while violence elsewhere in the country that day killed a further 11 people, among them a TV presenter and a family of five.
• The presenter, Nawras al-Nuaimi, was the sixth journalist to be killed in Iraq since October, and the fifth to die in the city of Mosul in the same period.

 

An Iraqi policeman gave his own life on Wednesday December 18, 2013, in an attempt to protect pilgrims, embracing a suicide bomber just moments before an attack to shield others from the blast. The bomber struck in Khales, northeast of Baghdad, killing five Shiite pilgrims and wounding 10. The toll would almost certainly have been higher were it not for the selfless actions of the policeman, whom the colonel said threw his arms around the bomber, dying to save others. The police hero was named as Ayyub Khalaf, 34, who was married and had two children, aged six and nine.

Iraq Thursday December 19, 2013:

• Suicide bombings targeting Shiite pilgrims in and around the Iraqi capital and other violence across the country killed 36 people and wounded dozens others.
• One suicide bomber set off his explosive belt near a group of pilgrims in Baghdad's southern district of Dora, killing 14 people and wounding 28.
•  Another blew himself up among pilgrims in Youssifiyah killing eight and wounding 28 shortly after sunset.
• At night, seven people were killed and 25 were wounded in a third suicide bomber attack on Shiite pilgrims in Latifiyah town south of Baghdad.
• Gunmen wearing military uniforms broke into the home of a former member of anti-al-Qaida Sunni militia in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing him, his wife, his two children and his brother-in-law and wounded two other children.
• A roadside bombing killed two soldiers and wounded four in the village of Mishahda, just north of Baghdad.

 

A double bombing at a sheep market in a town north of Baghdad has killed six people. The Friday December 20, 2013 morning attack took place when two bombs exploded at the sheep market in Tuz Khormato. At least 10 people were also wounded in the attack.

Iran’s Ambassador in Baghdad Hassan Danaiefar said on Friday December 20, 2013, that Iraqi authorities have arrested 9 people on charges of attacking pipeline workers on December 13 in which 20 Iranian workers lost their lives. ---

Iraq Saturday December 21, 2013:

• Five senior Iraqi officers, including a divisional commander and 10 soldiers were killed in a raid on an Al-Qaeda hideout in the west of the country. Mohammed al-Karoui, the commander of the army's 7th Division, was leading an operation to attack "hideouts of militants belonging to the Al-Qaeda organisation" in Sunni-majority Anbar province, which borders Syria. He was killed along with four other senior army officers and 10 soldiers when they attacked a camp near Rutba.
• Violence elsewhere killed 10 people, including a police chief, four other police and a soldier.
• In other violence a bomb blast killed Colonel Ahmed al-Battawi, the police chief of Al-Sharqat area, and wounded five policemen as they were on patrol northwest of Baghdad.
• Another four policemen were killed in attacks on checkpoints in Fallujah, west of the capital.
• And militants detonated bombs at two houses west of the northern city of Kirkuk, killing five people, among them a soldier, and wounding six, including two soldiers.
• And more than 6,600 have been killed since the beginning of 2013, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

 

The anti-terrorism squad of Iraq announced on Sunday December 22, 2013, that it has arrested 26 people who were plotting to carry out terrorist attacks against Shiite pilgrims in the Northern parts of Babel. The arrested people are under interrogation at a security center in Iraq.

Iraq Monday December 23, 2013:

• A new wave of attacks across Iraq killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens as the government pressed on with its offensive to hunt down al-Qaeda-linked militants in the country’s western desert.
• The military operation in Anbar province followed the weekend killing of a senior military commander, a colonel and five soldiers in an ambush there during a raid on a militant hideout early Saturday.
• Security forces backed by helicopters have been combing the desert near the borders with Syria and Jordan. Syria’s civil war and chaos have encouraged widespread cross-border movement of al-Qaeda fighters between the two countries.
• The deadliest attacks was near Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib, where militants fired mortar rounds into a military base, killing three officers and three soldiers. Seven soldiers were wounded.
• Hours later, a bomb went off next to a passing military patrol in the same area, killing two, an officer and a solider. Two other soldiers were wounded.
• In Baghdad’s southern district of Dora, gunmen broke into a pet shop and killed four men.
• Three civilians were killed and nine were wounded when a bomb ripped through an outdoor market in the Iraqi capital’s northwestern Tobchi district.
• On a highway in eastern Baghdad, drive-by shooters opened fire at a bus, killing two commuters and wounding nine.
• Separately, gunmen attacked a bus in the town of Baqouba killing three commuters and wounding six there.
• In western Iraq gunmen seized three trucks with a load of about two dozen SUVs on the main highway to Jordan and kidnapped the drivers.
• The Iraqi military attacked and destroyed two camps belonging to an Al-Qaeda-linked militant group in Anbar province.
• Four suicide bombers attacked a local television station headquarters in Tikrit killing five journalists. The dead were Salaheddin television’s chief news editor, a copy editor, a producer, a presenter and the archives manager. Another five employees were wounded. Two of the bombers blew themselves up, and security forces killed the other two when they stormed the building.

 

A bomb struck the acting Iraqi defence minister’s convoy west of Baghdad on Tuesday December 24, 2013, wounding two of his guards. The roadside bomb hit Saadun Al Dulaimi’s convoy as it travelled between Fallujah and Ramadi.

Iraq Wednesday December 25, 2013:

• Militants targeted Christians in three separate Christmas Day bombings in Baghdad, killing at least 37 people.
• In one attack, a car bomb went off near a church in the capital’s southern Dora neighborhood, killing at least 26 people and wounding 38.
• Earlier, two bombs ripped through a nearby outdoor market simultaneously in the Christian section of Athorien, killing 11 people and wounding 21.
• The Christmas Day attacks brought the total number of people killed so far this month in Iraq to 441. According to United Nations estimates, more than 8,000 people have been killed since the start of the year.
• A rocket attack has killed three members of an Iranian opposition group in Iraq. A number of people from the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) group were injured at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. Baghdad has in the past repeatedly denied attacking the group.

Iraqi security forces on Saturday December 28, 2013, raided the home of a Sunni MP who backs anti-government protesters, arresting him and sparking clashes that killed his brother and five guards. Automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were fired in the clashes that erupted during the raid on MP Ahmed al-Alwani's home in Ramadi. 18 people, including 10 security forces members, were wounded. Alwani's brother Ali, who was wanted on terrorism charges, was the target of the raid. When security forces arrived, the two brothers and their guards opened fire, killing one security forces member and wounding five. Ali and two guards were wounded and taken to hospital, while Ahmed was arrested.

Attacks across Iraq, including a suicide bombing targeting soldiers on patrol and a drive-by shooting, killed at least 14 people Sunday December 29, 2013. The day’s deadliest attack happened in Mosul, where a suicide bomber attacked an army patrol, killing four officers -including a military general- and four soldiers. The attack also wounded nine soldiers and four civilians.

Islamist militants stormed police stations in several cities of Iraq’s western province of Anbar on Wednesday January 1, 2014, seizing weapon caches and freeing prisoners after security forces dismantled a Sunni protest camp on Monday. The attacks on police stations in Falluja, Ramadi and Tarmiya represent an escalation in the confrontation between Iraqi Sunni groups and the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. In Falluja, a police officer said gunmen first forced policemen to leave their posts without their weapons, then deployed snipers on a nearby building to prevent the security forces from retaking command. In Tarmiya, at least four officers were killed when gunmen attacked a police headquarters.

Iraq Thursday January 2, 2014:

• Iraq has arrested an Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia leader whose group claimed responsibility for a mortar bomb attack near a border post in Saudi Arabia in November. Wathiq al-Batat, commander of Iraq's al-Mukhtar Army militia, was arrested at a check point in northeastern Baghdad. The Al-Mukhtar Army is a relatively new Shi'ite militia, which has said it is supported and funded by Iran. Batat is a former leader of Iraq's better known Kata'ib Hezbollah militia. Batat said his militia was behind the six mortar bombs that landed near the border post in northern Saudi Arabia on November 21. There were no casualties, but the attack was a warning to the kingdom to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs, he told Reuters.
• A vehicle bomb targeting a street full of shoppers in a city north of Baghdad has killed 16 people and wounded 31 others. The pickup truck laden with explosives blew up in a commercial street of Balad Ruz destroying several shops.
• An explosive stuck onto a public minibus exploded in Baghdad’s Shaab district, killing 4 people and wounding six.
• Three soldiers were killed and five wounded in a bombing of their patrols in the northern city of Mosul.

More than 100 people were killed Friday January 3, 2014, as Iraqi police and tribesmen battled Al-Qaeda-linked militants who took over parts of two Anbar provincial cities. Parts of Ramadi and Fallujah have been held by militants for days. Fighting began in the Ramadi area Monday, when security forces removed the main anti-government protest camp set up after demonstrations broke out in late 2012 against what Sunni Arabs say is the marginalisation and targeting of their community. At least 32 civilians and 71 ISIL fighters died in the clashes but it is not known how many police and tribesmen were killed. Hundreds of gunmen, some of them carrying the black flags often flown by jihadists, gathered at outdoor weekly Muslim prayers in central Fallujah. One of them went to where the prayer leader had stood, and said: "We announce that Fallujah is an Islamic state and call you to stand by our side." At least 14 people were killed on Monday and Tuesday in and near Ramadi, while the tolls from the following two days were not immediately clear.

On Friday January 3, 2014, Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda are still in control of parts of two cities in western Iraq. Fierce fighting continues as government troops try to force militants aligned to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) from Ramadi and Fallujah. More than 60 jihadists have been killed in or near Ramadi. Clashes erupted on Monday after troops dismantled a protest camp in the city.

Iraq has lost Fallujah to Al-Qaeda-linked fighters we were told on Saturday January 4, 2014, putting militants who repeatedly battled American forces for the city back in control. Parts of the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, west of Baghdad, have been held by militants for days. Fighting erupted in the Ramadi area Monday, when security forces removed the main anti-government protest camp set up after demonstrations broke out in late 2012 against what Sunni Arabs say is the marginalisation and targeting of their community.  However, the city's outskirts were still in the hands of local police. More than 100 people were killed on Friday in Ramadi and Fallujah. Fourteen died in and near Ramadi on Monday and Tuesday, while later tolls were not immediately clear.

Hundreds of gunmen, some bearing the black flags often flown by jihadists, gathered at outdoor weekly Muslim prayers in central Fallujah on Friday, January 3, 2014. One went to where the prayer leader had stood, and said: "We announce that Fallujah is an Islamic state and call you to stand by our side."

The city center of Iraq's Fallujah has fallen completely into the hands of fighters from the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and Levant we were told Saturday January 4, 2014. ISIL is also one of the strongest rebel units in Syria, where it has imposed a strict version of Islamic law in territories it holds and kidnapped and killed anyone it deems critical of its rule. Also on Saturday, it claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in a Shiite-dominated neighborhood in Lebanon. Police has left the city center entirely and had positioned themselves on the edge of town. "The walls of the city are in the hands of the police force, but the people of Fallujah are the prisoners of ISIL".

On Saturday January 5, 2014 Iraq is preparing a "major attack" to retake militant-held Fallujah. Washington said it would help Baghdad in its fight against Al-Qaeda-linked militants but that there would be no return of US troops.

The Iraqi military tried to dislodge al-Qaida militants in Sunni-dominated Anbar province Sunday January 5, 2014, unleashing airstrikes and besieging the regional capital in fighting that killed at least 34 people. A series of bombs in Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, meanwhile, killed at least 20 people.

Iraq's prime minister urged people in the besieged city of Falluja on Monday January 6, 2014, to drive out al Qaeda-linked insurgents to preempt a military offensive that officials said could be launched within days. Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite Muslim whose government has little support in Sunni-dominated Falluja, said tribal leaders should help expel the militants, who last week seized key towns in the desert leading to the Syrian border. A provincial official said security forces had regained control of another town, Ramadi, forcing militants to the east where they were holding out in mosques and homes. Air raids would flush them out.

An Iraqi government airstrike killed 25 al-Qaeda militants Tuesday January 7, 2014, and fierce clashes broke out elsewhere in the newly disputed western province of Anbar. Fighters from an al-Qaeda group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant seized control of the center of Fallujah and part of Ramadi, the provincial capital, last week. Iraqi forces and fighters from government-allied Sunni tribes have been battling militants to recapture the two cities. Clashes erupted about 12 miles west of Fallujah following the capture of an army officer and four soldiers in the area on Monday.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at a military recruiting center in Baghdad on Thursday January 9, 2014, killing at least 21 people. The blast struck as an international rights group warned of the apparent use of indiscriminate mortar fire in civilian areas by Iraqi forces in their campaign to reassert control over the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. Iraqi troops, backed by pro-government Sunni militiamen have been clashing with the fighters and carrying out airstrikes against their positions in an effort to reassert control of the cities.

Fighting between security forces and al-Qaida-linked militants in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province has killed at least 60 people over the past two weeks we were told on Saturday January 11, 2014. 43 people were killed in the city of Ramadi and other 17 were killed in Fallujah since violence erupted in the western province. A total of 297 people were wounded in both cities. Iraqi military casualties were not included. At least 50 civilians and militants were killed during the military operations in Anbar during the past two weeks.

Iraq Sunday January 12, 2014:

• A series of car bomb attacks and clashes between security forces and militants around and north of Baghdad killed at least 21 civilians.
• The deadliest blast occurred at a bus station in central Baghdad when an explosives-laden car was detonated outside, killing at least nine people and wounding 16. Last Thursday, a suicide bomber blew himself up among a group of security force recruits nearby, killing nearly two dozen.
• Another parked car bomb targeted a gathering of buses and taxis in Baghdad’s northern Hurriyah neighborhood, killing four civilians and wounding 12.
• Shortly after sunset, fighting erupted in Baghdad’s western suburbs of Abu Ghraib as gunmen attacked a military convoy, authorities said.
• Army artillery shells later landed on the Sunni village of Al-Mahsna in Abu Ghraib, killing five civilians and wounding 13.
• Later, a suicide car bomb exploded in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu, followed minutes later by bomb hidden in a cart nearby. The blasts killed three people and wounded 27.
• Fallujah remains in the hands of the militants and tribal gunmen opposed to the central government.
• Militants and tribal fighters also control part of the provincial capital, Ramadi. Sporadic clashes there and in surrounding areas continue to take place.

 

Iraq Tuesday January 14, 2014:

• Bombings and shootings killed at least eight people in and around the Iraqi capital including a judge.
• Gunmen in a speeding car opened fire at the judge, killing him and his driver.
• A sticky bomb attached to a mini-bus exploded later in the afternoon in the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr city, killing three passengers and wounding eight.
• In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb missed a police patrol but killed one civilian and wounded six.
• Later on, gunmen in a speeding car sprayed an army checkpoint in the western suburb of Abu Ghraib with bullets, killing two soldiers and wounding two others.

 

Iraq Wednesday January 15, 2014:

• A wave of attacks including car bombs in Baghdad, killed 73 people as militants took more territory from security forces in crisis-hit Anbar province.
• Nine car bombs hit civilian targets in majority-Shiite or confessionally mixed neighbourhoods of the capital, killing 37 people.
• One of them struck a packed market in the Shaab neighbourhood, while another detonated outside a restaurant on Sanaa Street, killing five people and badly damaging the restaurant and adjacent buildings.
• A suicide bombing at a funeral in Buhruz, in religiously mixed Diyala province north of Baghdad, killed 16 people and wounded 20. The funeral was for a member of the Sahwa, the Sunni tribal militia who sided with the US military against their co-religionists in Al-Qaeda from 2006, helping turn the tide against the jihadists.
• In and around the main northern city of Mosul, 13 people were killed, nine of them soldiers.
• North of Baghdad, seven employees of a brick factory were gunned down by insurgents in the town of Muqdadiyah, while in the mainly Shiite town of Dujail a car bomb wounded four people.
• Militants overran the police station in Saqlawiyah and retook one in Malaab, a major district of Ramadi, just days after security forces trumpeted their successes in the area.
• And clashes erupted periodically in Ramadi and on the outskirts of Fallujah from Tuesday evening into Wednesday, with two children killed and 13 civilians wounded, security and medical officials said.

 

Members of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq handed out pamphlets in Fallujah on Thursday January 16, 2014, urging people to take up arms and back them in their weekslong fight against government troops for control of the city. While the militants battled Iraqi security forces in and around Fallujah and Ramadi, police outside the capital, Baghdad, found the bullet-riddled bodies of 14 Sunni men who had been abducted from a funeral by gunmen wearing military uniforms.

Iraq Saturday January 18, 2014:

• At least 19 people were killed in bombings in Baghdad.
• The deadliest blast was caused by a car bomb that exploded near a Western-style mall in the western Mansour district, killing at least six people.
• At least 13 other people died in six other incidents across the city.
• At least 74 people were wounded in the Baghdad bombings, six car bombs and one roadside bomb.
• Gunmen broke out 23 prisoners from the Tobchi juvenile prison in Baghdad and that two police officers were killed and three wounded. By around midnight, 13 of the 23 escapees had been captured in three neighborhoods of Baghdad.
• Earlier Saturday, at least one person was killed and 11 others were wounded when two explosive devices detonated in Kirkuk. The attack targeted a marketplace in the southern part of the city.

 

On Sunday January 19, 2014, we were told that al Qaeda and other insurgent groups have tightened their grip on Falluja, defying the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government's efforts to persuade local tribesmen to expel them from the Sunni Muslim city. Despite an army siege, fighters and weapons have been flowing into the city. In an embarrassing setback for a state that has around a million men under arms, the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its tribal allies overran Falluja and parts of the nearby city Ramadi on January 1. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, seeking a third term in a parliamentary election in April, deployed troops and tanks around the city of 300,000 and funneled weapons to anti-Qaeda tribesmen, but has ruled out a full-scale military assault. 80 soldiers and police had been killed so far, as well as more than 80 civilians and double that number of insurgents. On the other hand Ramadi, the provincial capital of the vast western province of Anbar, is mostly back under state control. ---

Iraq Monday January 20, 2014:

• Islamic militants controlling a mainly Sunni area west of Baghdad are so well-armed that they could occupy the capital.
• Since late December, members of Iraq's al-Qaida branch — known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — have taken over parts of Ramadi, the capital of the largely Sunni western province of Anbar. They also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah, along with other non-al-Qaida militants who also oppose the Shiite-led government.
• Iraqi government forces backed by Sunni tribal militias launched an all-out offensive Sunday to seize back control of Ramadi and surrounding areas from the militants.
• Five government-allied tribesmen were killed in the initial fighting, and 15 tribesmen and government forces were wounded.
• Two policemen and a local television cameraman who had been accompanying them were killed when a roadside bomb hit their convoy inside Ramadi.
• Two civilians were wounded in Fallujah and a number of houses were damaged when artillery shells hit them.

 

Iraq Tuesday January 21, 2014:

• Online footage appeared to show the execution of four Iraqi soldiers captured by al-Qaida militants weeks ago near the city of Fallujah. Security forces on Monday found the bodies of four soldiers in al-Bubali village, a day after it was retaken by Iraqi troops.
• Meanwhile, a car bomb exploded near a car dealership in Baghdad’s central al-Nahda area, killing five people and wounding 16 others.
• Gunmen abducted Mahmoud Fayadh, a security adviser to the governor of Anbar, as he was driving on a highway near Fallujah.

 

Shelling in Fallujah, a town near Baghdad held by anti-government fighters, killed four people we were told on Thursday January 23, 2014. Several neighbourhoods in south Fallujah were hit by shelling late Wednesday with four people killed and 18 others wounded. Fallujah residents blame the army for the shelling, but defence officials say the military is not responsible. Mortars also struck in the centre of Ramadi but did not cause any casualties.

Iraq Saturday January 25, 2014;

• A series of bombings across Iraq killed 15 people including a soldier and his entire family.
• The day’s deadliest attack struck Muqdadiyah, when two explosions targeting the home of a soldier killed him, his wife, his two daughters and two sons as they slept. The blasts leveled the home.
• In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in a commercial street in the capital’s western neighborhood of Amariyah, killing four people and wounding 12.
• Another bomb blast near an outdoor market in the Sadiyah neighborhood killed two shoppers and wounded six.
• A car bomb exploded near homes in a Turkomen neighborhood in the town of Tuz Khormato, killing three people and wounding five.
• Since late December, members of Iraq’s al-Qaida branch — known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — have taken over parts of Ramadi, the capital of the largely Sunni province of Anbar. They also control the center of the nearby city of Fallujah. Government forces and allied tribes have been trying to wrest control back from the militants since.

 

Iraq Sunday January 26, 2014:

• Violence in Anbar, as well as Baghdad and several areas north of the capital left at least 26 people dead and dozens more wounded.
• The deadliest of the violence struck in Abu Ghraib, a Sunni Arab town to the west of Baghdad, where eight people were killed in separate incidents -six soldiers were gunned down in a checkpoint attack, while a bombing on a busy road killed two people.
• Gunmen in Baghdad killed four people in two different shootings, including a former Iraqi army general.
• Militants targeting local officials in Baquba and Mosul, two of the country’s most violent cities, left three dead.
• Three car bombs in the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk killed four more people.
• Another car bomb in the town of Mishahda left three dead.
• In Fallujah, which has been out of government hands for several weeks, a mother and her three children were killed when a blast struck their home.
• The latest bloodshed pushed the overall death toll for the month above 850.
• More than 65,000 people have fled the fighting in Falluja and Ramadi during the past week alone. 

 

Iraq Wednesday January 29, 2014:

• A suicide bomber has killed four Iraqi troops west of Baghdad while attacks elsewhere in the country killed four people.
• The bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a military post near the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, killing the four soldiers and wounding 21.
• In an attack north of Baghdad, gunmen shot dead a grocery store owner and his relative.
• A bomb exploded near a line of shops in the Latifiyah area south of the Iraqi capital, killing two people.

 

Iraq Thursday January 30, 2014:

• -Iraqi police have won back full control of a ministry building stormed by gunmen who took civil servants hostage.
• Six gunmen were killed in the police operation to retake the Ministry of Transport in northeast Baghdad. Police killed four militants, while two of the militants detonated suicide vests.
• Two police officers were killed and seven injured in the attack. The hostages were freed unharmed.
• Two car bombs exploded in different areas in the northeast part of the capital, killing four people and injuring 14 others. One hit a popular market area.
• The United Nations said 2013 was the deadliest year in Iraq since 2008, with almost 8,000 people killed in violence, most of them civilians.

 

Iraq Sunday February 2, 2014:

• The Iraqi military killed 14 militants in an operation north of Baghdad, and nine people died in separate attacks across the country.
• The military undertook a two-day offensive backed by helicopters, sweeping militant positions in Salahudin, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces.
• Fourteen militants were killed, and 16 arrested, and troops seized 10 booby-trapped cars, and caches of weapons and explosives.
• The operation was based on intelligence reports that said that militants planned to seize Tikrit to divert army resources from militants in the western province of Anbar, the source said.
• Meanwhile, four soldiers were killed and one injured when gunmen opened fire on a checkpoint near the city of Kirkuk.
• Five people died and three were injured by gunmen in the eastern province of Diyala.
• A car bomb in Baquba injured two people.
• The Iraqi Defense Ministry announced that its military forces killed over 50 fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group between Saturday and Sunday in the city of Ramadi.

 

Iraq Monday February 3, 2014:

• A series of car bombings in and around Baghdad killed at least 23 people, as Iraq’s Shiite-led government grapples with a stubborn Sunni extremist-led insurgency in the western Anbar province.
• In the town of Mahmoudiya, a car bomb went off near the local council building, followed by another at a nearby outdoor market. The blasts in the town killed nine people and wounded 28.
• In Baghdad, an explosives-laden car ripped through a commercial area in the northern Hurriyah neighborhood, killing four people and wounding 11.
• Three bystanders were killed and nine were wounded in another car bomb explosion in the city’s eastern Baladiyat neighborhood.
• Also, a sticky bomb attached to a minibus exploded in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, Killing one passenger and wounding four others.
• After nightfall, a car bomb went off near an out-door market in Baghdad’s Abdu Dashir district, killing six shoppers and wounding 14 others.
• Police also found four bodies dumped in the street of the capital’s southwestern Amil neighborhood. The four, three men and a woman, had suffered gun shots and had no ID cards.
• Meanwhile, in Iraq’s western Anbar province, fierce fighting has been raging for over a month between government forces and allied tribal militiamen on one side, and al-Qaida-linked militants on the other. Since late last month, the militants have seized parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and the city center of the nearby city of Fallujah.
• A Defense Ministry statement said military operations overnight in Ramadi killed 57 militants.
• In Fallujah, security forces are still besieging the city, with sporadic clashes taking place on its outskirts.

 

Iraq, Tuesday February 4, 2014:

• Two people were killed and 21 others wounded in violent attacks in and around Iraq's capital Baghdad.
• In one of the attacks, two people were killed and 10 wounded when a car bomb went off in Baiyaa district in the southern part of Baghdad. Iraqi security forces captured a suspect at the scene, who confessed to his involvement in the attack, and he was taken into custody for further interrogation.
• In a separate incident, another car bomb detonated in al-Shurta al-Rabia district in the southwestern part of Baghdad, leaving six people wounded along with damaging several nearby buildings and civilian cars.
• Meanwhile, an interior ministry officer was critically wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated while he was driving on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad.
• In addition, a roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in Taji area, just north of Baghdad, damaging a police vehicle and wounding four policemen on board.
• Also two Katyusha rockets struck the headquarters of an army brigade inside the heavy fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad, with no reports of casualties. ---

Iraq Friday February 7, 2014:

• Attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital killed nine people on Friday, including a supporter of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who was standing in April's parliamentary election.
• The murder of Hamza al-Shammari, the first of an election candidate, comes amid a protracted surge in bloodshed with near-daily attacks nationwide and security forces battling anti-government fighters in Anbar province.
• North of Baghdad, separate bombings killed eight people.
• In Tuz Khurmatu, a car bomb set off by a suicide attacker at a main intersection in the centre of the ethnically mixed town killed five people and wounded 27 others.
• Another vehicle rigged with explosives was detonated near a passing army patrol in Baiji, killing three soldiers.
• Violence in Iraq is at its highest level since 2008, with government data showing more than 1,000 people killed last month.

 

Iraq Saturday February 8, 2014:

• At least 10 people, including six policemen, were shot dead in Iraq's Salahudin province. The six policemen were killed when gunmen stormed a police checkpoint outside a village near Tuz-Khurmato city.
• Police found the bodies of a leader of Sahwa paramilitary group, his two sons and a nephew, who were kidnapped three days ago from their home near Tikrit city.

 

Iraq Monday February 10, 2014:

• Iraq's parliament speaker narrowly escaped an attack in his hometown while 21 insurgents died when a car bomb they were readying mistakenly went off.
• A convoy carrying Parliament Speaker Osama Al Nujaifi, Iraq's most senior politician, was hit by a roadside bomb in the main northern city of Mosul. One of Nujaifi's bodyguards was wounded but the speaker himself escaped unharmed.
• Also north of Baghdad, a car bomb mistakenly went off in a compound, killing 21 insurgents including a suicide bomber. The group were filming a propaganda video of the would-be suicide attacker when a technical glitch set off the car bomb in the Jilam area south of Samarra.
• Elsewhere attacks near Baghdad in and around the towns of Mussayib and Balad left two people dead, while three insurgents were also killed in clashes with security forces.

 

Fifteen soldiers were killed Tuesday February 11, 2014, in an insurgent attack at their base in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh. The incident took place at dawn when gunmen attacked the army base at the village of Ain al-Jahash near the city of Hamam al-Alil. Hours later, reinforcement troops arrived at the site and found the bodies of the soldiers, which were all beheaded by the gunmen.

Gunmen seized part of Sulaiman Bek town and nearby villages in northern Iraq on Thursday February 13, 2014. This is the latest instance of authorities losing ground to militants, who have held all of the city of Fallujah and parts of provincial capital Ramadi for weeks. The latest flareup began with attacks by militants armed with light and medium weapons on army positions before they overran the town center.

Iraq Thursday February 13, 2014:

• Eleven people were killed and 28 others wounded in separate attacks across Iraq, including battles in Anbar province.
• In eastern province of Anbar, anti-government Sunni tribal fighters attacked an army checkpoint in Ne'imiyah area, just south of the city of Fallujah leaving two soldiers killed and four wounded.
• In a separate incident, the tribal fighters attacked a police checkpoint in Ta'mim district in the southern part of the provincial capital city of Ramadi killing four policemen and wounding three others.
• Also in the province, Sunni tribal fighters seized the al-Malahma and Albu-Dhiyab areas on the edge of Ramadi after they fought fierce clashes with the army troops backed by allied tribesmen.
• The troops also lost control of two police stations in the centre of the city after the clashes with the anti-government fighters.
• A member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group was killed when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated in Abu Ghraib area.
• Elsewhere, militant groups took control of the town of Sulaiman Beg after clashes with security forces in the early hours of the day.
• In Baghdad, two roadside bombs detonated in and near al-Qadsiyah building in the major commercial area of Shorja, leaving a civilian dead and nine others wounded.
• In the eastern province of Diyala, three people were killed and 12 wounded when two roadside bombs detonated in quick succession near the provincial capital of Baquba.

 

Iraqi troops backed by helicopter gunships regained ground in the northern town of Sulaiman Pek on Friday February 14, 2014, a day after parts of it were overrun by insurgents. At least 12 militants were killed by the army. Sulaiman Pek is a majority sect town of around 25,000 people, with smaller Turkoman and Kurdish communities. Police forces are in control of government buildings despite repeated attempts by the militants to break into them. Military forces backed by helicopters are controlling now around 70 per cent of the town and the gunmen started to leave their positions.

On Saturday February 15, 2014, we were told that attacks and clashes killed 16 soldiers and police overnight. Attacks north of Baghdad killed seven police and four soldiers on Friday night, while five soldiers died in clashes south of the capital.

Iraq Sunday February 16, 2014:

• At least 18 people, most of them members of the armed forces and security services, died and nine others were wounded in a number of attacks around Iraq.
• Unknown gunmen attacked a police checkpoint in Taza, a region to the west of Baghdad, killing at least five officers and then escaping.
• Three members of the armed forces died and four others were wounded in an attack on an army checkpoint in Al Riad, a zone southwest of the northern city of Kirkuk.
• In Tikrit, capital of Salaheddin province, two police officers died in an attack on another checkpoint in the village of Shokra, in the Sharqat district.
• Two civilians were shot to death by unknown gunmen on the highway west of Tikrit, while a man and his wife were gunned down by unknown killers who broke into their house in the eastern part of that city.
• A car-bomb attack on a police checkpoint near the Al Warar Bridge north of Ramadi, a city in Al Anbar province, killed three police officers and wounded four others.
• One civilian died and another was wounded when their car was fired upon in the Al Salam area, east of Baquba, capital of Diyala province.

 

Iraq Monday February 17, 2014:

• A wave of explosions rocked mainly Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens. The attacks, three carried out by parked explosives-laden cars and one by a separate bomb, hit crowded commercial areas near Shiite mosques.
• The deadliest took place in the eastern Ur neighborhood where a car bombing killed at least 10 people and wounded 23 others.
• Another car exploded in the central Karrada area, killing eight people and wounding 25 others.
• And one civilian was killed and seven were wounded in another explosion in the southwestern Amil neighboruhood.
• In the western Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah, another car bomb ripped through a commercial area, killing four civilians and wounding 11 others. ---

Three mortar rounds struck the Mussayib area south of Baghdad on Thursday February 20, 2014, killing 11 people. The attack also wounded 19 people. A car bomb killed one person in Mussayib on Tuesday, one of 10 such blasts to hit central Iraq that day. More than 1,500 people have been killed in attacks and clashes so far this year, after upwards of 6,800 died in violence in 2013.

Iraq Saturday February 22, 2014:

• Nineteen people were killed and 29 others wounded in attacks by gunmen mainly targeting Iraqi security forces in central and eastern Iraq.
• In the northern central province of Salahudin, gunmen attacked several police checkpoints in the early hours of the day in the town of Seiniyah resulting in fierce clashes that left four policemen dead and six others injured.
• In a separate incident, gunmen blew up two houses of police officers in the city of Tikrit killing a policeman and two civilians and wounding 17 others.
• In the eastern province of Diyala, gunmen attacked overnight a base of a rapid reaction police force and several nearby outposts in Imam Weis area leaving six policemen and four gunmen dead and six more policemen wounded. The commander of the force, Adnan Farouq, and another officer were among those killed. The clashes which ended in the morning also resulted in the arrest of six gunmen believed to be linked to the Al Qaeda.
• Meanwhile, two gunmen were killed when a roadside bomb detonated while they were planting it on a main road in Taji area.
• Separately, the Iraqi defence ministry Friday offered bounties of 20 million Iraqi Dinars ($16,666) to anyone who kills a terrorist from Al Qaeda's front, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), and 30 million Iraqi Dinars (about $25,000) to anyone who captures a terrorist of ISIL.
• According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.

Iraq Sunday February 23, 2014:

 

• Militants launched separate attacks in and around the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing at least 10 people.
• The deadliest took place in Baghdad’s eastern neighborhood of Sadr City when a car bomb exploded in an outdoor market for secondhand motorcycles and bicycles, killing six civilians and wounding 21.
• A bomb-laden motorcycle exploded in Baghdad’s northern Waziriyah neighborhood, killing three civilians and wounding 12.
• Gunmen in a speeding car also attacked a police checkpoint in the nearby town of Tarmiyah, killing one and wounding three.
• The deadliest attack was a bomb that exploded on a highway between Baghdad and the Northern city of Mosul, killing three police and four detainees who had been captured during a raid.
• In North Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near bicycle shops in the Sadr City area, killing at least two people and wounding at least seven, while another bombing in the Hurriyah area wounded at least three more people.
• Three shootings in the Northern city of Mosul killed four people, including the brother of a provincial councilor and a health directorate employee.
• And a bomb exploded in a house in the Siniyah area North of Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding two others.
• More than 610 people have been killed in attacks and clashes since the beginning of the month, and over 1,600 since January 1.

Irar Tuesday February 25, 2014:

• A car bombing in Baghdad killed at least 15 people and wounded 36. The explosives-laden car went off in the crowded commercial area of Karrada.
• A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle near the provincial council headquarters in Ramadi. Three soldiers were killed and at least four wounded.
• In a village West of Baiji, a town North of Baghdad, gunmen attacked a police checkpoint, killing four police and wounding three more.
• A suicide bombing near the Anbar provincial council headquarters in the disputed city of Ramadi, killed 12 people, most of them soldiers and police.
• In Nineveh province in northern Iraq, separate bombings killed two police and wounded four.
• A roadside bomb in the Tuz Khurmatu area killed a civilian.
• And a car bomb in central Baghdad killed at least two people and wounded nine.

 

Iraq Wednesday February 26, 2014:

• At least 51 people were killed and 62 more were killed across Iraq.
• Three militants were killed in Ramadi. A bomb killed three soldiers and wounded two more. Another eight militants were killed in clashes that also left two soldiers wounded.
• A family of five was wounded in shelling in Falluja.
• In Mosul, a car bomb wounded four soldiers. A suicide bomber killed four people, including a civilian, and wounded five more. A series of bombs killed two policemen and wounded three more. Police killed three gunmen. A grenade wounded seven people. Another grenade wounded four people at a bank.
• In Baghdad, a blast in Abu Dsheer wounded two people. Another Six people were wounded in a bombing in Ilam. Three people were shot to death. A sticky bomb killed a police officer in Ghazaliya.
• An I.E.D. in Canaan killed four people and wounded four more.
• On a highway across the provincial border near Amiriya al-Falluja, a bomb killed four soldiers.
• A car bomb in Bani Saad left three dead and seven wounded.
• Gunmen attacked a police station in Tal al-Dhahab where they killed the station chief and two policemen; another two policemen were wounded.
• Two dumped bodies were found in Qayara.
• In Baquba, gunmen killed one person and wounded another. A bomb wounded four people.
• A sticky bomb wounded two soldiers in Mahmoudiya.
• A sticky bomb killed a civilian in Kirkuk. A bomb targeting a security official wounded two bodyguards.
• The body of a former army officer was found dumped in Muqdadiya.
• A roadside bomb in Habaniya killed three soldiers.
• A suicide bomber was killed in Tikrit without causing other casualties.

 

Iraq Thursday February 27, 2014:

• Attacks, including two bombings in north Baghdad, killed 17 people as Iraq struggles with its worst violence in years.
• In the deadliest attack, an explosives-rigged motorcycle killed at least 11 people and wounded 35 when it blew up in a motorcycle market in the largely-Shiite Sadr City district.
• A car bomb in Sadr City killed at least one person and wounded five.
• In northern Iraq, a roadside bomb exploded near a Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda militia patrol in the Sharqat area, killing two fighters and wounding four.
• And three soldiers died in clashes with militants in Kirkuk province, also in northern Iraq.
• In a separate attack, at least four people lost their lives after bombs detonated on two different mini-buses in Baghdad’s Shia districts.
• Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, three army soldiers died and a number of others were injured after a militant rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a military checkpoint in the Mushaada district.
• Meanwhile, Sheikh Said Fleah al-Usman, a prominent tribal leader, and six of his guests were killed and 22 others injured in a bomb attack at Usman’s greeting house in Iraq’s western province of Anbar.
• Also in the town of Tuz-Khormatu in Iraq's northern Salahuddin Province, a bomb explosion in an outdoor marketplace claimed two lives and wounded 11 others.
• A similar attack targeting a checkpoint in the town of Shirqat in Salahuddin Province led to the death of two militants and wounded four others.
• Unknown armed men shot dead three members of a family in the eastern province of Diyala. No reason was given for the shootings.

 

Iraq Saturday March 1, 2014:

• At least 18 people were killed and 16 wounded in unabated incidents of violent attacks in different parts of Iraq, mainly in Anbar province.
• Six militants, suspected to be linked to the Al Qaeda organisation, were killed in clashes with army in Al-Sijar area, north of the Fallujah city.
• Four policemen were killed when suspected Al Qaeda militants attacked two checkpoints in Anbar's provincial capital city of Ramadi.
• In a nearby Khaldiyah town, two soldiers were killed and three wounded when unidentified gunmen attacked their checkpoint in the town.
• A car bomb ripped through the city of Heet leaving two people dead and three wounded.
• Unidentified gunmen attacked a checkpoint of a government-backed paramilitary group, in an area, some 30 km from Baghdad, killing two group members and wounding three.
• Two Sahwa members were killed and seven wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint at a village near Tuz-Khurmato city.
• According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, a total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.

The Iraqi army and police have killed 37 militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Mosul we were told on Sunday February 2, 2014. A rapid reaction force killed six ISIL terrorists and destroyed a vehicle carrying weapons in a raid on al-Sagr area in Mosul. The date of the raid was not mentionned.

Iraq Monday March 3, 2014:

• Dozens of militants died in two days of fighting with counter-terrorism forces while violence elsewhere killed at least 10 people.
• Iraqi forces have killed 52 jihadist militants in fighting on Sunday and Monday in Ramadi. The dead included foreign fighters.
• In the deadliest incident, a mortar round struck a house in Fallujah, killing two women and two children. The source of the fire was not immediately clear.
• In Baghdad, a bomb exploded in a market, killing one person and wounding five.
• Gunmen shot dead a policeman in Abu Ghraib.
•  And attacks in the northern province of Nineveh – one of the most dangerous areas of the country– killed four people, including a lawyer and a policeman. ---
• At least 22 people were killed and 97 others wounded in separate attacks across Iraq, including a deadly bombing attack at a cafe in the eastern city of Baquba.
• While Iraqis were enjoying the victory of the national soccer team with celebratory gunfire, gunmen took advantage of the sounds of the shooting and opened fire on three police checkpoints in Baghdad, killing seven officers.
• Wednesday, the city witnessed a wave of six car bombings that killed at least 18 civilians and wounded more than 50 in public markets in Shiite neighborhoods.
• In Anbar Province, two suicide bombers drove into two security checkpoints and killed at least ten officers.
• Four people were killed and eight others wounded when a bomb exploded in a cafe in Kanan area near Baquba.
• In the capital Baghdad, two people were killed and 10 others wounded when a car bomb exploded in a popular market in the southwestern district of Amil.
• Four people were killed and 12 others injured when a roadside bomb went off inside a popular cafe in Baghdad's eastern district of Sadr city
• A car bomb exploded near a garage in Nahda area of eastern Baghdad, leaving two people killed and 13 others wounded.
• Earlier in the day 10 people were killed and 54 others wounded in violent attacks, including car bombings, in central Iraq.
• In central province of Babil, two car bombs exploded in two areas in the provincial capital city of Hilla leaving two people killed and 12 others wounded.
• A car bomb ripped through Iskandriyah town, some 50 km south of Baghdad, wounding eight people, the source added.
• Near Baghdad, two soldiers were killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their checkpoint in Tarmiyah area.
• In a separate incident, an explosives-laden car parked near a popular market detonated in the town of Meshahda leaving a civilian dead and 15 others wounded.
• Elsewhere, a member of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group was killed and four wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint in the city of Baiji.
• In the western province of Anbar, two soldiers were killed by sniper fire while they were manning an army checkpoint in the town of Garma.
• Also in the province, a police officer was killed by sniper shot in the town of Khaldiyah while four mortar rounds landed on a police station in the town and wounded a policeman.
• A source from Fallujah hospital said that mortar barrage on the city during the day left a civilian killed and 12 wounded, while damaging many houses and shops.

Iraq, Saturday March 8, 2014:

• Attacks across Iraq killed 13 people including a parliamentary candidate and four children.
• In Sharqat, north of Baghdad, gunmen shot dead Mohammed Hussein Hamid, who was standing in parliamentary elections scheduled for next month on Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak's list. Hamid was the second parliamentary candidate to be killed this year, after gunmen murdered Hamza al-Shammari last month.
• In Samarra a shooting at a checkpoint killed two secondary school students and a policeman.
• A roadside bomb blast in a village south of Sharqat killed two children.
• Gunmen attacked a checkpoint in Sharqat, killing a police major and a policeman, while a roadside bomb in Khales killed army Lieutenant Colonel Abbas al-Rubaie and another soldier.
• In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near a market in the Qahira area, killing at least two people and wounding four.
• And a shooting killed one person in the northern city of Mosul.
• Violence has killed at least 110 people so far this month, and more than 1,800 since the beginning of the year.
• A suicide bomber in a stolen police Humvee passed through a military checkpoint before detonating his explosives. The bomber’s attack happened in Ramadi. Police said militants stole the Humvee and painted it with military colors to trick soldiers into letting it by. The suicide blast wounded 14 people.
• A car bomb targeting a street full of shoppers in the capital, Baghdad, killed six people and wounded 14. The blast happened in the capital’s northern Qahirah neighbourhood.
• In Baquba a roadside bomb targeting a military vehicle killed a captain and wounded four soldiers.

A suicide bomber driving a minibus packed with explosives killed at least 32 people and wounded 147 on Sunday March 9, 2014, in the southern Iraqi city of Hilla. The attacker approached a main checkpoint at a northern entrance to the largely Shiite Muslim city and detonated the minibus. At least 50 cars were set ablaze with passengers trapped inside and part of the checkpoint complex was destroyed. ---

Iraq Thursday March 13, 2014:

• As many as 21 people were killed and seven injured in violent attacks that mainly targeted security force in different parts of Iraq.
• In north Iraq, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car at an army base in a village near Mosul city. A soldier was killed and three wounded.
• Iraqi security forces foiled an attempt by Al Qaeda militants to storm a police base in south Mosul. The troops shot dead a suicide bomber and blew up his car bomb before he could reach his target.
• In Anbar province, a battalion commander and five soldiers were killed in fierce clashes with gunmen in Albu- Bali. Three gunmen were also killed.
• In a separate incident, a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into an army checkpoint and blew it up on a bridge in the city of Rawa. The attack killed four soldiers and wounded two others, destroying parts of the bridge.
• Separately, a policeman was shot dead near his house in the western part of the city of Tikrit.
• In the early hours of the day, gunmen broke into the house of a member of the government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group, and killed him and his wife.
• In Baghdad, a car bomb was detonated outside the house of a defence ministry officer in Zaiyounah district in east-central part of the capital, causing damages to the house without human casualty.
• In Diyala province, gunmen shot dead an owner of a restaurant in the city of Maqdadiyah.
• In another incident, gunmen shot dead a member of the government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group in the town of Wajihiyah.
• Meantime, an intelligence officer was gunned down by armed men when he was driving at a road intersection in Baquba
• Also in the province, a policeman and his wife were wounded when gunmen blew up a bomb in their house in the town of Buhruz.

Iraq executed three former officials of ex-leader Saddam Hussein's government and four others convicted of terrorism we were told on Thursday March 13, 2014, despite international calls to end death penalty in the country. The executed had committed crimes against humanity and murdered former government opponent Talib al-Suhail al-Tamimi in Lebanon. One of the three convicts was Abed Hassan al-Majeed, a cousin of former leader Saddam Hussein and brother to Saddam's aid Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as Chemical Ali. The three were found guilty in the case of killing al-Tamimi, who was assassinated in Beirut in 1994, reportedly after planning a coup against Saddam Hussein. The other four were charged for colluding in terror acts.

Heavily-armed militants attacked the home of an anti-Qaeda militiaman north of Baghdad Sunday March 16, 2014, killing and decapitating his wife and two sons and killing another person in a brutal pre-dawn assault. The militia leader, Abu Salim, was not in the house at the time of the attack, which involved more than a dozen vehicles and fighters armed with heavy machine guns and other weapons and also left two of his young sons wounded. Fighters attacked the militia leader’s house in Jilam, a suburb of the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra and killed Abu Salim’s wife, two sons and another woman. They then decapitated his wife and two sons, and set off explosives around the house, injuring two other sons, aged four and five. Policemen at a nearby checkpoint attempted to repel the assault but were unsuccessful and fled the scene when they ran out of ammunition and reinforcements that they had radioed for failed to arrive.

One Iraqi army soldier and four militants were killed Monday March 17, 2014, in clashes in Fallujah in the western province of Anbar. Armed tribesmen had attacked an army barracks in the northern Sagr district, killing one soldier and injuring two others. In a separate incident, four militants were killed in clashes with army troops in Al-Amin neighbourhood in eastern Fallujah. The militants attacked a military convoy on the international highway, prompting the army to fire back and kill them.

Iraq Tuesday March 18, 2014:

• Attacks in Baghdad and across central Iraq, including seven car bombs, killed at least 10 people. The blasts also wounded nearly 50 people.
• Attacks struck in Baghdad, as well as in nearby Karbala, Diyala, Salaheddin, Babil and Wasit provinces, killing at least 10 people and wounding 47.
• Separate blasts in the capital -a car bomb and a roadside bomb- left three people dead, while vehicles rigged with explosives were also set off near Karbala, Hilla, Baiji and Hafriyah, killing six more.
• A magnetic "sticky bomb" in Diyala province killed a municipal council member.
• More than 250 people have been killed so far this month and upwards of 2,000 since the beginning of the year.

Iraq Wednesday March 19, 2014:

• Bombings at a Baghdad cafe left 13 people dead pushing the toll from a day of nationwide blasts, shootings and shelling to at least 46.
• Violence elsewhere in and around the capital killed eight people.
• Four policemen were killed by a booby-trapped corpse north of Baghdad.
• Attacks in the restive provinces of Diyala, Nineveh and Kirkuk, also left six dead.
• In Fallujah shelling by government forces, as well as clashes in and around the city, killed 15 people and left 40 others wounded.
• Security forces have managed to wrest back control of Ramadi but a stalemate has persisted in Fallujah.
• More than 300 people have been killed so far this month and upwards of 2,000 since the beginning of the year.

At least 14 Iraqi SWAT forces were killed on Thursday March 20, 2014, when they entered a house rigged with explosives in the western province of Anbar. More than 20 SWAT entered the house in the provincial capital Ramadi after gunmen left the area. The building then blew up. Gunmen had likely planted bombs in houses as they left.

Iraq Friday March 21, 2014:

• Thirty-seven people were killed in a wave of bombings and attacks across Iraq, and eight soldiers were kidnapped.
• A suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into a police station in northeastern Diyala Province, followed by gunmen who sprayed bullets from speeding S.U.V.s. Eleven police officers were killed, including the commander of the unit.
• In Samarra gunmen in S.U.V.s attacked an army unit, took control and killed five soldiers, while kidnapping eight others and bringing them to an undisclosed location.
• In Anbar Province, where ISIS fighters seized control of Falluja in January, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the funeral for a leader of the local Sunni Awakening council, tribal militiamen armed and paid by the Iraqi government to battle ISIS. The suicide bomber killed 13 people, including other Awakening members and tribal leaders while 37 others were wounded. The Awakening leader who was being buried had been killed by a roadside bomb on Thursday.
• In Tikrit a roadside bomb exploded as a convoy of the commander of the army’s Fifth Brigade was passing by, killing the commander and two of his guards.
• In Kirkuk, two car bombs in a public market killed five civilians and wounded 15 others.

A double bombing has rocked Tikrit leaving at least seven people killed. The attack on Saturday morning March 22, 2014, took place when a roadside bomb exploded in a commercial street. Minutes later, a car bomb struck policemen who had arrived to inspect the first blast. Five policemen and two civilians were killed and 18 people were wounded in the bombings.

An Iraqi presidential guard has shot dead the Baghdad bureau chief of RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq (RFI), Mohammed Bdaiwi Owaid al-Shammari. The shooting occurred on Saturday March 22 at the gate of the compound housing RFI's offices in Jadriyah neighbourhood. Shammari was driving his car through the guarded gate, when he had a verbal argument over the right of passage with a member of the Kurdish peshmerga forces traveling in a vehicle. The officer shot Shammari before fleeing inside the compound. He apparently took refuge in presidential-guard offices before eventually being handed over, but only after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a surprise appearance to demand he be taken into custody.

Security forces foiled an attempt by unknown gunmen to break into Iraq's second-largest prison, we were told on Saturday March 22, 2014. One policeman and a number of gunmen were killed in the overnight attempt to storm the Badoush Prison. The prison had been attacked with mortar shells prior to the storming attempt. Badoush Prison is located in Mosul and has been the target of several attacks in recent months to free inmates imprisoned on terrorism-related offenses.

Iraq Sunday March 23, 2014:

• At least seven people were killed in a series of attacks, most of which were concentrated in predominantly Sunni areas north of the capital.
• The deadliest violence struck in the northern province of Nineveh, where three separate attacks killed four people, including two soldiers who were on patrol in the south of the province.
• In Tikrit two civilians were killed.
• A university professor was shot dead in the Shiite-majority city of Kut.

Thirty-six militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), including three from other Arab countries, were killed in the northern Iraqi province of Diyala, we were told on Monday March 24, 2014.

Three Iraqi lawmakers on Tuesday March 25, 2014, survived a bombing in the eastern Diyala province that left three bodyguards dead and four others injured. A roadside bomb planted near a checkpoint in the Ghalibiyah district in Diyala went off as their convoy passed by.

At least nine people have been killed and 25 others wounded when a suicide bomber drove a truck, packed with explosives to an army checkpoint late on Tuesday March 25, 2014. The attack targeted civilian vehicles lined up at the checkpoint on Al-Muthna bridge at Taji, north of Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday March 27, 2014:

• A series of bombings targeting commercial areas of Baghdad killed 26 people as residents were heading out on the town.
• The attacks happened within minutes of each other, suggesting a coordinated assault. The evening’s first attack was also the deadliest.
• A car bomb exploded after sunset in a commercial street in the Sunni-dominated northern neighbourhood of Azamiyah, killing 12 people and wounding 28.
• Minutes later, another bomb exploded near a market in the same neighbourhood, killing seven and wounding 27.
• Those blasts were followed by an explosion in a shopping street in the capital’s Aamiriyah district, killing three people and wounding 15 others.
• Yet another blast struck a commercial street in southwestern Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 14.

Iraq Sunday March 30, 2014:

• A series of attacks on security forces and civilians killed more than 12 people.
• In the deadliest attack, gunmen shot dead seven soldiers at a security checkpoint in Mosul.
• In Ramadi a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle on a main bridge, killing at least five people and wounding others.  Part of the bridge, a key crossing for Ramadi's residents, fell into the Euphrates River.

Iraq Wednesday April 2, 2014:

• Attacks against security forces killed 14 people as the UN's envoy to Iraq warned that the country's election campaign would be "highly divisive". The attacks came on the second day of campaigning for April 30 parliamentary polls, Iraq's first since March 2010.
• A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to an army recruitment centre in northern Iraq, killing six would-be soldiers and wounding 14 others. The attack struck in Riyadh, a mostly-Sunni town in ethnically mixed Kirkuk province.
• In Kirkuk, separate bombings targeting the military killed six soldiers and wounded 14 others.
• Attacks in Kut, south of the capital, and the main northern city of Mosul, left two policemen dead.
• Another policeman was killed in a firefight with militants south of Baghdad in a confessional mixed region known as the Triangle of Death for the frequency of attacks that take place there.

Fighting between government troops and al-Qaida-inspired militants has killed 40 gunmen and an army officer near the capital, Baghdad. On Thursday April 3, 2014, members of security forces foiled an assault by the militants on a military base in Youssifiyah, killing 40 "terrorist attackers. One army officer was killed during the clashes. The attack started late Wednesday and lasted for a few hours. The attackers withdrew after the arrival of security enforcements to the area. ---

Iraq Saturday April 5, 2014:

• Twenty five people were killed and 33 wounded in violence across Iraq, mainly in the western province of Anbar.
• In Anbar province, an Iraqi army troops clashed with militants linked to Daash militant group in al-Malahmah area near the town of Khaldiyah killing 11 militants and wounding 18.
• Fierce clashes erupted between militants affiliated to the Daash group, and Iraqi police backed by pro-government tribesmen in al-Soufiyah district in the southern part of the provincial capital city of Ramadi, killing six militants, two policemen and two tribal fighters.
• In Fallujah, a civilian was killed and nine others were wounded when army artillery pounded several neighbourhoods in the besieged city.
• Also in Anbar, Iraqi army helicopter gunships pounded insurgents' positions in the village of Zoubaa in Abu Ghraib area.
• In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and three others were wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in Tarmiyah area.
• In the eastern province of Diyala, a roadside bomb detonated near a police patrol in the city of Maqdadiyah, near Baquba, leaving a policeman dead and an officer wounded.
• Police clashed with a wanted local leader of an insurgent militant group, named al-Naqshabandiya organisation, and shot him dead during an operation outside the city of Jalawlaa.
• Also in the province, two soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion near their patrol in Naft Khana area.
• A total of 8,868 Iraqis, including 7,818 civilians and civilian police personnel, were killed in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.
• An explosion at a booby-trapped house and ensuing clashes with militants have killed 15 soldiers west of Baghdad. The blast happened Saturday April 5, 2014, when a group of soldiers searched a farmhouse in Garma, an area near the city of Fallujah. Minutes later, gunmen opened fire on arriving soldiers. 24 soldiers were wounded.

 

Iraq Sunday April 6, 2014:

• Gunmen near Iraq's capital kidnapped and later shot to death six men, the deadliest of a series of attacks that killed at least 15 people across the country.
• A suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into a police headquarters in Tikrit, killing three police officers and wounding 13.
• In Maidan a bomb in a commercial area killed two civilians and wounded five.
• A bomb exploded in a commercial street in Baghdad's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing four people and wounding 11.

 

A suicide car bomb attack on a police station has killed four policemen and wounded seven. The bomber rammed his explosive-laden car Tuesday April 8, 2014, into the main entrance checkpoint near the city of Mishada, also wounding 7.

Iraq Wednesday April 9, 2014:

• Car bombs hit several mostly Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad and a town south of the Iraqi capital killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens.
• The deadliest of the day's attacks took place in the town of Numaniyah, where a bomb first went off in a busy commercial area, followed by a car bomb that exploded as people gathered to help the victims from the first blast. In all, five people were killed and 17 were wounded.
• Earlier in the day, a car bomb in Baghdad's central Nidhal Street killed four people and wounded 11.
• Three people died and nine were wounded in a car bombing in the northern Kazimiyah district.
• Car bombs also exploded in the areas of Shaab, Shammaiya, Karrada and Maamil, killing a total of seven people and wounding 30.
• Three more civilians died and eight were wounded when another car bomb struck Baghdad's central upscale commercial area of Jadiriyah.
• The militants have seized and are continuing to hold parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi, and nearly all of the nearby city of Fallujah.

 

A car bombing in a neighbourhood of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, has killed five people. The blast Thursday night April 10, 2014, happened in Baghdad's eastern neighbourhood of Sadr City and also wounded 14 people. They say it struck a commercial area of the neighbourhood.

Gunmen attacked Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlak's convoy in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad on Friday April 11, 2014, killing a guard and wounding at least five. Mr. Mutlak was not hurt. The identity of the attackers was not immediately clear. While an interior ministry official said only that gunmen attacked the convoy, Mutlak's assistant specifically blamed the army.

A car bomb in the Iraqi city of Baquba on Saturday April 12, 2014, killed three people and wounded 18 others. The bomb went off in the Jurf al-Malah section of central Baquba.

Iraq Sunday April 13, 2014:

• Bombings targeting security forces in northern Iraq killed at least 16 people as the country prepares for a crucial election later this month.
• In the deadliest attack, an explosives-laden parked car exploded as a joint Iraqi army and police patrol passed through a busy commercial area in Mosul, killing five civilians and five security personnel; the blast wounded 12.
• Earlier, a suicide car bomber drove his vehicle into a security checkpoint in the northern town of Dibis, killing six people and wounding 15. ---

Iraq Thursday April 17, 2014:

• Suspected Sunni Muslim militants killed at least 30 people around Iraq including 12 soldiers in an assault on a remote army base in the north.
• Gunmen disguised in Iraqi military uniforms drove armoured vehicles, including Iraqi army Humvees, up to a small military base outside Mosul and opened fire, killing 12 soldiers and wounding about a dozen.
• Suspected Sunni militants killed another 18 people in bomb and shooting attacks in other parts of Iraq.
• Meanwhile, a rusting pipeline that runs from the Kirkuk oilfields to the Baiji refinery in Salahuddin province leaked a large amount of oil into the Tigris River.
• An Iraqi policeman sacrificed himself to shield army recruits from a suicide bomber northeast of Baghdad. In Baladruz, northeast of Baghdad, policeman Raad Kadhim Hattab threw his arms around a suicide bomber who was trying to target an army recruitment centre. The bomber detonated his explosives, killing Hattab and a recruit and wounding 10 more.
• In Mahallabiyah, west of Nineveh's capital Mosul, militants with automatic weapons attacked a military site, killing 12 soldiers and wounding 15.
• A police colonel was gunned down southeast of the city.
• Near the town of Tuz Khurmatu, north of Baghdad, militants who blocked a road and searched cars found three soldiers in a minibus and killed them. The soldiers were shot in the head; the militants also beat the bus driver, injuring him.
• In Baghdad, a car bombing in the Karrada district killed at least three people and wounded at least 12.

 

Twelve people were killed on Friday April 18, 2014, in clashes between Sunni villagers and suspected Shiite militants in Iraq's northern Diyala province. A militia attacked al-Mekheisa village in the town of Abu Seida and clashed with residents. Ten militants and two villagers were killed in the violence. Several civilians were also injured in the clashes. The militants burned down four homes on the village's outskirts.

A senior leader of the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been shot dead near Mosul on Friday April 18, 2014. The ISIL leader, identified as Satam Azawi, was killed in an ambush carried out by gunmen believed to be affiliated with local tribes.

Iraq Sunday April 20, 2014:

• Attacks including a suicide bombing at a university in north Baghdad, killed at least 10 people.
• A suicide attacker entered the university before setting off explosives, while another bomber and a gunman were killed by security forces. The bombing took place at the entrance to the university, while a second bomber was shot dead. The attack killed at least 3 people and wounded at least 9.
• In Babil province, south of Baghdad, a car bomb killed 3 people and wounded 4.
• Two more car bombs killed 3 people and wounded 26 in Al-Rumaitha in Muthanna province, further south.
• And in Saadiyah, north of Baghdad, a magnetic "sticky bomb" on a vehicle killed an army lieutenant colonel.
• In another sign of the reach of militant groups and the weakness of security forces, shifting parts of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi and all of Fallujah, both west of Baghdad, have been outside government hands for more than 3 months.
• Violence has killed more than 460 people in Iraq this month and upwards of 2,700 this year.

 

Militants wearing military uniforms carried out an overnight attack against a balloting centre in a remote area of the country's north and killed 10 guards we were told on Tuesday April 22, 2014. An unknown number of militants showed up at the polling centre late Monday in Daqouq village outside the northern city of Kirkuk. They said they were there to carry out a search but instead shot and killed the 10 guards, eight of whom were village residents.

Iraq Thursday April 24, 2014:

• Militants shot dead an Iraqi provincial councillor and bombed the education minister's convoy today, as violence killed 13 people nationwide ahead of next week's elections.
• In Muqdadiyah, northeast of Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on Diyala provincial councillor Ahmed al-Harbi's two-vehicle convoy, killing him and two guards.
• And in Kirkuk province a bomb exploded near Education Minister Mohammed Tamim's convoy without causing any casualties.
• North of the city of Mosul, a car bomb exploded in the village of Bayukh, which is populated by members of the Shabak minority, killing seven people and wounding 13. The 30,000-strong Shabak community mostly lives in northern Iraq near the Turkish border.
• In the Dhuluiyah area north of Baghdad, two Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda fighters were shot dead.
• A policeman was killed in Tikrit.

 

Suicide bombers killed 31 people Friday April 25, 2014, at a sports stadium hosting a campaign rally for thousands of supporters of a militant Shiite group before parliamentary elections. An al-Qaida breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, claimed responsibility for the attack at the Industrial Stadium in eastern Baghdad, which drew about 10,000 backers of the Iranian-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq group. The bombings were to avenge what it called the killing of Sunnis and their forced removal from their homes by Shiite militias.

On Saturday April 26, 2014, the Iraqi army killed 12 armed elements and wounded others by launching airstrikes against their headquarters near the city of Fallujah. In addition the Iraqi army planes bombed dens and headquarters which holed up inside armed elements in the areas of Saqlawiyah, Alizergiyah and Amiriyat-al-Fallujah city, North, West and South of the city. The shelling killed 6, injured 6 other armed elements and destroyed a number of the vehicles belonging to the armed groups; air raids are ongoing till now. ---

Iraq Sunday April 27, 2014:

• A car bomb explosion on Sunday evening killed 10 people at an outdoor market in the Iraqi capital, officials said. The blast took place at the fruit and vegetable market in the Shiite district of Sadr city, killing 10 people and wounding 22 others. Several shops were damaged in the attack.
• Security forces ambushed a convoy of fuel tankers trying to illegally enter Iraq from Syria, killing at least eight drivers.

 

Iraq Monday April 28, 2014:

• Militants targeted polling stations across much of Iraq and a crowd of Kurds jubilantly dancing on the street as soldiers and security forces cast ballots two days ahead of parliamentary elections. The attacks, including a suicide bombing northeast of Baghdad, left at least 46 people dead.
• The day's worst attack took place in the Kurdish town of Khanaqin  in Diyala province close to the Iranian border. A suicide bomber walked toward a crowd of Kurds performing a traditional dance and blew himself up, killing at least 25 and injuring 35, many of them in critical condition.
• One of the deadliest attacks took place in Tuz Khormato where a suicide bomber blew himself up at a checkpoint leading to a polling centre, killing six security personnel and wounding four.
• Another suicide bomber hit a checkpoint leading to a polling centre in the nearby city of Kirkuk, killing six policemen and wounding seven.
• A civilian was killed and another wounded when a bomb went off on a nearby street, also in Kirkuk.
• Another bomber struck a polling centre in Baghdad's upscale Mansour district on the west bank of the Tigris, killing three soldiers and wounding four.
• Another suicide bomber set off his explosive belt among a group of soldiers gathering at a checkpoint near a voting centre in Baghdad's northern Azamiyah neighbourhood, killing four of them and wounding 13.
• In the town of Habbaniyah a bomb went off next to a group of policemen leaving a balloting centre, killing one and wounding five.
• And in the northern city of Mosul, two suicide bombers on foot tried to attack a polling centre. The guards shot and killed one attacker as the second blew himself up outside the centre in the southern Zeindan area, wounding five security personnel.

 

Iraq Monday April 28, 2014:

• Militants targeted polling stations across much of Iraq and a crowd of Kurds jubilantly dancing on the street as soldiers and security forces cast ballots two days ahead of parliamentary elections. The attacks, including a suicide bombing northeast of Baghdad, left at least 46 people dead.
• The day's worst attack took place in the Kurdish town of Khanaqin close to the Iranian border. A suicide bomber walked toward a crowd of Kurds performing a traditional dance and blew himself up, killing at least 25 and injuring 35, many of them in critical condition.

 

Two bomb blasts have killed at least 15 people, a day before the country holds its first general elections since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011. Tuesday April 29, 2014's attacks took place at a market in the town of al-Saadiyah.  On Monday, insurgents targeting polling stations and political gatherings killed least 50 people in the Iraqi capital and areas north of the city.

Iraq, Saturday May 3, 2014:

• At least 16 people were killed and 16 others were wounded in separate attacks across Iraq.
• Gunmen intercepted a car travelling on a main road near the city of Baiji killing four soldiers before fleeing the scene.
• In a separate incident, gunmen attacked a checkpoint manned by members of a government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group in Tarmiyah area leaving three group members dead and five others wounded, including three passers-by.
• In Anbar province, an army force clashed with gunmen who tried to attack an army base, just east of the city of Fallujah. They killed seven militants said to be affiliated to the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.
• Also in the province, two civilians were killed and eight others wounded by mortar fire in several neighbourhoods in the militant-held city of Fallujah.

 

Iraq Thursday May 8, 2014:

• A series of attacks in Iraq, including a bomb blast at a cafe in a Baghdad suburb, killed 15 people.
• The deadliest of the day’s attacks was the cafe bombing, which struck inside a small cafe in the capital’s northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing four people and wounding eight.
• A bomb went off in a commercial street in Baghdad’s southern district of Dora, killing two people and wounded five.
• A bomb targeted a wedding party in Baghdad’s Abu Dashir neighbourhood, killing three people and wounding seven.
• A roadside bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the town of Youssifiyah killing three people and wounding nine.
• A bomb went off near a security checkpoint in northeastern Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounded five people, including three civilians.
• A gunman riding a motorbike opened fire on a group of people walking in the street in the town of Madian, just south of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding four
• Relatives discovered the body of a kidnapped Iraqi policeman but it was rigged with explosives and blew up, killing his father and brother. The policeman was kidnapped in a village near Sharqat, northwest of Baghdad, the previous day. The blast also wounded a second brother. ---

Iraqi forces launched an operation Friday May 9, 2014, to retake areas near the militant-held city of Fallujah in preparation for an eventual assault as violence killed 11 people. Anti-government fighters have held Fallujah, just a short drive from Baghdad, and shifting parts of Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, farther west, since early January. But such an assault is unlikely to occur soon, as security forces have struggled all year to retake territory in Anbar from militants. Shelling and clashes began in and around Fallujah on Friday and continued for hours. Eight people were killed and nine wounded. Among the dead were two children, while another two children were wounded.

Iraq Saturday May 10, 2014:

• A series of bombings have killed 14 people a day after army shelling killed 11 civilians and gunmen in the militant-held city of Fallujah.
• The deadliest attacks happened when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into the security checkpoint in the town of Dujail, killing six security force members and a civilian. They said the attack wounded 15 people.
• A bomb blast at an outdoor market killed four people and wounded 17 in the town of Tarmiyah, just north of the capital.
• Another bomb exploded near a patrol of Sunni anti-al-Qaida militiamen in the town of Dawr, killing three Sunni fighters and wounding two.
• Meanwhile, army shelling in Fallujah killed eight civilians and three gunmen Friday.

 

Iraq Sunday May 11, 2014:

• Militants launched an audacious attack on a military barracks in a remote area in the country's north and killed 20 troops overnight, including some who had been bound and shot at close range. The killings happened in the village of Ayn al-Jahish outside of Mosul. Gunmen staged the assault late Saturday night shooting some at short range while others died fighting the insurgents when they stormed the barracks. 11 troops had their hands tied behind their backs and suffered close-range gunshots to the head. The slain troops were in charge of protecting an oil pipeline that sends Iraqi crude oil to international markets and guarding a nearby highway.
• Other attacks killed 18.
• In the town of Adeim gunmen in speeding car opened fire on members of the Sahwa militia, which joined forces with U.S. troops at the height of the Iraq war to fight al-Qaida, killing seven.
• Outside of Mosul, gunmen attacked a joint checkpoint for Iraqi police and the Sahwa, killing three police officers and one Sunni militiaman.
• Another Sahwa member was killed along with his brother and son when gunmen stormed his house in the town of Youssifiyah.
• A suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Mosul, killing three soldiers and a policeman.

 

Three Iraqis were killed and six others injured when a bombing struck a local market near Baghdad on Monday May 12, 2014. The explosive charge was detonated remotely in a local market in Mahmoudiyah. The bombing also caused severe damage to several shops in the market.

Iraq Thursday May 15, 2014:

• As many as 22 people were killed and 65 wounded in separate attacks and suicide bombings across Iraq.
• The deadliest attack occurred in Baghdad during morning rush hours when a car bomb and two suicide bombers detonated at a court and a nearby police headquarters, killing 10 people and injuring 46.
• In Anbar province five militants were killed as clashes erupted between Iraqi army and gunmen.
• Meanwhile, four people were killed and 10 wounded by artillery and mortar shelling on several neighbourhoods in Fallujah.
• In northern Iraq, an off-duty soldier and a civilian were killed by gunmen at a village in Mosul city.
• Two more soldiers and three civilians were also wounded in two bomb attacks in Mosul during the day.
• Elsewhere, a soldier was killed and another wounded when they were attacked by gunmen in Baiji city.
• Three children were wounded in a separate roadside bomb explosion near a primary school. ---

Iraq Saturday May 17, 2014:

• Bombings killed five people in the outskirts of Baghdad.
• The deaths were latest in a protracted surge in bloodshed that has seen 3,500 people killed already this year.
• Four people died in roadside bombing in a market area of the town of Tarmiyah, North of Baghdad.
• Another blast, in Latifiyah, South of the capital, killed a soldier.

 

Iraq Sunday May 18, 2014:

• A series of attacks, mainly bombings targeting markets and commercial streets, killed 14 people.
• The deadliest attack took place shortly before sunset when a bomb exploded at an outdoor market in the town of Mahmoudiya, killing four people and wounding 12.
• A bomb blast at an outdoor market in Baghdad's eastern suburb of Maamil killed three shoppers and wounded seven.
• In western Baghdad, a bomb blast in a commercial street killed two people and wounded seven.
• In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb exploded near an army patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing two soldiers and wounding four.
• Sunday night, gunmen using weapons fitted with silencers stormed an apartment in eastern Baghdad, killing three off-duty policemen.
• Militants kidnapped a candidate from a small Shiite Muslim political party. Rahman Abdulzahra al-Jazairi was near his home in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Jamila in north Baghdad when gunmen opened fire, wounding his father and brother and abducting him. Jazairi is the general secretary of Hezbollah Warithun, an offshoot of the main Hezbollah party in Iraq.

 

Militants killed eight Iraqi soldiers travelling on a bus in north Iraq on Tuesday May 20, 2014. The soldiers were leaving the town of Suleiman Bek to go on leave, but were stopped by militants who killed them. Four other soldiers were wounded in the shooting on the highway out of the town.

On Tuesday May 20, 2014, we were told that Iraqi security forces captured 14 members of the terrorist group of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the city of Fallujah. The arrests were made on Monday as ISIL militants were wearing niqab, a cloth which covers the face as part of hijab for women. The detainees were ISIL militants who fled after coming under attack by the Iraqi forces. One of the detainees had planted bombs in several residential buildings in the city of Fallujah.

Iraq Thursday May 22, 2014:

• A wave of suicide and car bomb attacks in Iraq killed at least 29 people and wounded dozens more as political rivals prepared to launch negotiations on forming a new government after last month's national elections. The attacks mainly targeted Shiite pilgrims, but they bore the hallmarks of Sunni extremists who view Shiites as heretics. The pilgrims were on their way to the shrine of Imam Mousa al-Kazim, a revered saint who lived in the eighth century, to commemorate the anniversary of his death.
• The deadliest attack took place in Baghdad's eastern Ur neighbourhood when a parked car bomb went off near a group of pilgrims, killing at least 10 and wounding 25 others; the dead included seven children under 14 years of age.
• Another parked car bomb exploded in the capital's western Mansour neighbourhood, killing nine and wounding 26 others.
• In central Baghdad, a suicide car bomber targeted another group of pilgrims, killing five and wounding 18.
• Another suicide car bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint in the town of Mishahda, killing three policemen and two civilians while wounding 11 others.

 

Iraq Friday May 23, 2014:

• Three roadside bombs in northern Iraq killed at least seven police officers while they were guarding an oil pipeline. Two of those killed were described as high-ranking officers, and nine police officers were wounded.
• Suicide car bombing kills 4 Iraqi soldiers in Mosul

 

Iraq Saturday May 24, 2014:

• The security forces have arrested 7 individuals suspected of involvement in the Saturday terrorist attack on the vehicle of an Iranian company.
• A total of 12 people, including four Iranian nationals, were killed and 39 wounded in separate attacks across Iraq.
• In Iraq's Eastern province of Diyala, four Iranian workers were killed when a roadside bomb struck a convoy of vehicles belonging to an Iranian company building a gas pipeline between Iran and Iraq in Imam Wies area.
• Throngs of Shiite Muslims converged on a shrine in Baghdad today for an annual ritual under heavy security, but a string of attacks outside the capital killed 25 people.
• Three bombings in the capital, including two carried out by suicide attackers, on May 22 killed 21 people, while mortar fire yesterday struck a district adjacent to Kadhimiyah, killing three more.
• In the deadliest attack a car bomb exploded outside an alcohol shop in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing 10 people and wounding 33 others.
• In Kirkuk province three farmers kidnapped in the early hours of the morning were found beheaded.
• Another vehicle rigged with explosives, this time set off by a suicide attacker, and targeted an army convoy in Diyala province escorting Iranian workers who had been installing a gas pipeline between Iran and Iraq. Five people were killed -three Iranians and two soldiers- and 13 people were wounded, including eight Iranians.
• Attacks also struck in the restive provinces of Nineveh and Salaheddin.

Iraq Tuesday May 27, 2014:

• A suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden belt in a mosque in busy commercial area in central Baghdad, killing at least 27 people. The bomber entered the Shiite mosque in the Shorja market in downtown Baghdad as worshippers were heading inside to attend noon prayers. The explosion wounded 29 other people.
• Also in Baghdad, a bomb went off in an outdoor vegetable market in the eastern Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, killing two civilians and wounding five others.
• Two policemen were killed and six other people wounded when a bomb hit a police patrol in the southern Dora district.
• Elsewhere in the capital, roadside bombs in the neighbourhoods of Sadr City and Dura left two people dead.
• And a series of shootings and bombings in the main northern city of Mosul killed six others.

Iraq Wednesday May 28, 2014:

• Attacks across Iraq killed 22 people the latest in a months-long surge in violence that has left more than 4,000 people dead this year. The shootings and bombings struck in Baghdad and restive parts of the north and west, leaving dozens more wounded.
• In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomb exploded in north Baghdad, killing at least eight people and wounding 49 others.
• Elsewhere in and around the capital, three people were killed, while three others died in the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Nineveh.
• Also in north Iraq, a series of 11 bombings in the ethnically mixed town of Tuz Khurmatu killed five people, four of them members of the same family, and wounded 11.  The blasts targeted homes belonging to ethnic Turkmen.
• Shelling in the militant-held city of Fallujah killed three more people, a day after Human Rights Watch criticised the government for possibly violating the laws of war by shelling the city's main hospital.

Iraq Wednesday May 28, 2014:

• A series of bombings and attacks across Iraq killed at least 29 people.
• The deadliest attack happened when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint in Baghdad's northern district of Kazimiyah, killing five police officers and four civilians. The attack wounded 35.
• In the northern town of Tuz Khormato, a series of bomb blasts in residential areas killed at least four civilians and wounded seven.
• A bomb in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib killed two civilians and wounded three.
• Other attacks killed a civilian and wounded three in the northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, while gunmen shot dead a lawyer as he drove through the eastern New Baghdad neighbourhood.
• In Baghdad's western neighbourhood of Jihad, a parked car bomb ripped through a commercial street, killing five civilians and wounding 12.
• A parked car bomb went off in a commercial area in the capital's eastern neighbourhood of al-Ameen, killing four civilians and wounding 14.
• A bomb in a parking lot in Baghdad's Sadr City killed three civilians and wounded 12.

 

Iraq Friday May 30, 2014:

• A total of 13 people were killed and 17 others wounded in separate bombings and shootings across Iraq.
• An employee who works for the Iraqi Oil Ministry was killed when a sticky bomb exploded in his car in western capital Baghdad’s Ghazaliya district.
• A civilian was killed and six others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a popular fruit market in the Tarmiyah area.
• A roadside bomb was detonated near an army patrol, leaving an Iraqi soldier killed and four others wounded in the Abu Ghraib area.
• A policeman was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb targeted their patrol near the town of Dujail.
• Four militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant were killed in a clash with Iraqi army near the city of Fallujah.
• In a raid by unidentified gunmen against a civilian vehicle, two soldiers and a civilian were killed and another soldier wounded, when they were traveling west of the city of Tikrit.
• In Diyala province, a civilian was shot dead and four others wounded by unidentified gunmen in Muqdadiyah.
• Meanwhile, a soldier was killed and another wounded when unidentified gunmen attacked an army checkpoint in Qaratapa area.

 

Violence has claimed the lives of 799 Iraqis in May, the highest monthly death toll so far this year, the United Nations said on Sunday June 1, 2014. Last month’s civilian death toll amounts at 603, with 196 security forces killed. 1,409 Iraqis, including 1,108 civilians, were wounded. The previous month’s death toll stood at 750, making April the second deadliest month of the year. The worst-hit city was the capital Baghdad, with 315 people killed. The northern province of Ninevah came in second with 113, followed by nearby Salahuddin province with 94. The figures exclude deaths in embattled Anbar province, where militants have controlled parts of the provincial capital Ramadi and nearby Fallujah since December.

Iraq Sunday June 1, 2014:

• Attacks across Iraq killed 16 people. The worst violence targeted security forces north of Baghdad, in the provinces of Salaheddin, Diyala and Nineveh.
• In the single deadliest attack, five off-duty soldiers riding a taxi between Baiji and Samarra, in Salaheddin, were ambushed by militants who freed the vehicle’s driver but proceeded to kill all the soldiers.
• Elsewhere in the province, three soldiers and a policeman were killed in separate roadside bombs.
• In Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province, four others died in a series of shootings and bombings.
• A policeman was killed in Muqdadiyah, Diyala province.
• Two teachers were also shot dead in Baghdad.

 

Iraq Monday June 2, 2014:

 

• Attacks across Iraq targeted commercial areas and Iraqi security forces, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens.
• The deadliest attack was in the southern Shiite city of Najaf where a parked car bomb ripped through a commercial area, killing six people. That attack also wounded 13 people.
• In other attacks, a suicide car bomber struck an army checkpoint in the northern town Mishahda killing three soldiers and two civilians. 14 people were wounded in that attack.
• In a commercial area in the town of Iskandariyah two people were killed and 10 were wounded in a parked car bombing.
• A car bomb also hit in the southern city of Nasiriyah, killing one civilian and wounding 18.
• One person died and three were wounded in a bombing at an outdoor market in the town Mahmoudiyah.

Iraq Tuesday June 3, 2014:

• Violence across Iraq, including shelling of the conflict-hit city of Fallujah, killed 35 people, as politicians haggle over forming a new governing coalition after April elections.
• The worst attack was concentrated in Fallujah, which has been under the control of anti-government fighters since the beginning of the year. Shelling in the city killed 18 people and wounded 43 others. The shelling hit a market, municipal offices and in the vicinity of the hospital.
• Attacks in and around Baghdad killed nine people.
• In Iskandiriyah, militants killed five people -two with guns and three with knives- along a main road in the town before fleeing the scene.
• In the capital itself, a civil servant was shot dead, while separate attacks on Baghdad’s northern outskirts killed three people.
• Further north, attacks in Salaheddin, Nineveh and Kirkuk provinces killed eight people, six of them members of the security forces.
• Along with the casualties, militants have also struck a key northern pipeline ferrying oil to international markets via Turkey, disabling it for three months, dealing a blow to the country’s economy, which is heavily-dependent on crude exports.

 

A suicide bomber killed a top leader of the Iraqi government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group and four others we were told on Wednesday June 4, 2014. Among those killed in the attack in Iraq's western province of Anbar were three security officers and one bodyguard. Seven security personnel were also injured. The attack occurred late Tuesday night when the suicide bomber hugged Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha and blew up his explosive vest amid a crowd of Sahwa leaders and senior security officers who were on tour at a residential area in the western part of the provincial capital Ramadi. In addition, the huge blast killed Hussein Abu Umsha, who is responsible for a local Sahwa group; seven of Abu Risha's bodyguards and policemen were also wounded. The Sahwa militia, also known as the Awakening Council or the Sons of Iraq, consists of some Sunni armed groups, who previously were part of powerful anti-US Sunni insurgent groups after the US-led invasion to Iraq in 2003.

Iraqi helicopters bombed the city of Samarra after insurgents overran parts of it early on Thursday June 5, 2014, bringing them within striking distance of a Shi'ite shrine the destruction of which in a 2006 attack unleashed a bitter sectarian war. Militants advanced on Samarra in pick-up trucks, raiding checkpoints along the way and blowing up a police station in an attack that killed several policemen. After entering the city from the east and west, they seized control of the municipality building and university, raising the black flag of the Sunni militant 'Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) over both buildings. They also occupied Samarra's two largest mosques and announced the "liberation" of the city via loudspeaker, urging residents to join their jihad (holy war) against the government. The militants have come within about two kilometres of the Askari shrine, whose destruction by insurgents in 2006 set off the worst bout of Sunni-Shi'ite violence to follow the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

Iraqi helicopters bombed the city of Samarra after militants overran parts of it early on Thursday, bringing them within striking distance of a Shi'ite shrine the destruction of which in a 2006 attack unleashed a bitter sectarian war. On Friday June 6, 2014, the Iraqi army and SWAT forces had regained control in Samarra, killing dozens and forcing the rest to retreat from the city after they moved in overnight.

In other violence Thursday June 5, 2014, a bomb blast near a bakery in a town just south of Baghdad killed two people and wounded 10. In eastern Baghdad, a bomb exploded near a bus stop, killing one person and wounding eight.

Iraq Saturday June 7, 204:

• A series of car bombs exploded across Iraq’s capital killing at least 52 people in a day of violence that saw militants storm a university in the Anbar province and take dozens hostage.
• The attacks in Baghdad largely focused on Shiite neighbourhoods, underscoring the sectarian violence now striking at Iraq.
• Separate clashes in a northern city killed 21 police officers and 38 militants.
• The first Baghdad attack took place in the capital’s western Baiyaa district, killing nine people and wounding 22.
• Later on, seven car bombs in different parts of Baghdad killed at least 41 people and wounded 62.
• A roadside bomb in western Baghdad also killed two people and wounded six. All the attacks happened in a one-hour period and largely targeted commercial streets in Shiite neighbourhoods.
• The day began with militants killing three police officers on guard at the gates of Anbar University. The gunmen detained dozens of students inside a university dorm during their attack.
• Several hours later, gunmen left the university under unclear circumstances. Students then boarded buses provided by the local government to flee the school, though gunfire erupted as security forces attacked retreating militants.
• Not a single student or a university staff member was hurt during the raid. All of them went home and their ordeal is over.
• Meanwhile in the northern city of Mosul, clashes continued Saturday for a second day between security forces and Sunni militants trying to seize neighbourhoods there. Fighting since dawn killed 21 police officers and 38 militants.

 

Insurgents overran the headquarters of the provincial government in Iraq's northern city of Mosul late on Monday June 9, 2014, making further gains in a fourth day of fighting in the country's second-largest city. Governor Atheel Nujaifi was trapped inside the building but managed to escape while police held back an assault by hundreds of militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades, sniper rifles and heavy machine guns mounted on vehicles. The western side of Mosul is now in control of militants, who are advancing steadily southwards in the direction of a major army base where a military airport and top-security prison are located.

Islamic militants overran much of Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday June 10, 2014, seizing the governor's headquarters and rampaging through police stations, military bases and the airport as security forces collapsed and abandoned their posts. Gunmen cruised through neighbourhoods, waving black banners while residents fled. The assault was a heavy defeat for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the face of a widening insurgency by a breakaway al-Qaida group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group has been advancing in both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, capturing territory in what appears to be a campaign to set up a militant enclave straddling the border. Earlier this year, Islamic State took control of Fallujah, in the west of the country, and government forces have been unable to take it back. The far larger Mosul is an even more strategic prize. The city and surrounding Ninevah province are a major export route for Iraqi oil and a gateway to Syria. Regaining Mosul poses a daunting challenge for the Shiite prime minister. The city has a Sunni Muslim majority and many in the community are already deeply embittered against his Shiite-led government.

A double bombing at a Kurdish party office killed 19 people in a town northeast of Baghdad on Sunday June 8, 2014. A suicide bomber set off his explosive vest at the gate of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan office in Jalula in the ethnically mixed Diyala province. Minutes later, a car bomb exploded near the building as security forces arrived to inspect the scene of the first blast. Police put the death toll for both explosions at 19 killed and 65 wounded. The dead included a senior police officer and four of his bodyguards, and several houses and cars were damaged in the attack. ---

Iraqi police and army forces abandoned their posts in the northern city of Mosul after militants overran the provincial government headquarters and other key buildings, dealing a serious blow to Baghdad's efforts to control a widening insurgency in the country we were told on Tuesday June 10, 2014. The insurgents seized the government complex late on Monday, following days of fighting in the country's second-largest city. The gunmen also torched several of the city's police stations, freeing detainees held in lockups. The fighters are believed to be affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al-Qaida splinter group. As the militants worked to consolidate control over Mosul, a powerful blast struck a funeral in the central city of Baqouba. The explosion targeted mourners gathered for the funeral of a Sunni university professor killed a day earlier, killing at least 15 and wounding 27. In Mosul the insurgents appeared to be in control in several parts of the city. Detainees set free form the police stations were seen running in the streets in their yellow-jumpsuits.

Iraq Monday June 9, 2014:

• A double bombing tore through Kurdish political party offices in northern Iraq in the deadliest of a series of attacks nationwide that killed at least 40 people. It was the second such assault in as many days.
• The attack took place in the town of Tuz Khormato when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden truck into a checkpoint leading up to the offices of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the nearby Kurdistan Communist Party.
• Another truck bomb exploded, presumably detonated by remote control, as people rushed to the scene of the first attack. The blasts killed 22 people, wounded as many as 150 and destroyed several houses and cars.

 

On Wednesday June 11, 2014, Islamist insurgents in Iraq have seized the city of Tikrit, the hometown of former leader Saddam Hussein, heir second major gain after capturing Mosul on Tuesday. Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki vowed to fight back against the jihadists and punish those in the security forces who fled offering little or no resistance. The insurgents are from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). ISIS, which is also known as ISIL, is an offshoot of al-Qaeda. It controls considerable territory in eastern Syria and western and central Iraq, in a campaign to set up a Sunni militant enclave straddling the border.

Iraq Thursday June 12, 2014:

• Jihadists are pushing toward Baghdad after capturing a town just hours to the north, as the US mulls air strikes to bolster Iraq's collapsing security forces.
• With militants threatening the capital, forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Thursday took control of the disputed northern oil hub of Kirkuk to protect it from jihadist attack.
• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meanwhile has warned that Tehran would combat "terrorism" in neighbouring Iraq.
• Fighters from the Sunni Muslim Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have spearheaded a major offensive, overrunning the northern province of Nineveh and parts of Kirkuk and Salaheddin provinces, and also moving into Diyala.
• They were advancing on Baghdad, after seizing the town of Dhuluiyah just 90km away.
• Militants also seized three villages in Diyala province, which abuts Baghdad to the east, expanding the offensive.
• ISIL spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani promised the group would drive on to Baghdad and Karbala that is one of the holiest sites for Shi'ite Muslims.
• Washington is considering several options for offering military assistance to Baghdad, including drone strikes.
• There is no current plan to send US troops back into Iraq, where around 4500 American soldiers died in the bitter conflict.
• British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there was "no question" of British troops being sent back to Iraq.
• The militants overran Iraq's second city Mosul on Tuesday before taking control of its surrounding province Nineveh and sweeping into Kirkuk, Salaheddin and Diyala provinces. They encountered little effective resistance from security forces, some of whom discarded their uniforms and joined tens of thousands of fleeing civilians.
• The gunmen did not enter Kirkuk city, but the army withdrew from positions in the surrounding province and their places have been taken by members of the Kurdish peshmerga security forces.
• The first sign of effective resistance to the militants came Wednesday when they were repulsed in heavy fighting as they tried to enter Samarra, a mainly Sunni Arab city that is home to a shrine revered by the country's Shi'ite majority.
• Over 500,000 people have already been displaced in and around Mosul alone.

Iraqi government forces carried out airstrikes Thursday June 12, 2014, against fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The militant group seized several cities from the Iraqi army this week in a move that has caused alarm across the world. Analysts say the militants' advance has called into question the future of the Iraqi state. Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are within 100 kilometers of Baghdad, having taken control of several towns and cities in northern Iraq in recent days.  Iraqi army units have abandoned their posts and fled ahead of the militants’ advance. But Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, insisted that ISIL forces had been halted north of the capital.

Kurdish forces exploited the mayhem convulsing Iraq on Thursday June 12, 2014, to seize complete control of the strategic northern oil city of Kirkuk as government troops fled in the face of advancing Sunni militants. The insurgents pressed their advance southward toward Baghdad, warning officials of occupied Mosul to renounce allegiance to the central government and threatening to destroy religious shrines sacred to all Shi’ites. At the same time, militias of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority rushed to fill the vacuum left by the abrupt disintegration in the government’s security forces, vowing to confront the Sunni militants, defend Baghdad, and protect other threatened cities including Samarra. Thousands of volunteers were reported mobilizing.

Sunni militants captured a strategic northern Iraqi city along the highway to Syria on Monday June 16, 2014, sending thousands of residents from an ethnic minority fleeing for safety and moving closer to their goal of linking areas under their control on both sides of the border.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday June 16, 2014, that American drone strikes are an option in a bid to halt the dramatic sweep by insurgents over a swath of Iraq. He also said the Obama administration is willing to talk with Iran and does not rule out potential military cooperation between the two rivals to stop the rampage. Already, the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani, is in Iraq, consulting with officials on how to roll back the al-Qaida-breakaway group leading the insurgent charge, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The U.S. government was notified in advance of Soleimani's visit.

As the Iraqi government bolstered Baghdad's defences Sunday June 15, 2014, the Islamic militant group that captured two major cities last week posted graphic photos that appeared to show its fighters massacring dozens of captured Iraqi soldiers. The pictures show masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, loading the captives onto flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie face-down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The final images show the bodies of the captives soaked in blood after being shot. The soldiers are denounced as unbelievers and shot one by one in the back of the head.

On Sunday June 15, 2014, Iraq’s military pummelled the positions of Sunni Muslim insurgents who have captured large chunks of territory north of Baghdad, trying to turn back battlefield advances that threaten to split apart the country. The army killed more than 279 “terrorists” with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and destroyed 50 of the group’s vehicles within 24 hours.

Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has fired senior officers for failing to halt a sweeping advance by Sunni Islamist rebels. Four army commanders were dismissed because they did not perform "their national duty", we were told on Tuesday June 17, 2014. The US is deploying up to 275 military personnel to protect staff at its huge embassy in the capital, Baghdad. Mr Maliki and other senior figures of his Shia government were joined by Sunni leaders in a call for "national unity", after talks in Baghdad on Tuesday evening. They urged Iraqis to avoid sectarian grievances and said individuals with no official state function were banned from carrying weapons.

Iraq has formally called on the US to launch air strikes against jihadist militants who have seized several key cities over the past week. Earlier the Sunni insurgents launched an attack on Iraq's biggest oil refinery at Baiji north of Baghdad. Government forces are battling to push back ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and its Sunni Muslim allies in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, after the militants overran the second city, Mosul, last week.

Sunni extremists on Wednesday June 18, 2014, battled security forces for control of Iraq’s largest oil refinery, which provides Iraq with more than a quarter of its domestically produced fuel and could help fund the militants’ rampage across the country.
 
Militants seized a complex that was once Saddam Hussein’s top chemical-weapons production facility. The facility still contains a stockpile of old weapons, but they are contaminated and hard to transport, and officials don’t believe the militants could make a chemical weapon out of them. The capture of the Muthanna complex, roughly 45 miles northwest of Baghdad, highlights the threats from the advancing Sunni forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its allies. ---

On Sunday June 22, 2014, militants overran a second frontier post on the Syrian border, extending two weeks of swift territorial gains as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) pursues the goal of its own power base, a "caliphate" straddling both countries that has raised alarm across the Middle East and in the West.

Sunni fighters have seized a border post on the Iraq-Syria frontier, smashing a line drawn by colonial powers a century ago in a campaign to create an Islamic Caliphate from the Mediterranean Sea to Iran. The militants, led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), first moved into the nearby town of al-Qaim on Friday, pushing out security forces we were told on Saturday June 21, 2014. Once border guards heard that al-Qaim had fallen, they left their posts and militants moved in, the sources said.

Iraq, Saturday June 21, 2014:

• The security forces killed at least 40 militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Tikrit and they also destroyed five vehicles of the militants. The ISIL terrorists were killed in a joint operation by the Anti-Terrorism Unit of Iraq's security forces and Air Force.
• The Iraqi security forces captured a senior militant of the ISIL in the South of the city of Tikrit as army forces backed by volunteers killed 30 ISIL terrorists in Tal Afar.
• Iraqi security forces clashed with ISIL terrorists in Baiji, North of Baghdad, capturing Abu Abdurrahman al-Nasseri, a top ISIL militant. The captive was one of the close aides to the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Nasseri was responsible for the killing of 80 Iraqi troops.
• In another incident, Iraq’s army troops, backed by volunteers and tribal fighters, killed 30 members of the ISIL terrorist group in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, inflicting heavy losses on the terrorists.
• Three hundred Iraqi Special Forces are protecting the Baiji oil refinery.

 

Iraq Friday June 27, 2014:

• Iraqi helicopters fired on a university campus in Tikrit to dislodge insurgents who overran the city in an onslaught that has given them control of most majority Sunni regions and brought them close to Baghdad.
• Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric calls for prime minister to be chosen by Tuesday.
• A rights group said analysis of photographs and satellite imagery "strongly indicate" that ISIL staged mass executions in Tikrit after seizing it on June 11 early in their offensive.
• ISIL killed as many as 190 men in at least two locations over three days. Numbers may be much higher but the difficulty of locating bodies and getting to the area had prevented a full investigation.

 

Iraqi security forces killed the commander of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group in Kirkuk on Monday June 30, 2014. The security forces have killed a guerrilla commander in Kirkuk. The slain terrorist was Abu Bakr Chechen, the commander of the ISIL.

Violence has claimed the lives of 2,417 Iraqis in June, making it the deadliest month so far this year we were told on Tuesday July 1, 2014. The figures issued by the U.N. mission to Iraq put last month's civilian death toll at 1,531, with 886 security forces killed. UNAMI added that 2,287 Iraqis, including 1,763 civilians, were wounded. The figures exclude deaths in embattled Anbar province, which is largely controlled by Sunni militants. The second deadliest month this year was May, with 799 Iraqis killed, including 603 civilians. April's death toll was 750. The latest casualty figures exceed even last year's peak. The U.N. reported that last July at least 1,057 Iraqis were killed and another 2,326 were wounded.

A report suggests that Iran has supplied Iraq with warplanes to bolster its forces as it fights an offensive by Sunni-led Islamist militants. The Sukhoi jets delivered on July 1 originated from Iran. Russia earlier supplied an initial delivery of Su-25 ground attack planes -a single-seat, twin-engine jet aircraft developed in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s. It is unclear who will be responsible for crewing and maintaining the aircraft.

Islamic militants in Iraq have freed 32 Turkish truck drivers held hostage for three weeks in a mass kidnapping that shocked Turkey we were told on Thursday July 3, 2014. The truck drivers are now on their way back to Turkey through northern Iraq but a separate group of almost 50 kidnapped Turks remain in captivity. ---

The Iraqi army retook Saddam Hussein's home village overnight, a symbolic and tactical victory in its push against Sunni insurgents that have seized swathes of the country. Backed by helicopter gunships and helped by Shi'ite Muslim volunteers, the army recaptured the village of Awja in an hour-long battle on Thursday July 3, 2014. Awja lies 8 km south of Tikrit, a city that remains in rebel hands since Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), launched a lightning assault across northern Iraq last month. Awja had been "totally cleansed" and 30 militants killed. A police source told Reuters three insurgents had been killed.

Warplanes carried out multiple bombing raids in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Sunday July 6, 2014, a day after the leader of a powerful al-Qaeda-inspired militant group appeared online in a video from the city’s main mosque.

Kurdish security forces took over two major oil fields outside the disputed northern city of Kirkuk before dawn Friday July 11, 2014. The takeover of the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oil fields were the latest land grabs by Kurds, who have responded to the Sunni militant insurgency that has overrun large parts of Iraq by seizing territory of their own, effectively expanding the Kurdish autonomous zone in the north. Those moves have infuriated al-Maliki's government while stoking independence sentiment among the Kurds.

Iraqi security forces and government-affiliated militias appear to have executed at least 255 prisoners since 9 June, we were told on Saturday July 12, 2014. The killings appeared to be retaliation for attacks by the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis. The prisoners were all Sunni Muslims, while the majority of security forces and militia were Shia.

On Saturday July 12, 2014 we were told that On June 11, 2014, members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized a former chemical weapons facility near Samarra, Iraq called Muthanna, 56 kilometres northwest of the capital Baghdad, taking possession of chemical remnants left over from the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As if seizure of a Saddam-era chemical weapons depot were not enough, the takfiri terrorists also have taken some 40 kilograms of uranium compounds used for research at Mosul University. Downplaying the incident, an IAEA spokesperson stated the stolen material, which was not confirmed as uranium, was “low grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk, and apparently not even suitable for a terrorist to make a dirty bomb. 

Gunmen appeared to be targeting prostitutes in Iraq Saturday July 12, 2014, after 33 people, 29 of them women, were slaughtered in two apartment buildings. At least 18 people were wounded during the massacre.

Residents of a town north of Baghdad found 12 corpses with execution-style bullet wounds on Monday July 14, 2014, following fighting between rival Sunni insurgents that could eventually unravel a coalition which has seized much of northern and western Iraq. The incident points to an intensification of infighting between the Islamic State and other Sunni groups, such as supporters of former dictator Saddam Hussein, which rallied behind the al Qaeda offshoot last month because of shared hatred for the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government. ---

On Tuesday July 22, 2014, a suicide driver rammed his explosive-laden car into a police checkpoint at the entrance to Baghdad's Khazimiyah district killing 21 people, including seven policemen manning the post. There was a long line of cars at the checkpoint at the time of the attack. At least 35 people were wounded.

Iraq Thursday July 24, 2014:

• A series of attacks killed dozens of people and Islamic militants destroyed a Muslim shrine in Mosul traditionally said to be the burial place of the Prophet Jonah.
• The militants first ordered everyone out of the Mosque of the Prophet Younis, or Jonah, then blew it up. Several nearby houses were also damaged by the blast. The mosque was built on an archaeological site dating back to 8th century BC and is said to be the burial place of the prophet.
• In Baghdad, a double car bombing ripped through the busy commercial district of Karradah as people gathered at dusk to break their daily fast for the holy month of Ramadan, killing 21 people and wounding 33 and sending smoke billowing over the city.
• Earlier in the day, militants fired mortar shells on an army base holding suspects facing terrorism charges in Taji. As the prisoners were being evacuated by bus to prevent a jailbreak, the militants attacked with roadside bombs, igniting a gun battle that left 52 prisoners and eight soldiers dead; another eight soldiers and seven prisoners were wounded in the gun battle.

 

The Iraqi government Friday July 25, 2014, confirmed that Russia has begun delivery of attack helicopters and warplanes as part of an arms deal intended to bolster the foundering military effort to retake the nearly half of Iraq lost this year to Islamist militants. Mi-35 helicopter gunships and Su-25 fighter-bombers were hastily added in June to a multibillion-dollar arms deal that had been signed before militants from the Islamic State stormed through northern and central Iraq. Efforts to retake territory, notably in Tikrit and Anbar province to the west of the capital, have been disastrous for the Iraqi army and its Shiite Muslim militia allies, something the government hopes effective air power might change.

On Sunday July 17, 2014, Iraqi security forces have killed 50 terrorists and destroyed their vehicles in Himreen Dam in Diyala. The terrorists where trying to infiltrate Himreen Dam to the Northeast of Baquba, capital of Diyala. ---

A commander with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was recently killed while on a "jihadi mission" in Iraq we were told Thursday July 31, 2014. Ibrahim Mohammed al-Haj was killed sometime in the past week. It was the first known Hezbollah death in Iraq since Sunni extremists with the Islamic State captured large parts of the country north and west of Baghdad in June. A handful of advisers from Hezbollah are offering front-line guidance to Iraqi Shiite militias fighting the Sunni extremists north of Baghdad. But it is not known if —beyond the advisers— any Hezbollah fighters are fighting along Iraqi Shiite militiamen.

Iraq Saturday August 2, 2014:
 

• At least 33 people were killed and 94 were wounded in clashes with Sunni militants and bomb attacks across Iraq.
• In one attack, a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-laden car into a crowd of security forces and allied volunteers at a recruitment centre in Balad city leaving four volunteers killed and some 32 others wounded.
• Helicopter gunships carried out air strikes against positions of insurgent militants affiliated with the Islamic State (IS), an al Qaeda offshoot, in Jurf al-Sakhar area killing at least 15 militants and wounding 40 others. Three vehicles carrying heavy machineguns were also destroyed.
• An Army force raided IS positions, in the town of Latifiyah killing five IS militants, including a Syrian militant known as Abu Safiyah al- Suri.
• In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, Sunni militant groups, including IS, took control of the southern part of the city of Jalawlaa after fierce clashes broke out with Kurdish security forces, known as Peshmerga. The battles in Jalawlaa resulted in the killing of a Peshmerga member and the wounding of five others, while at least three militants were killed and another wounded.
• A clash between the security forces and militant groups erupted in Imam Weis area in northeast of the provincial capital city of Baquba leaving at least two militants killed and destroying a vehicle carrying heavy machinegun.
• Sporadic clashes between the militant groups and security forces continued during the day in the rural areas near the town of Mansouriyah leaving at least a woman killed and four people wounded.
• In Baghdad, a bomb went off inside a bus carrying passengers, including soldiers, near Qahtan square in southern part of the capital, wounding nine soldiers and three civilians.
• At least 1, 737 Iraqis were killed and 1,978 others injured in acts of terrorism and violence in July across Iraq, not including casualties in Anbar province.
• Terrorism and violence have killed 5,576 civilians in Iraq in the first half of this year, with 11,666 more wounded.
• Fifteen terrorists affiliated to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were killed in Himreen area of Mukdadiya district in Diyala province. The air forces attacked the ISIL positions in Himreen area, killing 15 ISIL terrorists and destroying 8 vehicles.

Four terrorists affiliated to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant were killed when an improvised explosive device went off at Mosul-Shurqat highway. The IED, which was placed on a roadside exploded when the vehicle of the terrorists passed where the explosion resulted in killing the four terrorists in the vehicle we were told on Saturday August 2, 2014.

Islamic State fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday August 3, 2014, after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping across much of northern Iraq in June. Capture of the electricity-generating Mosul Dam, after an offensive of barely 24 hours, could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities or withhold water from farms, raising the stakes in their bid to topple Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government. The terrorist gangs of the Islamic State have taken control of Mosul Dam after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces without a fight. Peshmerga fighters were preparing for a "major offensive" Sunday night to take back control of towns near the dam. The swift withdrawal of the peshmerga troops was an apparent severe blow to one of the few forces in Iraq that until now had stood firm against the Sunni Islamist fighters who aim to redraw the borders of the Middle East.

Baghdad operations command centre on Monday August 4, 2014, launched large-scale operations in different parts of Baghdad, killing 176 terrorists in West and South of the capital. In addition 75 suspects were arrested. The security forces also defused five car bombs and hit 38 hideouts for the terrorists.

Iraq Wednesday August 6, 2014:

• Two car bombs have exploded in Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad killing 27 people.
• The first attack was a double car bombing in a shopping area of Sadr City, a Shiite neighbourhood in the east of the city, killing 21 people and wounding 34 others.
• Later on in the night, another car packed with explosives detonated in the nearby neighbourhood of Ur, also predominantly Shiite, killing six more people. ---

The crisis escalated rapidly on Thursday August 7, 2014, with a re-energized Islamic State in Iraq and Syria storming new towns in the north and seizing a strategic dam as Iraq’s most formidable military force, the Kurdish pesh merga, was routed in the face of the onslaught. The loss of the Mosul Dam, the largest in Iraq, to the insurgents was the most dramatic consequence of a militant offensive in the north, which has sent tens of thousands of refugees, many from the Yazidi minority, fleeing into a vast mountainous landscape. In one captured town, Sinjar, ISIS executed dozens of Yazidi men, and kept the dead men’s wives for unmarried jihadi fighters.

The US has launched an air strike against militants from the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq on Friday August 8, 2014. American aircraft attacked artillery that was being used against Kurdish forces defending the northern city of Irbil. President Barack Obama authorised air strikes on Thursday, but said he would not send US troops back to Iraq. British forces are to drop food aid for Iraqi refugees living under threat from militants in support of the US in its planned air strikes on militants but there will also be food drops, targeting members of the Yazidi community. David Cameron, the perfect poodle, has welcomed US air strikes against Islamic State militants but ruled out any UK military action.

U.S. fighter jets and drones repeatedly bombed Sunni Islamic extremists in northern Iraq on Friday August 9, 2014, targeting ISIS artillery units and convoys advancing on the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil. The airstrikes began just hours after President Barack Obama authorized "targeted airstrikes," saying in a televised address late Thursday that the United States had an obligation to protect its personnel in Iraq and prevent a potential genocide of minority groups by ISIS. Obama said there will be no build-up of U.S. combat troops in Iraq. Two U.S. F/A 18 fighters first struck an ISIS artillery unit outside of Irbil. Later, a drone targeted an ISIS mortar position. When ISIS fighters returned to the site a short time later, the drone struck the target again. That was followed a short time later by a second round of airstrikes, carried out by four U.S. fighter jets, that targeted an ISIS convoy of seven vehicles and another mortar position.

U.S. airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq on Wedne3sday August 13, 2014, allowing thousands of trapped members of a minority group to escape. A team of about 20 U.S. troops and aid workers spent the day on the mountain and determined that an operation to rescue Iraqis who had been besieged there was probably unnecessary. There are far fewer refugees left at the northern Iraq location, where tens of thousands had been said to have been surrounded by Sunni Muslim extremists, and they “are in better condition than previously believed”. Humanitarian airdrops and the nightly evacuation of Yazidis on land routes appeared to have lessened the emergency. Several thousand members of the Yazidi minority sect remained on the mountain, but not the tens of thousands who had been believed to still be there. ---

The United States on Saturday August 16, 2014, launched several more air strikes in Iraq at Islamic State, including ones targeting members of the Islamic militant group who are positioned around the country’s largest dam, near Irbil. Islamic State captured the Mosul Dam last month in its surprisingly swift and deadly run across northern Iraq in recent months. A mix of U.S. fighter and remotely-piloted aircraft executed nine strikes as part of its humanitarian efforts in Iraq and to protect American personnel and facilities. The strikes destroyed or damaged four armoured personnel carriers, seven armed vehicles, two Humvees and an armoured vehicle.

Also on Saturday August 16, 2014, Islamic State reportedly killed 80 Yazidi men and abducted their wives and children. The U.S. military later struck two militant targets in the village of Kawju (the village is located south of the village of Sinjar) killing some of those involved in the killings.

Kurdish forces fired mortars and explosives at extremist militants Sunday August 17, 2014, as the battle to retake a strategic dam in northern Iraq raged on. By Sunday evening, the Kurdish forces had taken over the eastern side of the structure. Clashes were ongoing over the western side. The forces want to retake the dam without damaging it. U.S. warplanes joined the effort amid growing concern that the facility is not maintained and could rupture. Engineering studies show that a failure of the dam would be catastrophic, resulting in flooding all the way to Baghdad. Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam, the facility on the Tigris River north of the city of Mosul is a key source of electricity, irrigation and flood protection. ISIS fighters seized it this month, and they were digging in Sunday to keep their grip, using snipers, land mines and other explosives in their efforts to fend off advancing forces. There may be up to 400 ISIS fighters in and around the dam complex. The Peshmerga were worried that the militants could try to sabotage the dam.

Pope Francis on Monday August 18, 2014, said efforts to stop Islamic militants from attacking religious minorities in Iraq are legitimate but said the international community —and not just one country— should decide how to intervene. Francis was asked if he approved of the unilateral U.S. airstrikes on militants of the Islamic State group, who have captured swaths of northern and western Iraq and northeastern Syria and have forced minority Christians and others to either convert to Islam or flee their homes. "In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor," Francis said. "I underscore the verb 'stop.' I'm not saying 'bomb' or 'make war,' just 'stop.' And the means that can be used to stop them must be evaluated."

A suicide bomber and several gunmen attacked a Sunni mosque in a province outside Baghdad during Friday August 22, 2014 prayers, killing at least 64 people and wounding more than 60. It was not immediately clear if the attack was carried out by Shiite militiamen or the Islamic State extremist group, which has been advancing into the ethnically and communally mixed Diyala province and has been known to kill fellow Sunni Muslims who refuse to submit to its leadership. The attack on the Musab bin Omair Mosque in Imam Wais village began with a suicide bombing near the entrance, after which gunmen poured in and opened fire on the worshippers. Iraqi security forces and Shiite militiamen raced to the scene of the attack to reinforce security but stumbled upon bombs planted by the militants, which allowed the attackers to flee. Four Shiite militiamen were killed and thirteen wounded by the blasts.

Hundreds of Iranian soldiers have taken part in a joint operation inside Iraq with Kurdish forces to retake a town held by the Islamic State group. It is believed to be the first time that Iranian troops have been directly involved in the fighting against the Sunni rebel group on this scale. Hundreds of soldiers crossed the border on Friday August 22, 2014, in a joint operation with Kurdish Peshmerga forces to take back Jalawla in Diyala province. He said the Iranian forces retreated back across the border early on Saturday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham dismissed the reports of any Iranian military presence in Iraq.

The airstrikes continued Sunday August 24, 2014, albeit at a reduced tempo, with one attack near the Kurdistan regional capital, Irbil, and another in the vicinity of the Mosul Dam, which was recaptured from Islamic State forces last week.

On Tuesday August 26, 2014, a car bomb was detonated in a mainly Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 28. The bombing in the New Baghdad neighbourhood followed a series of blasts in the Iraqi capital on Monday that killed more than 20 people. The Islamic State said in a statement the bombing was carried out as revenge for an attack against a Sunni mosque in Diyala on Friday, which killed 68 and wounded dozens.

Islamic State (IS) has released a video appearing to show the beheading of a Kurdish man as a warning to forces fighting the group in northern Iraq. The video, entitled a Message in Blood, shows several men in orange jumpsuits said to be captured Kurdish fighters. The victim is then seen kneeling near a mosque in the IS-held city of Mosul before he is beheaded. The jihadists warn that others will be killed if Kurdish leaders continue to back the US.

On Sunday August 31, 204, the United States carried out airstrikes and dropped humanitarian aid in the Iraqi town of Amerli to protect an ethnic minority that one official says faces the threat of an "imminent massacre." The town of Amerli, which has been besieged by ISIS fighters, is home to many of Iraq's Shiite Turkmen. Australia, France and the UK also participated in the aid drop.

The Islamic State militant group released a video on Tuesday September 2, 2014, purporting to show the beheading of a second American hostage, journalist Steven Sotloff. A masked figure in the video also issued a threat against a British hostage, a man the group named as David Haines, and warned governments to back off "this evil alliance of America against the Islamic State". The purported executioner appeared to be the same British-accented man who appeared in an August 19 video showing the killing of American journalist James Foley, and it showed a similar desert setting. In both videos, the captives wore orange jumpsuits.

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has lost his aide after a strike on the ISIS-held city of Mosul, in northern Iraq we were told on Thursday September 4, 2014. Another ISIS figure was also declared dead. Baghdadi, who was a prominent figure in the Sunni extremist response to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the later Sunni insurgency, has declared himself the caliph of an Islamic State in the territories his organization has seized in Iraq and northeastern Syria. He has been leader of ISIS since it was formed in 2013, and was previously the leader of ISIS’s predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq.

Iraq Wednesday September 10, 2014:

• A series of attacks, mainly car bombings targeting security forces and markets, killed at least 30 people in Iraq's capital.
• The deadliest attack took place when twin car bombs hit a police checkpoint near a pet market, killing at least 19 people. The attack began when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a checkpoint manned by traffic police in the southeastern neighbourhood of New Baghdad, killing five policemen and wounding nine.
• Seconds later, a car bomb explosion near the market killed 14 people and wounded 35. Several cars were damaged in the blasts. Security forces sealed off all the roads leading to the attack site.
• A suicide car bomb hit a police post in Ghadeer district in southeastern Baghdad, killing six police officers and two civilians.
• A sticky bomb attached to a mini-bus also exploded in southeastern Baghdad, killing three passengers.

ISIS militants publicly executed eight Sunni men in a small northern Iraqi village for allegedly plotting against the group we were told Sunday September 14, 2014. The killing began on Friday night when a pair of masked ISIS gunmen openly murdered a police officer in Al-Jumasah village after the militant group accused him of spying for the Kurdish and Iraqi military forces. The ISIS fighters gathered local residents to watch the execution. After the police officer was executed, a small armed group opened fire in revenge on the house of an ISIS officer. On Saturday morning, the witness said, 10 ISIS cars drove around al-Jumasah with two masked informants, who helped the fighters identify 10 people they suspected of attacking their member's house the previous night. That evening, three were released and seven others -all but one relatives of the slain policeman- were executed.

Kurdish peshmerga forces on Tuesday September 16, 2014, recaptured seven Christian villages in northern Iraq in clashes with militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS. Tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians, most of them Chaldeans, fled their homes when ISIS militants launched a renewed drive in the north in early August. Iraq’s largest Christian town, Qaraqosh, and dozens of other villages were all but emptied in what Christian leaders described as the worst disaster for the minority in centuries. Peshmerga forces ousted ISIS militants from seven villages west of the Kurdish capital Arbil during fighting in which rockets and mortar rounds were used. ---

Iraq Thursday September 17, 2014:
 

• A series of bomb and mortar shell attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 36 people in an assault that underscored the threat posed to the Iraqi capital by marauding Islamic militants that have seized large parts of country.
• At least 15 people were killed in an apparently coordinated assault the northern Shiite district of Khazimiyah. A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a security checkpoint there late in the evening. Minutes later, three mortar shells landed in different parts of the district, hitting houses and a bus station. 31 were wounded in the attacks on Khazimiyah.
• A bomb blast struck a shopping street in the Toubachi neighbourhood in northwest Baghdad, where a bomb blast killed four people and wounded 10.
•  Another blast struck after dark, killing another six and wounding 15.
• Elsewhere in the capital, a bombing near a car repair shop downtown killed three and wounded eight.
• An explosion in a wholesale produce market killed three more people and wounded 11.
• A roadside bomb also struck an army patrol, killing two soldiers and wounding four.
• In the city's southern suburbs, mortar shells landed on houses, killing three people.

Dozens of hostages seized by Islamic State (IS) from the Turkish consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have been freed on Sunday September 20, 2014, and are back in Turkey. The hostages were seized after IS militants overran Mosul in a rapid advance in June. The 49 were employees from the consulate -46 Turks and three local Iraqis. They included diplomatic staff, children, and Special Forces police.

Iraq lost contact with soldiers during an operation Sunday September 21, 2014, aimed at rescuing a battalion that was repeatedly attacked by militants near the city of Fallujah. Communication was lost with some soldiers who were injured or wounded during the operations. The assault involving army, police, counter-terrorism units and Shiite volunteers was aimed at pushing back Sunni militants who have been besieging an army base for more than a week.

Bomb and mortar fire attacks killed six people in Shiite areas in and around Baghdad on Sunday September 21, 2014. Security forces succeeded in breaking a siege on soldiers who had been surrounded by Islamic State militants west of Baghdad. Three mortar shells landed on a residential area in Sabaa al-Bour, a town just north of Baghdad, killing four, including a 12-year old-boy. Several cars were damaged in the attack, which wounded 14. Later, a bomb blast in a commercial street killed two people and wounded four in the capital's northeastern district of Shaab.

Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq captured a border crossing with Syria on Tuesday October 30, 2014, expelling Islamic State militants in heavy fighting that ground down to vicious house-to-house combat and close-quarters sniping. On Tuesday, Kurdish fighters saw some of the heaviest fighting yet. We were told that the Kurds seized the border crossing of Rabia, which the extremists captured in their blitz across Iraq over the summer. Syrian Kurdish militiamen, who control the Syrian side of the frontier, had helped in the fight. Kurds wounded in the fighting were brought to a makeshift clinic in the town of Salhiyah.

On Wednesday October 1, 2014, ISIS militants seized weapons and besieged hundreds of Iraqi soldiers after overrunning an army base northwest of the capital. The attack on the Albu Aytha military camp, 50 miles outside of Baghdad, comes amid airstrikes by the U.S. and its allies and gains by Kurdish troops on the Iraqi-Syria border. Poor communications from the base meant it was unclear exactly how many soldiers remained trapped inside the base but reports suggested between 240 and 600 people were under siege. Some of the soldiers at Albu Aytha were able to escape before ISIS arrived.

Iraq Sunday October 5, 2014:

• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has said it has taken more territory in Anbar province even as Iraq's army and pro-government Sunni fighters continue to go after the armed group.
• Iraq's government forces are currently in the town of Ameriyah in Fallujah. This is a strategic town that links Anbar to Baghdad and the south of the country. By holding Ameriyah against the ISIL fighters, the army can ensure that supplies from the capital reach Anbar.
• Casualties remain a key concern for the army, which relies on shelling and tank fire.
• Witnesses saw ISIL fighters publicly kill six Iraqi soldiers in Anbar province. The soldiers, one in uniform and five in civilian clothes, were lined up against a wall in the town of Hit and shot in the head.
• The ISIL fighters also bombed a police station in Hit, which was stormed on Thursday.
• On Sunday, the US military released a statement saying that it had conducted four air raids northeast of Fallujah and one southeast of Hit.

 

ISIS fighters recaptured parts of the Iraqi town of Dhuluiya Sunday October 5, 2014, pushing back security forces who had only recently won control. The swift counterattack enabled the militants to retake northern and western sections of the town, 50 miles south of Tikrit. As ISIS fighters forced their way back into Dhuluiya, at least two tribal fighters were killed, seven policemen wounded and four police vehicles destroyed. On Saturday, ISIS fighters also seized the town of Kubaisa and attacked the Shi-ite town of Balad.

An Iraqi military helicopter crashed Wednesday October 8, 2014, near Baiji killing the crew. The cause of the crash was not immediately clear but residents in Seiniye, where the helicopter went down, said it had been hit by jihadist fighters. The helicopter was on its way back from Baiji. The entire crew was killed. The helicopter was “completely charred.” ---

Iraq Saturday October 11, 2014:

• A series of car bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital killed 30 people in Shiite areas after Islamic militants killed a journalist working for a local television network in a Sunni province.
• The first bombing happened when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Baghdad’s northern district of Khazimiyah, killing 13 people, including three police officers, and wounding 28.
• The second car bombing, targeting a commercial street in Shula district in northwestern Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 18. The blast damaged several shops and cars.
• Also in Shula a suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint killed 10 people and wounded dozens others.
• Meanwhile the governor of Iraq’s Salahuddin province said Islamic State group militants killed Raad al-Azzawi, who was a cameraman for Iraq’s Salahuddin Television. Governor Raed Ibrahim said militants killed al-Azzawi on Friday in the city of Tikrit.
• The Islamic State group has beheaded a number of journalists in Syria, saying the killings are in retaliation to U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
• Reporters Without Borders said last month that the militants had threatened to kill al-Azzawi, a father of three, for refusing to join the Sunni militant group. The media watchdog said al-Azzawi was abducted on September 7.

 

ISIS fighters stood Saturday October 11, 2014, on the verge of taking not just a key Syrian town along the Turkish border, but also an entire province on Baghdad's doorstep spurring leaders of that province to urgently plead for U.S. ground troops to halt the Islamist extremist group's rapid, relentless assault. The situation in Anbar, just to the west of Baghdad. ISIS, the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" which also is referred to as ISIL, controls about 80% of the province. Reports Saturday suggest they have encircled Haditha, the last large town in Anbar province not yet in the militants' hands. Should all of Anbar fall, the Sunni extremists would rule from the perimeter of Iraq's capital to Raqqa in Syria.

Iraq Sunday October 12, 2014:

• A triple suicide attack tore through a Kurdish compound in eastern Iraq, killing at least 29 members of the security forces and wounding 88. The attack happened in Qara Tappah, in the eastern Diyala province.
• The militants targeted three different locations in close proximity to each other -two of them were used as bases by Kurdish security forces, a third by the PUK political party.
• In a separate incident, a bomb killed the police chief of Anbar province. The bomb went off near a convoy carrying Brigadier General Ahmed al-Dulaimi in the vast province west of Baghdad.

 

Fighters from the Islamic State were mustering with tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy weapons on Wednesday October 15, 2014, near a strategically located rural town about 25 miles west of Baghdad in the embattled province of Anbar. The militants were approaching the town from three directions —north, west and east— through surrounding farmland, and they appeared to be preparing a siege.

The U.S. said Sunday October 19, 2014, that it had expanded airstrikes in Iraq’s Sunni-dominated Anbar province, a stronghold of Islamic State militants. U.S. warplanes struck a berm near the Fallujah Dam that American military officials said had been used by Islamic State militants to flood Shiite neighbourhoods in East Fallujah. The berm was used to flood canals and control downstream water supplies, it was a legitimate military target. Initial reports indicate the berm was destroyed, enabling water again to flow freely. In all, the U.S. struck 10 targets in Iraq and conducted 13 strikes in Syria on Saturday and Sunday. The strikes in Syria were conducted with allied fighter planes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Five car bombings in the revered Iraqi city of Karbala have killed at least 15 people on Monday October 20, 2014. The explosives-laden cars were parked in commercial areas and parking lots near government offices. 48 others were wounded in the explosions. Karbala is home to two of the most sacred Shia shrines. The attacks came hours after a suicide bomber blew himself up among Shia worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in a commercial area in central Baghdad, killing at least 11 people. It also came a day after a suicide bomber killed at least 21 people at a funeral in western Baghdad outside a Shia house of worship.

Iraq Monday October 20, 2014:

• ISIS militants launched about 15 near-simultaneous attacks on Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, a fierce and renewed push for territory.
• ISIS also launched attacks against Mosul Dam, a strategic prize, and also renewed its offensive on the Sinjar mountain range in northern Iraq.
• An ISIS-commandeered military truck loaded with explosives targeted a Peshmerga checkpoint along the security belt circling the dam, killing six security force members and injuring seven others critically, according to Peshmerga spokesman Said Mamazeen.
• At almost the same time, ISIS militants launched an attack on the Nineveh Valley near the dam, which was repelled by Peshmerga forces using European and American weapons.
• Despite the attacks, it would be difficult for ISIS to gain control of the dam because of the large numbers of Peshmerga forces in the area. ISIS fighters were also killed in the attacks, and that the Peshmerga successfully repelled most of the more than dozen incidents Monday.
• ISIS fighters launched attacks on several areas of the Sinjar mountain range including the village of Sharaf ad-Din, which holds one of the most important shrines for the Yazidi community.
• ISIS fighters managed to seize two villages in an area close to Sharaf ad-Din, but these villages were unpopulated as a result of ISIS attacks in August.
• At least 21 killed in Baghdad suicide bombing

 

Iraq, Wednesday October 22, 2014:

• Coalition air strikes killed around 25 Islamic State fighters near the northern Iraqi city of Baiji.
• A series of bombings beginning in the early hours hit the town of al-Siniya, west of Baiji, a strategic city adjacent to the country's largest refinery.
• Iraqi army tanks and armored vehicles also fought off an advance by Islamic State militants on the town of Amiriya Fallujah, west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
• Around 400 fighters amassed in the nearby towns of Fallujah and Karma the day before, piling pressure on the capital's western flank.
• Government forces fought back Islamic State outside Amiriya Fallujah. It is the last government-controlled town before the key provincial city of Fallujah.
• Soldiers destroyed five of the fighters' vehicles.
• Another battle between the two sides raged in the area around Hit town, also in western Anbar province, but the outcome remained unclear. Hit is a walled market town located some 130 km  west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad seized by Islamic State militants at the beginning of October. ---

Officials said on Friday October 24, 2014, Islamic State militants used chlorine gas during fighting with security forces and Shiite militiamen last month north of Baghdad. If the reports are confirmed, it would be the first time the Sunni extremists tried to use chlorine since their seizure of large parts of Syria and northern Iraq earlier this year. The statements in Iraq came two days after Kurdish officials and doctors said they believed IS militants had released some kind of toxic gas in an eastern district of Kobani. The attack took place late Tuesday and some people suffered symptoms that included dizziness and watery eyes. However doctors lacked the equipment to establish what kinds of chemicals were used.

The first US death in the campaign against Islamic State (Isis) militants in Iraq, occurred on Friday October 24, 2014. 22 air strikes had been carried out in the country on Friday and Saturday. Another US military death has been associated with the campaign against Isis in Iraq and Syria. On 2 October, the navy said a marine who ejected from an MV-22 Osprey aircraft over the Persian Gulf was presumed lost at sea. The 22 strikes in Iraq on Friday and Saturday included attacks in frequently targeted areas near the vital Mosul dam, the city of Fallujah and the northern city of Bayji, home of an oil refinery. US warplanes also destroyed an Isis artillery piece near the besieged town of Kobani in Syria.

Iraq Monday October 27, 2014:

• Two car bombings in Iraq, including one where a suicide attacker drove a Humvee into a checkpoint manned by Iraqi troops and pro-government Shiite militiamen, killed at least 38 people.
• The deadliest attack struck the outskirts of the Sunni town of Jurf al-Skhar, where the suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden Humvee into the checkpoint, killing at least 24 people and wounding 25. Most of those killed were members of the Shiite militia.
• Islamic State group militants lost control of the town Sunday, when Iraqi soldiers and the Shiite militia retook it from the Sunni extremist group. The Islamic State group seized the town in July as part of its blitz that captured large swaths of northern and western Iraq.
• A car bomb blast near a line of shops and restaurants in downtown Baghdad killed 14 people and wounded 23.

 

On Tuesday October 28, 2014, U.S. and allied attack, fighter and remotely controlled aircraft again targeted the Mosul Dam area with four strikes taking out a small fighting unit, a fighting position, vehicle and logistics base. Two strikes near Fallujah destroyed a small Islamic State unit and tank. Other strikes were staged west of Baghdad, near Sinjar and northwest of Haditha.

Islamic State (IS) militants have shot dead 30 Sunni Arab tribesmen in a town west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The killings took place in Hit, in Anbar province, which fell to the jihadist group earlier this month. The men were paraded through the streets before being shot. They belonged to the Al Bu Nimr tribe, which has allied with Iraqi government forces attempting to seize back territory claimed by IS since January.

On Sunday November 2, 2014, gunmen came in during noon prayers at the small Sunni mosque in the Diyala province, waving AK-47 machine guns. Then they opened fire. When the bullets stopped flying at the Musab bin Omar Mosque in the village of Bani Weis, about 75 kilometres northeast of Baquba, 34 people were dead and a more than a dozen were wounded.

Iraq Sunday November 2, 2014:

• Car bombs targeting Shia Muslims in the Iraqi capital a day before major Ashoura religious commemorations, have killed at least 28 people. The first blasts struck near a tent from which Shia Muslims were distributing tea and water in the mixed neighbourhood of Saidiyah in southwest Baghdad. Twenty others were wounded in the attack.
• Another car bomb later exploded near another tent used by Shia pilgrims preparing for Ashoura in central Baghdad's Sadoun commercial street, killing at least five people and wounding 13 others.
• And at night, 13 people were killed as a parked car bomb blew up in Sadr City, in eastern Baghdad.
• That attack also targeted a Shia hospitality tent and injured 34 people.
• Hundreds of thousands of Shia Muslims flock to the Iraqi shrine city of Karbala for Ashoura, which marks the death of Imam Hussein, one of the most revered figures for Shia Muslims.

 

ISIS militants killed more than 300 members of a Sunni tribe in a recent series of executions we were told on Monday November 3, 2014. Some of the 322 people executed were women and children. The dead belonged to the Albu Nimr tribe, known for its fighting skill. The latest incident came Saturday when 75 members of Albu Nimr were taken from their homes and killed in the desert near the town of Hit. Nine children and six women were killed in Saturday's attack.

ISIS lined up and systematically shot dead at least 50 men, women, and children from a Sunni Muslim tribe in a village north of Ramadi on Sunday, November 2, 2014. The latest killings brings to at least 150 the number of Sunni tribespeople slaughtered by ISIS thugs in the last two weeks. The latest attack occurred in the village of Ras al-Maa, north of the provincial capital of Ramadi. ISIS gunmen rounded up the unarmed tribespeople, which included six women and four children, and shot them one by one. The terrorists also reportedly kidnapped nearly 20 additional individuals.--

On Friday November 7, 2014, we were told that more than 600 American service members since 2003 have reported to military medical staff members that they believe they were exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq, but the Pentagon failed to recognize the scope of the reported cases or offer adequate tracking and treatment to those who may have been injured.

President Barack Obama authorized the US military to send 1,500 more troops to Iraq on Friday November 7, 2014. That would nearly double the American military presence in the country. He also requested $5.6 billion for the fight against the Islamic State. The additional troops will expand the military’s role in training and helping Iraqi forces, focusing on the part of the volatile Anbar Province that is currently under Islamic State control. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey ‒and other high-ranking military officials‒ have repeatedly warned that airstrikes will not be enough to defeat the brutal extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq Sunday November 9, 2014:

• Fighter jets from the US led coalition have destroyed a moving Islamic State (Isis) convoy near Mosul. A number of top militants had been killed.
• The USA was however unable to confirm reports that the group’s top commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was among the 50 casualties in the ten vehicles targeted or even whether he was present.
• The convoy consisted of 10 Isis armed trucks which were destroyed in the air strikes.
• A Mosul morgue official said 50 bodies of Isis militants were brought in after the air strike.
• Earlier, the al-Hadath TV station, reported that US-led strikes had targeted a gathering of Isis leaders in Iraq, possibly including al-Baghdadi.
• The air strike had targeted a house where senior Isis officers were meeting, near the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim, and said Isis fighters had cleared a hospital so that their wounded could be treated, using loudspeakers to urge residents to donate blood.

 

President Barack Obama authorized a broad expansion on Friday November 7, 2014, of the U.S. military mission in Iraq that will boost the total number of American troops there to about 3,100 and spread advisory teams and trainers to the north and west where fighting with Islamic State militants has been fierce.

Iraqi government forces have seized large areas of the town of Baiji -home to Iraq's biggest oil refinery- from Islamic State fighters. The troops controlled some 50% of the town,  about 200km north of the capital Baghdad. IS-led militants took Baiji in June, in one of their earliest victories, but did not capture the refinery.

On Saturday November 8, 2014, coalition strikes had targeted a gathering of IS leaders near Mosul destroying a convoy of vehicles. The US could not confirm whether IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was present at the time of the attack late on Friday. ---

Iraqi soldiers battling the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) recaptured most of the town of Beiji, home to the country's largest oil refinery we were told on Tuesday November 11, 2014. There was no word on the fate of the refinery, which lies on Beiji's northern outskirts, but the advances in the town could help break the five-month siege of the facility by ISIS. Since June, a small army unit inside the refinery, resupplied and reinforced by air, has successfully resisted wave after wave of extremist assaults.

The flag of an Iraqi Christian minority party is hoisted high over the village of Bakufa in northern Iraq, less than a month after militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) were pushed out and the extremists' black banner was taken down. The predominantly Christian Assyrian hamlet of 95 houses that once had about 500 people was overrun by the Islamic State group during its shocking blitz this summer, along with 22 other villages nearby. In a counter-offensive, the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters swept in from the north, battling ISIS house-to-house. The fighting forced the villagers to flee to Kurdish towns and cities elsewhere in northern Iraq. Once Bakufa was retaken, the Kurdish fighters helped set up the village militia, made up of about 70 volunteers and known as Dwekh Nawsha, or "self-sacrifice" in Assyrian. The men of Dwekh Nawsha now patrol Bakufa round-the-clock, in the hope that the village stays free long enough so their families can return.

Iraqi forces have driven out Islamic State (IS) fighters from the oil refinery town of Baiji. However there are still reports of heavy fighting around the oil refinery, which is Iraq's largest. Iraqi troops took control of large parts of Baiji on Sunday November 16, 2014, but stopped short of advancing on the refinery, the road to which is believed to be heavily booby-trapped. Iraqi war planes targeted fleeing IS fighters near the refinery on Friday. Other reports suggested Iraqi troops had now broken through to the besieged oil facility, which lies around 10km from the town centre.

Iraqi forces broke the Islamic State group's months-long siege of the country's largest oil refinery Saturday November 15, 2014, as America's top officer flew in to discuss the expanding war against the jihadists. Completely expelling IS fighters from the area around the refinery would be another significant achievement for Baghdad, a day after pro-government forces retook the nearby town of Baiji.

A suicide car bomber in a Toyota sedan exploded outside the gates of the governor’s compound in Irbil on Wednesday November 19, 2014, the first major terrorist attack in the Kurdish capital since the Islamic State took over much of neighbouring northern Iraq in mid-June. The blast killed two policemen and four civilians traveling in cars. As many as 30 people in the surrounding area were wounded. Guards opened fire on the vehicle as it attempted to make an illegal left turn to ram into the walled and gated compound. The car exploded outside the gates, but across from another government building. The bomb appeared to be of moderate size, damaging surrounding vehicles and shattering windows but not significantly harming the blast walls that protect the compound.  Still, the explosion put Irbil on edge. ---

British warplanes blasted an Islamic State terror network in Iraq on Thursday November 20, 2014, killing jihadists operating underground. RAF Tornado fighter bombers dropped 500lb Paveway IV laser guided bombs on a huge bunker and tunnel complex used by fighters avoiding coalition airstrikes. The dug-in position was only discovered when US aircraft wiped out a vehicle belonging to militants – leading to smoke to billow from holes in the ground hundreds of metres away.

Islamic State fighters attacked a government complex in the heart of an Iraqi provincial capital on Friday November 21, 2014, in an apparently coordinated effort to seize full control of the city. Gunmen fired from rooftops at buildings in Ramadi housing the Anbar governorate offices and police headquarters, while security forces and tribal fighters tried to prevent the militants from advancing. Mosques are asking anyone who can carry weapons to confront the attackers.

Islamic State fighters attacked a government complex in the heart of an Iraqi provincial capital on Friday November 21, 2014, in an apparently coordinated effort to seize full control of the city. Gunmen fired from rooftops at buildings in Ramadi housing the Anbar governorate offices and police headquarters, while security forces and tribal fighters tried to prevent the militants from advancing. Mosques are asking anyone who can carry weapons to confront the attackers. Most of Ramadi and the surrounding Sunni Muslim province of Anbar is already held by Islamic State. The loss of the city would be a major setback for government forces, after they broke an Islamic State siege of Iraq's biggest oil refinery this week. Militants also launched coordinated attacks to the east and west of Ramadi.

Iraq Sunday November 23, 2014:

• A car bomb explosion at a bus terminal south of Baghdad has killed at least five people and injured seven others. The attack took place in the town of Yusufiyah.
• In a separate development, army forces supported by pro-government armed groups launched an offensive on the town of Sadiyah in Diyalah province in an attempt to re-take it from ISIL. The main road and houses were booby trapped and the army forces were advancing slowly.
• Peshmerga forces in turn have also launched an offensive from their side in the town of Jalawlah, which is neighbouring Sadiyah.
• Medical sources in Khanaqeen general hospital said that 10 people from Iraqi army, Peshmerga and Shia militias were killed in the ongoing clashes.

 

Seventeen people were killed in Iraq on Saturday November 29, 2014, in air strikes targeting areas controlled by Islamic State militants. Two brothers who were members of the Albu Hishma tribe were mistakenly killed when an Iraqi military helicopter attacked the house of an Islamic State militant in the town of Yathrib. Fifteen people from the same tribe were then killed in an airstrike as they headed to the funeral of the brothers. ---

Islamic State militants attacked a checkpoint along the Iraqi-Syria border on Monday December 1, 2014, killing at least 15 Iraqi border policemen. The attack took place in the town of al-Walid on Iraq’s side of the border. At least five officers were also wounded in the assault.

Iraq Thursday December 4, 2014:

• A string of car bomb attacks across Iraq killed at least 37 people.
• Three of the attacks targeted Shiite districts in the capital, Baghdad, while the fourth targeted a Kurdish neighborhood in the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk.
• The first attack targeted a line of small restaurants in the Shiite district of Sadr City killing 11 people and wounding 25 others.
• Minutes later, a second car bomb blast near an outdoor market in the same district killed seven people and wounded 21 others.
• Later on, a bomb exploded near a restaurant in Baghdad's Shiite northern neighbourhood of Shaab, killing three people and wounding 12 others.
• In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a car bomb attack near a cafe killed 16 people. The blast took place in a Kurdish district in the city.

 

Iraq Friday December 5, 2014:

• At least 139 people were killed across Iraq. Bombers struck in the Baghdad area and in Kirkuk, which suffered its first major bombing in several months. Another 116 people were wounded.
• The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Stuart Jones, said that Iraq has given Washington assurances that U.S. troops will have immunity from prosecution in Iraq.
• In Sadr City, a bomb exploded among a row of restaurants, where it killed 11 people and wounded 25 more.
• A few minutes later, a bomb near a market killed nine and wounded 41 others.
• A blast near a Baghdad restaurant killed three people and wounded 12 more in Shabb.
• Two people were killed when a bomb exploded near the Green Zone. At least two more people were wounded in the Green Zone or in a separate blast.
• A dead body was found.
• Four people were gunned down separately in Bayaa.
• Security forces killed seven militants.
• Twenty-one people were killed in a Kirkuk suicide car bombing that also left 30 wounded near a popular cafe in a predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood.
• One person died and five more were wounded in a public flogging that followed their arrest for writing anti-militant graffiti on walls.
• On a highway between Samarra and Dujail, four civilians were gunned down and a fifth was wounded.
• Three musicians were executed in Mosul. A police officer was also executed.
• Militants killed six volunteer fighters in Baiji.
• An airstrike in Kubaisa killed 23 militants.
• In Sayed Ghraib, an airstrike left 22 militants dead.
• Security forces killed 16 militants in Hit.
• Five militants were killed in Muqdadiya.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has executed three Iraqi tribal leaders outside a government building in the northern city of Mosul we were told on Friday December 5, 2014. The three leaders were from al-Jabour tribe and were executed for allegedly plotting a rebellion against the terrorist groups that controls the city. The extremist group was also reported to have burnt Islamic text books assigned by Iraq's ministry of education. Last week, the ministry said ISIS militants in Mosul have shut down family planning departments at public hospitals in order to prevent women from using contraceptive pills.

A terrorist car bombing at a checkpoint north of Baghdad has killed at least seven police officers and injured nearly 26 others. The police officers were killed at a checkpoint outside a police barracks on Sunday December 7, 2014, when a bomber set off an explosive-laden car he was driving. On December 4, at least 40 people were killed and scores more injured in separate bomb attacks across Iraq.

U.S. allies have committed to send about 1,500 forces to Iraq to help train and advice Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers battling the Islamic State, which increasingly appears on the defensive we were told on Monday December 8, 2014. These forces would come on top of the up to 3,100 troops U.S. President Barack Obama has authorized to deploy to Iraq.

On Monday December 8, 2014, we were told that militants have beheaded four Christian children in Iraq for refusing to convert to Islam, according to a British vicar based in Baghdad. Cannon Andrew White claims the beheadings took place in a Christian enclave close to Baghdad which has been recently overrun by Islamic State. ---

US allies are ready to send roughly 1,500 security personnel to Iraq to help the Baghdad government in its fight against jihadists we were told on Monday December 8, 2014.

On Wednesday December 10, 2014, we were told that Iraq's armed forces have retaken control of the Baiji Oil Refinery in the north of the country in their first major victory against IS fighters.

Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga force so far has lost 727 fighters in their fight against the Islamic State (IS) militants in recent months. The Kurdistan region’s Peshmerga Ministry on Wednesday December 10, 2014, released the latest causality figures among the Kurdish forces, which has been fighting the extremists in northern Iraq since last June. Since June 10th, when the IS militant took over the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, until now, 727 Peshmerga has lost their lives and 3,564 more Peshmerga has been wounded. During the fighting, 34 Peshmerga officers are missing.

Iraq Wednesday December 10, 2014:

• A series of attacks in and near Baghdad, including one involving a suicide bomber driving a tanker truck, killed at least 15 people.
• In the tanker bombing, the suicide attacker targeted a security checkpoint in the village of Mikeshifa near the city of Samarra.
• Nine Iraqi soldiers and Shiite militiamen aligned with government forces in the battle against the Islamic State group were killed in that attack. The explosion also wounded at least 22 people.
• Also, a bomb struck near an outdoor market in the town of Madain, just south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding five.
• And a bomb explosion in a commercial street in southern Baghdad killed two people and wounded seven.
• Later in the day, a roadside bomb hit an army patrol in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing one soldier and wounding six.

 

A deadly mortar attack Friday December 12, 2014, near the Iraqi city of Karbala increased security concerns as millions of Shiite pilgrims gathered for one of the largest religious gatherings in the world. One person was killed and four wounded when mortar rounds hit an area on the western side of the city.

Since the beginning of taking control of Mosul, Islamic State (IS) militants have executed more than 31 police officers in the city. After the IS militants captured Mosul and then all Nineveh province, they have started to arrest security members of the city including policemen, soldiers and high ranking officers that so far a large number of them have been executed by IS insurgents. A large numbers of security have been arrested by IS insurgents and are waiting to be executed. IS militants took control of Mosul on 10th of June, 2014 and later started to expand its control to many Sunni Arab populated areas in Nineveh province and other provinces of Iraq. Iraqi Army failed to defend the city and left their arms and heavy weapons in the city and fled to Kurdistan Region.

Iraq Saturday December 13, 2014:

• Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have mounted two suicide car-bomb attacks aimed at security checkpoints at the main entrance into Haditha city in Iraq's western Anbar province that is currently mostly under the control of the government, with troops and tribesmen holding about 70 percent of the city. The attacks left at least 12 people dead and 17 more injured. Nine policemen and three civilians were among the dead.
• ISIL, however, is in control of areas that are in the direction of the border with Syria.
• ISIL fighters also shot down an Iraqi military helicopter killing the two pilots on board. The attack happened near the city of Samarra. The ISIL fighters used a shoulder-fired rocket launcher to shoot down the EC635 helicopter.
• Earlier, ISIL took control of a different area of Anbar province. Fighters seized the village of al-Jabha just after Friday midnight.

 

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters stormed a town in Iraq’s western Anbar province on Saturday December 13, 2014, killing at least 19 policemen and trapping others inside their headquarters. ISIS seized the town of al-Wafa near Ramadi on Saturday after starting its assault early on Friday. With the capture of al-Wafa, ISIS now controls three major towns to the west of Ramadi, including Hit and Kubaisa. Police forces have been fighting ISIS fighters since Friday, but lack of ammunition forced it to retreat and losing the town. Police forces backed by few members of government-paid Sunni tribal fighters tried to prevent the militants from crossing the sand barrier surrounding the town, but were overwhelmed when sleeper cells from inside open fired on them.

The assistant Islamic State (ISIS) governor of Iraq’s Diyala province has been arrested, together with stockpiles of ammunition and recordings aimed at inciting ethnic violence we were told on Monday December 15, 2014. In an operation in the Ghazalia area of Diyala, the Iraqi military arrested the assistant governor (Wali), the command said in a statement. It added that recordings “of many provocative statements aimed at violence and ethnic conflict” were discovered in his possession. Agents also confiscated “a store containing ammunition and triggering devices for planted bombs,” as well as a large amount of ammunition at another location. The agents also defused 10 planted bombs during their operation.

On Wednesday December 17, 2014, we were told that Islamic State members in the city of Falluja killed 150 women and underage girls that refused to perform sexual acts for fighters. After the Islamic State members murdered the women and girls, among them pregnant women, they then proceeded to bury the victims in large mass graves in the city.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have fought their way to Iraq's Sinjar Mountains where hundreds of people have been trapped for months by fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. The siege on the mountain has been lifted we were told on Thursday December 18, 2014. 100 ISIL fighters had been killed. More than 50 air strikes in recent days have allowed those Kurdish forces to manoeuvre and regain approximately 100 square kilometres of ground. Meanwhile on Thursday that US strikes had killed several top ISIL leaders. Among those killed was Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, who was Baghdadi's deputy in charge of Iraq and would be the most senior ISIL leader to fall this year. ---

US-led air strikes against the Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq have killed three of the militant group’s top leaders but not senior commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, we were told on Thursday December 18, 2014. Among those killed was Abd al Basit, whom the officials described as the group’s military “emir”, and Haji Mutazz, a deputy to Baghdadi. Those strikes took place between 3 December and 9 December. Last month’s killing of Radwan Taleb al-Hamdouni was also confirmed. He was the radical militant group’s leader in the northern city of Mosul.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Thursday December 18, 2014, beheaded a man publicly on charges that he was a "sorcerer," north of their bastion of Tikrit.

Kurdish peshmerga fighters have fought their way to Iraq's Sinjar Mountain and freed hundreds of Yazidis trapped there by ISIS fighters we were told on Thursday December 18, 2014. 100 ISIS fighters had been killed. The assault ended the months-long ordeal of hundreds of people from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority, who had been besieged on the mountain since ISIS stormed Sinjar and other Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Iraq in August.

U.S.-led forces attacked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) targets on Sunday December 21, 2014, with 13 air strikes in Iraq and three in Syria, using fighters, bombers and other aircraft. Four of the Iraq strikes were near Sinjar in the north of the country, which destroyed ISIS buildings, tactical units and vehicles, while other Iraqi cities targeted included Tal Afar, Ramadi, Mosul and Baiji. Earlier, Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani hailed victories over ISIS during a visit to Mount Sinjar, which had been besieged by the militants for months. Thousands of the autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga fighters launched a major operation on Wednesday backed by U.S.-led air strikes which broke the second IS siege of Mount Sinjar this year. The operation threatens the links between the city of Mosul, the main ISIS stronghold in Iraq, and territory the militant group controls in neighbouring Syria.

The Islamic State (ISIS) regained control over the town of Baiji in Iraq’s Salahaddin province after days of fierce fighting in which Iraqi forces suffered heavy losses. ISIS militants launched a violent attack on Baiji neighbourhoods that had been seized by Iraqi forces earlier, and fierce clashes took place in the past two days we were told on Sunday December 21, 2014. Iraqi forces suffered heavy losses in lives and equipment, as they were forced to pull out of those neighbourhoods. The main roads to the Speicher military base and Baiji refinery are still under Iraqi Army control, with battles raging along the road.

Iraqi Kurdish forces forged ahead with their assault Monday December 22, 2014, on the militant-held town of Sinjar, but encountered heavy resistance from Islamic State fighters whose snipers fired at the attackers and who used burning tires to create a smoke screen against coalition airstrikes. Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched their offensive on the town last week. In the opening days of the operation, the Kurds managed to reach thousands of Yazidis who were trapped on Mount Sinjar, which overlooks the town and sweeping desert plain below. Peshmerga forces opened up a corridor to the mountain and are regularly bringing truckloads of aid and food to the area. The clashes have moved to the edges of Sinjar itself, which the militants have held since August.

Iraq Wednesday December 24, 2014:

• A suicide bomber attacked Sunni anti-jihadist fighters south of Baghdad killing at least 26 people, while a senior counter-terrorism officer was shot dead in north Iraq, officials said. The attack on the fighters, known as Sahwa, near a military base in the Madain area also wounded at least 56 people.
• In Kirkuk, a gunman killed Colonel Dhargham Khairallah, the head of Kirkuk province's anti-terrorism forces. The officer was being driven in Kirkuk's Al-Shorjah neighbourhood in a taxi to keep a low profile, but the gunman sprayed him with bullets from another car. ---

Iraq Wednesday December 24, 2014:

• A suicide bomber detonated his payload among a group of pro-government Sunni militiamen near the Iraqi capital Baghdad killing at least 24 people.
• The attacker mingled with the militiamen as they gathered at a military base in the town of Madain to receive their monthly pay checks. At least 15 of the dead were Sunni militiamen and the rest were soldiers, while 55 others were wounded.
• In another attack, four civilians were killed and seven wounded when a bomb tore through an outdoor market in the town of Youssifiyah.

 

A senior commander in Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard has been killed during a battle against the Islamic State extremist group in Iraq on Sunday December 28, 2014. Brig. Gen. Hamid Taqavi was "martyred while performing his advisory mission to confront ISIS terrorists in Samarra. Shiite Iran says it has sent military advisers to assist Syria and Iraq in battling Sunni-led rebels and extremist groups, but has denied sending any combat forces to either country. Taqavi is the highest ranking officer known to have been killed outside Iran since the devastating 1980-88 war with Iraq, in which he fought and in which he lost his father and a brother. Taqavi was assisting Iraqi troops and Shiite volunteers defending Samarra, a city north of Baghdad which is home to a major Shiite shrine.

A suicide bomber struck a funeral north of the capital on Monday December 29, 2014, killing at least 15 mourners. The bomber blew himself up inside a funeral tent in a farming area outside the mainly Sunni town of Taji. 26 mourners were wounded in the attack.

A Kurdish Imam was shot dead on Saturday afternoon December 27, 2014, in the disputed town of Tuz Khurmatu, causing outrage among the local population. Following the burial procession of Imam Salah Mullah Jamal, who leads congregational prayers at the Imam of Hussein Mala Wahab Mosque protests ensued. Protesters accused armed Shiite militiamen in the town of orchestrating the killing.

A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up among mourners inside a funeral tent on a farm about 12 miles north of Baghdad on Monday December 29, 2014. At least 21 people were killed and 35 others injured at the funeral in al Taji. The funeral was for a member of the local Awakening Council, a group also known as the Sons of Iraq and Sahawat, made up of Sunni Arab fighters who turned against al Qaeda. ISIS militants were behind the attack.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released statistics detailing the numbers of people killed and wounded in Iraq in 2014: 11,484 Iraqis have been killed and 17,235 wounded. Most of the deaths and injuries were the result of suicide bombers and terrorist attacks. When compared to previous years, 2014 has been one of the bloodiest for Iraq. ---

The Islamic State group on Tuesday December 30, 2014, claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a funeral tent north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad the day before that killed 16 people and wounded 34 others. Monday's attack targeted the funeral of the father of two members of pro-government Sunni militias. The bomber showed up at the funeral disguised as a Shiite, with a religious flag and a portrait of a Shiite imam. In a separate incident, a Shiite militia commander was killed Monday by a sniper's bullet during fighting with Islamic State militants in the town of Duluiyah. Retired Brig. Gen. Abbas Hassan Jabr had joined the Badr Brigades, a powerful Shiite militia, after the IS group captured vast swaths of northern and western Iraq over the summer.

2014 has been a bloody year in Iraq, where ISIS militants have seized swaths of territory and remain on the offensive and civilians, as so often in war, are paying a heavy price. At least 17,049 civilians were recorded killed in Iraq during 2014 roughly double the number recorded in 2013 which in turn was about double that of the previous year. The shocking rise in deaths in 2014 is due in large part to the ISIS offensive and the military response to it by Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led international coalition. In total during 2014, the number of casualties in Iraq increased dramatically. At least 48,590 were killed and 26,516 were wounded.

Militants linked to the Islamic State group have rounded up dozens of men from two villages in northern Iraq following a quarrel that led to the burning of the extremist group's flag we were told on Saturday January 3, 2015. The militants entered a mosque in the village of al-Shajara on Friday as worshipers gathered for prayers, removing flags commemorating the birth of Prophet Muhammad and hoisting their own black Islamic State group flag. That prompted a verbal quarrel between the militants and the worshippers, who later burned the Islamic State group flag. The militants then snatched up around 170 men from their homes in al-Shajara and from the nearby village of al-Ghariba village. Around 100 of the men were later released, while the rest remained in captivity. The IS group controls around a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it has declared an Islamic caliphate and imposed a violent form of Shariah law.

The United States-led coalition forces airstrikes on inside Sinjar in northern Iraq killed 23 militants among them senior leaders. The shelling of Sinjar began early Friday morning January 2, 2015, and in continued for a few hours. The airstrike was one of 29 on Iraqi and Syrian targets Wednesday and Thursday. Twelve attacks hit IS-controlled buildings and tactical units in the Iraqi cities towns of Sinjar, Mosul and Fallujah and 17 more in Syria struck IS buildings, checkpoints and positions in Raqqa, Dier-al-Zour and Kobani. Fighter planes, bombs and remote-controlled aircraft were involved in the attacks. A key IS leader, Mohammed Salih al-Suwaidi, was also reportedly killed by the Iraqi army in east of Fallujah.

Four gunmen attacked a Saudi security patrol near the Iraqi border early Monday January 5, 2015, killing three soldiers and wounding at least three more. It was the first deadly attack along Saudi Arabia's 745-mile border with Iraq since the kingdom joined the U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria. The IS group controls about a third of both Syria and Iraq. Four terrorists had fired on the patrol in the Northern Borders Province. The commander of the border guard in the area, Brig. Gen. Oud Awad al-Balawi, was among those killed. The guards returned fire, killing two attackers. The other two tried to flee and hide. When security forces approached them, one of the attackers detonated his explosives belt and blew himself up. The fourth was shot dead by security forces.

The Islamic State jihadist group has executed eight people, four of them policemen, in Iraq's Salaheddin province. Seven of the victims can be seen wearing orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by journalists and aid workers killed by IS. One is said to be a policeman and three are described as "secret informants". The eighth victim is not identified.

Three prominent Sunni clerics have been killed on Thursday January 1, 2015, in the southern Shiite majority city of Basra including the prominent members of Basra’s Sunni community in Bab al-Zubair. The assailants ambushed a car carrying the clerics in the mostly Sunni district of Bab al-Zubair near Basra, shooting dead three and seriously wounding two other clerics travelling with them.

Iraq Tuesday January 6, 2015:

• At least 23 Iraqi troops and pro-government fighters have been killed in clashes with militants in the western province of Anbar.
• A suicide bombing at a mosque in al-Jubba killed 10 anti-jihadist fighters. Militants then attacked police and army positions, killing 13.
• A further 28 Iraqi troops were wounded, while militant casualties are unknown.
• The incidents took place near the Ain al-Asad airbase, where US forces are currently training Iraq's military.
• The attacks were carried out on Tuesday near the town of al-Baghdadi, 110 miles north-west of Baghdad. ---

A suicide blast targeting Iraqi security forces and subsequent clashes with Islamic State extremists on Tuesday January 6, 2015, killed at least 23 troops and pro-government Sunni fighters in the country’s western province of Anbar. A suicide bomber first struck a gathering of pro-government Sunni fighters near the town of al-Baghdadi. Soon after, IS militants attacked nearby army and police positions, setting off hours-long clashes. 23 were killed and 28 were wounded on the government side. They did not give the death toll on the militants’ side. In Baghdad, Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi pledged that Iraq’s forces would retake all areas that fell to IS during last summer’s stunning blitz.

Iraq Thursday January 8, 2015:

• At least 23 people have been killed in a series of attacks which targeted security checkpoints and Shia worshippers.
• A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint in the town of Youssifiyah, just south of the capital Baghdad, killing three police and four civilians, and wounding another 21 people.
• Later on, a suicide bomber driving a pickup loaded with explosives struck a checkpoint manned by police and Shia militiamen near the city of Samarra, killing eight people and wounding 23 others.
• In western Baghdad, a suicide bomber set off his explosives belt among Shia worshippers who were leaving a mosque there, killing eight worshippers and wounding 16 others.

 

At least 30 militants were killed in clashes in northern Iraq Saturday January 10, 2015. All the casualties took place in Kuwair village located 40 miles south of Erbil city. The ISIL had launched the attack on the village from three fronts, including one from the Zab River using two boats. The Peshmerga claimed the ISIL dead included four alleged suicide attackers armed with explosives belts. The river boats used by the ISIL were also destroyed. Four Peshemrga were also killed and five others were wounded in the clashes.

Two separate bombings on commercial streets have killed eight people in and around Baghdad. A bomb exploded on Saturday January 10, 2015, at a wholesale market in Baghdad’s western district of Baiyaa, killing five people and wounding 11 others. Later on, a bomb blast inside on a commercial street killed three people and wounded nine others in the town of Madian.

Islamic State militants have killed at least 30 members of the Kurdish security forces in a surprise attack in northern Iraq. Clashes continued with Islamic State on Sunday January 11, 2015, one day after the deaths, near Gwer, a town some 40km southwest of the autonomous Kurdish region's capital Arbil.

On Monday January 12, 2015, we were told that 11 civilians were killed and seven others were wounded when Iraqi Army units shelled parts of the city of Fallujah in a bid to target Islamic State (ISIS) positions. They indiscriminately bombed the city with mortars and medium range missiles.`

A suicide car bomb killed 12 Shiite militiamen and Iraqi soldiers Monday January 12, 2015, in a town north of Baghdad sparking a battle between security forces and fighters with the extremist Islamic State group. The suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a gathering of soldiers and Shiite fighters in the town of Abasiyat, just south of Tikrit. The attack killed 10 militiamen and two soldiers, while wounding 18 people.

Another Iranian national was reported killed in Iraq in January 2015. Mehdi Norouzi was part of the Basij militia, which often fills manpower needs for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF). This would be the sixth member of that force to die in Iraq since June. On January 11, 2015, the Iranian press reported that Mehdi Norouzi was killed in Iraq. He died in a firefight with the Islamic State on January 10. He was a commander in the Basij, a militia formed in 1979 to help protect the new revolutionary regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah

Iraq Thursday January 15, 2015:

• Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have launched a series of attacks killing at least 23 people, including several Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers.
• At least 16 Peshmerga soldiers were killed trying to repel an ISIL attack on the Mosul Dam in Nineveh province. The dam, located on the Tigris River, provides electricity to northwestern province of Anbar, which is under ISIL's control.
• In another attack, seven fighters from militias fighting against ISIL in Diyala Province were killed in the town of al-Mansuriya.
• In Sinjar, Peshemerga forces, backed by US-led coalition warplanes, stopped an attack on the town's southwestern side. The ISIL fighters have since mostly been driven out of the area.
• US-led forces launched 12 air strikes against the group's positions overnight on Wednesday, targeting tactical units, buildings and equipment used by the group.

 

Iraq Friday January 16, 2015:

• A series of attacks in Iraq, including an explosion at a booby-trapped house in a village recently retaken from IS militants north of Baghdad, killed 17 people.
• The explosion at the house in Zalaya village took place as Iraqi troops were at the premises, carrying out an inspection of the house.
• The blast killed eight soldiers and wounded 12. The village fell into the hands of Islamic State militants last year but was retaken by Iraqi security forces days ago.
• Earlier mortar shells landed on houses in Baghdad's northwestern Shiite district of Shula, killing four people and wounding 13.
• Also, a bomb struck a commercial street in the capital's northeastern Shiite suburb of Husseiniya, killing three people and wounding 11 there.
• A bomb also exploded in western Baghdad, near a row of shops for spare parts for cars, killing two people and wounding nine others. ---

Iraq Saturday January 17, 2015:

• Peshmerga forces repulsed three early morning assaults by Islamic State (ISIS) in Shingal. The militants had used heavy weapons, and that the two forces had come within about 50 meters of each other during the intense battles. The Peshmerga suffered no casualties.
• Baghdad announced that its forces had killed 33 militants in clashes on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital.
• 33 militants were killed and several military vehicles operated by ISIS were destroyed in fighting in the areas of Halabsa and Nabai, near the Iraqi capital. A leader of the group was among the dead.
• The Iraqi were able to defuse 12 planted bombs as well as 17 booby traps planted in homes.

 

Raising doves and pigeons is a deadly pursuit in ISIS-controlled Iraq. The popular hobby is in the sights of extremist Islamist fighters, who this week rounded up 15 boys and young men in the eastern province of Diyala for pursuing a pastime now deemed un-Islamic. Three have already been executed.

The Islamic State (IS) militant group has freed at least 200 members of the Yazidi religious community in northern Iraq. The group of mainly elderly Yazidis crossed out of IS-controlled territory and were received by Kurdish officials near the city of Kirkuk. IS attacked the Yazidi minority community in Iraq last year, killing and abducting thousands of people.  Almost all of those released on Saturday January 17, 2015, were elderly or unwell. The group, including several sick infants, were taken directly by Kurdish Peshmerga forces to a health centre for treatment.
 
Some 250 residents of the village of Abu Maria in Iraq’s Nineveh province were taken captive by the Islamic State (ISIS) after villagers refused an order calling on men to join the Sunni Muslim radicals as fighters. Three villagers were killed in clashes with ISIS, which attacked the village near the town of Tel Afar, after the residents refused to give in to the call for volunteer fighters we were told on Sunday January 18, 2015. The captured villagers have been taken to a prison in the town of Kaske.

Canadian special operations forces came under ISIS attack for the first time in Iraq over the last week, and returned sniper fire to neutralize the threat, we were told on Monday January 19, 2015. No Canadians were injured in the exchange.

Islamic State extremists have carried out scores of execution-style killings in Iraq this month, the United Nations said on Tuesday January 20, 2015, reporting “cruel and inhuman” punishment of men, women and children in areas under their control. Two men believed to be members of the Islamic State who were accused of banditry, were tied by their arms to a cross and then shot in the northern city of Mosul; two other men who had been accused of homosexual acts were thrown off a rooftop in the city after a summary hearing by an ad hoc court.

On Wednesday January 22, 2015, ten civilians were killed in Iraqi army shelling of Islamic State (ISIS) bases in the city of Fallujah. The Iraqi army shelled the areas of Jollan and Zubat in Fallujah with artillery and mortars, and that the bombing continued all night. Fighter jets shelled ISIS bases in the village of Alsous in southern Hadithah, killing ISIS military commander Abu-Anas al-Samarai and several of his guards.

Kurdish forces launched an offensive against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group on Wednesday January 21, 2015, cutting a road linking two of the main areas it holds in north Iraq. The drive succeeded in cutting the road between IS's stronghold Mosul, the first city the jihadists took in a June offensive, and Tal Afar, a large town to its west that the group has held for months. A US-led anti-IS coalition carried out six air strikes in the two areas from Tuesday to Wednesday -three near Tal Afar and three near Mosul. The strikes hit targets including vehicles, IS units, buildings, heavy weapons and a bridge.

Iraq Sunday January 25, 2015:

• Two bombings ripped through commercial areas in Iraq's capital Sunday January 25, 2015, killing at least 10 civilians and wounding dozens.
• The deadliest attack took place in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji area, where a bomb went off outside a small restaurant, killing seven civilians and wounding 22.
• Another bombing in the central Sibaa area killed three civilians and wounded 11.
• Meanwhile, fierce clashes have been taking place around the town of Muqdadiyah, about 90 kilometres north of Baghdad, between the Islamic State group and government security forces allied with Shiite militias.
• The government forces have recaptured seven villages and that security forces and Shiite fighters suffered causalities. ---

Government Allies are said to have slaughtered dozens of Sunnis we were told on Friday January 30, 2015. Some of the men were shot on their doorsteps, their bodies left crumpled in the streets. Others were lined up, led to a field and killed there. Their relatives, ordered to stay in their homes, heard the gunfire. At least 72 people from a majority Sunni village in eastern Iraq were methodically singled out for slaughter this week. The victims were killed by Shiite militiamen who were supporting Iraqi security forces. However officials in Diyala Province have asserted the victims were militants killed in battle by the security forces, denying that sectarian executions had occurred.

Iraq Friday January 30, 2015:

• Islamic State militants struck at Kurdish forces southwest of Kirkuk, while bombs in Baghdad and Samarra killed at least 21 people.
• The militants launched mortars and attacked positions of Kurdish fighters in four districts.
• Militants later detonated a car bomb at a hotel in Kirkuk city centre and clashed with peshmerga forces.
• The peshmerga forces have recaptured the district of Mariam Bek but clashes were ongoing in Tal al-Ward, Maktab Khalid and Mullah Abdullah.
• The peshmerga have repelled dawn attacks by Islamic State at different points along a more than 1,000 km frontline, including Khazer, west of Arbil, and Makhmur, further south.
• 45 militants and seven Kurdish "martyrs" were killed around Kirkuk. Senior commander Brigadier Sherko Fatih was among the dead.

 
Iraq Friday January 30, 2015:

• Islamic State militants struck at Kurdish forces southwest of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk while bombs in Kirkuk, Baghdad, Samarra and Ramadi killed at least 27 people.
• Police in Kirkuk province said the militants launched mortars and attacked positions of Kurdish fighters in four districts.
• Militants later detonated a car bomb at a hotel in Kirkuk city centre and clashed with peshmerga forces.
• The peshmerga have recaptured the district of Mariam Bek but said clashes were ongoing in Tal al-Ward, Maktab Khalid and Mullah Abdullah.
• Peshmerga have repelled dawn attacks by Islamic State at different points along a more than 1,000 km frontline, including Khazer, west of Arbil, and Makhmur, further south.#
• 45 militants and seven Kurdish "martyrs" were killed around Kirkuk. Senior commander Brigadier Sherko Fatih was among the dead.
• At least seven other Kurdish fighters were killed by a suicide bomb at a checkpoint near the eastern town of Jalawla, 160 km southeast of Kirkuk.
• More than 800 peshmerga have been killed in combat since Islamic State overran their defences in northern Iraq last summer, prompting U.S.-led air strikes.
• The Kurds have now regained most of the ground they lost, but commanders complain they remain ill-equipped compared with Islamic State militants, who plundered Iraqi arms depots when they overran Mosul in June.
• Sheikh Lawrence Metab al-Hathal, a former member of parliament and head of the Anizza tribe, and at least five others were killed when an oil tanker was rammed into his reception hall in al-Nukhaib, 400 km southwest of Ramadi.
• At least 18 people were killed by two bombs in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharqi shopping district on Friday.
• Three civilians were later killed and at least 10 wounded in northwestern Baghdad when mortars landed in residential neighbourhoods.
• Further north in the holy city of Samarra, suicide bombers targeted a security checkpoint in the city centre killing three members of the police and Shi'ite militias.
• Police and militias later clashed on Samarra's western outskirts following another explosion there.

 

Airstrikes have killed an Islamic State (ISIS) chemical-weapons expert. Abu Malik, an ISIS chemical-weapons engineer was killed by an airstrike on January 24 near Mosul. Abu Malik had worked at Al Muthanna chemical-weapon production facility during Hussein’s regime and that he had planned to attack Mosul with chemical weapons in an Al-Qaeda operation. US military officials believe that ISIS is working on chemical-weapons capabilities.

Iraq Saturday January 31, 2015:

• Kurdish peshmerga forces retook a small crude oil station near Kirkuk which Islamic State insurgents seized earlier on Saturday, but the fate of 15 employees remained unclear.
• The militants had seized a crude oil separation unit in Khabbaz on Saturday morning and 15 oil workers were missing after the company lost contact with them.
• Major General Hussein Mansour, who had mobilized a unit from Khanaqin to reinforce the Kurdish forces outside Kirkuk, was killed by a sniper in the fighting.
• IS seized at least four small oilfields when it overran large areas of northern Iraq last summer, and began selling crude oil and gasoline to finance their operations.
• Khabbaz is a small oilfield 20 km southwest of Kirkuk with a maximum production capacity of 15,000 barrels per day. It was producing around 10,000 bpd before the attack.
• Islamic State insurgents attacked regional Kurdish forces southwest of Kirkuk on Friday, seizing some areas including parts of the Khabbaz oilfields.
• Further south near Baghdad, two bombs in a central neighbourhood and a farming district south of the capital killed at least seven civilians on Saturday.
• Two soldiers were also killed when a bomb exploded close to an army patrol near Taji, a predominantly Sunni Muslim rural district north of Baghdad. At least 24 others were wounded in the explosions.
• In Falluja five people, including two children, were killed during Iraqi army shelling of Islamic State positions. They said at least 44 others were wounded, including 25 IS fighters.

 

Terrorism and other violence killed 1,375 people across Iraq in January 2015 and wounded another 2,240 we were told on Sunday February 1, 2015. The largest casualties were in the Iraqi capital, where 256 people were killed and 758 injured. The number of civilians killed was 790, Including 59 civilian police, and the number of civilians injured was 1,469, including 69 civilian police. A further 585 members of the Iraqi Army were killed and 771 were injured. In Kirkuk, which is under Kurdish control and where ISIS launched a fierce attack early Friday in a failed bid to capture the oil-rich city, 14 people were killed and 6 injured in January.

Kurdish peshmerga forces retook a small crude oil station near Kirkuk which Islamic State insurgents seized earlier on Saturday January 31, 2015, but the fate of 15 employees remained unclear. The militants had seized a crude oil separation unit in Khabbaz on Saturday morning and said 15 oil workers were missing after the company lost contact with them. The peshmerga forces had regained control of the facility on Saturday evening and were combing it for explosives. The fate of the 15 workers is unknown. ---

Iraq Saturday February 7, 2015:

• At least 34 people have been killed in three bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
• The explosions came just hours before a long-standing overnight curfew was to be lifted.
• In the first attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant in the predominantly Shia New Baghdad area, killing 22 and wounding at least 50.
• More people were killed in attacks on two separate markets, one in the centre and one in the southwest of Baghdad.
• In the Zumar district in northern Iraq the excavation of a mass grave revealed the remains of at least 16 members of the Yazidi religious minority who came under attack from IS last year. It is the second such grave found this week.

 

The Islamic State (IS) militants bombed the Kirkuk Province railway in northern Iraq on Saturday evening February 7, 2015, fearing Peshmerga forces might launch an attack in the area. The jihadists laid waste to a section of the railway near Maktab Khalid. The insurgents also blew up a bridge, again near Maktab Khalid, in an effort to prevent the advance of Peshmerga in the area. Kirkuk railway is in the south of the province. It has been out of use since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Extremists recently launched a string of attacks on Kirkuk from the west, but Peshmerga forces, supported by US-led coalition jets, pushed them back.

A suicide bomber set off an explosive vest in a busy Baghdad square crowded with rush-hour commuters early Monday February 9, 2015, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens. The attack took place in Adan Square, in a predominantly Shiite part of the capital. Hours after the attack, a bomb ripped through a commercial area in the capital's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing four civilians and wounding nine others. The attacks came two days after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi lifted a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew in the capital that had been in place in various forms since 2004.

A commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been killed in Iraq. Reza Hosseini Moghadam was in Samarra to confront militants of the Islamic State (IS) when he was killed on February 7, 2015. Moghadam was martyred in the vicinity of the Al-Askari [Shi’ite] shrine in Samarra.

Iraq Wednesday February 11, 2015:

• Clashes between Iraqi government forces and militants along with attacks in the capital Baghdad killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens.
• Heavy clashes erupted in three separate areas outside the city of Tikrit, which is controlled by the Islamic State extremist group, killing 12 security forces, Shiite militiamen and civilians, and wounding 37 others.
• Three suicide truck bombers attacked the security forces during the clashes. Militants claimed responsibility for three suicide attacks. The attacks were carried out by French, Syrian and Qatari fighters.
• The IS group controls around a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it has declared an Islamic caliphate and imposed a violent form of Shariah law. The group captured Tikrit, which is about 80 miles north of Baghdad, during its sweep across northern and western Iraq last summer.
• Mortar shells have struck two Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad, killing at least 10 civilians.
• The deadliest mortar attack struck a commercial area in the northern Shula neighbourhood, killing seven civilians, including two women, and wounding 19 others.
• Hours later, mortar shells landed in Baghdad's Sabi al-Bore neighbourhood, killing three civilians and wounding six others.
• The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Jordanian armed forces, Lt. Gen. Mashal al-Zaben, met the Iraqi defines minister and reiterated Jordan's "support to Iraq in its war against the terrorist gangs.

 

Iraqi soldiers backed by US-led coalition aircraft repelled an attack Friday February 13, 2015, by the Islamic State group on a base where hundreds of US troops are training local security forces. The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) supported by Coalition surveillance assets defeated the attack (on Al-Asad air base in western Iraq), killing all eight attackers. The botched assault involved at least seven would-be suicide bombers using a military vehicle. It came hours after IS fighters launched an offensive on the nearby town of Al-Baghdadi, one of the few in the Sunni province of Anbar still under government control. Eighteen soldiers, including a brigadier general, were killed in the clashes in Baghdadi and the attack on Al-Asad. IS gunmen launched an attack Thursday targeting the police headquarters of Al-Baghdadi and two government buildings in the town centre. The attackers were assisted by "sleeper cells" already inside the town, one of a handful in the Sunni province of Anbar not under IS control. Police, army and anti-jihadist tribal forces on Friday repelled the jihadists from most neighbourhoods of the town on the Euphrates River, northwest of Baghdad.

Islamic State (IS) has captured an Iraqi town about 8km from an air base housing hundreds of US troops. US officials downplayed the fall of al-Baghdadi, which is within striking distance of the Ain al-Asad air base. Ain al-Asad was itself attacked by IS on Friday February 13, 2015, though the militants were repelled. Until its fall, al-Baghdadi was one of the few towns in the western Anbar province still held by the Iraqi army. Friday's attack on the air base is prompting some in Washington to question again whether deploying US ground forces against IS can really be avoided.

Iraq's two main parliamentary lists including Sunni lawmakers suspended their activities on Saturday February 14, 2015, in protest at the killing of a prominent Sunni tribal leader and the kidnapping of a Sunni member of parliament the night before. Sheikh Qassem al-Janabi and his son were shot dead along with at least six guards after gunmen stopped their convoy in south Baghdad. The sheikh's nephew was detained but later released. ---

Iraq Saturday February 7, 2015:

-    At least 34 people have been killed in three bomb attacks in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
-    The explosions came just hours before a long-standing overnight curfew was to be lifted.
-    In the first attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a restaurant in the predominantly Shia New Baghdad area, killing 22 and wounding at least 50.
-    More people were killed in attacks on two separate markets, one in the centre and one in the southwest of Baghdad.
-    In the Zumar district in northern Iraq the excavation of a mass grave revealed the remains of at least 16 members of the Yazidi religious minority who came under attack from IS last year. It is the second such grave found this week.

The Islamic State (IS) militants bombed the Kirkuk Province railway in northern Iraq on Saturday evening February 7, 2015, fearing Peshmerga forces might launch an attack in the area. The jihadists laid waste to a section of the railway near Maktab Khalid. The insurgents also blew up a bridge, again near Maktab Khalid, in an effort to prevent the advance of Peshmerga in the area. Kirkuk railway is in the south of the province. It has been out of use since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Extremists recently launched a string of attacks on Kirkuk from the west, but Peshmerga forces, supported by US-led coalition jets, pushed them back.

A suicide bomber set off an explosive vest in a busy Baghdad square crowded with rush-hour commuters early Monday February 9, 2015, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens. The attack took place in Adan Square, in a predominantly Shiite part of the capital. Hours after the attack, a bomb ripped through a commercial area in the capital's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing four civilians and wounding nine others. The attacks came two days after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi lifted a midnight to 5 a.m. curfew in the capital that had been in place in various forms since 2004.

A commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been killed in Iraq. Reza Hosseini Moghadam was in Samarra to confront militants of the Islamic State (IS) when he was killed on February 7, 2015. Moghadam was martyred in the vicinity of the Al-Askari [Shi’ite] shrine in Samarra.

Iraq Wednesday February 11, 2015:

-    Clashes between Iraqi government forces and militants along with attacks in the capital Baghdad killed at least 22 people and wounded dozens.
-    Heavy clashes erupted in three separate areas outside the city of Tikrit, which is controlled by the Islamic State extremist group, killing 12 security forces, Shiite militiamen and civilians, and wounding 37 others.
-    Three suicide truck bombers attacked the security forces during the clashes. Militants claimed responsibility for three suicide attacks. The attacks were carried out by French, Syrian and Qatari fighters.
-    The IS group controls around a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it has declared an Islamic caliphate and imposed a violent form of Shariah law. The group captured Tikrit, which is about 80 miles north of Baghdad, during its sweep across northern and western Iraq last summer.
-    Mortar shells have struck two Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad, killing at least 10 civilians.
-    The deadliest mortar attack struck a commercial area in the northern Shula neighbourhood, killing seven civilians, including two women, and wounding 19 others.
-    Hours later, mortar shells landed in Baghdad's Sabi al-Bore neighbourhood, killing three civilians and wounding six others.
-    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Jordanian armed forces, Lt. Gen. Mashal al-Zaben, met the Iraqi defines minister and reiterated Jordan's "support to Iraq in its war against the terrorist gangs.

Iraqi soldiers backed by US-led coalition aircraft repelled an attack Friday February 13, 2015, by the Islamic State group on a base where hundreds of US troops are training local security forces. The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) supported by Coalition surveillance assets defeated the attack (on Al-Asad air base in western Iraq), killing all eight attackers. The botched assault involved at least seven would-be suicide bombers using a military vehicle. It came hours after IS fighters launched an offensive on the nearby town of Al-Baghdadi, one of the few in the Sunni province of Anbar still under government control. Eighteen soldiers, including a brigadier general, were killed in the clashes in Baghdadi and the attack on Al-Asad. IS gunmen launched an attack Thursday targeting the police headquarters of Al-Baghdadi and two government buildings in the town centre. The attackers were assisted by "sleeper cells" already inside the town, one of a handful in the Sunni province of Anbar not under IS control. Police, army and anti-jihadist tribal forces on Friday repelled the jihadists from most neighbourhoods of the town on the Euphrates River, northwest of Baghdad.

Islamic State (IS) has captured an Iraqi town about 8km from an air base housing hundreds of US troops. US officials downplayed the fall of al-Baghdadi, which is within striking distance of the Ain al-Asad air base. Ain al-Asad was itself attacked by IS on Friday February 13, 2015, though the militants were repelled. Until its fall, al-Baghdadi was one of the few towns in the western Anbar province still held by the Iraqi army. Friday's attack on the air base is prompting some in Washington to question again whether deploying US ground forces against IS can really be avoided.

Iraq's two main parliamentary lists including Sunni lawmakers suspended their activities on Saturday February 14, 2015, in protest at the killing of a prominent Sunni tribal leader and the kidnapping of a Sunni member of parliament the night before. Sheikh Qassem al-Janabi and his son were shot dead along with at least six guards after gunmen stopped their convoy in south Baghdad. The sheikh's nephew was detained but later released.

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement acknowledged for the first time Monday February 16, 2015, that the Shiite militia has sent fighters to Iraq, and he urged Arab states throughout the region to set aside sectarian rivalries to confront the threat posed by the Islamic State. Hasan Nasrallah called on the region’s traditional American allies to abandon their reliance on the United States and instead align with Hezbollah —and by implication with its sponsor Iran— to defeat the Sunni extremists. Nasrallah portrayed the Islamic State as the most serious immediate threat to the region’s stability, although he also repeated the common charge that the Islamic State is working on Israel’s behalf. He cited Iraq and Syria as evidence that Hezbollah and its allies are the only ones who are effectively fighting the Islamic State, and he described the U.S. response as too slow and insufficient.

Islamic State (IS) militants have burned 45 people to death in Iraq's western Anbar province. The exact circumstances of the deaths were unclear some of the victims had been members of the security forces. A compound in the area where the relatives of security personnel and officials live had also come under attack. IS militants launched a multi-sided offensive on al-Baghdadi on Thursday and took over much of the area, before Iraqi forces pushed them out. The attack on the town was followed by attempted suicide bombings on the nearby Ain al-Asad air base on Friday. An estimated 320 U.S. troops training Iraqi forces are stationed on the base. Al-Baghdadi had been sieged by IS fighters for months, with much of Anbar province having fallen to IS militants and their supporters in January 2014.

On Tuesday February 17, 2015, we were told that Islamic State militants have destroyed more than 20 houses and a number of government buildings inside Mosul. Militants raided and robbed the houses before the explosions. Elsewhere in Iraq's northern Nineveh Province, IS militants exploded a number of offices belonging to the Iraqi ministries of Municipalities, the Interior and Finance. The U.S.-led coalition conducted airstrikes in the province, killing 22 militants. Forensics authorities in Mosul stated they received the bodies of the 22 fighters, including 16 foreigners.

Wednesday 1,400 U.S. troops have arrived in Iraq's Western Anbar province. The troops are stationed at the Ain al-Asad air base in the west of Anbar, joining thousands of Iraqi troops and an estimated 320 U.S. personnel already at the base. Another 4,000 American troops are now in Kuwait awaiting approval from U.S. President Barack Obama to head to Anbar. Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, including eight attempted suicide bombers, successfully infiltrated the Ain al-Asad base on February 13, but were stopped by Iraqi security forces. That attack followed an ISIS offensive launched against the nearby town of al-Baghdadi, 8 km away from the base, the previous day, during which militants captured much of the area. Iraqi forces have since retaken the captured territory, aided by coalition airstrikes against ISIS positions in the region, but the fight for Anbar province continues.

Police announced Wednesday February 18, 2015, that 70 Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters have been killed near a police force base in Iraq’s Salahaddin province. The militants were killed in the city of Samarra in a joint operation with volunteer forces and the city’s police to repel ISIS fighters from southern districts of the city. Several vehicles belonging to the group were also destroyed. The group still controls a significant amount of territory in Iraq as well as Syria, although Kurdish and Iraqi forces continue to make gains, with support from coalition airstrikes. ---

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants blew up the Miriami Ezra church in an Arab locality in the north of Mosul on Saturday February 21, 2015. Since the militants took control of the city last June, they had been using the church as a prison.  The explosion also caused damage to neighbouring houses belonging to Christian residents. In spite of months of anti-ISIS offensives led by Peshmerga and Iraqi forces, supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, ISIS militants have maintained their hold on a significant amount of Iraqi territory.  

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants have reportedly seized armoured vehicles and American-made weapons from Iraq’s western Anbar province we were told on Saturday February 21, 2015. The extremists attacked an Iraqi military post before seizing dozens of weapons. The arms seized by the group included M-16s and heavy machine guns.

Iraq Sunday February 22, 2015:

• Multiple bombings, including a suicide truck bomb attack on Shiite militiamen, killed 19 people, as police found four bodies with gunshots wounds in the capital.
• The deadliest attack took place when a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden truck into a checkpoint manned by Shiite militias near the city of Tikrit. Eight militiamen were killed and at least 15 wounded in the attack.
• Elsewhere, a bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the town of Youssfiyah, just south of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding 10 others.
• Another bomb blast on a commercial street in Baghdad’s southeastern district of Zafaraniyah killed two people and wounded six others.
• At night, a car bomb exploded near a string of car repair shops in Baghdad’s western district of Baiyaa, killing seven people and wounding 14 others.
• Meanwhile, four bodies with gunshot wounds in the head and chest were found in different parts of Baghdad. Dead bodies left in the street were a common occurrence during the widespread sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq several years ago.

 

France has deployed an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf to strengthen its military operation against Islamic State extremists in Iraq. President Francois Hollande announced days after deadly attacks by Islamic radicals in Paris last month that France would dispatch the Charles de Gaulle carrier to the Middle East, to work more closely with the U.S.-led coalition. Warplanes are starting operations from the Charles de Gaulle on Monday February 23, 2015. Some 2,000 military personnel are aboard the carrier, accompanied by a submarine, an air defence frigate and a British anti-submarine frigate.

A group of unidentified gunmen has reportedly assassinated a prominent ISIS leader in the militant-held city of Mosul. A group of unidentified gunmen shot an ISIS convoy, killing a top ISIS leader called Abu Dajana Saudi as well as two militants we were told on Sunday February 22, 2015. In an earlier killing, Abu-Anas Iraqi, another top ISIS leader in Mosul, was shot and killed by an armed gang while in his car on November 27.

The United Nations announced in a report released Monday February 23, 2015, that at least 11,602 civilians were killed in Iraq from January 1 to December 10 of 2014, while another 21,766 people were injured. During a seven-month period beginning June 1, which marked the advance of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants beyond the country's western Anbar province, the report estimates 7,801 civilians were killed and 12,451 more were wounded. Religious and ethnic minorities including Yazidis, Turkmen, Shabaks, Christians, Sabaeans, Kaka'e, Faili Kurds, and Arab Shi'a have been subjected to executions, abductions, and slavery. Executions in ISIS-held areas, mandated by the group's own courts, numbered at least 165 during the reporting period.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces have repelled an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) raid in Sinjar, west of Mosul, and killed nine ISIS militants. Meanwhile, Peshmerga and other Kurdish forces liberated five villages near the town of Snune in the Sinjar district.

Iraq Monday February 23, 2015:

• A total of 52 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in separate clashes and U.S.-led coalition air strikes.
• In the western province of Anbar, hundreds of soldiers, police officers, Shiite and Sunni militias launched an operation in the militant-seized town of al-Baghdadi. They retook control of part of the town, including its main police headquarters, after heavy clashes with the IS militants. The battles left more than 20 militants killed.
• The security forces repelled an IS attack on a neighbourhood adjacent to al-Baghdadi, which was the scene of fierce clashes two days ago, leaving at least four IS fighters killed, including two suicide bombers.
• On Saturday, the security forces broke the siege of the neighborhood which is housing some 1,000 families of security personnel and government-backed Sahwa paramilitary group members. They have been trapped for about ten days and the families have suffered from acute shortage in food and drinking water.
• Separately, U.S. and partner-nation warplanes conducted an airstrike on IS positions near a bridge outside the militant-seized city of Fallujah killing at least five militants and wounding seven others.
• Elsewhere, warplanes of the U.S.-led coalition on late Sunday night hit an IS convoy outside a village near the town of Daqouq, some 40 km south of Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk, destroying two vehicles and killing some 18 militants aboard.
• In Iraq's northern central province of Salahudin, heavy clashes erupted near the town of Is'haqi between the security forces and dozens of IS militants who attacked a military base, leaving at least five extremist militants killed.

 

Iraq Tuesday February 24, 2015:

• A series of bombings, including twin blasts in a busy street in a Baghdad suburb, killed at least 40 people and wounded dozens.
• The deadliest of the day's attacks came shortly before sunset, when a bomb exploded in Baghdad's southeastern suburb of Jisr Diyala. Minutes later, a car bomb went off near the site of the first blast as people started gathering to help the victims of the initial explosion. The casualty toll in Jisr Diyala rose throughout the evening to at least 25 people killed and that 50 wounded, including several students who had just come out of a nearby school after class.
• A car bomb in the commercial district of Mishada, 30 km north of the capital, killed at least four people and injured 12 others.
• Three more were killed and eight injured in an explosion near a restaurant in Baghdad's northwestern Shula district.
• One person was killed and five were wounded in another bombing in the northern Shaab neighbourhood.
• South of the capital district, three more bombs exploded, targeting civilians as well as a police patrol.
• One went off in a commercial district of Youssifiyah killing three civilians and injuring nine others.
• Another targeted a market in Latifiyah killing two and wounding seven.
• The sixth bomb, which hit a police patrol in Madain killed an officer as well as a civilian and wounded five others.
• In Baghdad's northwestern Shula neighbourhood, a bomb exploded near a restaurant, killing three civilians and wounded eight.
• Another bomb hit a police patrol in Madain southeast of Baghdad, killing a police officer and a civilian and wounding five people.

Iraq Wednesday February 25, 2015:

• A total of six people were killed in explosions and mortar attacks in the vicinity of the Iraqi capital.
• Two people had been killed and nine more wounded in two bombings in Nahrawani, southeast of the capital.
• Three more people were killed and another seven were wounded in a bomb blast in the Amn area, east of Baghdad.
• Elsewhere, one person was killed and six others were wounded by three mortar shells in the Hamamati neighbourhood of the Taji district, north of the capital.

An overnight coalition airstrike against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) positions in Iraq's western Anbar province killed 17 militants we were told on Thursday February 26, 2015. The strike hit near the town of al-Qaim, 330 km northwest of Baghdad, where a group of ISIS militants had reportedly been resting after crossing into Iraq from Syria. Another 29 militants were wounded in the airstrike and nine civilians were also reported killed. Iraqi airstrikes and army helicopters killed 50 militants in Anbar's Abu Ghraib on Wednesday.

The Islamic State group released a video on Thursday February 26, 2015, showing militants using sledgehammers to smash ancient artefacts in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul, describing the relics as idols that must be removed. The destructions are part of a campaign by the ISIS extremists who have destroyed a number of shrines —including Muslim holy sites— in order to eliminate what they view as heresy. They are also believed to have sold ancient artefacts on the black market in order to finance their bloody campaign across the region. The five-minute video shows a group of bearded men inside the Mosul Museum using hammers and drills to destroy several large statues, which are then shown chipped and in pieces. The video then shows a black-clad man at a nearby archaeological site inside Mosul, drilling through and destroying a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity that dates back to the 7th century B.C. ---

Iraq Friday February 27, 2015:

• A series of bombings and mortar strikes in and near the Iraqi capital killed 10 people.
• In the capital's southern district of Dora, mortar shells killed two people inside their homes early in the morning, and wounded four others.
• In Baghdad's western Sadiyah neighbourhood, a bomb blast near a wholesale vegetable market killed three people.
• Another bomb went off near an outdoor market in the Sabaa al-Bour area, just north of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding eight.
• Shortly after sunset, a bomb blast at a commercial street killed two people and wounded five in Baghdad's southeastern district of New Baghdad.
• Meanwhile, six bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and chest were found in a northern Baghdad suburb.
• Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces repulsed an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) assault in the Sinjar district of Iraq's northern Nineveh province. ISIS militants attacked Peshmerga from four sides in Sinjar, but Peshmerga forces successfully repelled their attack.
• U.S.-led coalition airstrikes were also carried out in support of the Peshmerga forces, striking a number of the group's military positions and killing 23 ISIS militants. The Peshmerga forces reported no losses in the clashes.

 

Iraq Saturday February 28, 2015:

• A series of attacks targeting public places and Shiite militia checkpoints in and north of Iraq's capital killed 37 people.
• The first bombs exploded near the market in the town of Balad Ruz killing 11 people and wounding 50.
• Two suicide car bombers later attacked checkpoints manned by Shiite militiamen near the city of Samarra, killing 16 Shite fighters and wounding 31.
• A bomb killed four people in western Baghdad.
• While another bomb in Baghdad's neighbourhood of Abu Dashir killed three people and wounding eight.
• Four mortar shells also hit homes in Sabaa al-Bour, just north of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding six.
• Iraq's Interior Ministry later said Iraqi border guards repelled an attack by Islamic State militants on a post on the Iraqi-Saudi border, saying several militants were killed.
• Meanwhile in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed to track down and punish those who smashed rare relics in the northern city of Mosul.

 

On Friday February 27, 2015, we were told that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants have regained control of some areas of al-Baghdadi, in Iraq's western Anbar province. Militants retook control of those areas after the withdrawal of Iraqi and tribal forces due to their lack of weapons needed to confront ISIS fighters. The fighting is ongoing, and ISIS militants are currently a few kilometres away from the Ain al-Asad military base.

A twin car bombing targeting a busy Iraqi market place has killed at least 21 people in a town northeast of Baghdad. The attack took place on Saturday morning February 28, 2015, when the first bomb exploded near the market in the majority Shia town of Balad Ruz, in the eastern Diyala province. Minutes later, a second car bomb went off on the people who gathered to inspect the site of the first blast. At least 44 people were injured in the attacks. At least 13 army soldiers and Shia fighters were killed and 42 have been injured.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) has revealed that more than 3,000 people were killed and wounded in Iraq last month. Violence in February accounted for 1,103 deaths and 2,280 injures. 492 of the deaths were members of the Peshmerga, Swat forces, Shiite Militia Hashdi al-Sha’bi and the Iraqi army, with 972 wounded in the same groups. The majority of casualties occurred in Baghdad followed by the Diyala, Salahaddin and Nineveh provinces. UNAMI’s January figures reported 3,615 people killed and wounded. February’s figures show a slight decrease.

Iraq's armed forces, backed by Shi'ite militia, attacked Islamic State strongholds north of Baghdad on Monday March 2, 2015, as they launched an offensive to retake the city of Tikrit and the surrounding Sunni Muslim province of Salahuddin.The offensive is the biggest military operation in the province since the Sunni Islamist radicals seized swaths of north Iraq last June and advanced toward the capital Baghdad.Progress in Salahuddin will affect plans to recapture Mosul further north. The assault on Mosul, the largest city under Islamic State control, could start as early as April but the Mosul operation would not likely start until later, possibly in the fall.

Mortar shells and homemade rockets fired by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants in Iraq’s al-Baghdadi district in the western province of Anbar killed two women and one child on Tuesday March 3, 2015. 10 more people had been wounded in the attack, which targeted an area belonging to the town of Haditha, northwest of Baghdad. Iraqi security forces and allied fighters continue to make gains around al-Baghdadi. Three area villages were liberated on Tuesday and 60 percent of Jubba, which is located near the Ain al-Asad air base, has now been freed. Police forces have killed nine ISIS militants and arrested four others northeast of the provincial capital of Ramadi. ---

A video posted to Youtube by Iraqi activists on Wednesday showed a group of Iraqi security forces executing a young boy believed to be a captured militant fighter. In the video, a group of men wearing Iraqi army uniforms and shouting in Iraqi Arabic surrounds the bewildered boy who is shown kneeling on the ground. One man stands in front of the boy, shielding him and asking the others, “What’s wrong with you? No! Don’t kill him!” As the he moves aside, the others raise their automatic weapons, shooting and killing the boy.

An offensive to retake Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit appears to have slowed we were told Thursday March 5, 2015, with fighters struggling to uproot Islamic State militants battling to retain control of one of their major bastions in Iraq. Pro-government forces, led by Shia militias and including the Iraqi army and tribal fighters launched a three-pronged assault on the centre of the city, which was conquered by Isis in a lightning advance last summer.

Iraqi government forces and Iran-backed militiamen entered a town on the southern outskirts of Saddam Hussein's home city Tikrit on Friday March 6, 2015. Militia forces have retaken the town of al-Dour on Tikrit's outskirts, known outside Iraq as the area where executed former dictator Saddam was found hiding in a pit near a farm house in 2003. It was not immediately clear if the town had entirely fallen. Some officials said the troops were still only in the south and east of the town, which had been rigged with bombs by retreating Islamic State fighters.

On Saturday March 7, 2015, we were told that a Canadian soldier has been killed in Iraq and three others injured in a friendly fire incident after they were fired on by Iraqi Kurdish forces. It’s the first fatality since Canada dispatched troops to Iraq last fall to participate in a mission to train local forces in their battle against Islamic State extremists. Killed in the incident was Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron, from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, based at Garrison Petawawa. Three other members were injured in the incident and are receiving medical care for their injuries.

Iraqi government forces and allied tribal militia have retaken the town of Al-Baghdadi, from where jihadists had threatened to attack an airbase housing US troops we were told on Friday March 6, 2015. Fighters from the Islamic State group had taken Al-Baghdadi, a small town on the Euphrates River in western Iraq, in February, posing a threat to a nearby base where American forces train their Iraqi counterparts. Iraqi security forces and tribal fighters from the Anbar region have successfully cleared Al-Baghdadi of ISIL (IS), retaking both the police station and three Euphrates River bridges. US ground forces were not directly employed in the battle, but "the coalition supported the operation with surveillance assets and advise and assist teams" attached to Iraqi headquarters units.

Gunmen dressed all in black have abducted 31 Shiite men from their home in eastern Baghdad in an attack they described as targeting suspected criminals. The abduction happened early Saturday March 7, 2015, when the gunmen stormed houses in the Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City. They say the gunmen took the 31 men and put them in a truck before driving away. Police officials suspect the kidnapped men were involved in prostitution and criminal activities. Some Shiite militias have been involved attacks against suspected prostitutes and stores that sell liquors as a part of their campaign to impose Islamic laws.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) newly appointed governor of Mosul in northern Iraq has been killed by an international coalition airstrike northwest of the city we were told Saturday March 7, 2015. Shaker al-Hamdani was killed in a targeted strike on a vehicle in the Salamiya district of Mosul. ISIS appointed Hamdani governor of the Mosul area, which fell to the group last June, after his predecessor, Hassan Saeed al-Jubouri, was killed in an airstrike south of Mosul in January. Jubouri's predecessor, Radwan Taleb Al-Hamdouni, was also killed in a coalition airstrike near the city last year.

A car bomb exploded in the town of Tuz Khurmatu on Saturday March 7, 2015, killing two civilians and injuring 20 others. The bomb exploded in front of an oven used for baking in the central Aksu neighbourhood. Those injured in the attack were taken to the hospital in Tuz Khurmatu for treatment.

Islamic State militants attacked a string of predominantly Christian villages in northeastern Syria on Saturday March 7, 2015, touching off heavy clashes with Kurdish militiamen and their local allies. The attack targeted at least three villages near the town of Tal Tamr along the Khabur River in Hassakeh province. The Islamic State group kidnapped more than 220 Christians from the same area last month after overrunning several farming communities on the southern bank of the river. The fighting Saturday was focused in villages on the northern bank of the river as the militants press to capture Tal Tamr.

A car bomb exploded near a security checkpoint in Baghdad’s eastern New Baghdad district on Saturday March 7, 2015. It was not immediately clear how many people were affected by the blast. Police cordoned off the scene and victims were rushed to a nearby hospital.

Coalition airstrikes have killed ISIS leader Abu Talut Tunisi. Tunisi and 32 other militants were killed in the sub-district of Gayara, 60km south of Mosul on Sunday March 8, 2015, by a targeted bombardment. Coalition warplanes have also been shelling ISIS bases on the Mekhmour front, southeast of Mosul.

Iraq Sunday March 8, 2015:

• A series of bombings targeting public places and police have killed 11 people around Baghdad.
• The first attacks happened when a car bomb exploded in a parking lot in the town of Mahmoudiya, 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 15 others.
• Later on, a bomb blast in a commercial street killed three people in Baghdad's northern suburb of Husseiniyah.
• Another blast in a town just south of Baghdad killed two people and wounded nine others.
• A roadside bomb missed a police patrol in eastern Baghdad, killing three civilians.

 

Chilling new images have emerged of three men accused of homosexuality and blasphemy being forced to their knees and publicly beheaded by a sword-wielding Islamic State executioner. Photographs of the barbaric murders show the blindfolded men kneeling in the centre of what appears to be a traffic roundabout with a crowd of people looking on as a masked executioner stands by with a long, rusty blade. After an elderly man uses a microphone to read to the crowd from his notes, the executioner then steps forward with the blade poised above the men's heads in the unnamed city in northern Iraq. ---

Iraqi soldiers and allied Shiite militiamen swept into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) held northern city of Tikrit on Wednesday March 11, 2015, launching a two-front offensive to squeeze extremists out of Saddam Hussein's hometown in a major test of the troops' resolve. Half of Qadisiya district, the largest of Tikrit's neighbourhoods" had been secured by the Iraqi troops and their Iranian-backed Shiite allies. Officials quickly established a supply line through the neighbourhood to reinforce troops.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) launched a coordinated attack on government-held areas of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi on Wednesday March 11, 2015, involving seven almost simultaneous suicide car bombs. At least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded in the attack. A Belgian, a Syrian and a militant from the Caucasus were among the suicide bombers.

On Thursday March 12, 2015, the Islamic State militants are accused of using chlorine gas in roadside bomb attacks. The bombs contain small concentrations of a chemical agent and in open ground are unlikely to be lethal. Experts say they are designed to create fear rather than harm. There have been multiple reports that IS has been deploying chlorine gas since late last year, but their footage confirms its use. Troops have defused dozens of devices containing chlorine as part of the offensive against the militants.

Rockets and mortars echoed across Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit on Thursday March 12, 2015, as Iraqi security forces clashed with Islamic State militants a day after sweeping into the Sunni city north of Baghdad. Recapturing Tikrit is seen as a key step toward rolling back the extremist group, which seized much of northern and western Iraq last summer and controls about a third of Iraq and Syria. Iraqi troops and allied Shiite militiamen entered Tikrit for the first time Wednesday from the north and south. The militants were trying to repel security forces with snipers, suicide car bombs, heavy machine guns and mortars.

Supported by coalition airstrikes, Kurdish forces cleared a key ridgeline and pushed Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) militants away from oilfields in Kirkuk we were told Wednesday March 11, 2015. Earlier this week, Kurdish forces launched a large-scale military operation to further push back ISIS and eliminate threats on the city of Kirkuk and its oilfields. Peshmerga forces seized critical portions of Route 80. In addition, the Peshmerga forces pushed ISIL two to three miles back over a wide front, liberating about 30 square miles (48 kilometres) of terrain formerly held by ISIL. Coalition forces conducted supporting airstrikes, resulting in the destruction of 10 enemy fighting positions, five tactical units and 10 ISIL weapons systems.

22 soldiers from an army unit in the western province of Anbar have been killed in an airstrike. The 22 soldiers were killed when an airstrike believed to be launched by a US-led coalition aircraft hit the headquarters of an army company on the edge of Ramadi city, Anbar's provincial capital on Thursday March 12, 2015.

A U.S. soldier who was standing at a guard post at a military base in Iraq was apparently shot in the face Wednesday March 11, 2015, the first enemy-inflicted wound to an American service member in Iraq since the start of the latest mission there nine months ago. The soldier's wounds were described as a "laceration," and he was treated and immediately returned to duty. This is the first wound that is a result of direct or indirect fire to American personnel in Iraq since this mission began. The shooting occurred at a guard post manned by two soldiers at the Besmaya Range Complex south of Baghdad. The injury was minor and may not have been a direct shot.

Iraqi Kurdish authorities said on Saturday March 14, 2015, they had evidence that Islamic State had used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq in January. Laboratory analysis showed "the samples contained levels of chlorine that suggested the substance was used in weaponized form." Chlorine is a choking agent whose use as a chemical weapon dates back to World War One. It is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits all use of toxic agents on the battlefield.

The U.S. has failed to live up to its promises to help Iraq fight Islamic State extremists, unlike the "unconditional" assistance being given by Iran we were told on Friday March 13, 2015. Iraqi forces entered Tikrit for the first time Wednesday from the north and south. On Friday, they waged fierce battles to secure the northern neighbourhood of Qadisiyya and lobbed mortar shells and rockets into the city centre, still in the hands of IS militants. The Iranian-backed Shiite militias have played a crucial role in regaining territory from the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group, supporting Iraq's embattled military and police forces. Iran has sold Baghdad nearly $10 billion in arms and hardware, mostly weapons for urban warfare like assault rifles, heavy machine-guns and rocket launchers.

Islamic State (IS) militants have blown up the 1,500-meter-long Gwer Bridge in Makhmour we were told on Saturday March 14, 2015.

Kurdish forces repelled an attack by Islamic State (IS) fighters in the centre of Khazer district, northeast of Mosul we were told on Sunday March 15, 2015. IS fighters launched an assault against Kurdish forces in Khazer on March 10, killing one Peshmerga soldier and injuring two others.

The tomb of Iraq's late dictator Saddam Hussein was virtually levelled in heavy clashes between militants from the Islamic State group and Iraqi security forces in a fight for control of the city of Tikrit. Fighting intensified to the north and south of Saddam Hussein's hometown Sunday March 15, 2015, as Iraqi security forces vowed to reach the centre of Tikrit within 48 hours. A video from the village of Ouja, just south of Tikrit, shows all that remains of Hussein's once-lavish tomb are the support columns that held up the roof. Poster-sized pictures of the late Sunni dictator, which once covered the mausoleum, are now nowhere to be seen amid the mountains of concrete rubble. Instead, Shiite militia flags and photos of militia leaders mark the predominantly Sunni village, including that of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the powerful Iranian general advising Iraqi Shiite militias on the battlefield.

Iraq paused its Tikrit offensive on Monday March 16, 2015, and called for more air strikes against Islamic State militants. An officer said Kurdish forces sustained two more chlorine gas attacks by insurgents. General Aziz Waisi told journalists the insurgents used chlorine twice during a January offensive west of Mosul and once in a December attack on his military police brigade in the Sinjar mountain area. One attack near Mosul, on January 23, was described by Kurdish authorities on Saturday. A number of military police were taken to hospital, where blood tests indicated they had inhaled chlorine gas released by the bombs. ---

Iraq's offensive to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State group was stalled Tuesday March 17, 2015, because of streets and buildings rigged with booby trap bombs and by the several hundred jihadists still holding out there. Troops, police and militia fairly easily boxed the jihadists in over recent days, but mopping them up is proving to be far harder. The battle to retake Tikrit will be difficult because of the preparations (IS) made. They planted bombs on all the streets, buildings, bridges, everything and the Iraqi forces were stopped by these defensive preparations.

Iraq Tuesday March 17, 2015:

• Separate attacks in and outside the capital, Baghdad, have killed at least nine people.
• The deadliest attack took place in the town of Tarmiyah when three suicide bombers tried to attack a military headquarters, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 14 others.
• A bomb went off in an outdoor market in Baghdad's northern Shaab neighbourhood, killing three civilians and wounding 11 others.
• Two policemen were killed and five wounded when a bomb struck their patrol in Youssifiyah.
• Seven ISIS militias were reportedly killed as they planted a bomb in a vehicle use against Peshmerga positions. ISIS militants were strapping explosives on a vehicle in Baziawa village but the car exploded and killed at least seven ISIS fighters. 

The United Nations human rights office has said that Islamic State fighters may have committed genocide against the minority Yazidi community in Iraq, as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians including children. In a report based on interviews with more than 100 alleged victims and witnesses, published on Thursday March 19, 2015, it urged the UN security council to refer the situation to the international criminal court for prosecution of the perpetrators. Iraqi government forces and affiliated militias “may also have committed some war crimes” while battling the insurgency. The UN investigators also cited allegations that Isis had used chlorine gas, a prohibited chemical weapon, against Iraqi soldiers in the western province of Anbar in September. Captured women and children were treated as “spoils of war” and often subjected to rape or sexual slavery. The report said that Isis’s sharia courts in Mosul had also meted out cruel punishments including stoning and amputation; for example thirteen teenage boys were sentenced to death for watching a football match. Ut was “widely alleged” that Iraqi government forces had used barrel bombs, an indiscriminate weapon banned by international law.

More than a dozen bodies have been unearthed from a mass grave near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit. A new UN report said Islamic State (IS) militants may have committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during their rampage across the country. The discovery and the report’s findings –detailing mass killings, torture and rape– raised fears that more atrocities could be uncovered as Iraqi security forces and Shia militias claw back territory from the extremist group. Iraqi authorities in Salahuddin province unearthed 13 bodies in the district of al-Boajeel, where forces are engaged in a large-scale offensive against the militants.

Iraq Monday March 23, 2015:

• Iraqi police officials say multiple bombings in Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded 22.
• The deadliest bombing struck a busy commercial street in the Habibiya section of Baghdad's Sadr City, killing at least 9 people and wounding 22.
• Earlier in northwestern Baghdad, a bomb detonated near an intelligence branch of the Interior Ministry, killing four people, including two children. ---

A day after several Shiite militias quit the offensive against the Islamic State in protest of American airstrikes, senior Iraqi leaders made assurances on Friday March 27, 2015, that the militiamen would adhere to government command and cooperate with the American role.

After two days of U.S. airstrikes, Iraqi forces are resuming their stalled offensive to rout Islamic State fighters from Tikrit without the help of Iran-backed fighters once at the forefront of the battle. As Iran-backed Shiite militiamen sat on the side-lines, thousands of Iraqi government forces sought to capitalize on the new American airstrikes to dislodge hundreds of Islamic State fighters hunkered down in the heart of the city. U.S. planes started hitting Islamic State positions on Wednesday March 25, 205. The U.S.-led coalition has carried out 20 airstrikes on Islamic State forces in and around Tikrit, we were told on Friday March 27, 2015. The fight in Tikrit is putting new strains on the uneasy and informal alliance between the U.S. and Iran in Iraq, where both countries have been working in parallel to help the Baghdad government. American officials agreed to help Iraq in Tikrit, but only if the government in Baghdad would side-line upwards of 20,000 Iran-backed Shiite militiamen that unsuccessfully tried to push Islamic State forces from the strategic city in Iraq’s Sunni heartland north of Baghdad.

On Saturday March 28, 2015, American warplanes have begun bombing the Islamic State-held Iraqi city of Tikrit in order to bail out the embattled, stalled ground campaign launched by Baghdad and Tehran two weeks ago. This operation, billed as “revenge” for the Islamic State (IS) massacre of 1,700 Shiite soldiers at Camp Speicher last June, was launched without any consultation with Washington and was meant to be over by now, three weeks after much triumphalism by the Iraqi government about how swiftly the terrorist redoubt in Saddam Hussein’s hometown was going to be retaken. U.S. officials have variously estimated that either 23,000 or 30,000 “pro-government” forces were marshalled for the job, of which only slender minority were actual Iraqi soldiers. The rest consisted of a consortium of Shiite militia groups operating under the banner of Hashd al-Shaabi, or the Population Mobilization Units (PMU), which was assembled in answer to a fatwah issued by Iraq’s revered Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani in June 2014 following ISIS’s blitzkrieg through northern Iraq. The PMUs are said to command 120,000 fighters, whereas the Iraqi Army has only got 48,000 troops. Against this impressive array of paramilitaries, a mere 400 to 1,000 IS fighters have managed to hold their ground in Tikrit, driving major combat operations to a halt. This is because the Islamic State is resorting to exactly the kinds of lethal insurgency tactics which al Qaeda in Iraq used against the more professional and better-equipped U.S. forces.

The top Kurdish ISIS leader, Ziad Salim Mohammad Ali al-Kurdi, reportedly responsible for the death of dozens of Kurdish civilians, was killed in coalition air strikes in Mosul, we were told on Sunday March 29, 2015. al-Kurdi had been in charge of several military operations,” including assaults on the Kurdish towns of Gwer and Makhmur. Dozens of Kurdish civilians and Iraqi people have been murdered by al-Kurdi.

A U.S.-led coalition airstrike on Saturday March 28, 2015, reportedly killed seven Islamic State (IS) militants in the centre of Fallujah in Iraq's western Anbar province. The airstrike targeted an IS headquarters in central Fallujah's Nazzal neighbourhood.

Fighters aligned with the Islamic State destroyed Mosul’s police academy on Monday March 30, 2015, abducting five personnel and taking them to an unknown location. In a separate incident, the extremists relocated a number of captured journalists from Mosul to neighbouring Syria.

A pair of car bombings in a Baghdad suburb on Monday March 30, 2015, killed at least 11 people and wounded dozens hours after the arrival of the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, for talks with the Iraqi officials. The two explosive-laden cars went off simultaneously in a commercial area of the Shiite-dominated Husseiniyah district in northeastern Baghdad. Two policemen were among the dead. At least 26 people were wounded in the attack.

A suicide bomber has targeted a bus with Iranian Shiite pilgrims north of Baghdad, killing six people, including four Iranians. Tuesday March 31, 2015's attack happened in the town of Taji where the bomber detonated his explosives as the pilgrims were getting off the bus at a gas station. At least 11 Iranian pilgrims were wounded in the attack. The pilgrims were returning from the holy Shiite city of Samarra.

Iraqi forces battling to wrest Tikrit from ISIS are now in control of the city, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Tuesday March 31, 2015. While al-Abadi has declared victory in the battle but pockets of fighting continues. Iraqi forces and Shiite militias are taking part in clearing operations. Iraqi forces reached the centre of Tikrit and hoisted the nation's flag on top of the Governorate Building. Fighting continued on the outskirts of the city. Tikrit had been under ISIS control since June.

Iraq declared a “magnificent victory” Wednesday April 1, 2015, over the Islamic State group in Tikrit, a key step in driving the militants out of their biggest strongholds.

Three policemen were shot dead early Thursday April 2, 2015, in a terrorist attack in its southwestern Khuzestan province, which borders Iraq. Unknown gunmen had opened fire on the officers in the city of Hamidiye. ---

Almost all Shi'ite paramilitaries had left Tikrit on Saturday April 4, 2015, after locals complained that some fighters had spent several days looting the Sunni city after helping retake it from Islamic State. The rampage of theft and burning began on Wednesday, within hours of the Iraqi government declaring that security forces and Shi'ite paramilitaries had recaptured the city from Islamic State (IS) after a month-long battle. IS had held Tikrit since last June. The mayhem left hundreds of homes and shops looted or torched. The violence had threatened to cast a pall over the government victory in the city, home of the late dictator Saddam Hussein.

US-led coalition airstrikes killed two ISIS leaders in southern Mosul, on Saturday April 4, 2015. Salim Khalaf Sauleh, head of the ISIS Sharia Court in southern Mosul, was killed together with Nuri Saeed Agab, the head of security for the general directorate of southern Mosul. Other casualties include Hasan Saud, governor of Mosul’s Dijlah district. He was wounded and rushed to Mosul’s Republican Hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

The Fallujah Liberation Committee in Fallujah has killed a top ISIS leader who was once a general in Saddam Hussein’s army. Abu-Jihad Abdullah Dlemi was a top ISIS leader responsible for the group’s suicide bombings. Abu-Jihad was a former General in Saddam Hussein’s regime. He was killed near Fallujah’s Grand Mosque by the security forces of the Fallujah Liberation Committee.

Iraqi forensic teams began on Monday April 6, 2015, excavating 12 suspected mass grave sites thought to hold the corpses of as many as 1,700 soldiers massacred last June by Islamic State militants as they swept across northern Iraq. The mass killing of Shi'ite soldiers from Camp Speicher, a former U.S. base outside the Sunni city of Tikrit, has become a symbol of the brutality of Islamic State fighters and their hatred for Iraq's Shi'ite majority. The images of Shi'ite soldiers being machine-gunned in their hundreds were posted online by the jihadists. Until now at least 20 bodies have been found.

Militants fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq have brutally beheaded four men accused of theft, before displaying their bodies on railings in a town square. ---

ISIS killed 52 men -the majority Iraqi police officers- at the al Qaim border crossing with Syria this week. The men were shot Monday April 6, 2015, and their deaths were confirmed Thursday.

Iraq Friday April 10, 2015:

• Two separate bombings have targeted public places in Baghdad and near the Iraqi capital, killing 11 people.
• A suicide bomber set off his explosives vest inside a small restaurant in the town of Mishada, killing six people and wounding 14. Mishada is 30 kilometres north of Baghdad.
• Later, a car bomb blast in the downtown Karrada district in Baghdad killed five people and wounded 12.
• Islamic State fighters launched a heavy attack on government-held territory in Anbar Province killing 25 Iraqi police officers and soldiers, and then 15 family members of local police officers.
• The attackers overran large parts of Albu Faraj, a town just north of the provincial capital, Ramadi, less than two days after officials in the province declared that they had begun an offensive against the extremists to the east of the capital.
• A convoy of police reinforcements sent to Albu Faraj was attacked by a suicide bomber, wounding Maj. Gen. Kadhim al-Duleimi, the Anbar Province police commander.
• Two bombs went off in Baghdad in the morning. In one of the Baghdad attacks, a suicide bomber targeted a restaurant in the northern part of the city, which at the time was frequented by Shiite militiamen taking a break from the fighting. Seven were killed and 16 were wounded.
• ISIS fighters seized several districts in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in an hours-long assault that included suicide and car bombs. At least 10 Iraqi security forces were killed in the attacks. The head of the Iraqi military operation in Anbar province, Gen. Qassim al-Muhammadi, was wounded.
• The northern Ramadi districts of Albu Faraj, Albu Essa and Albu Risha were in the hands of ISIS by the time the day was done.

 

Iraq Saturday April 11, 2015:

• A series of bombings targeting public places in the capital, Baghdad, have killed 12 people.
• A bomb exploded on a commercial street in downtown Baghdad, killing four people and wounding nine others.
• Earlier, two bomb blasts near an outdoor market killed five people and wounded 10 others in the western suburbs of the capital.
• Another bomb exploded on a commercial street in Baghdad's district of Amil, killing three people and wounding 11 others.

 

The Islamic State released a video showing its fighters controlling parts of the Baiji oil refinery Sunday April 12, 2015. The town was captured by ISIS in June, but the larger refinery facility, which is the biggest refinery in Iraq, remained under the control of the Iraqi army’s Golden Brigade. Despite months of heavy battles between the group and Iraqi forces since last year, ISIS fighters have fought on seeking to impose their control around the extensive oil facility.

Anti-Islamic State partisans carried out a bomb attack on a Sunday April 12, 2015, meeting of the jihadi group and allegedly killed four ISIS leaders. The explosion occurred during a meeting among Daesh (the Arabic acronym for ISIS) gunmen and killed four Daesh leaders. The [total] numbers of casualties are unknown.

The Baghdad bureau chief for Reuters has left Iraq after he was threatened and denounced by a Shia paramilitary group's satellite news channel in reaction to a Reuters report last week that detailed lynching and looting in the city of Tikrit. The threats against journalist Ned Parker began on an Iraqi Facebook page run by a group that calls itself "the Hammer" and is believed by an Iraqi security source to be linked to armed Shia groups. The April 5 post and subsequent comments demanded he be expelled from Iraq. One commenter said that killing Parker was "the best way to silence him, not kick him out." Three days later, a news show on Al-Ahd, a television station owned by Iranian-backed armed group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, broadcast a segment on Parker that included a photo of him. The segment accused the reporter and Reuters of denigrating Iraq and its government-backed forces, and called on viewers to demand Parker be expelled. The pressure followed an April 3 report by Parker and two colleagues detailing human rights abuses in Tikrit after government forces and Iranian-backed militias liberated the city from the Islamic State extremist group. Two Reuters journalists in the city witnessed the lynching of an Islamic State fighter by Iraqi federal police. The report also described widespread incidents of looting and arson in the city, which local politicians blamed on Iranian-backed militias. The Reuters agency stood by the accuracy and fairness of its report. Facebook, acting on a request from Reuters, removed a series of threatening posts this week.

Islamic State militants have lost control of up to 6,500 square miles in Iraq but have gained a bit of ground in Syria since last August we were told on Monday April 13, 2015. The front lines of the territory held by the Islamic State group have been pushed farther south and west in Iraq. But the militants still control a wide swath of land stretching from west and south of Sinjar down through Mosul and across Bayji, including the oil refinery there, which is still contested. The coalition forces regained key territory near Tikrit, Sinjar Mountain and Mosul Dam. The coalition airstrikes and the ground campaign being waged by Iraqi forces have led to the gains, particularly lately around Tikrit. The airstrikes have not had the same success in Syria, where the Islamic State militants have largely held onto a broad area across the north and east. Islamic State militants were driven out of Kobani, in northern Syria but they have maintained their influence across the country and gained some ground around Homs and Damascus.

At least 38 ISIS fighters were killed Sunday April 12, 2015, while trying to take control of the key Baiji oil refinery in northern Salahaddin province.
 
Iraq Tuesday April 14, 2015:

• A series of bombings targeting public places in the capital, Baghdad, have killed 12 people.
• A bomb exploded on a commercial street in downtown Baghdad, killing four people and wounding nine others.
• Earlier, two bomb blasts near an outdoor market killed five people and wounded 10 others in the western suburbs of the capital.
• Another bomb exploded on a commercial street in Baghdad's district of Amil, killing three people and wounding 11 others.

 

Kurdish fighters have captured on camera the moment when what appears to be an Islamic State suicide bomber’s car is thrown into the sky and explodes in mid-air on a road several hundred yards away from where the shots are filmed. This video was shown Tuesday April 14, 2015.

As US-led coalition warplanes have intensified airstrikes on ISIS bases in and outside Mosul, some 20 extremists of the group were killed on Wednesday April 15, 2015, in the village of Qaim on the Nawaran front in northern Mosul province as warplanes hit some ISIS convoys.
 
The Islamic State militants have carried out systematic rape and other sexual violence against Yazidi women and girls in northern Iraq. Human Rights Watch conducted research in the town of Dohuk in January and February 2015, including interviewing 20 women and girls who escaped from IS militant, and reviewing IS statements about the subject. Human Rights Watch documented a system of organized rape and sexual assault, sexual slavery, and forced marriage by IS forces. Such acts are war crimes and may be crimes against humanity. Many of the women and girls remain missing, but the survivors now in Kurdistan Region need psychosocial support and other assistance. IS forces took several thousand Yazidi civilians into custody in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province in August 2014. Militants systematically separated young women and adolescent girls from their families and other captives and moved them from one location to another inside Iraq and Syria. The 11 women and 9 girls Human Rights Watch interviewed had escaped between September 2014 and January 2015. Half, including two 12-year-old girls, said they had been raped –some multiple times and by several IS insurgents. Nearly all of them said they had been forced into marriage; sold, in some cases a number of times; or given as “gifts.” The women and girls also witnessed other captives being abused.

Iraq Wednesday April 15, 2015:

• Islamic State militants gained ground in western Iraq overrunning several villages on the edge of the capital of Anbar province.
• Iraqi police came under attack from the insurgents in Albu Ghanim and withdrew from the area, about 5 km northeast of the provincial capital Ramadi, sending hundreds of families fleeing.
• The militants blew up the police station in Albu Ghanim and advanced further toward Ramadi, seizing the villages of Sofia, Albu Khalifa and Sor.
• The insurgents had set up a checkpoint at the main entrance to the village of Albu Ghanim and planted their black flag there.

 

Joint Iraqi forces have retaken control of the Baiji town hall and reinforcements have arrived in the town in order to clear it of Islamic State extremists we were told on Wednesday April 15, 2015. The town was captured by ISIS in June 2014 but the refinery facility remained under the control of the Iraqi army’s Golden Brigade. ---

When Islamic State (IS) seized control of Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, in June 2014, along with other parts of the predominantly Sunni Arab north-west, Iraq's Shia militia were mobilised to launch a counter-offensive against the jihadists. The collapse of Iraq's armed forces in the face of the IS advance led to these militia playing a pivotal role in government security operations over the past year, most notably in Tikrit. However, they have also come under criticism for alleged human rights abuses, a charge their commanders deny.

Last of Saddam Hussein's top henchmen -who was 'King of Clubs' in US military's "Deck of 55" most-wanted Iraqis- was reportedly killed in military operation against Isil near the northern city of Tikrit after helping to mastermind Iraq’s insurgency we were told on Friday April 17, 2015. The body of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, who spent 24 years as Saddam’s deputy on the Revolutionary Command Council, was discovered on a battlefield after he was killed by Iraqi soldiers and allied Shia militiamen. Douri, 72, was one of “12 terrorists” who died there.

 

ISIS claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack Friday April 17, 2015, near the U.S. Consulate in the Kurdish Iraqi city of Irbil. At least four people were killed and 18 injured. All U.S. Consulate personnel were safe and accounted for following the explosion. The blast killed two Turkish citizens and wounded five. The incident began with an explosion of a small improvised bomb in the area. After that blast, a car moved in the direction of the consulate. Security personnel fired at the car, which exploded but did not reach the consulate.

Iraqi forces said Friday April 17, 2015, they secured villages near Bayji, the nation's largest oil refinery. Protecting the refinery is considered critical, since the Islamic State raises much of its money by selling oil on the black market. The fighting was conducted by a combination of militias and Iraq's military with the backing of airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition. The forces gained control of the towns of al-Malha and al-Mazraah, just south of the Bayji oil refinery, killing at least 160 Islamic State militants.

Iraqi ground forces have secured the perimeter around the country's biggest oil refinery and entered the vast complex amid heavy clashes with Islamic State militants. Ground forces entered the Beiji oil refinery Saturday April 18, 2015, days after a number of ISIS militants carried out a large-scale attack and briefly took over a small part of the complex. The refinery has remained under government control, but the militants had been surrounding the entire complex preventing access by Iraqi forces.

Iraq Friday April 17, 2015:

• A series of bombings ripped through Baghdad mainly targeting public places and killing at least 40 people.
• The deadliest attacks came when a car bomb went off inside a car dealership in the Shiite neighbourhood of Habibya in eastern Baghdad, killed 15 people and wounded 26 others. At least 11 cars were burnt.
• Half an hour earlier, a car bomb detonated near an out-door market in the capital's southwestern Amil neighbourhood, killing 13 people and wounding 24 there.
• Earlier, a bomb blast on a commercial street in the southeastern Shiite New Baghdad district killed four people and wounded nine.
• Also, a bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Dora neighbourhood, killing three shoppers.
• Another bomb blast near a cafe killed three people in the capital's southeastern suburbs.
• A roadside bomb exploded near a patrol of Sunni fighters known as Sahwa in southern Baghdad, killing two of the force's members.

 

The Iraqi government has regained full control of a contested and strategically important oil facility that has been besieged for days by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) we were told on Sunday April 19, 2015. Iraqi soldiers had surrounded and entered the country's biggest oil refinery on Saturday but skirmishes had continued. On Sunday the Iraq’s government was now in “full control” of the refinery, “having successfully cleared the massive facility of any remaining ISIL fighters.”

On Sunday April 19, 2-15, the jihadi group now controls as much as 20 percent of the city.
 
On Sunday April 19, 2015, we were told that the Islamic State militants have killed over 6,000 people in Anbar alone, since they attacked the western Iraqi province last year. The jihadists have killed the people in different ways and for different reasons.

Iraq Sunday April 19, 2015:

• Bombings and mortar fire targeting public places have killed 14 people around the capital, Baghdad.
• The deadliest attack happened when a car bomb exploded on a commercial street in downtown Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 13.
• Earlier, a bomb blast near a market killed three people and wounded eight in al-Taji, just north of Baghdad.
• Another bomb exploded in Baghdad's northeastern suburbs, killing two people and wounding five.
• A mortar shell also hit a house and killed three people in the village of Sabaa al-Bour, 30 kilometres north of Baghdad.

 

Iraq’s prime minister has authorized the deployment of a large number of Shiite fighters in the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, where residents have been fleeing intensified fighting between ISIS and government forces. Monday April 20, 2015, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the Shiite Popular Mobilization Units -also known as Hashd al-Shaabi– to help Iraqi forces wrest control of Ramadi and surrounding regions from ISIS, or the Islamic State. The militias are being deployed in the Habanyah military base. Abadi’s decision comes a day after a group of 80 tribal leaders from the province urged him in writing for more military aid to confront ISIS militants committing atrocities against civilians.

On Wednesday April 22, 2015, we were told that the Islamic State militants kidnapped around 30 women from neighbourhoods of Mosul on April 20th because they refused temporary marriage (Nikah) with the jihadists. The women are from the Wadi Ikab, Hail Tanak and Tamouz 17 neighbourhoods of Mosul and their current whereabouts is unknown. The women are aged between 20 and 35, single and married. IS militants used their women’s brigade, al-Khansa, to investigate, arrest and kidnap women under their authority. The jihadists have kidnapped thousands of young girls and women since they took control of areas in Syria and Iraq, forcing them into temporary marriage. Reports from IS strongholds in Iraq confirm that the militants regularly use women as sex slaves and sell them in markets. IS is also responsible for the kidnap of over 5,000 Yazidi women when they attacked Sinjar, northern Iraq last year.

The Islamic State militants have torched oil fields in the Giara sub-district, southeast of Mosul in northern Iraq. The insurgents set fire to 3 oil fields in the sub-district of Nineveh Province on Monday April 20, 2015. The militants started the blaze as they are concerned about Peshmerga forces intentions to attack the area. These oil fields are only few kilometres away from the Peshmerga frontline.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil), is no longer in operational control of the organisation after being wounded in an airstrike, we were told Tuesday April 21, 2015. Baghdadi, who is the self-described 'caliph' or spiritual leader of Isil, was seriously hurt in a strike in a village in western Iraq on March 18. His wounds were at first thought to be so serious that he might die, and that while he had since staged a gradual recovery, he was not at present involved in the direct day-to-day control of the terror group.

The Islamic State jihadist group claimed to have executed 11 pro-government fighters in Iraq we were told on Tuesday April 21, 2015. The first picture shows masked men armed with assault rifles marching a line of orange jumpsuit-clad prisoners across a field. The captives are then shown kneeling in front of the gunmen with their hands bound. The final photographs show a row of bodies face-down in front of the militants with blood pooling on the ground. The men were killed in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, the scene of fierce fighting last month in which government forces recaptured its capital Tikrit. They were identified as members of the Popular Mobilisation paramilitary units which have been fighting against the jihadists alongside the army. ---

An armed anti-ISIS group operating in Mosul has claimed the assassination of the military attache of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State. Wisan Kanan, Baghdadi’s military assistant was gunned down, in the Mosul’s neighbourhood of  Al  Faisaliah we were told on Thursday April 23, 2015. Over the past two months, the group has claimed the killing of several ISIS leaders.

The Mosul division of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq released on Wednesday April 22, 2015, a video showing the execution of a Peshmerga soldier from Qushtapa. In the video the Peshmerga called on the Kurdish government to save their captives. IS captured the Peshmerga in the Hamdaniya battle in the area of Tal Aswad. He was captured in August last year and since then has been held captive by IS insurgents in Mosul.

A suicide car bomb went off next to a crowd of Shiite pilgrims near the town of Balad as they were returning from the city of Samarra, killing eight and wounding 16. We were told on Thursday April 23, 2015, that the attack happened overnight as the pilgrims were returning from a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra.

Iraqi forces are engaged in heavy fighting in Ramadi, with some parts of the city recaptured and other advances stalled by ISIS landmines and other explosives we were told on Thursday April 23, 2015. The Iraqi forces recaptured parts of the district of Sofaiya in southern Ramadi, but ISIS booby traps and landmines have prevented our forces to launch a further assault. Dozens of ISIS snipers have deployed in houses and buildings in Sofiya and they have planted explosives. The Iraqi army said that militants used chemical weapons in some areas of Anbar province resulting in the deaths of several civilians.

Iraq will at long last be getting the first batch of F-16 fighter jets it ordered four years ago we were told Thursday April 23, 2015. The fighters would arrive on July 12 along with the U.S.-trained Iraqi pilots and spare parts and would immediately begin carrying out operations. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad did not confirm the date, and only said the planes were expected by the summer. Iraq first ordered the 18 jets for $3 billion in 2011 to supplement its almost non-existent air force.

Iraq Friday April 24, 2015:

• Two bombings, one near a marketplace and the other near a courthouse, have killed seven people.
• The first attacks took place when a bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Sunni town of Tarmiyiah, killing four people and wounding eight.
• A bomb near a courthouse killed three people and wounded nine in the town of Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad.
• Security forces have recaptured a key bridge from Islamic State group militants in Ramadi. The forces recaptured the al-Houz bridge on the Euphrates River after fierce clashes with ISIS militants in the western section of Ramadi. The al-Houz bridge was controlled by the ISIS group for several months and served as the main route supply for the insurgents.

 

Islamic State militants in Iraq took partial control of a water dam and military barracks guarding it in the western Anbar province after fierce fighting on Saturday April 25, 2015.

The Iraqi government announced a new offensive this month to recapture parts of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, from Islamic State, in an attempt to build on an earlier victory against the group in the central city of Tikrit. Late on Friday, the insurgents attacked the security perimeter at al-Thirthar dam with explosive-laden vehicles and then battled army forces in clashes that continued on Saturday. Dozens of Iraqi troops were killed in the fighting. Two senior officers were among the dead.

Iraqi forces have recaptured a key bridge from the ISIL Takfiri group in the western province of Anbar. The Iraqi forces managed on Friday April 24, 2015 to retake the al-Houz bridge in the city of Ramadi that extends along the Euphrates River. The bridge had been under the control of the Takfiri militants for several months and was used as a major supply route. The old road of Karmah, a city located nearly 20 kilometres northwest of Fallujah, was liberated. The Iraqi forces also recaptured three villages north of the city besides killing a large number of extremist militants in the fighting. On April 21 government troops regained control of Ramadi’s pediatric and maternity hospital and the neighbourhood around it after heavy clashes with the Takfiri militants.

Three suicide car bombs driven by foreigners targeted the remote desert border crossing between Iraq and Jordan Saturday April 25, 2015, killing at least four Iraqi soldiers. The men targeted the dining facility, an army patrol and the border crossing itself. The three soldiers were killed along with Capt. Salah al-Dulaimi, the head of the border post's protection force. Twelve Iraqis were taken across the border and treated for their wounds. Militants launched a complex attack on Friday involving a bulldozer packed with explosives against a convoy as it approached an army base guarding a lock system on the canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River. The attack killed Iraqi 1st Division commander Brig. Gen. Hassan Abbas Toufan and three staff officers as well as 10 other soldiers. Islamic State militants paraded an officer and three soldiers allegedly captured in the fighting through the streets in a pickup truck on Saturday.

Two bombings, one near a marketplace and the other near a courthouse, have killed seven people. The first of Friday April 24, 2015's attacks took place in the morning, when a bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Sunni town of Tarmiyiah, killing four people and wounding eight. A bomb near a courthouse killed three people and wounded nine in the town of Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Iraq Sunday 26 April 2015:

• Car bombs ripped through commercial areas in and around the Iraqi capital killing at least 12 civilians.
• The deadliest attack took place in Khilani Square, a busy commercial area in central Baghdad, where a car bomb killed at least five people and wounded 15. The car was parked near a Sunni mosque and a gathering of motorcycle vendors.
• Hours earlier, an explosives-laden car ripped through a commercial area in the town of Mahmoudiya, about 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, killing at least four civilians and wounded another nine.
• Three people were killed and 13 wounded in another car bomb explosion in Baghdad's southwestern Amil neighbourhood.
• On Saturday, IS militants attacked a border crossing between Iraq and Jordan with three suicide car bombs, killing four Iraqi soldiers.
• The day before, the militants attacked an army base guarding a lock system on the canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River in Anbar, killing the army's 1st Division commander and several others.

 

Iraq Monday April 27, 2015:

• A series of car bombings targeting busy commercial areas in Iraq's capital killed at least 20 civilians.
• The deadliest attack took place when a car bomb exploded on a commercial street in Baghdad's western district of Mansour, killing 10 people and wounding 25. At least 20 cars were set ablaze by the blast, which damaged several shops and restaurants. Four children were among the wounded.
• A car bombing on a commercial street killed three people and wounded 12 in Baghdad's Amil neighbourhood.
• Earlier another car bomb exploded in Baghdad's Bayaa district near a real estate office in an area where dozens gather every day. The blast killed seven people and wounded at least 16.

 

Iraq, Tuesday April 28, 2015:

• Kurdish authorities announced the arrest of an alleged Islamic State group five-member cell that they said was responsible for the deadly bomb attack two weeks ago next to the U.S. consulate in northern Iraq. They planned the car bomb attack in the Kurdish regional capital, Irbil, that killed three people and wounded five. No Americans were killed or wounded, and the consulate was not damaged. Four of the suspects are residents of Irbil, while the fifth is an Arab resident in Kirkuk. One more suspect is still at large.
• Gunmen abducted a local UN staffer in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala. The man was kidnapped on Sunday April 26, 2015, in the city of Baqouba near the government headquarters. The man was grabbed from his car during the day and the family has received a $100,000 ransom demand for his release.
• Eight bodies with gunshot wounds to their heads and chests were found in different parts of two Sunni-majority neighbourhoods in western Baghdad.
• A sticky bomb attached to a minibus exploded in central Baghdad, killing four passengers and wounding seven others. ---

The director of the European Union’s humanitarian aid department warned on Thursday April 30, 2015, that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating rapidly. A wave of car bombs in Baghdad and Madaen, a town to the south, killed a total of 21 people and wounded at least 65.

A suicide attack west of the capital has killed at least six troops. The attacker on Saturday May 2, 2015, drove an explosive-rigged car into a military headquarters in the town of Garma. The dead included three soldiers and three militia members. Nine other troops were wounded.

More than 300 Yazidi prisoners have been slaughtered by Islamic State militants. They were murdered by Isis on Friday May 2, 2015 in the Tal Afar district Near Mosul. It comes after around 40,000 people were kidnapped at gunpoint when the terrorists attacked Yazidi villages last summer.

Militants from the Islamic State have taken control of half Iraq’s largest oil refinery and have cut supply lines to the 150 or so government troops who are holding out inside the facility we were told on Saturday May 2, 2015. The surprise Islamic State advance came despite U.S.-led aerial bombardment of Islamic State positions in the central Iraqi city of Baiji, where the refinery is located. Government troops are running low on food, water and ammunition. The situation was chaotic after 11 months of nearly unbroken siege. Islamic State fighters control all the major buildings, 80 percent of the watchtowers around the facility, and had flanked government positions with snipers and suicide bombers driving heavily armoured car bombs.

Iraq Saturday May 2, 2015:

• Bombings across the country killed at least 30 people.
• A suicide car bombing followed by another car bombing minutes later in Baghdad's popular Karrada neighbourhood killed at least 17 people. The bombs struck as restaurants and coffee shops were full of people.
• In eastern Diyala province, a roadside bomb killed five women and two children traveling in a minibus.
• In Anbar province, three soldiers and three militiamen were killed and nine were wounded when a suicide car bomber drove an explosive-rigged Humvee into their headquarters in the town of Garma.
• The killings came as the U.N. mission in Iraq reported that 812 Iraqis, including 277 members of security forces and allied militias, were killed in April.

 

Army forces backed by federal police and fighters belonging to the Hashd al-Shaabi control the Daesh group’s biggest military base in Diyala province WE WERE TOLD on Tuesday May 5, 2015. The Iraqi army began a military campaign in Diyala province on April 30 and a number of ISIS fighters were killed while security forces had neutralized much of the group’s weapons and military equipment.

Iraq’s largest oil refinery is under mounting threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists, who have advanced inside the perimeter of the facility we were told on Wednesday May 6, 2015. US warplanes have been carrying out air strikes against IS around the Baiji refinery, but it is unclear if Iraqi security forces would manage to hold on to the facility north of Baghdad. Securing Baiji town and the nearby refinery is a key step on the way to an eventual offensive to seize back control of the strategic city of Mosul in northern Iraq.

A secular and outspoken Iraqi journalist was gunned down in his Baghdad home we were told on Thursday May 7, 2015. Juburi was killed on Tuesday in his home in the capital’s Qadisiyah neighbourhood.

 

Twin bombings outside a Shi'ite place of worship in eastern Iraq killed at least 17 people as they filed out after Friday prayers (Friday May 8, 2015). A parked car laden with explosives blew up near the exit of the mosque in Balad Ruz, and when bystanders gathered to evacuate the wounded, a suicide bomber detonated himself among them. A further 37 people were wounded in the attack in the eastern province of Diyala. Local military commander Adnan al-Tamimi was among the dead. Another car bomb exploded in the parking lot of a Shi'ite mosque in the Kanan district of Diyala, wounding several civilians.

Thirty escaped prisoners were shot dead and another six recaptured Friday Mat8, 2015, after a prison break in Diyala province; six police officers were also killed in the fighting. At least 40 prisoners had escaped a police prison in the town of Khalis, with nine of the escapees described as terrorists. Several prisoners managed to disarm a security officer inside the prison. As a result, some police and people were killed inside the Khalis Police Station.

On Saturday May 9, 2015, we were told that up to 50 prisoners and 12 police officers have been killed after a riot broke out in an Iraqi prison and dozens escaped, including several convicted terrorists. After disarming a warden who had gone to break up a fight and killing him the convicts seized control of the armoury. 14 police officers were wounded during both the violence on Friday and an overnight manhunt for the fugitives. Among the prisoners were about 300 terrorists.

Militants in Iraq carried out a series of suicide attacks on Friday May 8, 2015, hitting Shiite mosques in the country’s northeast and killing at least 22 worshipers.

Since 2003, approximately 400 journalists have lost their lives in Iraq.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, has blown up the biggest mosque in the occupied city of Mosul’s western Badoush neighbourhood and reiterated its ban on the shaving of beards we were told on Sunday May 10, 2015. The jihadists destroyed the Badoush mosque because it reportedly had a grave that went against the ultra-conservative ideology of the Islamic State. A ban on shaving, issued earlier this year by ISIS clerics, was stressed again during Friday prayers.

Separate bombings outside the capital, Baghdad, have killed at least eight people. A suicide car bomber attacked a police and army checkpoint Sunday May 10, 2015, in the town of Tarmiyah, killing five security members and wounding 10. Another car bomb killed three civilians and wounded eight at an outdoor market in Taji.

Four Iraqi Presidential Guards have gone missing whilst returning home from Iraqi capital Baghdad to Khormato in Salahaddin Province, northern Iraq. On Sunday May 10, 2015, we were told that on Saturday morning the four elite guards went missing halfway through their journey home. Their whereabouts remains unknown. It follows last week’s reports that about 40 Presidential Guards were arrested by Shi’ite militias in Salahaddin Provinces. Their weapons were confiscated and they were sent back to Baghdad. ---

Iraqi joint forces have seized oil fields from ISIS jihadists in the Salahaddin-Anbar border area. Forces from the Iraqi Army with Hashd al-Shaabi militias, police, tribal gunmen and with air support from the US-led coalition have been able to recapture oil fields in Ajil, east of Ramadi [Anbar province], and the Mount Hamreen border district with Salahaddin province we were told on Monday May 11, 2015. An unknown number of Daesh gunmen were killed during the operation and several of their vehicles have been destroyed.

Forty inmates in a prison in northeastern Iraq, including some convicted of terrorism charges, escaped amid a riot that killed at least six police officers and 30 prisoners we were told on May 9, 2015 Saturday. A fight broke out among the inmates of the prison and when guards went to investigate, they were overpowered and their weapons were taken. Some of those who escaped were wanted on terrorism charges.

Islamic State militants on Monday May 11, 2015, destroyed a bridge in the western sub-district of Ayaz because they are fearing the Peshmerga might launch a surprise assault to capture areas from ISIS. The Islamic State, or ISIS, has been planting most Mosul bridges with bombs to be ready for any attack. Last month, ISIS destroyed Badoosh Bridge near the eastern Tigris River in Mosul.

An ISIS leader described as the extremist group's "mastermind of car bombs" was killed along with several militants in Fallujah in Anbar province we were told May 11, 2015 on Monday. After the bombardment of several ISIS arsenals and weaponry bases in the south of Fallujah by the coalition airstrikes, Abu Jaber, the ISIS mastermind of making car bombs was killed along with several other militants.

Iraq Tuesday May 12, 2015:

• Attacks on Shiite pilgrims commemorating the birth of the Imam Ali killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 50 across the Iraqi capital.
• The largest of the attacks happened in central Baghdad when a suicide bomber attacked pilgrims buying food and drinks on their way back from the shrine of the Imam Ali, located in the capital's Kazimiyah neighbourhood. At least 10 people were killed in the attack and another 25 wounded.
• In eastern Baghdad, another two pilgrims were killed and nine wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on Palestine Street.
• On the northeastern edge of the capital, in the town of Bab al-Sham, at least three mortars targeted Shiite pilgrims, killing four and wounding at least 12.
• Also in Mashahidah, just north of Baghdad, at least three pilgrims were killed and eight wounded by an improvised explosive device.

 

The Iran-backed Shiite Badr Organization has retaken control of half of the Baiji oil refinery from ISIS we were told Tuesday May 12, 2015. Iraqi security forces broke an ISIS siege of the key Baiji refinery Sunday following a joint assault with a Shiite militia and tribal groups.

In the continuation of the Anbar military campaigns, some 12 ISIS militants have been killed and another 20 wounded we were told Tuesday May 12, 2015. Tens of landmines had also been defused by bomb disposal teams.
 
On Wednesday May 13, 2015, we were told that the second-in-command of Islamic State (IS) has been killed in a US-led coalition air strike in northern Iraq. Abdul Rahman Mustafa Mohammed, also known as Abu Alaa al-Afari, was at a mosque near Tal Afar that was targeted. However, the US military later denied coalition planes had attacked a mosque. In recent weeks, there were unconfirmed reports that Afari had taken temporary charge of IS operations as IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been incapacitated as a result of an air strike in Iraq in March.

The top ISIS mufti in Iraq’s Anbar province has been killed in an air raid by Iraqi jets we were told on Thursday May 14, 2015. Iraqi fighter jets in the areas of Qaim and Karabla in Anbar managed to kill the official ISIS mufti, Mullah Hamid Al-Jofaifi, who has ordered the killings of civilians. Several other militants also had been hit by the Iraqi air raids.

Iraqi joint forces have captured three strategic areas in the city of Baiji as well as three watch towers inside the Baiji oil refinery we were told Wednesday May 13, 2015. With the help of Hashd al-Shaabi, Sunni tribal militants and coalition airstrikes, the Iraqi army managed to clear the Baiji neighbourhoods of Hai Askari, Hai Naft and Shahidan of the extremists as well as three watch towers inside the Baiji refinery.
 
On Wednesday May 13, 2015, Islamic State fanatics have beheaded three men they accused of spying for the Iraqi Government in the latest bloody execution to be carried out within the organisation's self-declared caliphate. Photographs taken in north-west Iraq's Nineveh province show the men being read their charges and sentence while masked gunmen stand guard. Forced to kneel with their heads bowed, an executioner then stands over them before striking at their necks with a sword.

The Islamic State group on Thursday May 14, 2015, released an audio message purportedly from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has not been seen or heard from in months. In it he exhorted all Muslims to take up arms and fight on behalf of the group's self-styled caliphate.

Three near-simultaneous suicide car bombings on Friday May 15, 2015, targeted an Iraqi government compound and killed 10 policemen in Ramadi. The coordinated attack damaged part of the Anbar Police Headquarters building, killed the 10 policemen and also wounded at least seven. Dozens of families were forced to flee their homes in the area.

Islamic State militants raised their black flag over the local government headquarters in the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday May 15, 2015 and claimed victory through mosque loudspeakers after overrunning most of the western provincial capital. If Ramadi were to fall it would be the first major city seized by the insurgents in Iraq since security forces and paramilitary groups began pushing them back last year. Fighting continued in one district of Ramadi and government forces were still in control of a military command centre to the west of the city.

ISIS fighters pulled out of key parts of Ramadi on Saturday May 16, 2015, after fierce fighting with Iraqi government forces backed by coalition airstrikes. ISIS withdrew from the provincial headquarters building, which they left booby-trapped, and the central police headquarters, which they burned. Iraqi security forces said they made significant gains in the city and now control the central part of the city, including 75% of al-Malaab neighbourhood. The ISIS forces said they didn't withdraw from the government compound buildings, they abandoned them to move into residential neighbourhoods where they'll be less likely to be hit by coalition airstrikes.

Since Friday night May 15, 2015, at least 150 Iraqi police and officers from the Albu Alwan tribe are trapped in the centre of Ramadi, Anbar province, surrounded by ISIS jihadis (Daesh gunmen) who have taken control of a large part of the city. ISIS took control of most of Ramadi Thursday night, including a security compound that houses the police headquarters and governor’s office. The gains marked a significant setback for the Iraqi government in its long fight to dislodge the militants, who hold about a third of the country.

Kurdish forces have shelled Islamic State (IS) positions in Nineveh province, northern Iraq, killing a number of militants and destroying a base. On Saturday May 16, 2015, Peshmerga artillery units shelled IS positions in the Khursibad and Nawaran areas North West of Mosul. At least 13 insurgents were killed during the assault and more wounded,” the source said.

The Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to ISIS on Sunday May 17, 2015, after government security forces pulled out of a military base on the west side of the city. The ISIS advances came after militants detonated a series of morning car bomb blasts. The explosions forced Iraqi security forces and tribal fighters to retreat to the city's east.

On Monday May 18, 2015, we were told that Iran-backed militias are reportedly being sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city on Sunday. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Around 500 people, both civilians and Iraqi soldiers, are believed to have been killed in days of battles. A British Isis fighter who called himself Abu Musa al-Britani was among suicide bombers who led the assault on Friday by using explosive-laden cars to blast their way into a government compound.

Islamic State militants likely killed up to 500 people —both Iraqi civilians and soldiers— and forced 8,000 to flee from their homes as they captured the city of Ramadi we were told Monday May 18, 2015, while the government-backed Shiite militias vowed to mount a counter-offensive and reclaim the Anbar provincial capital. Sunday saw a shocking defeat of Iraq's security and military forces as the militants swiftly took control of Ramadi, sending government forces there fleeing in a major loss despite the support of U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the extremists. Bodies, some burned, littered the city's streets as local officials reported the militants carried out mass killings of Iraqi security forces and civilians. Online video showed Humvees, trucks and other equipment speeding out of Ramadi, with soldiers desperate to reach safety gripping onto their sides. ---

On Saturday May 23, 2015, government forces and Shiite militias have recaptured a town lost to Islamic State militants a day earlier. The troops launched a counter-offensive against the militants in the town of Husseiba. Iraqi allied forces killed several militants before they withdrew from the town. Baghdad says preparations are underway to launch a wide-scale counteroffensive in Anbar province involving Iranian-backed Shiite militias, which have played a key role in defeating the Islamic State group elsewhere in the country. The presence of the militias could, however, fuel sectarian tensions in the Sunni province, where anger at the Shiite-led government runs deep.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) seized the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria after isolated government forces pulled out. The militants had seized the Syrian side, known as Al-Tanaf, three days earlier, leaving Iraqi forces guarding the remote outpost in Anbar province very vulnerable. The government forces at Al-Walid temporarily pulled back to the nearby Trebil border crossing with Jordan. ISIS fighters seized another border crossing between Anbar and Syria last year.

Shi'ite Muslim militiamen and Iraqi army forces launched a counter-offensive against Islamic State insurgents near Ramadi on Saturday May 23, 2015, aiming to reverse potentially devastating gains by the jihadi militants. The fall of Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, to Islamic State on May 17 could be a shattering blow to Baghdad's weak central government. The Sunni Muslim jihadis now control most of Anbar and could threaten the western approaches to Baghdad, or even surge south into Iraq's Shi’ite heartland. Hundreds of Shi'ite fighters, who had assembled last week at the Habbaniya air base, moved into Khalidiya on Saturday and were nearing Siddiqiya and Madiq, towns in contested territory near Ramadi. The pro-government forces, which include locally allied Sunni tribesmen, had advanced past those towns to within one kilometre of Husaiba al-Sharqiya, an Islamic State-run town 7 kilometres east of the Ramadi city limits. More than 2,000 reinforcements had joined the pro-government advance and they had managed to secure Khalidiya and the road linking it to Habbaniya.

A wall of orange flames and plumes of black smoke billow into the night sky as a fire at a key Iraqi oil refinery rages. Video of the massive blaze at the Baiji refinery was released on Sunday May 24, 2015. The US military announced on Friday that Iraqi troops had cleared a ground route into the city of Baiji in northern Iraq, which houses the country's largest oil refinery. The Iraqi forces had been met with significant IS resistance in the form of IEDs, suicide vehicle borne IEDs, as well as heavy weapon and rocket fire attacks.

Pro-government forces in Iraq have formally launched an operation to drive Islamic State out of Anbar province. The operation would see government troops and militiamen move southwards from Salahuddin province and seek to cut off IS militants in Ramadi. On Tuesday May 26, 2015, fighting was reported south and west of Ramadi, as the Iraqi forces tried to cut off supply routes to the city. ---

Iraq's Shi'ite paramilitaries said on Tuesday May 26, 2015, they had taken charge of the campaign to drive Islamic State from the western province of Anbar.

Islamic State extremists unleashed a wave of suicide attacks targeting the Iraqi army in western Anbar province, killing at least 17 troops we were told Wednesday May 27, 2015. The attacks came just hours after the Iraqi government announced the start of a wide-scale operation to recapture areas under the control of the IS group in Anbar. The attacks took place outside the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah late the previous night. The militants struck near a water control station and a lock system on a canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River where army forces have been deployed for the Anbar offensive. Last month, the water station fell into the hands of IS militants. Iraqi government forces recaptured the station a few days later.

ISIS militants killed 30 Iraqi soldiers in a suicide bomb attack in Iraq's key Anbar province on Wednesday May 27, 2015, a day after the launch of a major operation to liberate Anbar and Salaheddin provinces from ISIS. Three ISIS attackers targeted a forward combat outpost in al-Mazra, between Karma and Falluja.

On May 27, 2015, we were told that the International coalition jets have carried out intensive attacks on Islamic State (IS) positions in northern Iraq, killing the IS Governor of Mosul Ibrahim Younis Al-hamdani and destroying military equipment. Elsewhere, coalition jets bombed IS militants in Sinjar, killing dozens of the jihadists and destroying heavy weaponry. Jets also attacked the jihadists in Sultan Abdullah and Tal’asher villages near to Makhmour, east of the Kurdistan Region capital Erbil, leaving noticeable damage on positions in the area.

An Iraqi forensic team has exhumed 499 bodies from a series of graves in the presidential complex in the city of Tikrit we were told on Thursday May 28, 2015. The bodies are believed to be those of Iraqi military cadets, whom ISIS claimed to have killed in June 2014 in a massacre at Camp Speicher, a fortified Iraqi base near Tikrit.

Two separate car bombs inside parking lot of two hotels have killed 10 people in the capital Baghdad. A car bomb exploded in the parking lot of Babil Hotel late Thursday, killing six people and wounding 14 others. About one minute later, a second car bomb blast inside the parking lot of Cristal Hotel, formerly Sheraton, killed four people and wounded 13 others.

A U.S. military drone crashed in southern Iraq on Wednesday May 27, 2015, while it was conducting a surveillance mission against Islamic State fighters. The drone appears to have been crashed due to mechanical problems. It was not brought down by fire from Islamic State fighters. The wreckage of the aircraft and its components have been recovered.

Iraqi forces in coordination with air support from the US-led coalition have reportedly advanced in areas south and west of the city of Ramadi we were told on Saturday May 30, 2015. Iraqi forces launched a multi-pronged assault on ISIS elements in the area of Sarsar; warplanes pounded the extremists' arsenals and bases in the area. Over the last three days, military operations to recapture the Anbar province have reportedly retaken 65 square kilometres from ISIS.

Car bombings struck two luxury hotels in Baghdad that killed 14 people and wounded 25. The bombings took place in the parking lots of the hotels around midnight Thursday May 28, 2015. Foreigners frequently stay at the hotels. In one attack, a bomb in a parked car hit the Cristal, which used to be called the Sheraton, in the city centre, starting a fire in the middle of one of the city’s busiest areas. The hotel is a frequent spot for weddings and is next to an upscale private club. The other attack, a suicide car bombing, hit the Babylon, a recently renovated hotel that sits on the banks of the Tigris opposite the American Embassy.

Iraqi security forces lost 2,300 Humvee armoured vehicles when the Islamic State jihadist group overran the northern city of Mosul we were told on Sunday May 31, 2015. While the exact price of the vehicles varies depending on how they are armoured and equipped, it is clearly a hugely expensive loss that has boosted IS' capabilities. Last year, the State Department approved a possible sale to Iraq of 1,000 Humvees with increased armour, machineguns, grenade launchers, other gear and support that was estimated to cost $579 million. ---

Three Islamic State suicide bombers targeted a police base in Iraq's western Anbar province with explosives-laden Humvees on Monday June 1, 2015, killing at least 35 police and Shiite militiamen. The attack on a police station in the Tharthar area north of the IS-held provincial capital, Ramadi, caused a large secondary explosion in an ammunition depot. Another 40 security forces were wounded in the attack.

The Iraqi military killed an ISIS military leader in a targeted strike in Fallujah, also killing several other militants. Relying on intelligence information, the army successfully carried out a military operation to kill Abu Karar, the military leader of the group in the area of Rashad in eastern Fallujah.

Up to 500 children reportedly kidnapped by Isis in Iraq could be used as suicide bombers and child soldiers. They were taken to territory held by the so-called Islamic State in two provinces, possibly for training at the group’s camps for youngsters it dubs “cubs of the Caliphate”. The boys had been abducted from the towns of Ar Rutba, Al-Qaim, Anah and Rawa over a week.

Iraqi joint forces repulsed an ISIS attack against Tikrit Air Academy in Salahadin province, killing a number of the group’s militants we were told on Monday June 1, 2015. A number of ISIS-led militants fleeing the previous battles in the towns of Ishaq and Dojail attacked the Speicher airbase and captured a watchtower. After an intense hour-long battle, the airbase was cleared of the group’s militants and 40 ISIS military vehicles were destroyed in the battle.

 During the American-led occupation of Iraq between 2003-2011, the Tikrit Air Academy was known as Camp Speicher after US Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, who died in Iraq after his plane was shot down during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His remains were recovered by US Marines in Anbar province in 2009.  Also on Monday a Police Union force attacked an ISIS checkpoint in the Ajil area northwest of Tikrit with RPG-7s and grenades, killing six ISIS militants.

A mass grave containing the bodies of Yazidis murdered by Islamic State (IS) militants has been discovered in northern Iraq. On Monday Jun 1, 2015, we were told that the mass grave contained the remains of 80 Yazidis “of different ages”. It was discovered by locals in the al-Jadaa village, in the west of Nineveh Province. A number of other mass graves have been found by Kurdish Peshmerga forces in recent months, containing the remains of Yazidis who were massacred by IS insurgents over the past year.

A car bomb has struck near a restaurant in the capital, Baghdad, killing six people. The car went off inside the parking lot of the Qadouri restaurant in eastern Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon June 2, 2015. Among the six people killed was a traffic policeman. The explosion also wounded 13 people and damaged several buildings and cars in the area.

The Islamic State group, or ISIS,  has reduced the amount of water flowing to government-held areas in Iraq's western Anbar province we were told on Thursday June 4, 2015. The decision to reduce the flow through a dam on the Euphrates River will threaten irrigation systems and water treatment plants in nearby areas controlled by troops and tribes opposed to the extremist group.

On Thursday June 4, 2015, an airstrike in the Iraqi town of Hawija destroyed one of the Islamic State group's largest car bomb factories, causing heavy casualties and a massive explosion heard some 48km away in Kirkuk city. The strike hit a facility at the entrance to the town of Hawija in Kirkuk province that was used to rig vehicles with explosives for bombings that are one of ISIS deadliest tactics. The blast caused heavy ISIS casualties but also killed and wounded civilians. The facility included tanks, Humvees and large quantities of explosives and was the biggest factory in Iraq and Syria.

A number of Sunni tribal sheikhs and tribes in Iraq's Anbar province have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. The sheikhs and tribal leaders made the pledge on Wednesday June 3, 2015, in Fallujah.

Tariq Aziz, known as the face of Saddam Hussein's regime on the world stage for many years, has died in an Iraqi hospital on Thursday Jube 4, 2015. Aziz, 79, served as foreign minister and deputy prime minister and was a close adviser to the former leader. He was sentenced to death by the Iraqi Supreme Court in 2010 for the persecution of religious parties under Saddam's rule but was never executed. He surrendered to US troops in 2003 shortly after the fall of Baghdad. He was taken to hospital from prison after suffering a heart attack however initial reports said he had died in prison. He had long been in poor health, suffering from heart and respiratory problems, high blood pressure and diabetes, and his family repeatedly called for his release from custody. ---

An air strike by a U.S.-led coalition flattened an entire neighbourhood of a northern Iraqi town controlled by Islamic State militants, killing dozens of people including civilians. The strike targeted an Islamic State bomb-making factory in Hawija overnight on Tuesday June 2, 2015, triggering a series of secondary explosions that reduced the surrounding area in the industrial district to rubble. Residents and security sources put the number of people killed at around 70.

Government forces and Shiite militiamen repelled two Islamic State attacks in Anbar province. In one attack, they used anti-tank missiles to take out four would-be suicide car bombs. IS attacked the government-held town of Husseiba with heavy mortar fire early Saturday June 6, 2015. After an hours-long battle, the attackers retreated, leaving behind three destroyed vehicles and five dead fighters. At least 10 troops and militiamen were wounded in the battle. Iraqi forces took Husseiba, near the militant-held provincial capital of Ramadi, from IS last month. Elsewhere in Anbar, Iraqi troops destroyed four suicide car bombs during an IS attack in Tharthar area.

A car bomb attack near a market has killed 14 people in a town northeast of Baghdad. The attack took place Saturday night June 6, 2015, in the Shiite town of Balad Ruz, killing 14 people and wounding 37 others. Balad Ruz is 70 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. Several shops and cars were damaged in the attack. Police sealed off the blast area.

Iraq’s interior ministry on Sunday June 7, 2015, announced the recapture of some areas of Anbar province from the Islamic State (ISIS). The security forces have cleared the areas of Hamra, the Hamra military base, the villages of Albudilf, Abu Isa, and Malani in the Garma region in the west of Anbar province. In a separate announcement, the Baghdad Operations Command spokesman announced other areas in Anbar were retaken by the Special Rapid Intervention Force. The forces had retaken control of the areas of Zajaliya, Maqalih Hasur and Takrir in the Tigris river area of Anbar province, and that several militants were killed in the fighting. However ISIS still is in control of the provincial capital of Ramadi and its outskirts, which it captured in mid-May, sending Iraqi forces racing out of the city in a major loss despite the support of US-led airstrikes targeting the extremists.

Warplanes from the US-led coalition have bombarded ISIS positions in the district of Tal Afar west of Mosul, killing the ISIS governor in the district we were told on Sunday June 7, 2015. Peshmerga forces in coordination with warplanes pounded several ISIS arsenals and weaponry bases on Sunday inside Tal Afar. The ISIS governor of Tal Afar, Abbas Hamed, was killed along with three aides after a hit by coalition warplanes. Earlier this month, coalition warplanes bombarded ISIS bases near the main Mosul-Tal Afar road, reportedly killing 10 of the group's militants.

The Islamic State (IS) militants arrested over 90 women Mosul on Saturday June 6, 2015, forcing them to submit to temporary marriage with jihadist fighters. The IS women’s brigade al-Khansa made more than 90 arrests in neighbourhoods across Mosul. The arrested women are mostly young single girls who have previously been chosen by the insurgents because of their age and beauty. Since taking control of large swathes of Syria and Iraq last summer, the jihadists have kidnapped thousands of young girls and women, forcing them into temporary marriage. In April al-Khansa kidnapped more than 30 women from Mosul after they refused to marry insurgents. IS militants use their women’s brigade, al-Khansa, to investigate, arrest and kidnap women in areas under their control.

Iraqi troops backed by Shiite militias recaptured key parts of the northern refinery town of Beiji from the Islamic State group on Sunday June 7, 2015. The Iraqi flag was raised over a local government building in Beiji and that troops were advancing to other areas. The security forces are now controlling the downtown Beiji area. There was no word on the fate of the contested refinery on the town's outskirts.

Later on Sunday June 7, 2015, it was confirmed that the Iraqi forces with the support of the U.S. are now in control of Baiji city. The forces have cleansed and are in control completely of government complex, city centre, Fatah mosque (main mosque) and surrounding neighbourhoods.

At least 15,000 volunteers from Ziqar province and the capital city of Nasiriya have joined the Shiite militia movement known as the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Units, signing up to fight in Iraq’s ongoing war against the Islamic State we were told on Monday June 8, 2015. Iraqi police and military commanders in the Hashd al-Shaabi are currently training the arrivals and there are enough weapons for all the volunteers. The Hashd al-Shaabi rose up last year at a call from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shiite cleric in Iraq, when ISIS fighters overran much of country's western territory.

Iraq has re-taken control of some grain silos previously seized by Islamic State, but most of the grain held cannot be used as militants aim to destroy sites when retreating on Tuesday June 9, 2015. Islamic State has seized fertile areas and controls territory that normally produces significant quantities of Iraq's wheat crop. The Iraqi government had taken control of grain facilities in areas including the town of al-Alam, which produced 60,000 tonnes, and a site in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra, which produced around 120,000 tonnes of grain.

Baghdad is to create a 27,000-strong force which will protect Iraq's key energy assets throughout the country against the threat posed by the militant group ISIS. Their mission is to secure all oil and electricity facilities. ---

A top ISIS leader and a number of his assistants were killed Tuesday June 9, 2015, in an explosion at a bomb-making warehouse in the group’s stronghold of Mosul. The well-known Daesh emir, Abu Hisham al-Chechani, and a number of his gunmen died in a stockade blast where they were making explosives. Abu Hisham al-Chechani, said to be originally from Chechnya in Russia's North Caucasus region, was reportedly the head of ISIS operations involving booby traps and planted bombs.

Iraq Tuesday June 9, 2015:

• A series of bomb attacks in and around the Iraqi capital Baghdad has left at least 18 people dead.
• The deadliest attack took place near a restaurant in the city's Palestine Street, killing eight people.
• Several other attacks were reported in the capital, some of them targeting military personnel.
• IS was behind yet another attack against a local government building in Amiriyat al-Fallujah, to the west of Baghdad, in which at least two people were killed.

A suicide car bomb targeting a police checkpoint in the capital, Baghdad, has killed six people. The bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into the checkpoint in Baghdad's northern district of Shulla on Wednesday afternoon, June 10, 2015, killing three policemen and three civilians. At least 15 people were wounded and several cars were burned in the attack.

The Islamic State has executed more than 130 retired Iraqi Army soldiers and former security officers in Mosul in a week-long purge of ex-soldiers suspected of potentially spying on the group’s movements and military bases we were told on Thursday June 11, 2015. Over the past week, the bodies of 131 retired soldiers and security members have been transferred to the morgues of Mosul hospitals.

On Friday June 12, 2015, coordinated Islamic State suicide attacks targeted Iraqi government security posts north of Baghdad leaving 13 dead. Four suicide bombers driving explosive-laden cars rammed into two security checkpoints and a military headquarters within a 15-minute span, killing 13 Shiite militiamen and troops and wounding 24. Meanwhile security forces repelled Islamic State suicide attacks near the town of Garma, east of militant-held city of Fallujah. The attackers used four suicide cars in the assault that left no casualties among the government forces. Recently received U.S. anti-tank missiles were used to destroy the suicide cars.

Islamic State militants attacked government forces and their Shi'ite militia allies on Saturday June 13, 2015, killing 11 near the city of Baiji as part of the battle for control of Iraq's biggest refinery. Four suicide bombers in vehicles packed with explosives hit security forces and the local headquarters of the Shi'ite militias in the area of al-Hijjaj near the refinery.

The Islamic State has conducted a mass execution of former Iraqi soldiers in Mosul we were told Saturday June 13, 2015. The corpses of 27 former Iraqi soldiers were sent to a morgue. ISIS had asked the soldiers to join ISIS and fight alongside the jihadis; they were killed for not joining the group.

A car bomb blast near a market has killed 10 people in the capital, Baghdad. The attack took place Sunday night June 14, 2015, when the car bomb hit a market and shops in Baghdad's Qahira neighbourhood. At least 20 people were wounded in the attack. Several cars and shops were burnt in the attack.

Seventeen people were killed in Iraq on Monday June 15, 2015, in clashes between Islamic State militants and pro-government forces in a town close to the country's biggest refinery. The refinery beside the town of Baiji has changed hands before, reflecting the Iraqi army's struggle to hold territory it recaptures after months of clashes. Fighting on Monday took place on a road used by Islamic State for supply lines leading from Baiji to the nearby town of Siniya to the west.

A car bomb blast near a market has killed 10 people in the capital, Baghdad. The attack took place Sunday night June 14, 2015, when the car bomb hit a market and shops in Baghdad's Qahira neighbourhood. At least 20 people were wounded in the attack. Several cars and shops were burnt in the attack.

Fighter jets from the Iraqi air force in cooperation with Iraqi police mortar regiments bombarded ISIS positions in contested areas of the Salahadin and Anbar provinces Monday June 15, 2015.Mortar attacks destroyed several ISIS arsenals and stockades in the town of Husseiba east of Ramadi, killing seven militants and destroying the group’s positions and bases. Iraqi fighter jets also targeted a number of ISIS convoys in the Haqol Ajul area in Salahadin province, destroying five of the group’s convoys and killing all the militants inside the vehicles. Monday the Iraqi army and ISIS were locked in an intense battle in the Fatha area in eastern Salahadin province. 40 ISIS militants and 17 Iraqi police were killed in the fighting.

Islamic State has killed five policemen in a town near Iraq's biggest refinery, in an attack that may help ease pressure on some of its fighters trapped in the strategically important facility we were told on Wednesday June 17, 2015. The insurgents mounted the operation at Tal Albu Jarad village as part of a battle for control of Baiji refinery, which has changed hands several times. After receiving reinforcements, Islamic State militants recaptured three neighbourhoods in the town of Baiji near the refinery, but fresh clashes have erupted there. The fighting has left some Islamic State fighters trapped in the refinery, besieged by government forces and militias.

The Iraqi army’s military campaign to liberate Ramadi from the Islamic State has been halted we were told on Tuesday June 16, 2015. Over the past three days there have been no advances or attacks against ISIS bases and position on the outskirts of Ramadi. The military campaign to push ISIS out of Sunni-majority Anbar province was launched in early June.

Iraqi warplanes conducted airstrikes Monday night June 15, 2015, on a convoy of armoured ISIS vehicles on the way from Fallujah to Baghdad. The Iraqi air force was able to neutralize the explosive-laden vehicles before they could be used in suicide attacks in the capital. ISIS was expected attack Baghdad using its usual tactic of waves of suicide car bombs.

Iraq's defines ministry and the U.S. military dismissed a claim by Islamic State on Thursday June 18, 2015, that it had shot down an Iraqi fighter plane. The publication of these false stories is part of an unjust psychological war waged by some media outlets supporting terrorism aimed at playing down the heroics of the Iraqi army. Islamic State said it had shot down the fighter north of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi, which the group seized last month.

A suicide car bomber has attacked a police checkpoint, killing seven people, including civilians. The car exploded at a checkpoint at the northern entrance to the Kazimiyah section of Baghdad, killing three police officers and four civilians. Another 16 people were wounded in the attack. ---

Thirty-two Islamic State militants were killed Thursday June 18, 2015, in actions by Iraqi security forces. The Iraqi police gunned down two separate groups of ISIS militants and captured others in two operations near Baiji north of Tikrit and north of Baghdad. Iraqi police forces with the help of intelligence officers on the ground managed to defuse and dismantle ISIS vehicles rigged with explosives. On Wednesday, US-led coalition airstrikes bombed three ISIS military vehicles equipped with heavy artillery north of Baiji.

The Islamic State group executed 25 people in Mosul on Thursday June 18, 2015, on charges of spying and leaking information to the US-led coalition. Those executed were accused of leaking information to Peshmerga and Iraqi intelligence services about ISIS military bases that had reportedly been bombarded by coalition forces in recent days.

On Saturday June 20, 2015, 7 terrorists, including a Saudi national, have been killed in a security operation in Fallujah District. The operation also led to the destruction of two armoured bulldozers and a booby-trapped house located near the area of al-Harirat in Fallujah District.

On Monday June 22, 2015, we were told that two more Islamic State (IS) militants from Tajikistan were killed. Abduhakim and Abu Barro Shahritousi join Nasim Nabotov, who was killed in fighting in Syria earlier this month. 412 nationals had joined IS in Syria and Iraq, with up to 50 of them taking their families with them.

A mass grave of dozens of Iraqi army soldiers massacred by the Islamic State was found in the Tal Afar district of Mosul we were told on Monday June 22, 2015. On the outskirts of Tal Afar, locals found a mass grave of 70 Iraqi army soldiers. ISIS also recently bombed 16 Christian homes in Mosul belonging to doctors in the city. These 16 homes are located in Mosul’s eastern neighbourhood of Bakr. They were evacuated months ago.

A key suspect in the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was killed in a U.S. drone strike last week in Mosul that targeted him because he was an ISIS battlefield commander we were told on Tuesday June 23, 2015. Ali Awni al-Harzi, a known ISIL operative and organizational intermediary who was a person of interest in the September 11, 2012, attack against U.S. personnel in Benghazi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Mosul on June 15.

The Islamic State’s finance minister in Mosul was killed by a booby trap while returning from the town of Gayara to the group’s stronghold of Mosul on Tuesday June 23, 2015. He was killed in a booby trap ambush on the Gayara-Mosul road after he took part in the opening of a women’s prison for those not committed to sexual jihad. Sexual jihad is a controversial practice within jihadi groups where women voluntarily offer themselves in a sexual comfort role to fighters. Four other militants were killed by the booby trap. Afari was an Iraqi army officer prior to joining extremist jihadi groups in 2004. He allegedly had close ties with the Islamic State’s Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and slain Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The 450 U.S. troops who are settling into their new outpost at Iraq's Taqaddum Air Base are sharing the facility with some Shiite militiamen. Not long ago, Taqaddum was home to a large contingent of Shiite militia fighters, some of them likely linked to groups that were targeting U.S. troops in combat operations a decade ago. But that changed after American military commanders recently identified Taqaddum, a sprawling base in the heart of Anbar province, as a good location for a new forward operating base for about 450 U.S. troops who will help support the Iraqis' fight against the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State group. Top U.S. military officials told the Iraqis that the irregular Shiite militias, along with any Iranian military units, had to leave before American service members would arrive as part of the latest build up of U.S. forces.

The director of European police agency (Europol) Rob Wainwright announced on Monday June 22, 2015, that five thousand Europeans have joined ISIS during the past months. These five thousand people, include British, French, Belgian and Dutch travelled who joined ISIS terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria. The statistics estimated that about 700 British travelled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, while the European police database, that follow foreign terrorists, indicates that it has 6000 names.

14 child soldiers have been killed in Iraq, while conducting operations for Islamic State (IS). The so-called Cubs of the Caliphate –Ashbal al-Khilafah– died as a result of airstrikes, suicide missions in VBIEDs and clashes with Iraqi security forces. The children were taken to hostile areas of Iraq after completing training in Syria. In the first three months of 2014 at least 400 children of IS fighters were enrolled in training camps. Recruitment offices in cities such as al- Mayadin and al- Bokamal encourage children to join up, targeting those near IS posts, schools, mosques and those watching public punishments in city squares. They also offer parents rewards to send their children to camps where they will learn combat skills and be versed in the IS version of Sharia. The deaths of at least 6 fighters under the age of 18 were recorded during the battle for Kobani.

A late-night attack by Iraqi forces killed an ISIS leader described as a mufti, or judge, in the extremist-run Sharia court in Anbar province along with 24 of the group’s militants -36 were wounded- we were told on Wednesday June 24, 2015.

A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at a gathering of Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders, killing 14 people in an attack claimed Wednesday June 24, 2015, by the Islamic State group. At least 24 more were wounded in Tuesday night bombing in the Baladruz area of Diyala province, north of Baghdad. The bomber struck a gathering of notables and figures, most of them from the al-Nida tribe.

Iraq Thursday June 25, 2015:

• Attacks in Baghdad and town south of the Iraqi capital have killed at least eight people.
• A car bomb ripped through a commercial area in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Shaab killing six civilians and wounding 16. Two women were among the dead.
• A bomb struck an outdoor market in the town of Mahmudiyah, about 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, killing two people. One of them was an 8-year old child. That attack also wounded six people.

 

Iraqi pilot Rasid Mohammed Sadiq was killed when his F-16 fighter plane crashed during a training mission in the United States we were told Friday June 26, 2015. Search teams found the body of Sadiq, a brigadier, at the site of the crash in the state of Arizona. The accident, which took place Wednesday, happened during an aerial refuelling manoeuvre. Sadiq was in the final days of his training, and he was looking forward to returning to his home. Washington agreed to sell 36 F-16s to Iraq, but the purchase has been a source of contention, with Baghdad repeatedly complaining that they have not been delivered quickly enough.

Iraq Saturday June 27, 2015:

• A series of attacks targeting public places killed 12 people in Baghdad as the prime minister announced the arrest of an aide to Saddam Hussein.
• A car bomb went off about noon Saturday near shops selling car parts in southeastern Baghdad, killing five people and wounding 13 others.
• Another bomb blast at an outdoor market killed three shoppers and wounded eight in the city’s eastern suburbs.
• A bomb exploded near a row of shops in the capital’s western neighbourhood of Baiyaa, killing two and wounding 10.
• Later on, a bomb blast near a vegetable and fruit wholesale market in southern Baghdad killed two people and wounded three others.
• Meanwhile, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced Saturday that security forces arrested Abdel Baqi al-Sadun, a senior official in the disbanded Baath Party. Al-Sadun has been at large since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. During the Hussein era, he was in charge of Baath party formations in southern Iraq and he is wanted for his role in repressing of the Shiite uprising in 1991.

 

Gunmen shot dead a senior oil official working for Iraq's state-run North Oil Company (NOC) on Sunday June 28, 2015. NOC's chief of operations, Saad al-Karbalaie, was killed in the northern oil city of Kirkuk. Gunmen forced him to stop his vehicle as he was leaving his office and then shot him.

Iraqi fighter jets destroyed two Islamic State (ISIS) convoys led by two of the group’s notorious leaders in Fallujah Saturday evening June 27, 2015. The convoys belonged to Shakir Wahib and Gaaid Kuwaiti, two ISIS commanders in the western province of Anbar. All the militants were killed in the attack. On the same day coalition jets attacked a group of ISIS militants near Habbaniya.

Attacks inside and around Baghdad on Monday June 29, 2015, have killed at least seven people. Drive-by shooters killed a pro-government Sunni tribal sheikh along with his three guards in the town of Tarmiyah, 50 kilometres north of Baghdad. Three civilians were killed and nine wounded in a bomb explosion at an outdoor marker in Baghdad's western Ghazaliyah neighbourhood. The attacks come as authorities found the bodies for four men and two women dumped in different areas in and around Baghdad, all shot in the chest and head with their hands and legs tied. None had identification cards.

Peshmerga forces repulsed an assault on their position near the extremist-held city of Mosul early Sunday June 28, 2015, killing 19 militants and wounding scores of others. ISIS militants launched the attack in the village of Bihalan near the Bashik front, but the attack was repelled right away. The militants had come with artillery and other heavy weapons, which they did not get a chance to use in face of the fierce and deadly Peshmerga response. A Kurdish commander said on Saturday that Peshmerga forces had repulsed a string of attacks on their military base in Tal Afar.

The Islamic State group, or ISIS, has executed 26 prisoners over the last week in the captured city of Fallujah, in the Anbar province, on charges of cooperation with security forces and spying on the group, we were told on Sunday June 28, 2015. The people executed were from the sub-districts of Nassaf, Garma and Saqlawi who had been arrested last year and imprisoned in Fallujah prison. ISIS has executed some 500 prisoners in the city since last year.

Members of the anti-ISIS Free Officers Movement in Mosul have claimed to have killed 23 Saudi Arabian citizens who have executed civilians in the extremist-held city. The ISIS fighters were of Saudi citizenship and had arrived "recently" to join the Islamic State. The Free Officer’s Movement has been continuously targeting ISIS extremists inside Mosul in retaliation for the killing of civilians.

Iraq Tuesday June 30, 2015:

• A series of attacks in Baghdad and in two towns near the capital has killed at least eight people.
• The deadliest attack was in the town of Mahmudiyah, about 30 kilometres south of Baghdad. It killed three civilians and wounded 10.
• Two bombs went off in Baghdad's northern Hurriyah and western Ghazaliyah neighbourhoods, killing a total of three civilians and wounding 15.
• And in the town of Madain, about 20 kilometres southeast of Baghdad, a bomb killed two civilians and wounded six.
• In Baghdad, officials found two bodies with shots to the chest and head. ---

Kurdish fighters and leaders are intent on carving an independent state out of Northern Iraq after they wrest back vital territory from the Islamic State whether the U.S. likes it or not. Kurdish forces, whose commanders say they aren't getting enough help from the U.S. and other allies, have been making headway against ISIS. But while re-taking Mosul from ISIS was seen as a key achievement by the U.S., the new focus is squarely on holding Kirkuk, a northern Iraqi city claimed by many to be the cultural Kurdish capital. Lahur Talabani, head of the Kurdistan Intelligence Agency, acknowledged his interest in making an independent nation a reality.

Iraq Friday July 3, 2015:

• Bombings in Baghdad and in a town south of the Iraqi capital have killed eight people.
• A bombing near shops in the town of Madain, just south of Baghdad, left three people dead and wounded eight.
• Also in Madain, a bomb struck a checkpoint manned by pro-government Sunni militiamen, killing two fighters and wounding five.
• A bomb blast in a commercial street in eastern Baghdad killed three people.
• Two bodies with gunshot wounds to the head and chest were found in eastern Baghdad.

 
Iraq Saturday July 4, 2015:

• Bombings targeting public places have killed 15 people in and around Baghdad.
• The deadliest attack occurred when a car bomb exploded on a commercial street in Baghdad's western neighbourhood of Amil, killing nine people and wounding 24 others.
• Earlier a car bomb blast near a bus stop killed three people and wounded 15 in southern Baghdad.
• A bomb explosion near an outdoor market killed three people in Mhamoudiya town, just south of Baghdad.

 

Iraq Sunday July 5, 2015:

• Bombings targeting Shiite districts have killed 15 people in and around Baghdad.
• A bomb exploded Sunday night near a cafe in the Shiite district of al-Obeidi on the eastern edge of Baghdad, killing four people and wounding 14 others.
• Another evening bomb blast near a small restaurant killed four people and wounded 11 others in the southeastern suburb of Jisr Diyala.
• Earlier, a bomb went off at a bus stop in the northeastern suburbs of the capital, killing four people and wounding nine.
• Another bombing near a bus stop killed three people in Baghdad's northwestern district of Shulla.
• At least two senior commanders of the Islamic State group were killed in a series of attacks conducted by U.S.-led coalition in the violence hit province of Anbar. 
• Among those killed was Mashaan Hussain, the self-proclaimed himself governor of the town al-Rutbah.
• In a separate attack, Iraqi jets bombed Islamic State positions the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, killing Abu Shaker. Better known as Ali Saud Aswad; Shaker had proclaimed himself governor for City of Nineveh.
• The Islamic State (IS) militants killed at least nine soldiers in overnight attacks against the Iraqi security forces in the town of Baiji near the country's largest oil refinery in Salahudin province.
• Two suicide bombers on Saturday night drove their explosives-laden cars into the positions of the security forces and allied militias, known as Hashd Shaabi (popular mobilisation), in Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad. After several hours of heavy clashes, the IS militants seized the central part of the town, leaving at least nine soldiers killed.
• Meanwhile, heavy clashes continued in Iraq's largest oil refinery as the security forces were trying to drive IS militants out of it.

 

The Islamic State, or ISIS, has blown up on Monday July 6, 2015, an historic Christian church in Mosul known as the Mother of Aid. The jihadists also killed four children who were near the church at the time of its destruction. After one year of controlling Mosul, the Islamic State has blown up many mosques and churches. In early March, it was reported that ISIS militants used explosives to demolish the much-loved 19th century Hamo mosque, deeming it sacrilegious.

An Islamic State militant blew up an explosive-laden bulldozer near Haditha, killing seven Iraqi soldiers in one of a wave of bomb attacks on the northwestern town on Monday July 6, 2015. Security services fired on and destroyed four other vehicles believed to be rigged with explosives near the town, before they could reach their targets.

On Monday July 6, 2015, we were told that a journalist was executed by the Islamic State (ISIS) in the occupied city of Mosul. Islamic State fighters executed Suha Ahmed Radi in Mosul after days in extremists' captivity. ISIS fighters reportedly raided her home located in the east of Mosul and detained her. After she was killed, her body was reportedly handed over to her relatives.

On Wednesday July 8, 2015, we were told that an Iraqi court has sentenced to death 24 militants for their role in killing hundreds of soldiers. Four others were acquitted for lack of evidence. Islamic State (Isis) captured the soldiers when it overran Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit last summer. They were trying to flee from Camp Speicher, a nearby army base. After Tikrit was captured, Isis posted graphic images and video that showed its gunmen massacring scores of the soldiers after loading the captives on to flatbed trucks and then forcing them to lie face down in a shallow ditch. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty, insisting they never took part in the massacre. They told the court that their confessions were coerced under torture by Iraqi officers. At one point, while the chief judge was questioning the militants, several relatives of the dead soldiers stormed the courtroom and started to throw shoes and water bottles at the defendants, who were inside a cage. After the sentences were passed, the victims’ relatives raised pictures of their loved ones. Some burst into tears and others chanted “Allahu Akbar”, and “oh, Hussein”, in reference to the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, who is revered by Shias.

On Thursday July 9, 2015, we were told that Iraqi security forces, backed by Shia-dominated militias, are laying siege to Falluja in an attempt to cut off vital supply routes being used by the Islamic State. Falluja was seized in late 2013 by IS militants, six months before the dramatic collapse of the Iraqi army which led to vast territories in the west and north of the country falling into the hands of the IS group's fighters, including most of Falluja's sister towns and cities of Anbar province. Last week, around 10,000 troops, including the well-trained Shia militias -Badr, Kataib Hezbollah, and Asaib Ahl al-Huq- launched an offensive from three directions in a bid to re-take Falluja. For days now the city has been bombarded with artillery missiles and airstrikes.

Iraqi paramilitaries exchanged fire with police in Baghdad Thursday July 9, 2015, the latest sign of tension between the government and the country's Shiite militias. Around 15 gunmen from the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) force stormed an unfinished health ministry building in the Zayyounah neighbourhood overnight. The police dispatched units of around 60 men equipped with armoured personnel carriers to expel the gunmen, who opened fire. Three policemen were wounded in the clashes before the militiamen eventually leaving the building.

In its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, the Islamic State (ISIS) group is banning residents from performing prayers on one of the most important Muslim feasts, controversially claiming the practice does not belong in the religion. The radical group has warned residents to avoid prayers for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan in about a week. ISIS was claiming that the Eid prayer is not “originally an Islamic practice” and was not performed in Prophet Mohammad’s time. Since the ISIS takeover of Mosul last year, the jihadis have been imposing new rules and regulations, backed by strict punishments that include the threat of death for offenders. Eid al-Fitr, also called the Feast of Breaking the Fast, is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide that marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. Although a religious practice, the prayer preformed on the first day after Ramadan also is a cultural event. 

Islamic State fighters have destroyed Al Boshjal Bridge connecting Fallujah city and Saqlawiyah town in order to halt the advance of Iraqi security forces. ISIS destroyed the strategic bridge that was known as a vital supply line for the ISIS militants.
 
Iraq Friday July 10, 2015:

• Government forces and Shiite militiamen repelled an Islamic State group attack that left 10 soldiers dead in western Iraq's Anbar province.
• The militants attacked the government-held town of Khalidiyah with mortars and five suicide car bombs. They retreated after an hours-long battle, leaving behind 12 dead fighters. Some were hiding in houses in nearby Abu Flais village.
• Meanwhile, the Islamic State said IS militants seized positions in the Khalidyah area after attacking Iraqi troops and Shiite militias with car bombs.
• Iraqi forces, backed by Shiite militias, have been struggling to recapture areas lost to IS in the country's west and north.
• Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, urged countries in the region to take "decisive measures" to stop the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

 

Coalition warplanes launched airstrikes on Islamic State (IS) positions in the town of Bashiqa, northeast of Mosul, on Thursday July 9, 2015, killing eight militants. Coalition jets responded to the area in and around nearby Siquf village after militants bombarded the Peshmerga line in Bashiqa. The coalition forces conducted 14 strikes in Iraq on Wednesday.

Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters are tightening a noose around the Islamic State-held city of Falluja as the first stage of a counter-offensive in the Sunni province of Anbar. The Islamic State seized Anbar's capital Ramadi two months ago, extending its control over the Euphrates river valley west of Baghdad and dealing a major setback to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and the U.S.-backed army he entrusted with its defines. While the government initially vowed to swiftly recapture Ramadi, it now appears to have turned instead to Falluja.

Five women were recently burned alive in Anbar province after they refused to give their children to the jihadist group. The children they were trying to protect were also put to the torch. The Islamist extremist torched the women together with their sons in front of residents in the Al-Jamiya neighbourhood of Heet, a city 31 miles west of Ramadi.

Iraq Friday July 10, 2015:

• Islamic State militants attacked Iraqi security forces near the two main cities of the western province of Anbar.
• The militants attacked on two fronts near Khaldiya. The Euphrates river town lies next to a military base between the provincial capital Ramadi, seized by Islamic State in May, and their long-held bastion of Falluja.
• Some of the heaviest fighting took place near the villages of Husaybah Sharqiya, Mudiq and Sidiqiya, which run along the southern bank of the river west of Khaldiya.
• Islamic State fighters detonated a vehicle bomb at a military camp housing soldiers and fighters from the mainly Shi'ite Hashid Shaabi forces near Habbaniya.
• Another car bomb went off near Siddiqiya Bridge.
• Islamic State fighters attacked with an explosives-laden tanker, and then followed up with sniper fire against survivors who were trying to rescue the wounded.
• Further west in Haditha, which remains under government control, 25 residents had been killed in four days.
• US-led coalition airstrikes hit a major ISIS car bomb factory in an industrial area of Mosul.
• Three French nationals serving with ISIS as explosive experts were killed by the airstrikes.

 

Iraq Saturday July 11, 2015:

• Bombings and a shooting have killed at least 11 people in and around the capital, Baghdad.
• Three roadside bombs went off simultaneously targeting an army convoy just southeast of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding nine.
• A bomb near an outdoor market killed two people in the town of Youssifiya just south of Baghdad.
• In the northeastern suburbs of the capital, gunmen killed two people in a drive-by shooting.
• In Rashidiya just north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded near a vegetable and fruit market, killing three people and wounding five.

 

Iraqi security forces have wrested control of the Falasi district in Khalidiya in Anbar province from the Islamic State. Clashes took place after ISIS launched an assault on Iraqi forces in some Anbar districts. During the clashes more than 20 ISIS fighters were killed and a number of armoured vehicles were destroyed. ---

Iraq Saturday July 11, 2015:

• The Sunni radical group attacked three military bases of Kurdish security forces, also known as Peshmerga, in Kirkuk.
• The Peshmerga troops, backed by artillery and US-led coalition aircraft, repelled the attacks and forced the terrorists to retreat, killing at least 30 of them.
• The warplanes also bombarded an IS weapon warehouse near a village in Kikruk and destroyed several IS vehicles.
• In another attack in Anbar a suicide car bomb and two roadside bombs were detonated in Abu Fleis village, some 80 km west of Baghdad, which killed eight soldiers and left five others injured.
• The attacks came after heavy clashes between the IS fighters and Hashd Shaabi militants over the command of Abu Fleis.

 

ISIS militants have executed 12 civilians by crushing them by a bulldozer in the centre of Mosul. They put them on the highway at the entrance of Bab al-tob Street near the governorate building in central Mosul, while a bulldozer driver passed over their heads and a second time to crush their bodies. They were accused of spying in favour of the Iraqi government.”

Iraq's army troops, backed by fighters from allied Popular Mobilization units, have carried out a series of clean-up operations across the country, killing more than two dozen Takfiri ISIL militants. On Monday July 13, 2015, 17 ISIL extremists were killed after Iraqi forces launched offensives in Anbar Province. Three vehicles rigged with explosives were also destroyed and several explosive belts were confiscated during the raids. Iraqi fighter jets carried out precision strikes against terrorist hideouts in Hay al-Nazal region of Fallujah killing scores of ISIL Takfiris.

In Mosul, the Islamic State has executed 10 ex-Iraqi military officers on espionage allegations. Separately, ISIS executed former Iraqi Parliament candidate Ebrahim Saleh Badraniyeh.

F-16 fighter jets purchased for the Iraqi air force from the US were delivered to Iraq on Tuesday July 14, 2015. The F-16 is a single engine, all-weather military aircraft.

The Islamic State (ISIS) has arrested hundreds of shopkeepers in Mosul for failure to pay a religious tax we were told Wednesday July 15, 2015. Businesses in the vast territories that ISIS controls in Iraq and Syria must pay their “zakat,” or Islamic alms that practicing Muslims usually give to the poor, to the militant group, known as “Daesh” in Arabic. Daesh arrested 355 shop owners in Mosul after they refused to pay zakat to the group. ISIS had previously warned it would punish violators. ISIS subscribes to a fanatical version of Wahhabi Islam that remains strongest in Saudi Arabia.

A random airstrikes carried out by the Iraqi air force against Daesh in the centre of the city and the Heyaskari neighbourhood west of Fallujah have killed 11 civilians, including women and children we were told Thursday July 16, 2015. Months of air and artillery bombings by Iraqi forces have killed some 71 residents and wounded about 90 others –excluding the latest casualties. The wounded suffer grave injuries and the city is short of medicines, doctors and nurses. Until now the Iraqi forces have made little progress in efforts to retake the Sunni-majority city.

An attack by the Islamic State group on a crowded marketplace in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province has killed 115 people, including women and children. The mostly-Shiite victims were gathered to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which ended Friday for Iraqi Shiites and a day earlier for Iraqi Sunni Muslims. A small truck detonated in a crowded marketplace in the town of Khan Beni Saad Friday night July 17, 2015, in what quickly turned celebrations into a scene of horror, with body parts scattered across the market. At least 170 people were injured in the attack. Men quickly emptied boxes of tomatoes to use them for carrying the bodies of small children while adult victims lay scattered around the attack scene waiting for medical assistance. Khan Beni Saad has become a disaster area because of this huge explosion.

The Islamic State group has executed an Iraqi journalist in the northern city of Mosul on charges of spying we were told Saturday Jyly 18, 2015. Jala al-Abadi was taken from his home with his phone and laptop on June 4 and executed on Wednesday by firing squad after being sentenced by an IS court. The father of two was born in 1988 and had worked as a cameraman for a local channel before IS took over Iraq's second city in June 2014.

Iraq Monday July 20, 2015:

• At least 10 civilians were killed by mortar and rocket fire in the central Iraqi village of Hudaid, north of Khan Bani Saad, where dozens of people were killed in a huge bombing last week. 16 others were wounded.
• Thirteen men were kidnapped in the same area, including a Sunni tribal leader. Sheikh Talab al-Jumaili and three of his sons were among those kidnapped, along with seven men from the Albu Hamdan tribe.
• Five men suspected in the Khan Bani Saad bombing were arrested on Monday.
• Militants from the Islamic State group blew up a sports stadium in the western Anbar province.

 

Security forces in the Kurdistan region arrested eight fugitives in Sulaimani province who were previously convicted as being members of the Islamic State, or ISIS. Two of the detainees are known to be top members of the ISIS who allegedly carried out a massacre last December in the Alam district of eastern Salahadin province. All the terrorists were earlier found guilty under the Iraqi Anti-Terrorism law. One of the criminals identified as Abu Hafsa Ansari holds a PhD in Islamic Studies and previously taught in Tikrit University. Ansari took an active part in massacring of fighters who belonged to the Sahwa militia, also known as The Sons of Iraq. Another jihadist who had spent five years in Camp Bucca prison, participated in Camp Speicher massacre in Tikrit in which some 1,566 Iraqi Air Force cadets were killed by ISIS in June 2014.  Authorities also identified an Al-Qaeda member who was detained in Abu Ghraib prison and travelled to the region with a fake ID card in 2013. ---

At least 10 civilians were killed -16 others were wounded- by mortar and rocket fire on Monday July 20, 2015, in the central Iraqi village of Hudaid, north of Khan Bani Saad, where dozens of people were killed in a huge bombing last week. Thirteen men were kidnapped earlier in the same area, including a Sunni tribal leader. Sheikh Talab al-Jumaili and three of his sons were among those kidnapped, along with seven men from the Albu Hamdan tribe. The town's municipal council building was also torched overnight. Five men suspected in the Khan Bani Saad bombing were arrested on Monday. 
 
Iraq Tuesday July 21, 2015:

• Suicide bombings and battles between pro-government forces and Islamic State militants in central and western Iraq killed 54 people.
• Dozens of IS militants assaulted a base north of Fallujah, using suicide car bombs and infantry before being repelled with the help of coalition airstrikes. Seven IS fighters were killed and 14 wounded, while Iraqi troops and Shia militiamen suffered 11 killed and 20 wounded.
• Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces and Sunni tribal fighters assaulted toward the city of Haditha, losing seven killed and four wounded during an encounter with IS fighters in the Albu Haiyat area east of the city.
• A coalition airstrike destroyed a vehicle filled with ammunition and killed five IS militants near the town of Khaldiyah. Three others were wounded in the strike.
• Also three separate suicide car bomb attacks in and around Baghdad killed 24 people and wounded 62 others.
• The U.S. State Department last month said the international coalition to defeat IS, known as Operation Inherent Resolve, had so far killed an estimated 10,000 IS fighters in Iraq and Syria. Days later it said efforts to defeat IS forces in Iraq may take between three and five years.
• According to United Nations estimates, violence has killed nearly 15,000 civilians in Iraq since the start of 2014 to the end of April 2015, while more than 29,000 have been wounded.
• A car bomb detonated in front of a busy clothing store, killing 14 people and wounding 30. The explosion happened in the predominantly Shiite district of New Baghdad.

 

Iraq Wednesday July 22, 2015:

• At least four explosions have hit separate areas in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing at least 37 people and injuring several others. It happened in the impoverished neighbourhood of al-Bayaa in southwestern Baghdad. This car bomb was "designed to kill as many civilians as possible.
• The first car bomb blast hit a crowded popular market in a predominantly Shia neighbourhood in Baghdad, killing at least 18 people.
• A double bombing in Al Shaab killed 8 others, including 4 soldiers.
• And a fourth explosion in Shurtaa has killed another 11 people.
• Earlier on Wednesday, at least 22 Iraqi soldiers and fighters from the Popular Mobilisation Forces have been killed in a double suicide car attack by ISIL in east Fallujah. This attack was carried out with a confiscated Iraqi army Humvee and an armoured army vehicle at the Harariyat village, part of Al Karmah town. At least 24 were also wounded in the incident.

 

A U.S. drone has crashed while conducting a spying mission on Islamic State militants in Iraq. The Pentagon confirmed the disaster after pictures emerged online that appeared to show the wreckage of the MQ-1 Predator aircraft. The drone was returning from an intelligence and reconnaissance mission when technical problems caused a loss of communication on July 16.

On Saturday July 25, 2015, at least 12 people have been killed in an attack by two suicide bombers on a crowded swimming pool in northern Iraq. The attacks in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, about 110 miles north of the capital Baghdad, left 45 others wounded. Most of the victims were Shi'ites from the country's ethnic Turkmen minority. ---

Iraqi government forces recaptured Anbar University from the Islamic State militant group Sunday July 26, 2015, after hours of fierce clashes. The university, located 5 kilometres south of Anbar's provincial capital, the militant-held city of Ramadi, was under the full control of government forces, which had entered the complex early Sunday amid intense combat with the militant group. A number of buildings in and around the university complex have been badly damaged or destroyed, but the militants retreated. Two dozen Islamic State fighters were killed in the clashes.

At least 12 people were killed on Saturday July 25, 2015, when two suicide bombers attacked a crowded swimming pool in northern Iraq. The attacks in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, about 175 km north of the capital Baghdad, left 45 others wounded. Most of the victims were Shi'ites from the country's ethnic Turkmen minority.

Bombs went off during a local football game in Diyala province on Monday July 27, 2015, killing at least four people - at least 10 people were also wounded. Three improvised explosive devices went off during the final of a local amateur cup" in Abu Saida, about 75 kilometres northeast of Baghdad. Some of the football players were believed to be among the casualties. The bombs were planted behind a goal and it seems they were detonated remotely from a nearby orchard.

On Wednesday July 29, 2015, we were told that Taliban leader Mullah Omar died two years ago. Mullah Omar had died of health problems at a hospital in Pakistan. It believed that Mullah Omar died in April 2013.

Iraq Wednesday July 29, 2015:

• A total of 45 people were killed and 83 wounded in clashes with Islamic State (IS) militants and air strikes by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition aircraft.
• In Iraq's western province of Anbar, two suicide bombers detonated their explosive-laden trucks at positions of the security forces and allied paramilitary militias known as Hashd Shaabi, or popular mobilization, in the battleground of Anbar University compound in southwestern the provincial capital city of Ramadi.
• The huge blasts were followed by the attack of dozens of IS militants on the troops, which sparked heavy clashes that resulted in the killing of 17 security members and allied militiamen and the wounding of 25 others. Many of the IS militants were killed and wounded without immediate reports about exact numbers of their casualties.
• Three days ago, the Iraqi forces said they captured the vast university compound, but they involved in tug-of-war battles in and around it. Other security forces are trying to expand their foothold outside the compound as part of their effort to free the IS-held Ramadi, the source added.
• Also in the province, eight IS militants were killed and 14 others injured in clashes with Iraqi security forces and in an air strike in southwest of Ramadi.
• Meanwhile, a suicide truck bomber struck a military base housing Iraqi soldiers and Hashd Shaabi militiamen in Deraa Dijla area in northeastern the IS-seized city of Fallujah killing nine soldiers and militiamen and wounding 15 others.
• Separately, international warplanes pounded suspected IS targets in the town of Rutba, some 370 km west of Baghdad, leaving four people killed and seven others wounded.
• In northern Iraq, Mulla Shwan al-Kurdi, deputy leader of a local IS group, was killed together with six of his aides when an unmanned aircraft pounded their convoy of vehicles at a village near the militant-seized town of Hawijah west of the city of Kirkuk. The bombardment also left 22 IS militants wounded.

 

On Thursday July 30, 2015, the Taliban have confirmed that their leader Mullah Omar is dead, and are thought to have appointed Mullah Akhtar Mansour as the movement's official head. But there has been an eerie silence in Pakistani quarters in the 24 hours since the Afghan government announced that Mullah Omar died in a Pakistani hospital in April 2013. This was despite reports that the top leadership council of the Taliban had been meeting in the Pakistani city of Quetta to choose the successor. Few are impressed at Pakistan's stance. Osama Bin Laden was found and killed in Pakistan even though for years Pakistan denied he was present on its soil.

The recent wave of stifling heat –temperature up to 50 Celcius- and a lack of electricity has led to the deaths of at least 52 children in refugee camps in less than a week we were told on Friday July 31, 2015.

Airstrikes carried out by the US-led coalition pounded Islamic State positions in the extremist stronghold city of Hawija, with the targeted bombings reportedly leading to the death of the jihadists' deputy governor of Kirkuk province and six of his henchmen we were told on Wednesday July 29, 2015. The coalition destroyed three ISIS military vehicles in Al Shajra village east of the district of Hawija in southern Kirkuk province. 

US-led coalition air strikes destroyed early Friday July 31, 2015, two key bridges between the Syrian city of Albu Kamal and the Iraqi border used by the Islamic State group on the Syrian side of the Iraqi border. These bridges are strategically important for IS's movements between Albu Kamal and Iraq.

More than 780 ISIS militants and 135 civilians were killed in Mosul province by the Peshmerga airstrikes and internal tensions and conflict among the organization since last month we were told on Saturday August 1, 2015. Among the killed militants, eight were from Germany, three from France and 12 had the rank of emir [leader] and two mass graves were uncovered, containing many foreign militants of the Islamic State. Due to lack of medical necessities, 135 civilians from Mosul and its outskirts have died; moreover ISIS has evicted 415 Kurdish families and installed Arab families inside their homes in Mosul.

Iraq's embattled Kurds feel trapped by the resurgent conflict between Turkey and the militant Kurdish PKK movement and would like to see both sides return to the negotiating table we were told Friday July 31, 2015. While Kurdistan respects Turkey's concerns about PKK actions such as recent attacks on police officers, it does not agree with Ankara's claim that the Kurdish militant organization is as great a threat as the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Iraq's Kurdish regional government called on the Kurdish Worker's Party to "withdraw" from Iraq's Kurdish territory Saturday August 1, 2015, to prevent civilian deaths amid a campaign of Turkish airstrikes targeting the group. The Khurds also condemned Turkey for bombing civilians and destroying civilian homes in airstrikes in northwestern Iraq. They call on both sides to resume peace talks.

The United Nations (UN) says over 1,300 people were killed in acts of violence in Iraq in July. The death toll includes at least 844 civilians, and 488 members of Iraqi security forces and pro-government volunteers. Baghdad was the province worst hit by violence, with 335 deaths. The number of those wounded in violence in July was 2,108. There had been a slight drop of violence in July as compared to June, when at least 1,466 deaths and 1,687 injuries were recorded across Iraq.

The Islamic State jihadist group on Sunday August 2, 2015, executed 15 Iraqi police officers and arrested four journalism students accused of collaborating with the foreign press in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The incidents were part of a campaign of arrests and executions being carried out by the IS against the security services and public officials. The 15 officers were killed by rifle fire on a square in Mosul in front of the city hall before a crowd of passers-by with the aim of "intimidating" local residents. Meanwhile, four University of Mosul journalism students were arrested on Sunday morning in different districts around the city and accused of publishing images of the "land of the Caliphate," thus cooperating with the international press.

Up to 15,000 Islamic State (IS) fighters have been killed since the start of the air campaign against militants inside Syria and Iraq nearly one year ago we were told on Sunday August 2, 2015. 3,000 airstrikes have been conducted against IS inside of Iraq since August 2014, when fighters neared the Iraqi Kurdish capital, Erbil.

Tornado mission against Islamic State militants in Iraq is to be extended by an extra year we were told Monday August 3, 2015. The jets -due to be disbanded last March- are to be kept in service until "at least" March 2017 to continue air strikes.

U.S.-led airstrikes targeting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria have likely killed at least 459 civilians over the past year we were told Monday August 3, 2015. 57 specific strikes killed civilians and caused 48 suspected "friendly fire" deaths. The strikes have killed more than 15,000 Islamic State militants. The present coalition policy of downplaying or denying all claims of non-combatant fatalities makes little sense, and risks handing the Islamic State group and other forces a powerful propaganda tool.

More than 1,500 schools have been damaged or destroyed as a result of the conflict in Iraq's troubled Anbar province alone we were told Monday August 3, 2015.

Nearly 3,000 Kurdish Yezidis are still missing despite a year’s worth of efforts to secure the release of those abducted by the Islamic State, or ISIS we were told Monday August 3, 2015.
 
ISIS has executed seven former Kirkuk police officers and a civilian who were recaptured in a failed bid to escape the extremist-held city of Hawija we were told on Monday August 3. 2015. Another five members of the Al-Jabour tribe were assassinated in areas of Abbasiyah, in southern Kirkuk province. The Al-Jabouri tribe is the largest Arab tribe in Iraq and is scattered throughout central and northern parts of the country. A portion of the tribe settled in Hawija and Kirkuk in the 18th century. Hawija city is the capital of the Hawija district of Kirkuk province, 48 km south of Kirkuk.

The chief of Iraq's military intelligence agency said Wednesday August 5, 2015,   that a six-member terror cell was arrested in Baghdad with suspected of links to the Islamic States. The suspected terrorists are from Diyala province and had received training in insurgent tactics in the Baghdad neighbourhoods of Rashidiya, and Hossenya in Baghdad. The terrorists confessed to several crimes, especially killing civilians through bombings and improvised explosive devices.
 
Three car bombs killed scores of people in separate explosions in different parts of Baghdad Wednesday August 5, 2015. Two car bombs went off in Sadr City in eastern Baghdad killing and injuring around 30 people. Another car loaded with explosives detonated in the north of Baghdad in the Husseiniyah area, killing and injuring 10 people. The security forces defused an improvised explosive device (IED) and a car bomb in the Sayidiyah area and the Jamiah neighbourhood.

An explosion targeting a power installation in eastern Iraq has disrupted the flow of electricity from neighbouring Iran Thursday August 6, 2015, aggravating energy shortages amid a weeks-long heatwave. ---

On Friday August 7, 2015, the wife of an Islamic State leader who was captured earlier this year in a military operation that left her husband dead, has been transferred to Iraqi custody after being detained for months by the U.S. Umm Sayyaf, wife of the Islamic State's head of oil operations Abu Sayyaf, was in U.S. custody since May 15. There have been suggestions that she and her husband were the captors of American hostage Kayla Mueller, who was believed held in Syria. Mueller was killed while being held prisoner. Islamic State militants have claimed she died in a Jordanian airstrike, but U.S. and other officials have cast doubt on that assertion. Umm Sayyaf, an Iraqi, was cooperative while being detained by the U.S. in Irbil. She provided a "trove" of intelligence about Islamic State operations. She was transferred to the custody of Kurdish officials in Iraq. Abu Sayyaf was killed during a U.S. Army Delta Force raid on a compound in Syria. He was the head of oil operations for the Islamic State.

Iraq Monday August 10, 2015:

• At least 58 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in two blasts in eastern Iraq claimed by Islamic State.
• An explosion at a market in Huwaidar, about 4 km north of the provincial capital of Baquba, killed 51 people and wounded at least 80.
• The attacker managed to pass a checkpoint by lining up with a wedding motorcade and then split off with his explosives-packed vehicle to blow it up in a crowded marketplace.
• A separate blast to the east of Baquba killed a further seven people and wounded 25. Islamic State said it had targeted a checkpoint manned by the army and volunteers from the Hashid Shaabi.

 
On Monday August 10, 2015, 50 Islamic State militants were killed in Anbar province. 35 landmines and booby traps were defused.

An ISIS firing squad has gunned down more than 300 civil servants including at least 50 women in Mosul. They were slaughtered at the Galzani army camp on Saturday August 8, 2015, for being 'apostates and infidels'. All 300 reportedly worked for Iraq's Electoral Commission which has since urged the UN and other human rights groups to help stop the slaughter and crimes against the Iraqi people.

Iraq Wednesday August 12, 2015:

• Coalition warplanes and Peshmerga forces have destroyed heavy-weapons depots of the Islamic State (ISIS) on the western Dijla front, inflicting a heavy blow on the group’s ability to engage in heavy clashes.
• On Tuesday the US-led coalition warplanes and the Peshmerga destroyed ISIS military bases as well as weapons depots containing heavy weapons in the village of Ashqi close to the Kaske two-sided road on the western Dijla front.
• The US military said Tuesday that coalition forces have carried out 20 airstrikes, bombing 10 ISIS-held cities and towns in Iraq and an equal number in Syria.
• A bomb-making facility run by the group was destroyed in airstrikes on Monday on the Makhmour front and the militants were attacked in the nearby village of Kodila Shian.

 

On Wednesday August 12, 2015, thousands of displaced Arab refugees, including a large number of Christians and Yazidis, are continuing to flee Iraq following the Islamic State’s mass execution of around 2,000 Iraqis in the city of Nineveh followed by a series of car bombs in Baghdad on Monday resulting in dozens of causalities.

A mass grave of 150 ISIS militants was found in southeastern Mosul province on Wednesday August 12, 2015. The grave site was found by a shepherd who was recently arrested by the Islamic State militants. The mass grave reportedly included more than 150 bodies of ISIS fighters, mostly foreigners, buried near Mosul-Baghdad highway.

At least 67 people have been killed after a truck bomb exploded in north-eastern Baghdad on Thursday August 14, 2015. The blast tore through the crowded Jameela market in the predominantly Shia district of Sadr City. Meanwhile more than 20 civilians died when bombs dropped by the Iraqi air force hit a maternity and children's hospital in Falluja. The violence comes after a top American general said the US should consider embedding American troops with Iraqi forces if progress was not made in the fight against IS. ---

A car bomb at a popular car dealership in eastern Baghdad has killed eight people. The explosion took place Saturday August 15, 2015, in the Habibiya neighbourhood of Sadr City. 17 people were wounded.

50 Islamic State militants were killed by Iraqi forces during the Tigris military operation in the eastern province of Salahadin we were told Saturday August 15, 2015. The Iraqi army defeated a massive assault of ISIS militants on the oilfields of Allas and Ajail and gunned down 50 militants. Nine vehicles belonging to the extremists were destroyed. The ISIS militants had recaptured the area of Albu Jaradian in the town of Baiji in Salahadin, and “they are on the offensive towards the western neighbourhoods of Karaba and Naft in Baiji."

The Islamic State group (ISIS) executed another journalist in Mosul on Sunday August 16, 2015, after a summary trial. The journalist Yahya al-Khatib was kidnapped by ISIS militants at his home on Saturday. He was executed Sunday in the neighbourhood of Bab al-Tub in Mosul. The dead journalist was charged with spying for the Iraqi media and Iraqi military forces. He was tried and sentenced to death by an ISIS Islamic court on Sunday and the verdict was carried out the same day.

Islamic State militants launched an attack against government troops Sunday August 16, 2015, outside the militant-held city of Fallujah, killing at least 17 troops. Four suicide attackers drove explosives-laden military vehicles into government forces' barricades outside Fallujah. Clashes broke out afterward. 15 other troops were wounded.

An Iraqi parliamentary panel has called for former PM Nouri Maliki to face trial over the fall of the northern city of Mosul to Islamic State. More than 30 other officials including former Mosul governor Athil al-Nujaifi were also blamed in the report. Mr Maliki, a Shia, is seen as having fanned sectarian tensions, leading to a growth of discontent in those mainly Sunni Arab areas captured by IS. Hours earlier, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi cleared the way for a court martial of military commanders who abandoned their posts as another city, Ramadi, fell to IS in May this year. On Sunday August 16, 2015, Mr Abadi announced he was cutting eleven ministerial posts, reducing the size of the cabinet by a third.

Iraq Saturday August 15, 2015:

• A spate of bombings across Baghdad left 24 people dead.
• The blasts went off in Taji to the north, Jisr Diyala, Madaen, Iskan and other areas.
• The deadliest of these was carried out in the Shiite district of Habibiya and killed 15, wounding 35 others.
• Earlier, an Islamic State truck bombing in Sadr City killed 70 people.

 

At least 16 Islamic State militants were reportedly killed Tuesday August 18, 2015, in a fight between rival extremist groups in the district Baaj in western Mosul province. The group Al-Hajj Nasser al-Mawla clashed with a group of Abu Musab al-Musli in a dispute over money and power in the district of Baaj, killing eight militants from both sides. Daesh [ISIS] is witnessing large splits in its ranks in Mosul because of power struggles and money disputes.

The Islamic State’s (ISIS) Kirkuk governor and 80 other jihadis were killed in US-led coalition airstrikes on the militants east of Kirkuk province on Wednesday August 19, 2015. The coalition warplanes conducted attacks on ISIS military bases in Riyaz, east of Kirkuk province. The warplanes conducted 13 attacks on ISIS bases, inflicting large casualties and destroying heavy-weapons depots.

On Wednesday August 19, 2015, the coalition pounded ISIS on the Gwer front, hitting targets in the villages of Salhiya, Kbrouk, and Kanhash, killing and wounding some 40 jihadis and destroying an ISIS rocket launcher.

Islamic State (IS) fighters launched an attack on Peshmerga forces late Monday August 17, 2015, near Gwer, southwest of the Kurdistan Region’s capital city, Erbil. Militants sent three suicide car bombs toward the Peshmerga line; Kurdish forces responded, attacking the approaching vehicles with heavy machine fire. Coalition warplanes also responded destroying the vehicles. One Peshmerga was killed and another wounded in the clashes. Media reports last week stated that IS had used chemical weapons in an attack on Kurdish forces in Makhmour. Three Peshmerga fainted and vomited; the soldiers returned to the front after receiving treatment at a nearby hospital.

Iraqi security forces have recaptured the island of Samara in an ongoing operation in which 150 fighters or sympathizers of the Islamic State group (ISIS) were killed we were told on Thursday August 20, 2015. Several ISIS armoured vehicles were also destroyed. Iraqi ground forces and federal police were backed by US-led coalition forces in the fight for Samara.

Islamic State (IS) launched two attacks late Thursday August 20, 2015, against Peshmerga in Bashiqa. Peshmerga forces have suffered no casualties; they then shelled the IS positions in Bashiqa intensely. Coalition warplanes were called in to the area.

The No. 2 leader of the Islamic State militant group was killed in a U.S. military airstrike we were told Friday August 21, 2015. Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali was travelling in a vehicle near Mosul, in northern Iraq, when he was killed Tuesday. As the senior deputy to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Hayali was the primary co-ordinator for moving large amounts of weapons, explosives, vehicles and people between Iraq and Syria, where ISIS militants control vast amounts of territory. Al-Hayali oversaw the Islamic State in Iraq, where he planned operations during the past two years. He was a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor group to the Islamic State. Also killed in Tuesday’s airstrike was an Islamic State media operative known as Abu Abdullah. al-Hayali’s death is a blow to the organization because his influence spanned finance, media, operations and logistics for the group. But his removal from the scene is unlikely to affect ISIS operations or weaken the group and will most likely lead to even tighter security and secrecy around al-Baghdadi, who Iraqi intelligence officials say has mostly kept out of sight since he was wounded in an Iraqi airstrike near the Syrian border. ---

Iraqi security forces on Saturday August 22, 2015, regained control of nearly 20km of the main road between Tikrit and Samara after killing several Islamic State jihadists and defusing more than 100 mines along the stretch (which is less than half the distance of the 50km road between the two cities). In addition to diffusing the mines, security forces also destroyed several vehicles laced with explosives that were intended for suicide attacks. Heavy weapons ammunition was also taken.  

Islamic State militants killed up to 50 soldiers in two separate ambushes in Anbar province west of Baghdad we were told Saturday August 22, 2015. The ambushes took place Friday west of the provincial capital, Ramadi.

Some 100 German citizens were killed while fighting alongside the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq we were told Sunday August 23, 2015. 700 Germans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join IS militants since 2012. A third of them have returned to Germany. The militants have recruited thousands of Westerners. US intelligence estimates the number of foreign fighters in the IS ranks to be between 20,000 and 30,000.

A top Shiite militia commander announced Saturday August 22, 2015, that his forces had faced “fierce resistance” from Islamic State in the oil-refinery city of Baiji. Militants had concentrated efforts to retake the city from Iraqi joint forces as clashes intensified during the weekend in the town and in surrounding villages. They attacked Iraqi forces with 28 car bombs in one day alone which made them retreat temporarily from some districts. The city’s closed oil refinery, the biggest in the country, and a large power plant have given the city strategic importance.

Gunmen shot and wounded the Italian manager of a logistics company in the southern Iraqi oil city of Basra on Sunday August 23, 2015. Carlo Morandi from the Italian-Iraqi joint venture Sama Alimad was shot twice while withdrawing money from a bank and taken to hospital for surgery, but his injuries were not life-threatening. The incident was “criminal, not terrorist", and Morandi had not been targeted as a foreigner.

Islamic State militants killed up to 50 soldiers in two separate ambushes in the Anbar province we were told Saturday August 22, 2015. The ambushes took place Friday west of the provincial capital, Ramadi.

Daesh Takfiri terrorists have abducted nearly two dozen people in Iraq’s northern oil-rich province of Kirkuk. The terrorists raided the villages of Tel Ali and Shawook close to the town of Hawijah during the early hours of Sunday August 23, 2015, and kidnapped 20 civilians from their homes. The terrorists accuse the people of cooperation with government officials. Daesh militants took the victims to an unknown location, warning that the abductees will be tried at courts set up by the terrorist group and most likely executed.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman in the city of Mosul, Saeed Mamouzini, said Friday August 21, 2015, that Daesh had executed 15 of its child recruits west of Mosul. Mamouzini said the terrorists murdered the victims, aged between 13 and 18 years old, in the town of Sinjar, situated over 400 kilometres (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad. The slain child recruits had reportedly abandoned clashes with the Iraqi army in the Baaj district of Mosul. On August 15, Daesh killed 15 women in the Ghazlani military base after the victims refused to marry the militants.

The Iraqi jet fighters have carried out intense bombing campaigns against the Islamic State group (ISIS) on several fronts, killing dozens of militants. They targeted ISIS on the Dijla, Anbar and Baiji fronts.

Three members of an alleged ISIS terror cell were arrested Tuesday August 25, 2015, in Kirkuk. The group was led by a terrorist named Jamil Talib Mahmood who managed to infiltrate Kirkuk from the ISIS-controlled areas in Kirkuk province. The members of the group had been involved with the Ansar al-Sunna terror organization prior to joining the Islamic State, or ISIS. The emir [leader] of the group has confessed to many horrifying terrorist acts, including five car bombs in the town of Khurmatu, in southern Kirkuk, that killed dozens of civilians. The group's leader Mahmood is a Sunni Turkmen from Khurmatu.

Iraq Tuesday August 25, 2015:

• Winning the battle for control of an oil refinery town north of Baghdad is a key step toward defeating the Islamic State group, Iraq’s prime minister said in remarks aired hours before a suicide attack killed 13 soldiers and allied militiamen in the western Anbar province.
• The oil refinery in Beiji, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, has not operated since the IS seized the town as part of its blitz across much of northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014.
• There are no residents left in Beiji, which has suffered massive destruction over the past 14 months. However, control of Beiji gives government forces a key foothold for any future campaign to take back Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city.
• Elsewhere a suicide bomber in an explosives-laden army vehicle drove into a group of soldiers and Sunni militiamen southeast of the IS-held city of Ramadi killing 13 and injuring seven.
• In Baghdad, an army helicopter pilot was killed Monday in the upscale al-Mansour neighbourhood by an explosive device attached to his car. He was Col. Ahmed Zarzour.
• On Tuesday, a major in the Interior Ministry’s intelligence agency was killed in a similar attack in northern Baghdad.

 

Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes drove Islamic State militants out of 10 villages in Iraq's Kirkuk province on Wednesday August 26, 2015, in an offensive to secure their territory to the north. The assault began at dawn in the Daquq area, around 175 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. By evening, Kurdish forces had taken an area of around 250 square kilometres. Five Peshmerga had been killed, most of them by improvised explosive devices. The Kurds already control most of the territory they claim as their own, and have little incentive to push further into predominantly Sunni Muslim Arab towns and villages, except where they pose a direct threat to their region.

Brigadier General Safin Abdulmajid, the Kurdish commander of 10th Division of Iraqi Army, was killed Thursday August 26, 2015, in Anbar province in a vehicle-borne suicide attack by the Islamic State. The jihadist attack on occurred in Jarayshi district, 18km north of the ISIS-held city of Ramadi. The bomber also killed Staff Major General Abdulrahman Abu Raghif, deputy head of the Anbar Operations Command.

Iraq Thursday August 26, 2015:

• Three people were killed and at least 13 injured in twin bomb attacks in Baghdad.
• Also a bomb went off in the town of Taji in northern Baghdad, killing one and wounding eight others.
• Another bomb in the Huriya neighbourhood in the northwestern part of Baghdad killed two people and wounded five others.

 

Police and security forces in Kirkuk have in recent days detained 157 suspected of collaborating with Islamic State jihadists we were told Thursday August 27, 2015.

Western-backed Kurdish fighters freed seven villages from the clasps of the Islamic State group in northern Iraq in recent days we were told Saturday August 29, 2015. But the extremists still control broad swathes of land in the war-torn country. The Peshmerga fighters wrestled back more than 200 square kilometres near the town of Tuz since August 26. Planes and drones conducted a total of 25 strikes, helping the Kurdish forces in liberating seven villages.

Iraq Saturday August 29, 2015:

• Islamic State militants moved to stamp out dissent in a remote western Iraqi town, detaining at least 70 and tying dozens of residents, including tribal leaders, to streetlight poles as a punishment.
• The crackdown followed a rare street demonstration to protest the extremist group's execution of a local resident. The protest by hundreds of residents in Rutbah, in Anbar province, was triggered by the execution earlier on Saturday of Munir al-Kobeisi, a civil servant, for killing an IS member. The killing was part of a long-running blood feud between two local clans.
• Elsewhere in Anbar a roadside bomb hit a border guard convoy making its way to the border crossing of Trebil on the Jordanian border. Five officers were killed in the attack.
• A pair of roadside bombs killed five people and injured 19 south and west of Baghdad.
• Also in the capital, assailants using pistols fitted with silencers killed two people in the Jihad neighbourhood in western Baghdad before they fled in a car.

Two anonymous gunmen launched a hit-and-run attack on an Islamic State radio station inside Mosul Saturday August 29, 2015. The attack didn’t cause any casualties, and none of the assailants were injured.

Iraq Sunday August 30, 2015:

• Battles between Iraqi security forces and Islamic State militants, as well as suicide attacks and U.S.-led coalition bombing, killed at least 26 soldiers.
• Much of the violence occurred in the country's western Anbar province.
• Seven Iraqi troops were killed and 12 wounded during a battle with IS militants near the town of Baghdadi.
• Four Iraqi army vehicles were destroyed after six roadside bombs detonated next to a convoy traveling toward Ain al-Asad military airbase.
• Iraqi troops at a military post near the town of Haditha, in Anbar province used an anti-tank guided missile to kill an approaching suicide car bomber.
• A separate car bomber was able to detonate at the post, killing four troops and injuring two police officers.
• An explosive device went off in the al-Tajy district in northern Baghdad killing one police officer and injuring three others.
• The U.S. Department of Defence reported 15 coalition airstrikes in Iraq on Saturday hitting 10 towns and cities, including Baghdadi, where one strike destroyed two IS boats and two caches for improvised explosive devices, and in Ramadi, where an airstrike hit an IS tactical unit.
• Coalition airstrikes destroyed an IS car bomb factory at a village northwest of Ramadi, killing at least six militants. I
• Iraqi government airstrikes in the areas of al-Sejir and Albu Alwan near the IS-held city of Fallujah killed eight militants.

On Sunday August 30, 2015, Isis has released a graphic new execution video purporting to show four Shia “spies” being burned alive. Filmed in Anbar province, the footage shows four men apparently from Iraq’s popular resistance forces (militia), “confessing” individually to the camera. The men are then strung up by their hands and feet to a wooden frame, before a fire is lit beneath them and they are burned to death. Last week, a video circulated on social media showed the Shia militia leader Abu Azrael torturing and killing a Sunni fighter, accused of Isis allegiance, by burning him alive over an open pit. ---

Kurdish authorities said on Tuesday September 1, 2015, that they suspect a homemade rocket fired by Islamic State at their Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq contained chemical substances. The attack had taken place along the front line north of Mosul on August 31, and one Peshmerga fighter was receiving treatment in hospital. A considerable amount of yellow smoke was produced. Samples taken from the site of another attack earlier this year tested positive for chlorine, and at least two other incidents are being investigated.
 
Iraq Tuesday September 1, 2915:

• A series of suicide attacks by the Islamic State group outside Haditha in western Anbar province killed 12 soldiers and allied Sunni militiamen.
• The IS militants shelled army and militia positions outside the town with mortars. They followed up with two suicide bombers who blew themselves up near the troops and later with three suicide car bombings. Five soldiers and three Sunni tribesmen were wounded in the attacks.
• Airstrikes by the U.S.-led alliance destroyed six IS vehicles and killed 13 militants as they approached the site, where heavy clashes erupted.

 

Gunmen kidnapped 18 Turkish construction workers in Iraq Wednesday September 2, 2015, a retaliation for Turkey’s recent bombing campaigns against ISIS. The kidnapping occurred at a stadium construction site in the predominantly Shi’ite region of Habibiya. Gunmen in military garb entered the worksite at 3 a.m. local time while the construction workers slept in on-site trailers.

Twenty-five Kurdish prisoners managed to escape into civilian homes in Mosul a few days ago. Some of the escapees were recaptured by ISIS and others remained protected and harboured in civilian homes. After the people of Mosul realized that several captives fled ISIS, they welcomed them, guiding them to escape Mosul in order for them to return to their homes outside ISIS territories, but unfortunately, some of the escapees were recaptured we were told on Tuesday September 1, 2015.

A wave of attacks in and around Baghdad has killed at least 11 civilians and wounded 28. The attacks targeted five commercial areas with bombs. The deadliest bombing Thursday September 3, 2015, killed three shoppers and wounded 10 in the town of Tarmiyah. Other four attacks in Baghdad killed eight civilians and wounded 18 in total.

An Iraqi soldier was killed in clashes with gunmen as security forces searched for a suspect behind the kidnappings of 18 Turkish workers we were told on Friday September 4, 2015. The Turkish employees of Construction Company Nurol İnşaat were seized on September 2 in the Sadr City area of north Baghdad, where they were working on a football stadium project. Intelligence information had located “one of the members of the gang that carried out the kidnappings” in Baghdad’s Palestine Street. Forces moved to search and inspect in Palestine Street, but were fired on by armed men who tried to intercept them, resulting in the killing of a soldier and the wounding of three others.

The US led coalition carried out airstrikes on ISIS positions in Tal Afar on Saturday September 5, 2015, killing the ISIS governor of the Jazira region bridging northern Syria and Iraq. Lately the US coalition war planes have intensified their attacks on ISIS military bases and positions, destroying ISIS vehicles and targeting a strategic line where ISIS attacks Peshmerga by directing mortar shells. Many ISIS fighters were reportedly killed, including Hazm Klash, the Jazira governor.

On Sunday September 6, 2015, several anonymous armed men attacked Islamic State (IS) female fighters in Mosul, killing five. Armed men assaulted the al-Khansah brigade base in Mosul and killed five members of the female brigade.

The wife of an Islamic State militant and her child were shot as the woman tried to turn herself in to the Iraqi Army on Monday September 7, 2015. The woman escaped the jihadist organization in the ISIS-held city of Ramadi with her son and meant to turn herself in to authorities in the Hamriya district of Anbar. While they were trying to approach the army checkpoint to surrender, shots were fired in the fear they were suicide bombers.

Iraq’s Defence Minister has escaped a sniper attack unharmed while traveling in a convoy north of the capital, Baghdad. We were told Monday September 7, 2015, that Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi was heading back to Baghdad after a field visit to troops fighting Islamic State militants when shots were fired on his convoy near the contested town of Beiji in Salahaddin Province. One of his guards was wounded.

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency BND has reportedly collected evidence of mustard gas use by the Islamic State group; we were told on Monday September 7, 2015 that BND intelligence agents collected blood samples from Kurds who were injured in clashes with Isis. The BND has “information that IS used mustard gas in northern Iraq”. The mustard gas either came from old Iraqi stockpiles produced under Saddam Hussein’s rule or was manufactured by Isis after it seized the University of Mosul.

On Wednesday September 9, 2015, we were told that Islamic State militants have kidnapped 127 children from Mosul and intend to turn them into blood-thirsty killers. The 11 to 15-year-olds were snatched with the intention of taking them to camps where they will be indoctrinated with the terror group's sick ideology. In these camps, the child recruits are taught how to fire weapons, wrestle and perform close combat moves, and are known as the 'cubs of the caliphate'.

Tuesday September 8, 2015, we were told that more than a dozen Islamic State fighters were killed in a coalition airstrike against a house northeast of Ramadi. Intelligence about the militants' location enabled the U.S.-led international bombing campaign to conduct the strike in the Joabh area, nine miles northeast of the provincial capital. The strike resulted in the death of 18 terrorist elements of the organization, including Arab nationals, as well as the destruction of three vehicles carrying medium and heavy weapons.

Airstrikes by the international coalition has destroyed a strategic operating base in a stadium near the city of Ramadi we were told Wednesday September 9, 2015. The stadium was considered as a key ISIS command and supply hub in the Ramadi area and was being used by the organization to store large amounts of explosives, weapons and ammunition. ---

Bombs killed 13 members of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces during an operation against the Islamic State jihadist group in the Northern Province of Kirkuk on Friday September 11, 2015. Roadside bombs and explosives-rigged vehicles left by the jihadists killed 13 peshmerga and wounded 47 during the operation. The operation was launched at dawn on Friday with support from international coalition aircraft, and had succeeded in retaking 10 villages from IS.

On Saturday September 12, 2015, ISIS fighters launched an attack on the home of Yahiya Abed Ahmed, the director of Mosul's Rasheed Radio, and shot him to death. The militants later returned to Ahmed’s house, stole his personal computer and told Ahmed’s family to come and take his corpse.
 
In early 2015, ISIS began broadcasting its own programming on 92.5 FM out of Mosul, calling it Al-Bayan Radio. ISIS began Al-Bayan after seizing Rasheed Radio’s offices and using its equipment for its own broadcasts. Al-Bayan can be heard as far away as Erbil and Duhok, and broadcasts in Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Russian, French and English. The number of journalists executed in Mosul since ISIS took over the city in June 2014 has increased to 46.

Iraq Sunday September 13, 2015:

• Dozens of Islamic State militants were killed in a day of coalition airstrikes and clashes with security forces in Iraq's Anbar province.
• The U.S.-led coalition on Sunday destroyed a car bomb factory in Fallujah, killing an unknown number of the militants.
• The U.S. Department of Defence confirms six airstrikes against two IS car bomb factories in Fallujah, as well as against weapons caches, a command and control facility and a staging area used by the militants.
• Coalition warplanes, in coordination with Iraqi forces on the ground, conducted airstrikes in the Albu Aitha area in eastern Ramadi, killing 27 militants.
• The coalition aircraft also bombed three [IS] vehicles in Albu Aitha area, causing great material and human losses.
• Last week, a coalition airstrike against a house northeast of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province killed at least 18 IS fighters.
• Iraqi security forces killed 12 IS fighters during hours of clashes at the Fallujah University compound and the nearby Haiyakel area, south of Fallujah.
• The U.S. State Department in June said the coalition bombing campaign, known as Operation Inherent Resolve, had resulted in the deaths of at least 10,000 IS militants.
• The United Nations said that a total of 1,325 people -including 585 civilians- were killed in terrorist attacks and armed conflict in Iraq during August 2015.

 

ISIS has executed 32 Iraqi soldiers and 15 of its handicapped elements in the city of Mosul. ISIS also executed 15 of its handicapped gunmen, who have lost limbs from their bodies during the battles with the Peshmerga and Iraqi forces; these executions are due to the inability of the organization to take care of them.

Security forces in Kirkuk province arrested 45 terrorist suspects Monday September 14, 2015. After Peshmerga forces took control of 11 villages south of Kirkuk they arrested 45 people who he claimed were “previously ISIS members who participated in fighting against Peshmerga.” The 45 terrorist were taking part in the fight against Peshmerga.” An area of approximately 150 square kilometres was recaptured from the militants as the Peshmerga forced ISIS out of 13 villages.

Two suicide bombers targeted Iraqi police checkpoints in commercial areas in central Baghdad during rush hour Thursday September 17, 2015, killing at least 21 people. Both attacks were carried out by bombers on foot, wearing explosives-laden vests. One bomber struck in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji area, killing nine civilians and three police officers there. Forty-five people were wounded in that explosion. The second bomber hit in al-Wathba Square, killing nine people, including four policemen, and wounding 31.

A car bomb killed at least 12 people and injured 42 others on Monday September 21, 2015, in Ameen, a Shiite district in eastern Baghdad. Earlier in the day, gunmen shot and killed a local official along with his son and nephew in the town of Tarmiya, about 15 miles north of Baghdad. ---

At least 17 militants of the Islamic State group (ISIS) were killed in an airstrike southwest of Kirkuk on Thursday September 24, 2015. Coalition airpower also destroyed military bases in areas south of Kirkuk, from where ISIS frequently launches attacks against Peshmerga positions inside the city. Three bases where ISIS maintained “substantial military resources” were completely destroyed, including storage houses for ammunition and a number of vehicles.

Iraq will begin sharing "security and intelligence" information with Russia, Syria and Iran to help combat the advances of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) we were told Sunday September 27, 2015. The countries will help and cooperate in collecting information about the terrorist Daesh group. Iraq has long had close ties with neighbouring Iran and has coordinated with Tehran in fighting the advance of ISIS. Iranian commanders have helped lead Iraqi Shiite militiamen in combat.

On Saturday September 26, 2015, coalition airstrikes destroyed multiple Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant targets near Hit and Kubaysah. The airstrikes attacked key ISIL targets in Anbar province, including two vehicle-borne bomb production facilities, an ISIL headquarters building, and an ISIL staging area at the Kubaysah cement factory. The coalition targeted only portions of the Kubaysah cement factory because those portions were being used by ISIL as a staging area for their fighters, equipment, and weapons. The coalition takes great care to reduce collateral damage and preserve Iraqi infrastructure.

Daesh terrorists killed 10 fellow extremists on the grounds that they wanted to desert the group and had tried to escape clashes between the militants and Iraqi forces in the town of al-Karma we were told on Saturday September 26, 2015. Also security forces have killed a high-profile Daesh figure, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Daham al-Issawi, as they launched Katyusha rockets and artillery rounds at a terrorist hideout in al-Kartan district, east of Anbar’s provincial capital city of Ramadi. Seven other extremists plus three vehicles belonging to Daesh militants were also destroyed during the Saturday operation.

A suicide attack on a security checkpoint north of the capital, Baghdad, has killed at least seven people. The suicide bomber set off his explosives-laden vest Tuesday September 29, 2015, at an Iraqi army checkpoint in the town of Tarmiyah. Four soldiers and three civilians were killed, while 16 others were wounded.

Another Kurdish member of Islamic State (IS) has recently been killed while fighting for the jihadist group. Abu Muhammad Kurdi, from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, was killed on the battlefield. According to IS, 75 Kurdish insurgents have been killed during battles and airstrikes. Over 500 Kurds have joined IS and most of them have been killed already.

At least 11 people have died after a US Hercules aircraft crashed at an airport in Afghanistan Thursday October 1, 2015. Six of those killed worked for the US military, while the others were civilian contractors. The Taliban said that the group shot down the plane there was no indication of any such attack. The US military is investigating the cause of the accident.

“Médecins Sans Frontières” (MSF) condemn the horrific bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, which was full of staff and patients. MSF confirmed the death of nine MSF staff members during the bombing. 37 people were seriously wounded, of whom 19 are MSF staff. There are many patients and staff who remain unaccounted for. The numbers may grow as a clearer picture develops of the aftermath of this horrific bombing. ---

Two large bombings in Shiite-majority neighbourhoods in Baghdad killed at least 18 people on Saturday October 3, 2015. The larger attack took place in the Kadhimiya neighbourhood, where a suicide bomber set off his explosives at a checkpoint. At least 11 people were killed, including at least four civilians, and more than 36 people were wounded. In the second attack, a suicide bomber set off explosives on a busy street in the Huriya district, killing seven people and wounding 25.

Iraq Monday October 5, 2015:

• At least 57 people were killed in car bomb attacks in Baghdad and the north and south of Iraq.
• One attack took place near a crowded market in the town of Khalis, about 80 km northeast of Baghdad, killing 35 people.
• In the town of Al Zubair, about 15 km southwest of the oil town of Basra, a second attack took place also near a crowded market. Ten people died.
• Another car bomb exploded in the Hussainiya district of the northern outskirts of Baghdad, killing 12 people.
• Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group that controls a third of the country and wants to redraw the map of the Middle East, claimed responsibility for the car bomb attack in Al Zubair.

 

An Iraqi tribal leader has revealed that Takfiri Daesh militants have executed 70 of his fellow tribesmen in the western province of Anbar. Shiekh Na'im al-Gaoud, the leader of the Albu Nimr tribe, said Monday October 5, 2015, that Daesh executed the 70 after abducting them from Tharthar area, north of the provincial capital city of Ramadi. The terrorist Daesh organization kidnapped late on Sunday night some 70 Albu Nimer tribesmen from Tharthar area in north of provincial capital city of Ramadi, and shot them dead in the same area. The mass execution came because family members of the victims had joined the nation-wide battle against the terrorists. Daesh executed more than 400 Albu Nimer tribesmen in November 2014 while reports earlier this year showed that dozens more were executed across Anbar Province.

Twenty seven people were killed in Iraq on Thursday October 8, 2015, when mortars landed in the provincial capital of Baquba. It was not clear who fired the mortars at the northern town.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, has released a video allegedly showing three Assyrian Christian captives being shot dead in the Syrian city of Hasaka we were told Thursday October 8, 2015. Those executed were among 187 Assyrians held as hostages by Islamic State. Religious minorities such as Christians and Yezidis have been specially targeted by ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has kidnapped dozens of Christians, including 45 women, 19 children and 11 families from the city of Al-Qaryatain in Homs province. Hundreds of others were missing.

Members of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group have abducted at least 200 people in the al-Zaab district of the northern province of Kirkuk on Wednesday October 7, 2015. The civilians were taken hostage on the alleged ground that they were in collaboration with Iraqi security forces.

Protesters torched an office of the main political party in Iraq's Kurdish north on Friday October 9, 2015, after at least one demonstrator was killed in the worst unrest the region has seen for several years. Five other people were wounded in the city of Qaladize following a week of strikes and demonstrations. In other towns and cities across the region, political parties tightened security around their offices to avert attacks from rivals. The protests grew out of public anger at an economic crisis that has left many Kurds struggling to get by, but have become wound up in a power struggle between the region's political parties. The demonstration turned violent when protesters changed their planned course and headed towards the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Qaladize throwing stones. ---

Iraq Saturday October 10, 2015:

• Three people were killed in a third day of violent unrest in Iraq's Kurdistan region as protesters attacked or torched several offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Sulaimaniyah province.
• The protests, the most serious the region has seen for years, began on Oct. 1 as a show of public anger over an economic crisis that many blame on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), in which the KDP and other parties are partners.
• On Friday the demonstrations took a partisan turn when protesters in the city of Qaladize attacked a KDP office.
• A total of five people have now been killed in the protests, which threaten to destabilise the region at a time when it is at war with Islamic State militants.
• In the town of Kalar, two people died of gunshot wounds after protesters set upon a KDP office there.
• One person was burned to death when protesters in the town of Qaladize set another KDP office ablaze.
• Another KDP office in the town of Said Sadiq also came under attack from protesters hurling stones.
• In the city of Sulaimaniyah, capital of the province, protesters set upon the office of the media network Rudaw, which is seen as close to the KDP.
• Deadlock over Massoud Barzani's presidency, which expired on August 20, has not only polarised Kurdish politics but also compounded the economic crisis, which began in early 2014 when Baghdad slashed funds to the region. A plunge in oil prices has pushed the region further towards bankruptcy.

 

Frustrated with the US-led coalition's ineffective anti-ISIL campaign, Iraq is turning to Russia, viewing Moscow as a much more trustworthy partner than Washington we were told Saturday October 10, 2015.

Iraq said Sunday October 11, 2015, that its air force had bombed a convoy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the reclusive leader of the Islamic State group (ISIS), and that his fate is unknown. After Baghdadi met with the group’s leaders in the township of Karabla, his convoys were targeted by Iraqi aircraft in Anbar province. A hospital said that several ISIS leaders were killed in the airstrike, but that Baghdadi was not among them.

Iraq October 11, 2015:

• A wave of bombings in the Iraqi capital Baghdad killed or wounded more than a dozen civilians.
• A roadside bomb detonated in the Mahmoodia neighbourhood of southern Baghdad killing two civilians and wounding eight.
• A second explosion took place in the neighbourhood of Dawanmi in southeastern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding seven.
• An hour later, the third blast went off within a crowd at a traditional Bazaar in the neighbourhood of Nahrawan, resulting in the deaths of two civilians and wounding five others.

 

The Iraqi government has flown its first drone bombing missions on Islamic State (IS) positions in Anbar Province. On Saturday October 10, 2015, the Iraqi air force launched a drone from Kut in the eastern province of Wasit.

Islamic State's (IS) second-in-command has been killed in an airstrike in Iraq. On Tuesday October 13, 2015, IS confirmed the death of Fadel al-Hayari -also known as Haji Moataz - in an airstrike in Mosul in August. Little is known about al-Hayari's life, though some have alleged that he had previously been a lieutenant colonel in the army of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi security forces claimed Thursday October 15, 2015, to have taken control of most of the nearly completely destroyed oil refinery in the strategic central Iraqi city of Baiji. The Iraqi government has claimed multiple times before to have secured the facility. Heavy fighting that has spanned more than 17 months has destroyed the facility, once Iraq’s largest industrial plant, and conservative estimates predict it will take billions of dollars and years to make it operational again. Once responsible for more than 40 percent of Iraq’s production of gasoline and other refined products, the Baiji refinery has been completely destroyed for nearly year. ---

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces and volunteer militia fighters recaptured the presidential complex of former President Saddam Hussein in Makhoul Mountain, just north of Baiji we were told Saturday October 17, 2015. They also took full control of this important and strategic mountain that cut the supply route linking the Ziwiya and al-Fatha areas which has been considered one of the enemy's main supply routes to send fighters and personnel to Baiji.

Iraqi forces advanced on three fronts against Islamic State (IS) militants on Sunday October 18, 2015, flushing out pockets of resistance in and around Baiji and closing in on Ramadi and Hawijah. The city of Baiji and nearby refinery –the country’s largest– have seen the worst flashpoints since IS launched a sweeping offensive across Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland in June 2014. Anti-IS forces, including thousands from the Popular Mobilisation (Hashd al-Shaabi) force that includes Tehran-backed Shi’ite militias, have reclaimed most of Baiji and its surroundings. They are still combing some neighbourhoods of Baiji, including Tamim to the west and the market area in the centre.

A British ISIS fighter has carried out a devastating suicide bomb attack near the jihadi held city of Ramadi in Iraq. The fighter, known only as Abu Omar al-Britani, had taken part in a twin suicide bomb attack, killing and wounding 80 people.

The Islamic State (IS) militants have captured a number of people in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh who are believed to be relatives of the province’s new governor. We were told on Monday October 19t, 2015, that several people have been arrested by IS insurgents in Mosul and surrounding villages. They are believed to be related to the newly-appointed Nineveh Governor Nufel al-Argoub. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

The US Air Force recently lost control of two armed Predator drones in separate incidents in Turkey and Iraq we were told Wednesday October 21, 2015. The Predators were both carrying air-to-surface Hellfire missiles when they crashed, but these were safely recovered along with the aircraft. In the first case on October 17, a Predator crew reported a lost link and subsequent crash while the Predator was flying southeast of Baghdad. Local Iraqi police recovered the drone in the vicinity of Al-Kut. They returned the aircraft to US control and there were no injuries. Then on October 19, a different Predator crashed in Hatay, southern Turkey. The aircraft experienced mechanical failure but the Air Force maintained positive control of the aircraft and brought it down safely in an unpopulated area. Again, the aircraft was returned to US control.

One member of a US special operations team was killed during an operation to rescue hostages held by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, the first American killed in ground combat with the militant group, we were told on Thursday October 22, 2015. Iraqi forces, supported by a US Special Operations team in their advice and assist capacity, conducted a complex and highly-successful operation that resulted in the freeing of approximately 70 hostages held by ISIL in a prison near Hawijah, Iraq. The US launched the operation after receiving information that the hostages faced imminent mass execution at the hands of ISIS. The hostages included 20 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). The operation involved helicopters and targeted a makeshift prison where the Islamic State was holding a number of hostages. Kurdish forces took the lead while US Special Operations Forces, helicopters, and airstrikes provided support. The operation was requested by the Iraqi government and those rescued were Kurdish fighters. 69 hostages were rescued. The hostages were all Arabs, and included 20 members of the ISF, citizens of the local town, and members of ISIS that the militants believed were spies.

The Special Operations Forces raided a house in the Hawija area where Islamic State commanders were gathering, triggering gun battles and blasts that lasted several hours.

Russian military jets struck a bridge over the Euphrates River in Syria on Thursday October 22, 2015, which they suspected was being used by Islamic State (IS) militants to bring supplies from Iraq into Syria. The air strikes had allowed Syrian forces to recapture an area that was previously under the control of militants.

The Iraqi government authorized Russia to target Daesh (ISIS) convoys coming from Syria. The authorization for Russia to target Daesh inside Iraq comes amid security coordination between Iraq, Russia, Iran and Syria. This contributed to weakening Daesh by cutting off its supply routes. Iraq has been gripped by a security vacuum since June 2014 when Daesh stormed the northern city of Mosul and declared a self-styled caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. ---

International coalition jets have shelled the convoy of a Badr Brigade commander, Hadi Amiri, in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala. The US has now made three unsuccessful assassination attempts on Amiri we were told Monday October 26, 2015.

Iraq Tuesday October 27, 2015:

• At least four people were killed by bomb blasts and mortars targeted a police training facility wounding two officers.
• Two civilians were killed by separate roadside bombs in the greater Baghdad area. One blast was in a predominately Shi'ite area north of the capital, and the other in a mixed neighbourhood in the south.
• Two pro-government Shi'ite militia fighters were killed when a suicide bomb in a truck exploded at a gathering of security forces near the northern city of Samarra. Clashes broke out at the site of the bomb, which left seven police officers wounded.
• Further north, two police officers at Camp Speicher, a former U.S. base outside the Sunni city of Tikrit, were wounded in a mortar attack while new recruits were doing training exercises.

 

On Thursday October 29, 2015, more than 20 people are reported to have been killed after a barrage of rockets slammed into a former military base near Baghdad international airport that houses a group of Iranian exiles. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed, and Iraqi police said 16 rockets hit Camp Liberty, a former US base that now houses the exiled Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedin of Iran (MEK). 16 soldiers guarding the camp were also wounded while MEK said dozens of Iranian refugees were wounded as well.

Iraq Friday October 30, 2015:

• The United States-led coalition carried out 12 airstrikes targeted at ISIS, including one in Syria and 11 in Iraq.
• The airstrikes were launched on Thursday near five Iraqi cities to the north and west of Baghdad, including Ramadi and Mosul.
• The strikes hit multiple ISIS assembly areas, weaponry bases and fighting positions, as well as other targets.
• An airstrike near the Syrian city of Mara, carried out on Thursday, targeted three ISIS military vehicles.

 

Four Iraqi men have been executed for 'spying' by ISIS militants. This was shown in a graphic video designed to emphasise the group's ruthless use of fear and terror on civilians. The four men are forced to wear bright red boiler suits and give a full statement to the camera, explaining their alleged crimes.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, in Mosul has reportedly executed a group of boys and young men between the ages of 12 and 16 trying to flee the extremist-held city we were told on Saturday October 31, 2015. The children were receiving training at Ashti military camp in Mosul and they were caught trying to escape.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said in a statement that 559 of those killed in October 2015 were civilians, including civilian police, while 155 were members of Iraqi security forces, including the Kurdish peshmerga, Interior Ministry SWAT forces and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi army. The figures do not include casualties in Anbar province, which the UN says it could not obtain.

Islamist militants launched a rare attack inside Kurdish-held territory in northern Iraq on Tuesday November 3, 2015, briefly taking over a local government compound near several producing oil fields. A suicide bomber had blown himself up at a checkpoint, clearing the way for three other militants to enter the compound in the town of Dibis  south of the regional capital Erbil. The three insurgents then occupied the mayor of Dibis's office, throwing grenades and firing at Kurdish security forces surrounding the compound. Kurdish forces regained control after one of the militants was shot dead and the other two blew themselves up. At least four members of the Kurdish security forces were also killed. ---

Iraq Tuesday November 10, 2015:

• Attacks in different parts of the Iraqi capital have killed at least 10 civilians. A bomb went off in an outdoor market in Baghdad's northern Sabi al-Bore neighbourhood, killing three shoppers and wounding eight others.
• Three more civilians were killed and seven wounded in a bomb explosion in the eastern suburb of Hussainiyah.
• Another bomb ripped through a parking lot in the northern Shaab neighbourhood, killing two civilians and wounding seven others.
• And a drive-by shooting in the southern neighbourhood of Dora killed two merchants.

 

Iraq Friday November 13, 2015:

• A suicide blast and a roadside bombing targeted Shiites in Baghdad, killing a total of 26 people and wounding at least 46.
• The suicide bomber struck a memorial service held for a Shiite militia fighter killed in battle against IS in the Iraqi capital's southwestern suburb of Hay al-Amal.
• The attacks came as Iraqi Kurdish militias, backed by U.S. airstrikes, seized the town of Sinjar from the Islamic State group.
• Following its blitz last year, the IS —which splintered off from Iraq's al-Qaida branch— now holds about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in its self-declared caliphate.
• In Baghdad, a roadside bomb detonated at a Shiite shrine in Sadr City, killing at least five people and wounding 15.
• A suicide bomber blew himself up at the funeral of a pro-government Shia Muslim fighter in Baghdad killed at least 18 people. The funeral was for a member of the Hashid Shaabi, a government umbrella group comprised mostly of Shia fighters seen as a critical force in the battle against IS.

 

On Saturday November 14, 2015, Iraqi security forces with the support of tribal militias and US coalition airstrikes have taken over the Ramadi train station and killed several ISIS militants. They also took control of the shelter of emergency police forces after hours of clashes with the Islamic State organization in northern Ramadi and several districts of southern Ramadi. Some 10,000 Iraqi soldiers, policemen, militiamen of the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi and tribal forces have been fighting to clear Anbar province from ISIS since June, but they have not managed to make any significant advances.
 
A mass grave believed to contain the remains of more than 70 members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority was discovered east of Sinjar town after Kurdish forces claimed victory over Islamic State militants in the area we were told Saturday November 14, 2015. The insurgents overran the Yazidi heartland of Sinjar in north-west Iraq in August 2014, systematically killing, capturing and enslaving thousands of its inhabitants in what the United Nations has said may have constituted attempted genocide. The younger women were taken into sexual slavery, but the older ones were killed.

Iraq Sunday November 15, 2015:

• Iraqi security forces backed by its air force and the U.S.-led coalition aircraft foiled four suicide car bomb attacks and killed 13 Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's western province of Anbar.]
• The international aircraft carried out an air strike on IS positions in an area near the town of Khaldiyah, some 80 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, leaving 13 IS militants dead and destroying two houses and three of their vehicles.
• Separately, the security forces and allied paramilitary units, known as Hashid al-Shaabi, repelled an attack by two suicide car bombs on military positions in Albu Farraj, just north of the IS-held provincial capital city of Ramadi. Troops destroyed the two car bombs, killing the two suicide bombers by anti-tank guided missiles before they reach their targets.
• Meanwhile, U.S.-led coalition aircraft bombarded two suicide car bombs as they were on their way to attack the army positions in Jeraishi area, destroying them and killing the two suicide bombers.
• In addition, IS militants pounded the town of Amariyat al-Fallujah, some 40 km west of Baghdad, with mortar rounds and rockets killing three policemen and wounding five people. ---

Canada will increase the number of ground troops it has in Iraq to train local forces as a way of making a bigger military contribution to the coalition fighting Islamic militants, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday November 17, 2015. The increase, from the current number of 69 Special Forces trainers, is one of the scenarios being worked on as the government prepares to end the air combat mission of its CF-18 fighter jets in the U.S.-led coalition that is bombing targets in Iraq and Syria.

Fifteen Kurds from the Kurdistan Region who had been arrested by the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militia were freed in Khurmatu on Wednesday November 18, 2015, after talks with the Peshmerga. Seven other Kurds have not yet been released.

US warplanes destroyed dozens of trucks smuggling oil into Iraq and Turkey, depriving the Islamic State (IS) of a significant amount of funding. The US conducted air strikes this week that took out 161 oil trucks. It's smuggling oil across the borders into Iraq, into Turkey. A new campaign will deprive IS of its smuggling to Iraq and Turkey from which they get hundreds of millions of dollars. To minimize risks to civilians low-flying planes dropped leaflets 45 minutes prior to the strike. The leaflets said, "Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them."

A roadside bomb followed by a suicide bombing near a Shia mosque south of Baghdad killed at least six people and wounded 19 Friday November 20, 2015. The first blast struck as worshippers were leaving today prayers, while the suicide bomber detonated explosives after security forces arrived. Security forces members were among the dead and wounded, but the exact number was not immediately clear.

Iraq Sunday November 22, 2015:

• A bomb detonated near the Iraqi ministry of culture in Baghdad; the explosion caused no casualties.
• The incident at the ministry coincided with another Baghdad explosion that may have killed several people. 
• The bomb was planted on a car inside a garage belonging to the ministry. The bomb was linked to one of the ministry’s cars and after entering the garage it was detonated.
• Meanwhile, the second, deadly car bomb explosion occurred in Baghdad’s Rasafa district, with an exact casualty figure still unknown.

 

At least 210 people in Iraq’s Anbar province, held captive by the Islamic State group (ISIS) last year were rescued by Iraqi forces and reunited with their families we were told Monday November 23, 2015. Several ISIS militants also were killed in clashes with the Iraqi forces that were trying to free the hostages. The operation took place in southern Anbar province. The captives were from 70 different families; they have been returned to their tribes.

Takfiri Daesh terrorists have abducted three dozen people in Iraq’s northern province of Salahuddin. On Wednesday November 25, 2015, we were told that the terrorists raided Sadira Village on the outskirts of the city of Shirqat and kidnapped 36 people. This incident came two days after Daesh Takfiris killed 10 people in the Zab district on Monday after accusing them of attempting to escape militant-held areas instead of joining the ranks of the terror group.
 
Iraqi forces have cut off Daesh’s last supply line into Ramadi by recapturing a strategic bridge. On Thursday November 26, 2015, Iraqi forces announced that they have the city fully surrounded after the capture of the strategic Palestine Bridge on the Euphrates River in northwestern Ramadi, Anbar Province. Daesh can no longer ferry weapons, food and equipment through the river like they did in the past. On Tuesday army troops and allied volunteer forces had liberated 22 neighbourhoods from a total of 39 in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, which was taken over by Daesh in May.

Under the town of Sinjar, Islamic State group militants built a network of tunnels, complete with sleeping quarters, wired with electricity and fortified with sandbags. There, they had boxes of U.S.-made ammunition, medicines and copies of the Quran stashed on shelves. The tunnels were uncovered by Kurdish forces that took the city in northwestern Iraq earlier this month after more than a year of IS rule. They found between 30 and 40 tunnels inside Sinjar. Daesh dug these trenches in order to hide from airstrikes and have free movement underground as well as to store weapons and explosives. ---

C- The Iraqis

Saturday November 28, 2015, 15 members of a family were killed in a Hashd al-Shaabi attack in the Al Nasaf and Jubial districts of Fallujah. On Friday evening Hash al-Shaabi targeted the areas with mortars and missiles.

A bomb-rigged mass grave believed to hold the remains of more than 120 people killed by the Islamic State group has been found in north Iraq we were told Saturday November 28, 2015. It is the sixth mass grave discovered in or near the town of Sinjar since it was recaptured from IS jihadists earlier this month.

At least five people were killed –and 19 wounded- in a suicide car bomb attack in Tuz Khurmatu, northern Iraq, we were told on Saturday November 28, 2015. The target was a police checkpoint near the entrance to a market in a predominantly Shi'ite Turkmen district. At least two of those killed were police.

Iraq Saturday November 28, 2015:

• A total of 24 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in air strikes by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition forces in western Iraq.
• Iraqi warplanes bombarded an IS vehicle convoy in the Albu Eitha area, north of Anbar province's capital Ramadi. About 15 militants aboard were killed.
• Meanwhile, international aircraft and Iraqi army artillery pounded IS positions in Juwaiba area east of Ramadi, destroying two positions and leaving at least nine militants killed and 12 others injured.
• The attacks came as the Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary units, known as Hashid al-Shaabi, recaptured several areas on the edges of Ramadi as part of their offensive to surround the city and clear it later from IS militants.
• A suicide bomber killed six people in the Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu. The bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint in the town, also wounding 16 people.

 

888 Iraqis were killed and 1,237 others wounded in November 2015 due to acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict, the United Nations said Tuesday December 1, 2015. The number of civilians killed was 489 and the number of civilians injured was 869; a further 339 members of the Iraqi security forces including Peshmerga, SWAT and militia fighters were killed and 368 others were injured. Baghdad was the worst affected governorate with 325 people killed and 785 others injured.

Gunmen have shot and killed a prominent Sunni politician in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk. We were told Wednesday December 2, 2015, that security forces were searching for suspects in the killings of Councilman Moahmmed Khalil al-Jubouri and his wife late Tuesday. al-Jubouri was traveling through the central Taseen neighbourhood without guards when drive-by shooters opened fire.

The United Nations human rights office in Iraq said Friday December 4, 2015, that 16 mass graves were uncovered near Sinjar town. Militants overran Sinjar in northwest Iraq in August 2014, systematically killing, capturing and enslaving thousands of its Yazidi inhabitants in what the United Nations has said may constitute attempted genocide. ---

Iraqi joint forces have recaptured large parts of Ramadi from Daesh, or ISIS, we were told Tuesday December 8, 2015. Iraqi forces recaptured the Anbar Operations command centre inside Ramadi which was used by ISIS as a stronghold to carry out parts of its military missions in Ramadi. Iraqi security forces also recaptured a large area of Ramadi from ISIS, mainly Al-Tameem, on the southwestern side of the city.

The number of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria has more than doubled since last year to at least 27,000 we were told Tuesday December 8, 2015. In all, between 27,000 and 31,000 foreign fighters from 86 countries have travelled to Iraq and Syria compared with a figure of about 12,000 foreign fighters in Syria when it last published a similar study in June 2014. Around 5,000 made their way from Europe, with a further 4,700 from former Soviet republics. Between 20 and 30% of foreign fighters were returning to their home countries, creating major challenges for domestic security agencies as Isis in particular looks to carry out an increasing number of attacks overseas.

U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State (IS) killed several senior leaders of the militant organization, including the group’s finance minister we were told Thursday December 10, 2015. The airstrikes that killed Abu Salah, IS’ finance minister, killed also a senior leader responsible for coordinating the group's extortion activities and another leader who acted as an executive officer. Salah was the third member of the finance network that we have killed in as many months. 

A suicide truck bomber struck a border security post in the desert of Iraq's western province of Anbar on Saturday December 12, 2015, killing the commander and five security members and wounding 14 others. The suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden truck into the security post and blew it up in west of the town of Nukhayb.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Friday December 11, 2015 criticised the deployment of Turkish troops and tanks to the country's north that Baghdad says took place without its approval. Top Turkish officials said a deal had been reached with Baghdad over the forces, which were sent to a base near the city of Mosul, but Iraq reiterated demands that Ankara's troops be withdrawn and called on the United Nations to take action.

Iraq Sunday December 13, 2015:

• Islamic State (IS) fighters launched an attack on Kurdish forces near the city of Mosul killing one Peshmerga. The Peshmerga forces came under fire in the village of Ashiq, west of the militant-stronghold Mosul. As a result one Peshmerga and a number of IS fighters were killed in the clashes.
• Peshmerga forces destroyed two vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) and killed an IS suicide bomber before reaching the Peshmerga fronts.
• Coalition warplanes carried out airstrikes in the area in support of Kurdish forces, destroying another VBIED.

 

Peshmerga forces repulsed major attacks across Newaran, Bashik, Tl Eswed, Khazir and Zerdk Mountain on Wednesday December 16, 2015, killing more than 70 militants of the Islamic State group (ISIS or ISIL. The Peshmerga forces and coalition warplanes had cooperated in destroying 11 ISIS vehicles, foiling three car bombs and several suicide bombers. Coalition warplanes launched more than 25 strikes against ISIS and continue to monitor the area in support of the Peshmerga.

About 100 gunmen driving dozens of pickup trucks kidnapped at least 26 Qataris from their desert hunting camp in the area of Busaya in the Samawa desert in Iraq near the Saudi border in the early hours of Wednesday December 16, 2015. Members of the Qatari royal family may be among those held captive.

Islamic State (IS) militants fired rockets at a base in northern Iraq where Turkish troops were stationed on Wednesday December16, 2015, as they launched a wave of attacks against Kurdish forces. The Turkish soldiers returned fire, and four had been lightly injured when katyusha rockets landed in their camp north of the IS stronghold of Mosul. Seventy IS fighters were killed during clashes, in which the militants used suicide bombs and car bombs.

On Wednesday December 16, 2015, Italy's prime minister announced that the country will send 450 soldiers to protect the important Mosul Dam from the extremist group ISIS, also known as the Islamic State. The militants currently control the city of Mosul, which is just more than 30 miles from the dam. ---

Kurdish forces backed by coalition air strikes have repulsed the most serious attack by Islamic State group in Iraq in five months. IS militants mounted a co-ordinated assault on several locations near the northern city of Mosul on Wednesday December 16, 2015. About 180 IS fighters were killed in the strikes that continued until Thursday morning. Militants began attacking Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga positions late on Wednesday afternoon, using machine guns, car bombs, rockets and armoured bulldozers. This was the hardest punch Isil [IS] had thrown since this summer, and the Peshmerga defeated them. Among the sites targeted by IS was Bashiqa, where Turkish forces have recently been training Iraqi Kurds, sparking a row with the Iraqi government.

At the UN on Friday December 18, 2015, the 15-member Security Council adopted a resolution aimed at starving IS of funds. It urges countries to move vigorously and decisively to cut the flow of funds to IS, such as by preventing its smuggling of oil and antiquities.

Nine Iraqi soldiers have been killed by “friendly fire” from US-led coalition aircraft during an assault on an Islamic State stronghold. The coalition air forces were supporting ground troops near Falluja when the personnel, including an officer, were killed.

After achieving explosive territorial gains across Syria and Iraq following its declaration of a new caliphate in 2014, the Islamic State group has suffered a net loss this year of 14% of what it had conquered we were told Monday December 21, 2015. Pressure from Syrian Kurdish forces and the Iraqi military, both supported by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, have stripped the militant group of about 5,000 square miles of territory.

• ISIS fighters were driven from the Tal Abyad border crossing between Turkey and Syria, which was the group's main access point into Turkey from its capital, Raqqa.
• It also lost a crucial highway between Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul.
• The military group also lost the Iraqi city of Tikrit and the vital Beiji refinery complex in Iraq.
• The overall shrinking of its territorial gains comes despite the group's capture this year of the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra with its renowned Roman ruins, and the seizure of Ramadi, an Iraqi provincial capital west of Baghdad.

Iraq Wednesday December 23, 2015:

• A wave of attacks across Iraq killed at least 15 civilians as government forces pressed on with their offensive to dislodge Islamic State militants from Ramadi.
• In the Shiite-majority town of Khalis two explosives-laden cars were detonated. The first car was parked inside a bus station and that explosion killed three and wounded 10. The second car bomb exploded at the town's outdoor grocery market, killing four civilians and wounding eight.
• In and around Baghdad, five bombs went off in commercial areas, killing eight civilians and wounding 35.
• The Iraqi security forces' advance towards Ramadi was slowed by snipers, roadside bombs and booby-trapped buildings. In May, the Iraqi government suffered a major blow when IS militants took over Ramadi, the capital of sprawling western Anbar province and Iraq's Sunni heartland.
• On Tuesday, Iraqi counter-terrorism forces pushed into the Dubbat and Aramil neighborhoods of Ramadi, about 3 kilometres from the city centre. The Iraqi air force and the U.S.-led international coalition were providing air support to troops on ground and bombing IS targets.
• There are 250 to 350 Islamic State fighters in Ramadi, as well as several hundred outside the city on the northern and western perimeter.

 

19 militants of the Islamic State (ISIS) were killed Wednesday December 23, 2015, and three of the group’s vehicles destroyed in fighting in Salahadin province, north of Baghdad. Eight bombs were defused in the Hasibiya area of eastern Salahadin. A weapons depot in the area of Albu-Hantoush, eastern Sammara was captured. An abundance of booby traps and suicide bombers have slowed an offensive in Ramadi, but the military have vowed to fight on until ISIS relinquishes the strategic city.

Two bomb blasts in Baghdad on Thursday December 24, 2015, claimed the lives of 16 civilians. Roadside bombs in the neighbourhood of Mahmoudia, in southern Baghdad killed two civilians and wounded eight. Another blast simultaneously went off in the area of Sab'u Libor, northern Baghdad, killing five persons. Earlier in the day the army reported that it had killed an ISIS bombs and explosives expert in Samarra north of the capital Baghdad.

A member of the Sunni "Al-Hashd al-Watani" (National Mobilization) group in Iraq was killed by Daesh on Saturday December 26, 2015. Daesh fired mortars on the Al-Hashd al-Watani military training camp near the Iraqi city of Mosul. One soldier was killed and another was injured.

The Iraqi city of Ramadi has been liberated from Islamic State we were told Monday December 28, 2015. However some reports indicate there are still pockets of resistance in the city. The week-long battle against IS has destroyed the urban landscape. Ramadi's recapture marks a major reversal for the jihadist group. They seized it in May, in an embarrassing defeat for the army. ---

A mass grave believed to contain the remains of 120 Iraqi security personnel and some civilians has been discovered in northwestern Nineveh we were told Wednesday December 30, 2015.

Violence has claimed the lives of 980 Iraqis in December 2015, up from 888 the previous month, the United Nations said on Friday January 1, 2016. 506 of those killed in December were civilians, while the rest were security forces, including Kurdish peshmerga and paramilitary troops. 1,244 civilians were wounded in December. The worst-affected province was Baghdad with 261 killed, followed by Ninevah province with 68. 124 civilians were killed in Anbar province, which has large areas under IS control. December figures brought the total number of civilian causalities in 2015 to 7,515 killed and 14,855 wounded.

Iraq Sunday January 3, 2016:

• Security forces repelled attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants backed by suicide bombings targeting security forces in the Iraqi provinces of Anbar and Salahudin.
• In Iraq's western province of Anbar, soldiers, policemen and local Sunni tribal fighters backed by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition aircraft repelled major attacks by dozens of IS militants and heavy mortar barrage on the areas of Barwana and Khasfa near the town of Haditha after heavy clashes that erupted.
• The attackers pushed seven suicide car bombs to the positions of the security forces, but the troops destroyed three of them by anti-tank missiles before they reach to their targets while four car bombs were also destroyed but close to the troops' positions, leaving 15 security members killed and 22 others wounded.
• Iraqi and international aircraft participated in the battle and destroyed a number of IS vehicles, including more suicide car bombs.
• Meanwhile, IS militants carried out another attack on Iraqi army positions near Tharthar Lake in the desert area in north of Ramadi and detonated three suicide car bombs at the scene, but the attackers failed to seize the military positions after heavy clashes with the soldiers.
• The battle resulted in the killing of some 15 soldiers and the wounding of 12 others, while the dozens of IS militants were also killed and wounded.
• Also in the province, international warplanes bombarded IS positions in Albu-Eitha area in northeast of the city of Ramadi and Falahat in east of the city, leaving at least 21 IS militants killed.
• During the day, Iraqi forces and explosive experts continued defusing dozens of landmines and booby-trapped vehicles and buildings in Ramadi.
• In Iraq's northern central province of Salahudin at least 13 would-be policemen were killed and 15 others wounded when three suicide bombers late on Saturday night entered a police training center in a military airbase, known as Camp Speicher, in north of Salahudin's provincial capital city of Tikrit, and detonated their explosive belts inside.
• The attacked centre is housing trainees from Iraq's northern province of Nineveh who are being prepared for expected battles to free the provincial capital city of Mosul from the extremist militants by Iraqi security forces and international air support.

 

Several teachers and civil servants were reportedly executed in Mosul for refusing to implement the Islamic State (ISIS) curriculum in schools we were told on Monday January 4, 2016. Early in October and the start of the new school year extremists in Mosul changed the curriculum to focus more on teaching jihad and ISIS history. The 'terrorists' were imposing a new system in elementary, high school and universities on levels of education. The group is also printing new textbooks.

Iraq Sunday January 3, 2016:

• Islamic State (ISIS) militants attacked several villages and towns in Western Anbar province capturing new territory before being pushed back by security forces and local tribes.
• In a number of simultaneous attacks the militants overran the towns of Perawan and Baghdadi near Haditha and Hit. The militants were fought back by the army and tribal fighters in some areas and driven out of Baghdadi.
• 12 explosive-laden ISIS vehicles were destroyed in the confrontations.  Five militants were killed and at least 30 others wounded.
• The attacks were launched through car bombs and suicide bombers and the militants managed to infiltrate parts of Perwana township but they were repulsed by the security forces and tribal militants.
• Warplanes from the US-led coalition and Iraqi jets joined the local attempt to reclaim the lost territories.

 

 Iraq Monday January 4, 2016:

• Blasts rocked two Sunni mosques in central Iraq amid fears of renewed sectarian strife following Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed to track down the attackers, whom he said were attempting to undermine national unity.
• A man was killed in one of the overnight attacks and a muezzin -the person appointed to recite the Muslim call to prayer- was gunned down in the same region south of Baghdad.
• In Hilla the Ammar bin Yasser mosque in Bakerli neighbourhood was bombed after midnight. Gunmen shot dead a young man displaced from his home town of Ramadi who had been living in the mosque with his family.
• The Al-Fateh mosque in a village called Sinjar, just outside Hilla, was also destroyed overnight. Three or four men in military uniforms were involved in that bombing. Three people were wounded in the explosions.
• A muezzin from a Sunni mosque in Iskandariyah was also shot dead overnight. The weekend execution in Saudi Arabia of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr sparked outrage in Iraq. Shiite politicians and clerics unanimously condemned the execution but several religious figures in the Sunni minority also denounced it.
• Thousands of supporters of prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr demonstrated near the foreign ministry demanding all ties with Saudi Arabia be broken off.
• The Saudi embassy in Tehran was firebombed by an angry mob, prompting Riyadh to respond by announcing it was breaking off diplomatic relations with Iran.
• Islamic State militants attacked Iraqi troops and allied tribal fighters outside the western town of Haditha killing at least 11 and wounding dozens. 30 troops were wounded in the attacks, which included a suicide car bombing and roadside bombs.

 

Kurdish forces backed by Coalition airstrikes thwarted separate Islamic State (IS) attacks near the Khazir frontline in the early hours of Tuesday January 5, 2016. The first attack around midnight near the village of Wardak located southeast of IS’ Iraqi stronghold, Mosul. Militants made a second attempt several hours later to which Peshmerga responded on the ground while Coalition warplanes struck IS targets from the skies above. IS was employing a common strategy of using inclement weather for cover to launch, although Kurdish forces had intelligence of an impending attack. There were no reports of casualties.

ISIS has lost an estimated 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria we were told Tuesday January 5, 2016.

At least 19 Islamic State (ISIS) militants were killed in Mosul on Wednesday January 6, 2016, while preparing a car bomb. ---

Nearly two weeks after declaring victory over Islamic State (IS) in Ramadi, about 20 percent of the Iraqi city's centre remains out of the military's control and removing explosives from reclaimed areas is holding up initial reconstruction activities. In addition to explosions, the greatest threat to the security forces clearing Ramadi are IS snipers, which are being targeted in massive air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

A major commander of the Islamic State (IS) was killed during an operation by the Iraqi Air Force against the militants west of the country we were told Saturday January 9, 2016. The Iraqi fighter jets had managed to target the whereabouts of Asi Ali Mohammad Nasir al-Obaidi in the town of Barwanah in the western province of Anbar. Obaidi was the second deputy to the self-proclaimed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, meaning that he was the third in command of the group. Obaidi had escaped Abu Ghraib, a notorious prison facility once run by the United States forces.

Sporadic clashes still continue in Ramadi and other parts of Anbar but the Iraqi forces have purged IS militants from their key positions.

Gunmen set off a car bomb before storming a shopping mall in an eastern Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad on Monday January 11, 2016, killing at least 10 people and taking hostages. The gunmen set off the car bomb to open the way for fighters to move into the mall. 25 people were wounded in the attack and three police are among the dead. 50-75 people remained trapped in the mall.

A drone belonging to the Iraqi army struck Shia paramilitaries near the city of Tikrit on Sunday January 10, 2016, killing nine fighters; another 14 injured as a result of the strike. Iraqi forces mistakenly identified the group of fighters as enemy fighters before launching the deadly airstrike. The drone struck with a first missile and then two more seven minutes later. The fighters were part of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces, known as Hashid al-Shaabi, which has emerged as a dominant force against the Islamic State (IS) across central parts of Iraq.

Iraqi forces evacuated 635 civilians from Ramadi Sunday January 10, 2016, as they continued to clear the city two weeks after declaring victory against the Islamic State group. They had been trapped in areas where IS fighters are still present in Sichariyah and Sufiya, on the eastern outskirts of Ramadi. They were taken to a camp in Habbaniyah, east of Ramadi, to join hundreds of other families displaced from Ramadi by the fighting. The Army and the Anbar police also detained 12 suspected IS members who tried to slip out of Ramadi by blending in with evacuated civilians.

Shia Muslim militiamen in eastern Iraq have carried out reprisal attacks against Sunni Muslims after a double bombing. Bombs killed at least 20 people at a cafe in Muqdadiya on Monday January 11, 2016. Militiamen then went on what was described as a rampage. Several local Sunnis were killed, and Sunni-owned shops and homes were destroyed. IS militants also attacked a shopping centre in a predominantly Shia eastern district of the capital Baghdad on Monday evening, killing at least 18 people.

Airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition blew up a warehouse near Mosul where the Islamic State had stored millions of dollars in cash we were told Tuesday January 12, 2016. The coalition struck the facility Monday. Coalition aircraft dropped two 2,000-pound bombs on the building. In recent months, coalition airstrikes have targeted oil production and distribution centres in territory the Islamic State controls in Syria, reducing the group's daily oil revenue to less than $1 million from a peak of about $1.3 million.

Iraq Monday January 11, 2016:

• Two bombs later went off in the eastern town of Muqdadiya, killing at least 23 people and wounding another 51.
• Another blast in a southeastern Baghdad suburb killed seven more.
• Ground advances backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes killed about two dozen insurgents and pushed others out of areas near the government-held city of Haditha in Iraq's northwest.
• Seven people, including two policemen, were killed in the car bomb blast near the Jawaher mall in the predominantly Shi'ite district of Baghdad Jadida.
• Five more people were shot dead by the gunmen storming the mall, and six others were killed when those same assailants detonated their explosive vests.

 
At least 10 Iraqi Sunni mosques have been exploded in the past two days in northwest of Baghdad, following an explosion in Diyala province where tens of Shiite paramilitary were killed and injured we were told Wednesday January 13, 2016. Seven of the mosques were in Diyala province where curfew has been announced due to a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up in one of the markets where the members of Shiite paramilitary gathered. Some of the mosques were built hundreds of years ago and were classified as historical places of worship. On Tuesday the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG) Jan Kubis condemned the bombing of six mosques in Muqdadiya in Diyala.

Iraq Tuesday January 12, 2016:

• Jihadist gunmen and bombers killed at least 12 people in a busy market area of Baghdad.
• An attack claimed by ISIL and involving suicide explosions, gunfights and hostage-taking wreaked chaos in the eastern neighbourhood of Baghdad al-Jadida.
• Bombings killed at least 20 people at a cafe in the town of Muqdadiyah northeast of Baghdad. A bomb exploded at the cafe and a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle after people gathered at the scene, a police captain and an army colonel said. Four police officers killed.
• On January 12, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint north of Baghdad, wounding a senior intelligence officer and killing four police. The bomber attacked the convoy of Colonel Qassem al-Anbaki, the head of police intelligence in Diyala province, at a checkpoint.

 

Thursday January 14, 2016, we were told that the Iraqi forces had killed a wanted Islamic State (ISIS) leader responsible for the execution of civilians and the mastermind behind many car bombs. Mohammed Abul Manaf al-Rawi was severely wounded in air strikes on January 7, and died at the Shifa hospital in the tonw of Albu Kamal in Anbar on Wednesday. Al-Raqi was reportedly the al-Qaida's suicide attacks mastermind in Iraq prior to joining the Islamic State. al-Raqi was behind many car bomb attacks Baghdad and Ramadi and carried out numerous executions in Hit and Rawa in the Western Anbar province. Another prominent ISIS figure behind many car bombs in the Kirkuk area was killed in a coalition air strike this week.

The Islamic State (IS) militants late on Thursday January 14, 2016, launched attacks east of Tikrit and took control of Kirkuk-Tikrit main road. Militants launched a major offensive starting from the slot area to the north all the way to Tel Ksabh area south on several axes and captured the areas of Tel Ksabh and further 30 km east of Tikrit and controlled on the Tikrit-Kirkuk main road. The Iraqi aviation forces pounded the areas taken over by IS. At least 12 IS members and seven Iraqi security forces were killed.

The Iraqi security forces have killed at least 11 senior commanders of Daesh Takfiri terror group in the western province of Anbar. We were told on Wednesday January 13, 2016, that government forces targeted the Daesh members in the town Al-Qa'im in an air raid. The attack also injured seven Daesh elements. In a separate development on Wednesday, Iraqi Premier Haider al-Abadi said a group of militants involved in an attack that killed a dozen people in Baghdad two days before was arrested. The assault, claimed by Daesh, involved bombings, gunfire and hostage-taking in eastern Baghdad. ---

The Islamic States (ISIS) has arrested two preachers in their stronghold of Mosul for violating the group's rules and regulations on Friday January 15, 2016, sermon preaching. The preachers were arrested for refusing to mention or praise ISIS as required by a new ISIS law issued last week for all mosques where Friday prayers are performed. Preachers are also required to praise ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad in their preach. The two arrested preachers led Friday prayers in Mosul's Falah and Barid neighbourhoods. ISIS has appointed its own Friday preacher in Mosul who conveys the group's message to the local population and encourages support for jihad among people. Al-Baghdadi himself declared his Islamic caliphate during Friday prayers in June 2014 shortly after he wrested control of the city from the Iraqi army.

On Sunday January 17, 2016, ISIS have murdered a man by throwing him off the top of a high roof in Iraq after he was accused of being homosexual. It took place in al-Furat province. ISIS claimed the victim was arrested and subjected to a mock trial at an Islamic court before his execution.

Six NATO soldiers have been killed and three foreign troops were also wounded in a suicide attack near Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan we were told Monday January 18, 2016.

Islamic State militants have enslaved an estimated 3,500 people in Iraq, primarily women and children from the Yazidi community we were told Monday January 18, 2016. Moreover the terror group has committed atrocities in Iraq that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Isis has held large swaths of Iraqi territory since it rampaged across the border from Syria in a lightning offensive in the summer of 2014, conquering much of Anbar province and the plains of Nineveh as well as the city of Mosul. In recent months the group has faced setbacks, losing the cities of Ramadi and Sinjar, the homeland of the Yazidis, who are considered by the militants to be infidels whose death or enslavement is divinely sanctioned. But pro-government forces face an uphill struggle in evicting Isis from Mosul, the largest population centre under the militants’ control, which remains the crown jewel of their self-proclaimed caliphate. The fighting has fuelled large-scale displacement and civilian deaths as well as sectarian bloodletting that threatens Iraq’s existence as a state once the crisis has ended.

Iraq witnessed a sharp increase in civilian deaths following the fall of large swaths of territory to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014. Now despite a string of recent battlefield losses for IS, civilians in Iraq continue to die at a "staggering" rate. At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between the start of 2014 and October 31 of last year we were told Tuesday January 19, 2016. In just one six-month period between May and October last year, more than 10,000 civilians were killed. The numbers are nowhere near the death tolls recorded during Iraq's bloody civil war. In 2006 alone more than 34,000 civilians were killed.

The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has completely destroyed the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, the St. Elijah’s Church, which is 1,400-years-old we were told on Wednesday January 20, 2016. The monastery, which was used for U.S. troops during the Iraq War, was partially restored before it was destroyed and was built out of stone and mortar, housing 26 rooms including a sanctuary and a chapel.

Western-backed Kurdish forces fighting jihadists in Iraq have destroyed thousands of homes in an apparent bid to uproot Arab communities, actions that may constitute war crimes we were told Wednesday January 20, 2016. The destruction took place in areas of northern Iraq recaptured from the Islamic State group, which overran swathes of the country in 2014. The United States has carried out air strikes in support of forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region since August 2014 and other countries have also backed them with air support, training and weapons. Kurdish forces "appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities. Destruction of homes and property theft have occurred frequently during the war against IS, angering residents whose support security forces need to hold recaptured areas, and sowing the seeds of future conflict.

Iraqi forces have found more than 40 bodies, including those of women and children, in a mass grave in the city of Ramadi west of Baghdad, which they recently retook from Islamic State militants we were told Tuesday January 26, 2016.

Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan said the grave in central Ramadi contained the bodies of civilians as well as police. Video footage from the site shows local security forces and a small forensics team wearing face masks and digging with shovels. Similar mass graves have been found in other areas liberated from the IS group in Syria and Iraq. The extremist group has boasted of massacring Shiites and other opponents, often releasing gruesome videos and pictures of the killings. ---

Iraq claimed Wednesday January 27, 2016, that its forces repelled twin Islamic State (ISIS) offensives on the outskirts of Ramadi, killing 35 militants and destroying several car bombs. ISIS launched an assault against an Iraqi army building with 10 vehicles rigged with explosives in the area of Sarsar, northern Ramadi. The assault was repulsed.

On Thursday January 28, 2016, Iraqi forces have found more than 40 bodies, including those of women and children, in a mass grave in the city of Ramadi. The grave in central Ramadi contained the bodies of civilians as well as police. Similar mass graves have been found in other areas liberated from the ISIS group in Syria and Iraq. The extremist group has boasted of massacring Shiites and other opponents, often releasing gruesome videos and pictures of the killings.

Iraq said on Sunday January 31, 2016, that the Baiji refinery –the country’s largest- has been subjected to looting and warned over potential sabotage. Devices and equipment and other materials have been stolen at the Baiji refinery. Iraqi "security forces have begun legal measures to prevent the theft that has sabotaged the operating of the refinery. The refinery has not been restarted since the town was reclaimed from the Islamic State (ISIS) group in October because "there are still security forces inside the refinery.

Two self-declared governors, known as “walis” in Arabic, of Daesh Takfiri terrorist group have been killed in separate incidents. We were told on Sunday January 31, 2016, that Mohammad al-Vaziri, the self-proclaimed governor of the northern Iraqi province of Kirkuk, was killed in a joint aerial operation by the Iraqi Air Force and the US-led coalition fighting Daesh. Over 30 other members of Daesh were also killed in the raid. Another Daesh ‘governor,’ known as Abu Hamzah, was killed along with five other terrorists during infighting in the western province of Anbar. In another development, Iraqi military forces and volunteer fighters destroyed Daesh hideouts in the central city of Samarra in Salahuddin Province. Also on Sunday, at least three Daesh snipers were killed by Iraqi security forces in Anbar. Also Iraqi soldiers managed to liberate the Abu Risha district in Anbar’s provincial capital of Ramadi, and kill dozens of Daesh terrorists.

The United Nations says violence has claimed the lives of 849 Iraqis in January 2016, down slightly from 980 the previous month. 490 of those killed in January were civilians -a number that included the federal police, civil defines forces and personal security details- while the rest were security forces, including Kurdish peshmerga and paramilitary troops. 1,157 civilians were wounded in January.

Iraq Monday February 1, 2016:

• Warplanes from the US-led coalition and Iraqi jets carried out airstrikes against ISIS militants in Makhmour and Anbar, killing dozens of militants and destroying several of their positions. 24 ISIS militants have been killed.
• Meanwhile, 13 ISIS militants, including five leaders, were killed after Iraqi fighter jets shelled a military base belonging to the group in the area of Sharkat in western Anbar province. An area commander, a person in charge of suicide bombers and a media officer were among the victims.
• Following the deadly air raids, ISIS launched random arrests of civilians in the area.

 

Iraq Wednesday February 3, 2016:

• The Islamic State (ISIS) has shelled Anbar provincial capital Ramadi and killed 13 Iraqi soldiers.
• In the village of Abu Risha north of Ramadi ISIS artillery killed four soldiers.
• In the eastern suburb of Shujirayah nine soldiers from the Iraqi Army's 8th Division were killed by shelling when they attempted to force some 300 ISIS members from the area. That area is believed to be the last foothold ISIS retains in the city.
• Another attack on Tuesday killed 18 Iraqi soldiers in a suicide car bomb attack north of Ramadi.

 

Sunni Muslim Arab fighters backed by Kurdish forces and U.S.-led air strikes retook a village in northern Iraq on Wednesday February 3, 2016. The offensive in the Makhmour district south of Erbil resulted in the recapture of Kudila, part of a series of planned operations to clear Islamic State from the area.

On Thursday February 4, 2016, we were told that Iraq has begun building a wall and a trench around Baghdad in a bid to prevent militant attacks and reduce the large number of checkpoints inside the city. Work began this week on a 100km stretch of the wall and trench on the northern and northwestern approaches of the capital. The wall will be three metres high and partially made up of concrete barriers already in use across much of the capital.

Three members of Britain's Special Forces were injured in fighting with Islamic State gunmen in Iraq we were told on Saturday February 6, 2016. The injured men were from the SAS and SBS units and were taking part in a 25-strong allied Special Forces patrol in northern Iraq when they came under fire by 30 Islamic State fighters in armoured Humvees stolen from the Iraqi army. The covert patrol by British, German and U.S. Special Forces aimed to identify Islamic State positions outside Mosul and spot weak areas in the militant group's defences. The Islamic State fighters involved in the incident were all killed as the Special Forces fought back with assault weapons and called in an air strike. The three men hit by shrapnel were treated on the ground before being airlifted out by helicopter. ---

Iraq said on February 9, 2016, that its forces have completely retaken areas surrounding Ramadi from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and reopened the road linking the city to Baghdad. Iraq announced in late December the recapture of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad, but daily fighting with ISIL jihadists continued for over a month on the city's eastern outskirts. Iraqi forces liberated areas east of Ramadi including Sichariya, Juwaiba and Husaiba. With the latest advances, Ramadi and all its surrounding areas have been retaken from ISIL.
  
ISIL overran Ramadi in May 2015 in an assault spearheaded by a wave of car and truck bombs, a major blow to Iraqi forces, which had been regaining ground from the jihadists in other provinces. But the capture of Ramadi was the last major advance by jihadists in Iraq, and Baghdad's forces slowly tightened the noose around it in the following months before moving into the city itself. ISIL still holds Fallujah, east of Ramadi, and Mosul, Iraq's second city that is located in the north.

Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, in the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Laboratory tests have come back positive for the sulphur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.  The chemical weapons have been used by Islamic State fighters we were told Sunday February 14, 2016.

Around 5,700 structures in Ramadi and its outskirts have incurred some level of damage since mid-2014, and almost 2,000 buildings have been destroyed we were told Monday February 15, 2016. More than 3,200 structures in the city centre have been affected, with 1,165 destroyed. Those figures nearly double when outlying areas are included.

A military helicopter of the Mi-17 type crashed south of Baghdad on Tuesday February 16, 2016, because of a technical problem, killing its crew of nine, two of them officers. The Soviet-designed helicopter, which is intended for transport but can also be equipped with weapons, was en route from Iraq's main southern city of Basra to the city of Kut, southeast of Baghdad.

A local U.N. staffer in Iraq was killed after he was abducted from the eastern province of Diyala last April we were told on Tuesday February 16, 2016. Amer al-Kaissy, the Diyala representative for the U.N. mission, was found dead in November near the city of Baquba with a gunshot wound suggesting he had been executed. He was buried a month ago but his body was only identified on Monday after friends looked at photographs.

A desperate hunt for “highly dangerous” radioactive material is on in Iraq, where officials fear it could be used to make a "dirty bomb" if in the hands of ISIS. The material, stored in a case the size of a laptop, disappeared from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra in November 2015. It was in the possession of Houston-based oil industry contractor Weatherford. The stolen material is a highly dangerous radioactive source of Ir-192 with highly radioactive activity belonging to SGS from a depot overseen by Weatherford in the Rafidhia area of Basra province. ---

Iraq has sentenced forty members of Islamic State (ISIS) in its captivity to death on Thursday February 18, 2016. They were charged with mass-murdering hundreds of Iraqi cadets at Camp Speicher in Tikrit back in June 2014. Many of these suspects were arrested by Iraqi authorities after they pushed ISIS from Tikrit in early 2015. Previously 24 were convicted and executed last year. There are a total of 600 individuals suspected of having a hand in that atrocity. On that occasion ISIS lined up 1,700, mostly Shiite members of the Iraqi military, and systematically murdered them. Burying many in mass graves and dumping others in the Tigris River.

An Iraqi helicopter was shot down in the area of Amriyat al-Fallujah west of Baghdad Wednesday night February 17, 2016, killing two Kurdish pilots. The Bell helicopter was shot down by a heavy machine gun killing two Kurdish pilots named Captain Nahro Ahmed and Lieutenant Umed Jawhar. However the helicopter went down in a secured area where only Shiite militias of Hashd al-Shaabi exist.

Warplanes from the US-led coalition carried out 20 airstrikes Saturday night February 20, 2016, against Islamic State positions and shelters inside the group's stronghold of Mosul. Five different locations in Mosul were targeted by the warplanes including Mosul railway line, the presidential palace, Wadi Agibian neighbourhood as well as two bomb manufacturing facilities. The Iraqi army has warned Mosul residents to avoid ISIS shelters and positions as warplanes will continue shelling the areas. Two separate Iraqi army brigades are based in the town of Makhmour, southeast of Mosul, as part of the preparations underway for the offensive.

Military clashes between Islamic State and Sunni tribesmen in Fallujah are ongoing since Friday February 19, 2016. Iraqi Sunni tribesmen and ISIS jihadists engaged in deadly clashes Friday in and near Fallujah in Anbar, Iraq’s largest province.

At least seven Islamic State (ISIS) militants have been captured by the Peshmerga on the western Kirkuk front over the last two weeks we were told Monday February 22, 2016.

At least 15 people have been killed in a so-called "double tap" bombing at a Shia mosque in Baghdad. Scores of people were wounded in the blasts, thought to have been the work of two suicide bombers. The first assailant detonated his vest inside the mosque and the second blew himself up when security forces gathered at the site. The "double tap" is a technique used to maximise casualties, where a second device is detonated at the site as people flee or emergency services arrive. At least three of the victims were members of the security forces.

The Daesh Takfiri militant group has executed a dozen of its own members in Iraq’s western province of Anbar on charges of fleeing the battlefield. Daesh terrorists killed members of the terrorist outfit by firing squad in the village of al-Hadar on Saturday February 27, 2016. The slain militants were accused of escaping clashes with Iraqi government forces in the province. On January 26, Daesh terrorists had killed four militant commanders along with three other members of the terrorist group by firing squad in Hawijah district. The slain extremists were accused of fleeing the clashes with government forces in the predominantly Sunni village of Tal Kusaiba. The executions came only two days after Daesh killed three of its own commanders in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh after the militants sought to break away from the terrorist outfit and escape the city of Mosul.

Iraq Saturday February 27, 2016:

• At least seven people have lost their lives and nearly three dozen others sustained injuries in a spate of bomb attacks in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
• A civilian was killed and four others were injured when a roadside bomb exploded in Sheikh Omar neighbourhood of central Baghdad.
• Two civilians also died and nine others were injured when an improvised explosive device went off near an outdoor market in the town of Abu Ghraib.
• One civilian lost his life and seven others suffered injuries when a bomb attack struck a commercial district in the city of Bismayah.
• A bomb exploded near a popular café in the al-Eskan neighbourhood of western Baghdad, leaving one person killed and six others injured.
• In the capital’s northern neighbourhood of Sha’ab, a civilian was killed and eight others injured in a bomb explosion in the vicinity of a commercial district.

 

Iraqi security forces repelled an attack by Islamic State militants on Abu Ghraib on Sunday February 28, 2016. Three suicide car bombers struck a security force barracks as gunmen opened fire. At least eight government and paramilitary forces were killed and 22 wounded.

A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State (ISIS) killed 70 people in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad on Sunday February 28, 2016, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts. The suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.

At least 34 have been killed and more than 40 others injured in a bomb attack northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. We were told on Monday March 1, 2016, that the deadly attack took place in the town of Muqdadiyah in the Diyala Province. 42 other people were injured in the attack which targeted a funeral ceremony in Muqdadiyah. The attacker hit a gathering of people inside a mosque in Bereshteh district, located east of Muqdadiyah and 40 kilometres northeast of the provincial capital of Baqubah.

The top commander of the Iraqi army’s Jazira operations known as Brigadier Ali Aboud was killed in an Islamic State (ISIS) suicide attack in the town of Haditha in western Anbar province we were told Tuesday March 1, 2016. The attack resulted in the death of several Iraqi soldiers and officers.

On Tuesday March 1, 2016, we were told that Iraq's military and volunteer fighters have liberated a key district from the grip of the Daesh Takfiri terrorists north of the country; the forces recaptured the Dhaba’e district south of the city of Tikrit. At least six terrorists were slain during the operation.

Iraq Tuesday March 1, 2016:

• Iraqi forces continued offensives against the positions of Daesh north and west of Baghdad.
• At least 45 Daesh terrorists were killed in two separate operations near the city of Fallujah, located in the western province of Anbar.
• There were fatalities on the part of Daesh as a result of infighting between members of the group in Northern Province of Kirkuk. Over a dozen militants were killed in infighting in the Abbasi region near the city of Hawija.
• On Monday, a senior member of the Iraqi military was killed as four assailants dressed in military uniforms attacked an army headquarters in western Iraq. Staff Brigadier General Ali Aboud and seven others died in the attack.
• The militants also suffered heavy losses in the nearby area of Khat al-Layn. ---

The United Nations reported on Tuesday March 1, 2016, that 670 Iraqis were killed and 1,290 others were wounded in February due to acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict. 410 civilians and 260 security force members were killed during the month. Another 1,050 civilians and 240 security force members were injured. February’s casualty numbers were down from the previous month (849 killed and 1,450 injured), however the U.N. noted the “viciousness of some of the attacks” in February, which have targeted civilian locations, including mosques, markets and a funeral.

Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and at least 23 others wounded in an Islamic State (ISIS) attacked on their base near Makhmour Thursday morning March 3, 2016. Troops of the 15th division of the Iraqi army were the target of the ISIS rocket attack. Katyusha rockets were use in the attack.

On Sunday March 6, 2016, a suicide bomber has rammed an explosives-laden fuel truck into a security checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing dozens of people and wounding many more. Crowds gathered at the scene, picking through rubble and twisted car parts in search of survivors. Smoke rose from smouldering vehicles that had been lined up at the main checkpoint at the northern entrance to the city of Hillah. The blast has completely destroyed the checkpoint and its buildings. More than 100 cars have been damaged. Among the estimated 47 dead were 39 civilians, while the rest were members of the security forces. The attacker struck shortly after noon local time when the checkpoint was crowded with dozens of cars. Up to 65 people were wounded.

Iraq Sunday March 6, 2016:

• Scores of people have been killed in a series of terror attacks across Iraq as violence continues unabated.
• A bombing hit a military base in an area of Abu Ghraib killing two Iraqi soldiers and injuring five.
• An explosion in the town of Saab al-Bour left two people dead.

 

US Special Forces captured a top chemical weapons engineer working for Islamic State during a raid last month in northern Iraq we were told on Wednesday March 9, 2016, dealing a blow to the militants’ pursuit of “weapons of mass destruction”. Sleiman Daoud al-Afari was snatched close to a month ago in the town of Badoosh, north-west of the Isis stronghold of Mosul. He was an industrial engineer in former dictator Saddam Hussein’s military and had been a member of Isis throughout all its earlier incarnations.

More than 40 people suffered partial choking and skin irritation in northern Iraq on Tuesday March 8, 2016, when Isis fired mortar shells and Katyusha rockets filled with “poisonous substances” into their village.

A U.S. military aircraft with four crew members crashed in Iraq on Saturday March 5, 2016, but none were injured and initial reports ruled out hostile action.

Daesh Takfiri militants have executed six women in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh. Four Izadi women, who were held as slaves by Daesh, were killed while trying to escape from al-Hadar district of the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday March 8, 2016. Daesh terrorists killed two other women from Mosul, who were working at Nineveh police department, for alleged charges of cooperating with Iraqi army forces.

Iraqi security forces killed at least 30 members of the Daesh terrorist group in the provinces of Anbar and Diyala on Wednesday March 9, 2016. 22 Daesh terrorists were killed in an operation in the city of Hadithah in Anbar. Eight more Daesh militants were killed and two others injured after Iraqi forces destroyed a camp belonging to the militants during an anti-terrorist operation near Baqubah, the provincial capital of the eastern province of Diyala. Iraqi security forces also managed to capture a communication station belonging to Daesh terrorists in an area between the central cities of Ramadi and Samarra.

Iraq Wednesday March 9, 2016:

• A series of bomb blasts have rocked various areas across Iraq, leaving at least 15 people dead and a number of others injured.
• A bomb went off near a brick factory in Nahrawan district in the east of the capital, Baghdad, killing two people and injuring six others.
• Another bomb blast in al-Eskan neighbourhood of western Baghdad left one dead and seven others injured.
• Another blast hit the industrial area of Sheikh Omar in central Baghdad, killing three people and injuring eight
• At least eight dead bodies and 21 injured people arrived at al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad following Wednesday's blasts. Two security forces were among the dead while nine of the injured were reported in critical condition.

 

At least 40 people sustained injuries when the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group used “poisonous substances” during the shelling of a village in Iraq’s northern province of Kirkuk. A total of 24 chemical-laden mortar shells and Katyusha rockets was launched against the mainly Shia Turkmen village of Taza on Tuesday March 8, 2016. None of the villagers were killed in the attack, but the wounded, suffering from partial chocking and skin irritation, were taken to hospitals in Kirkuk. Earlier on Tuesday, Daesh also launched a barrage of 42 Katyusha rockets against the village from Bashir area and inflicted damage to some houses. ---

The convoy of the leader of one of Iraq's main Shi'ite militias, Aws al-Khafaji, came under attack and two of his guards were wounded on Friday March 11, 2016. An explosive device blew up as his convoy was passing in the region of Arab Jubour, just south of Baghdad. Khafaji is the commander of Abul Fadhl al-Abbas Forces, one of the groups fighting Islamic State militants.

Islamic State fighters have launched two chemical attacks near the city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, killing a three-year-old girl and wounding up to 600 people. The attack took place early on Saturday March 12, 2016, in the small town of Taza, which was also struck by a barrage of rockets carrying chemicals three days earlier.

Russia has helped the Kurdistan Region with arms against the Islamic State (ISIS) following a meeting between the Kurdish president and Russia’s ambassador to Iraq on Sunday March 13, 2016. More Russian help has been promised.

We were told on Monday March 14, 2016, that foreign members of the Islamic State (ISIS) have withdrawn from the town of Rutbah in western Ramadi, but that the town is still under the group’s control. So far, the Iraqi forces have not moved towards Rutbah and the town is under ISIS control.

Islamic State fighters retreated from several western Iraqi towns and towards the Syrian border on Sunday March 13, 2016 as security forces worked their way up the Euphrates Valley. The jihadist organisation's leadership ordered its fighters out of Hit, Kubaysa and Rutba. Iraqi government forces have yet to enter Hit and it was not known whether any holdout IS fighters remained.

An Iraqi Air Force Cessna 208 Caravan plane crashed on Wednesday March 16, 2016, northwest of the oil city of Kirkuk, and its two pilots and a crew member were reported missing. The single turbo-propeller plane was on a “reconnaissance and combat mission” over territory held by DAESH terrorist group in northern Iraq.

Iraqi military and allied fighters have managed to recapture a key district from Daesh Takfiri militants in the Anbar Province west of the country. The allied forces on Thursday March 17, 2016, seized al-Muhammadi neighbourhood in the city of Hit. The recapture is seen as a prelude to the full liberation of Hit as Iraqi security forces continue to close in on Daesh militants holed up in the city. Thousands of civilians have been fleeing Hit, located 145 kilometres west of the capital Baghdad along the Euphrates. The city fell to Daesh in 2014.

At least 15 local councils (mukhtars) have been killed by armed groups in Iraq’s Diyala province and some 250 other officials left their positions in recent months after receiving death threats from unidentified gunmen. Most neighbourhoods in Iraqi cities and villages have chosen officials who function as neighbourhood heads and help the public in various daily matters including resolving disputes and tensions between families. They have been targeted repeatedly and that has led hundreds of them to leave their posts. The attack on local mukhtars is a deliberate political action by the armed groups to silence opposition officials in areas with mixed ethnic populations.

A US marine has been killed Friday March 18, 2016, and several other American servicemen injured by rocket fire outside the city of Mosul. Enemy forces fired two rockets into a base where US troops are training the Iraqi military. It is the second time an American soldier has been killed in combat in Iraq since US forces re-entered the country in late 2014. The last US serviceman was killed by enemy small-arms fire in an October raid to free about 70 hostages held by IS in northern Iraq.

Two more children have died of wounds sustained in a suspected jihadist chemical attack last week in Iraq we were told Friday March 18, 2016, raising the death toll to three. A 10-year-old girl died in Taza, a town south of Kirkuk that was targeted by rockets armed with suspected mustard agent. A six-month-old baby also died on Thursday of complications resulting from the attack while a three-year-old girl had died shortly after the March 9 attack. The number of people treated after complaining of burns, rashes and respiratory problems has risen to 1,500. A total of 25,000 people had left their homes in and around Taza, fearing another attack from the neighbouring village of Bashir, still controlled by the ISIS jihadist group, he said.

A British suicide bomber has carried out an attack on Iraqi forces in Anbar province. A militant named as "Abu Musa al-Britani" used a car bomb to target a convoy of Iraqi army and aligned Sunni forces killing nearly 30. Iraqi military disputed the claims, saying it believed only the bomber died in the attack. The name "Abu-Musa al-Britani" -the kind of name taken by a militant when they go to fight- suggests that the man was British.

For the second time in three days, the first U.S. military firebase in Iraq has come under attack from ISIS. The base, known as Firebase Bell, came under small arms fire from a group of about 10 ISIS fighters who also attacked a nearby U.S./Iraqi installation at Makhmur in northern Iraq. No U.S. personnel were wounded, and at least two ISIS fighters were killed. The remaining attackers ran away. A U.S. Marine stationed at Firebase Bell was killed by an ISIS Katyusha rocket attack on Saturday. Eight U.S. troops were also wounded in the attack. ---

Islamic State (IS) militants bombarded a village in the Gwer sub-district, southwest of Erbil, on Tuesday March 22, 2016, wounding a number of people in the area. Militants attacked the village of Gamesh Tapa with mortar fire, four of which landed inside the village, injuring five civilian residents who were transported to a hospital in the Kurdistan Region’s capital city. The attack was on the Peshmerga, but the mortars fell in the village. Peshmerga responded to the attack hitting IS bases, then Coalition warplanes arrived and bombarded their bases.

At least 29 people have been killed in a suicide attack in a crowded park in the Iraqi city of Iskandariya Thursday March 24, 2016. The bomber detonated the explosives at the end of a football match, wounding more than 60 others.

Kurdish groups in Iraq recently freed 52 women and children held captive by Islamic State (IS) militants. Forces from the Sinjar Resistance Units (YPS) and Protection Force of Sinjar rescued 42 Yazidi children and 10 women in an operation in a village south of Sinjar. The Islamic State militants arrested us in Tal Azeer village and from there they took them to Tal Afar. They were forced to marry militants. They stayed there for nine months and then they were taken to Syria where they stayed 11 months. The women accused the Peshmerga of failing to defend them.

Suicide attackers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have stormed one of the biggest army bases in Iraq and killed at least 18 soldiers. All 10 ISIL fighters who entered the Ain al-Assad military base in Anbar province on Saturday March 27, 2016 were killed. Eight of them were killed by soldiers, and that two had managed to blow themselves up.

The death toll from a suicide bombing at a soccer stadium that was claimed by the Islamic State has climbed to 41, with another 105 people wounded we were told Saturday March 27, 2016. Friday’s bombing took place during a match in a small stadium in the city of Iskanderiyah.

Turkish Air Force jets on Saturday March 27, 2016, joined coalition forces in attacking Islamic State targets in northern Iraq. Although Turkish jets have struck IS positions in Syria in the past, the attack marks Turkey's first aerial assault on the group in northern Iraq. Turkey has deployed a number of troops in northern Iraq to help train Iraqi militia who are fighting the IS. ---

The Islamic State published a video showing a Kurdish militant of the group beheading a Peshmerga hostage before a crowd in Mosul, and threatening to kill two other Peshmerga prisoners who kneel before him. The video was released as ISIS faces an Iraqi Army offensive on villages in Makhmour that is seen as a first step of a war to liberate Mosul, the ISIS stronghold

Islamic State (IS) leader Abu al-Haijaa al-Tunusi (the Tunisian) was killed on Wednesday night (March 30, 2016) in an international coalition drone strike on the outskirts of Raqqa. Abu Haijaa was blown to pieces when a car carrying the IS leader was hit in the drone strike. Another person, who was possibly the driver, was killed in the drone strike as well.

At least three Kurdish policemen were killed and several others wounded in a car bomb in the town of Makhmour, south of the Kurdistan Region capital, Erbill on Thursday March 31, 2016. The car bomb went off in front of the towns police station.

The Islamic State’s (ISIS) chief expert on missiles and mortars has been killed in an Iraqi air raid we were told Saturday April 2, 2016. Abdulaziz Jassim Mohamed Hassan, also known as Jassim Khadija, was killed in an air raid in the Gyarah region of Mosul province. Over the past month coalition air strikes had killed “three senior leaders” of the terrorist group and the US forces were hunting for ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

During their advance to liberate and clear the town of Hit from the (IS) organization, security forces discovered a large prison. The Iraqi forces freed a large number of prisoners from an underground Islamic State group jail during a battle to retake a western town from the jihadists we were told Saturday April 2, 2016. The prison was underground and held 1,500 people, who were freed by security forces.

The majority of around 2,838 European fighters in Iraq and Syria come from just four countries: Belgium, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, with Belgium having the highest per-capita. Up to 23 percent of the foreign fighters from the EU are converts to Islam and 17 percent are women. Foreign fighters number between 3,922 and 4,294, out of which 30 percent have returned to their home countries and 14 percent are confirmed dead. There is no clear-cut profile of a European foreign fighter. Data indicates that a majority originate from metropolitan areas, with many coming from the same neighbourhoods. The radicalization process of foreign fighters is reported to be short and often involves circles of friends radicalizing as a group and deciding to leave jointly for Syria and Iraq.

The airstrikes in Iraq and Syria have killed the IS militant believed responsible for an attack on U.S. troops in northern Iraq last month that left a Marine dead we were told Sunday April 3, 2015. Jasim Khadijah, a former Iraqi officer not considered a high-value target, was killed by a drone strike overnight in northern Iraq. He was a rocket expert who controlled these attacks. That attack killed Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and wounded eight others, all part of a company-sized detachment of less than 200 troops. They provide force protection fire to Iraqi army troops, who are making slow progress in a campaign to clear areas around Mosul. Cardin's was the second combat death of an American service member in Iraq since the start of the campaign to fight the militant group in 2014. Five other Islamic State fighters were killed in the air strike.

Iraq Sunday April 3, 2016:

• At least 25 people have been killed and dozens wounded in bomb attacks across Iraq.
• As many as 10 suicide bombers carried out the attacks, which targeted members of the security forces and allied Shia Muslim militias.
• The Islamic State (IS) group said it was behind some of the attacks.
• In the deadliest attack, at least 14 people were killed when a bomber blew himself up in a restaurant. The eatery was popular with members of the Popular Mobilisation, a predominantly Shia militia which has taken a lead role in the fight against IS.
• Other attacks hit the southern city of Basra, Baghdad and Mashada.
• The army said it had made progress in an offensive to recapture the western city of Hit, which has been under IS control for the last 18 months. It had taken the northern edge of Hit, but was being slowed down by the presence of hundreds of roadside bombs planted by IS.

 

Iraq Monday April 4, 2016:

• At least 29 Islamic State (ISIS) militants were killed in air raids against the group's positions in remote western parts of Iraq's Anbar province.
• Using intelligence and coordinating with [Iraq's] joint operation command Iraqi jets afflicted major blows to two ISIS positions in the areas of Qaim and Rawah.
• In the first strike, a meeting of the ISIS leaders in Qaim area was targeted, killing 16 militants and officials.
• An ex-Baathist military official named "Abu Ahmed Janoubi who escaped the Abu Ghraib prison was among the slain militants, as were Abu Sulaiman Chechen, head of the Islamic State's Khurasan regiment and Sheikh Jamal Turki, one of those escaped Abu Graib prison in the past.
• In the second ISIS position the Iraqi air force targeted a training camp, killing 13 militants and wounding 12 others.
• Although the Iraqi army backed by US aircraft retook a vast majority of the provincial capital Ramadi from ISIS seven months after it fell to the ISIS there are still areas in the westernmost parts of Anbar province, namely Qaim, where the group is still present. 

 

More than 18 Islamic State (ISIS) militants were killed on Thursday April 7, 2016, in clashes with the Iraqi army in Tirkit city, Salahadin Province. In the clashes, the Iraqi Federal policemen were able to detonate two improvised ISIS vehicles rigged with explosives. ISIS militants are reportedly retreating in several areas and have moved their forces back to their stronghold of Mosul and to towns they still control in Salahaddin province. Iraqi Security Forces entered the town of Hit on Wednesday and recaptured several areas. ISIS mines however have slowed down their advance. ---

The coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant recently killed two foreign fighters in Iraq, while local partners continue the fight to reclaim ground in Iraq and Syria. The two foreign fighters were killed on the same day in separate strikes in Iraq. Abu Zubary al-Bosni was killed near Bajar; he was a Swedish national of Bosnian descent. Khalid Osman Timayare, ISIL's deputy emir of the Anwar al-Awlaki Brigade, was killed in a strike near Ar Rayhaniyah. He was a Swedish-born foreign fighter. Both of these strikes deprive ISIL of motivated foreign fighters who had displayed leadership aptitude. 

As many as 23 terrorists with the Takfiri Daesh terror group have been killed in different military operations across Iraq. On Saturday April 9, 2016, US aircrafts targeted the group in the western province of Anbar, killing 17 of the militants. They also destroyed a rocket launch platform belonging to the group.

Iraqi forces and volunteer fighters had pushed back the terrorists from an area within the Alas oil field north of the provincial capital Tikrit. The counteroffensive killed six Daesh members, inflicted injury on a number of security forces and destroyed two vehicles belonging to the militants.

Nearly 242,000 people, civilians and combatants, have been killed since March 2003 after the US-led invasion of the country led to the downfall of former ruler Saddam Hussein. 2006 and 2007 were the bloodiest years in the country’s post-Saddam era as some 55,000 people were killed, mostly civilians in suicide and retaliatory bombings. The death toll declined in 2012 to around 4600 after US troops withdrew from Iraq but with the advance of ISIS in the country in 2013 once again the number of casualties reached 9700 deaths in December 2014. Other studies, however, have put the death toll considerably higher. An academic study published in 2013 argued that nearly half a million people had died from war-related causes in Iraq since 2003.  

On Wednesday April 13, 2016, we were told that the IS has destroyed a 2,000-year-old gate near the Iraqi city of Mosul. The structure is known as the Gate of God, and used to guard the ancient Assyrian city Nineveh. The terrorists demolished the 2,000-year-old gate using military equipment.

Iraq Sunday April 17, 2016:

• 16 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in clashes and air strikes in Anbar province.
• The security forces and allied Sunni paramilitary tribal units clashed with IS militants who tried to attack a military base at Jeraishi area north of Ramadi, leaving six IS militants killed, including two suicide bombers.
• Separately, the army artillery shelled IS positions in Jubba area near the town of al-Baghdadi killing four IS operatives.
• Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber tried to strike a position of the security forces in Khasfa area near the town of Haditha but a U.S.-led coalition warplane destroyed the car bomb and killed the suicide bomber before reaching the troops' defensive line.
• Also an Iraqi aircraft bombarded a house said to be used by IS militants in Zuwiya area near Fallujah killing five militants and wounding 12 others.
• Three days ago, the troops raised the Iraqi flag in the town of Heet after 14 days of fierce clashes with the extremist militants.

 

A senior Islamic State member and two of his aides were killed south of Mosul on Monday April 18, 2016, in a helicopter raid by U.S. Special Forces and Kurdish counter-terrorism forces. The killed man was Suleiman Abd Shabib al-Jabouri, also known as Abu Saif; he was a member of the militant group's war council. A day earlier troops from a U.S.-led coalition landed a helicopter north of Mosul and seized at least one Islamic State member from a vehicle.

The Turkish army killed 32 suspected fighters from the Islamic State group in northern Iraq on Tuesday April 19, 2016, following an attack on one of its tanks. Turkish troops destroyed a building used by IS, killing 10 jihadists, and then killed another 22 who tried to flee the scene. The incident occurred after militants fired an anti-tank missile at one of its tanks near the Bashiqa military camp not far from the city of Mosul. The tank crew was unhurt and had fired back in response, shelling the building from which the fire came and causing it to collapse, killing 10 jihadists. They also fired at a group of people fleeing the scene in seven cars and four motorcycles, killing 22 of them.

A suicide attack claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least eight people at a Shiite mosque on the southwestern edge of Baghdad on Friday April 22, 2016. The blast, which occurred shortly after Friday prayers, also wounded at least 33 people. Gunmen wearing military uniforms with patches identifying them as members of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia surrounded the site of the bombing and prevented media from taking photographs or video.

Finland’s government will send 50 more specialist troops to the Kurdistan Region to train Peshmerga forces for the fight against Islamic State (IS) militants. The deployment will double the number of Finnish specialist personnel in northern Iraq to 100. Trainings will focus on reinforcing Peshmerga on the frontlines and close-combat fighting, as well as reconnaissance and survival skills. Troops will also provide “advisory support” to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) security forces at brigade and battalion levels we were told Thursday April 21, 2016. Finland is one of 60 countries taking part in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State.

An Islamic State (ISIS) ‘police commander’ in Iraq’s Nineveh province was killed in a wave of airstrikes by US-led coalition forces in the city of Tal Afar west of Mosul
We were told Saturday April 23, 2016. On Friday evening, the US coalition launched air raids on the Sara district in the centre of Tal Afar, which led to the death of Abdulhadi Qrdy, known as the ISIS Nineveh police commander.

Two Britons and an Irishman have been freed in Iraq after being held on their way home from fighting against Islamic State (IS. Jac Holmes from Bournemouth, Joe Ackerman from Halifax and Irish citizen Joshua Molloy had been detained in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. The three men were held for more than a week in a prison in the Kurdish city, Erbil.

Iraq Sunday April 24, 2016:

• Suicide attacks targeting security forces in two Baghdad suburbs have killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens.
• A suicide car bomb struck a checkpoint in the eastern suburb of Hussainiyah late Saturday, killing six civilians and four soldiers. Another 28 people were wounded in the attack. The Islamic State group claimed the attack.
• A suicide car bomb struck a passing military convoy at around the same time in the southern suburb of Arab Jabour, killing four soldiers and wounding eight others.
• Clashes between Kurdish and Shi'ite Turkmen paramilitary forces in northern Iraq killed at least 12 fighters and cut off a key road between Baghdad and the oil city of Kirkuk for most of Sunday before community leaders reached a ceasefire agreement.
• Violence in Tuz Khurmatu has become a near monthly occurrence between the armed groups.
• A small explosion just before midnight near the local headquarters of two rival political parties sparked armed exchanges between the communities that spread to most neighbourhoods and continued into Sunday afternoon.
• Fighters launched mortars into densely populated areas and fired rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns at the opposing positions. Shops were closed and streets deserted as plumes of black smoke rose into the sky and bursts of small arms fire pierced the air. At least three buildings were burnt down.
• Kurdish fighters in al-Jumhouri neighbourhood tore down a Shi'ite flag from a militia commander's house and set the building on fire.
• Separately, a military vehicle was engulfed in flames on a main road.
• Seven Shi'ite fighters and five members of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces, including two senior commanders, were killed. Twenty-six fighters and at least two civilians, including a child, were also wounded. ---

A suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden car Monday April 25, 2016, in a commercial area in Baghdad, killing at least 12 civilians. The attack in the capital's eastern Shiite-dominated New Baghdad neighbourhood also wounded at least 38 other people. The attack bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group.

Artillery fire killed a civilian and wounded four on Monday April 25, 2016, despite a ceasefire. Fighting broke out at the weekend in Tuz Khurmatu between the autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga forces and Turkmen members of the Hashed al-Shaabi militia umbrella organisation for the second time in six months.

Up to $800 million of the Islamic State’s cash reserves has been destroyed. We were told Tuesday April 26, 2016, that around 20 airstrikes had been conducted targeting cash stockpiles held by the group. In one incident, an estimated $150 million was destroyed in an airstrike on a house in Mosul.

The Iraqi Army, with the help of US-led coalition warplanes, recaptured Mahana village in Makhmour on Wednesday April 27, 2016. It also resumed offensives against Islamic State militants on the Makhmour front in an operation that had been on hold for weeks. Clearing ISIS from villages surrounding Mosul is the first stage of the liberation of that city.

Senior Kurdish and Shi'ite Muslim leaders agreed on Wednesday April 27, 2016, to withdraw their forces from a northern Iraqi town in a bid to end violence that has killed more than 10 people in recent days. The clashes in Tuz Khurmato marked the latest violence in the town since Islamic State militants were driven back in 2014 by Kurdish peshmerga and Shi'ite militia. Under the deal, local police would take control of Tuz Khurmato -home to Kurds, Shi'ite Turkmen and Sunni Arabs. The Peshmerga and Shi'ite militias would pull out once the police forces achieved a balance between the town's various ethnic and sectarian groups, estimating that would take around one month. In the meantime, Tuz Khurmato will be secured by a unit from each force coordinated through a joint operations room.

Islamic State claimed to have carried out a suicide attack on a police station in the town of Kubaysah, in Anbar province, killing over 50 police officers and soldiers. Four ISIS militants attacked the station; two detonated their explosives and two returned to ISIS headquarters.

Saturday April 30, 2016, at least 24 people were killed and as many as 38 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a busy livestock market in Nahrawan, east of Baghdad. ---

Two car bombs at a parking lot in Samawa city in southern Iraq killed at least 30 people and wounded another 55 on Sunday May 1, 2016. In Baghdad one person was killed and eight wounded by a planted bomb.

A planted bomb exploded at the entrance to Bashir village, killing eight fighters of the Hashd al-Shaabi on Sunday May 1, 2016, hours after the village had been recaptured from the Islamic State (ISIS). ISIS had planted bombs and booby-trapped the village and fired mortars at the Peshmerga in an attempt to slow down their offensive into the town. One of those bombs killed the eight Hashd militiamen. Earlier the Peshmerga forces evacuated the remains of 18 Hashd fighters who had been killed by ISIS militants in one of their earlier failed offensives.

An explosives-laden car detonated on Monday May 2, 2016, in the Iraqi capital, killing at least 18 Shiite pilgrims - and wounded 45 people- who were commemorating the anniversary of the death of a revered imam. Shortly after the explosion, the Sunni extremist Islamic State group, which sees Shiite Muslims as apostates, claimed responsibility for the attack. The car was parked in Baghdad's southwestern Saydiyah neighbourhood and blew up shortly after midday.

Tuesday May 3, 2016, a US navy SEAL was killed near Erbil by Isil militants when they overran Kurdish defences in northern Iraq. The man was the third American to be killed in direct combat since a US-led coalition launched a campaign against the jihadist group in 2014.

Peshmerga forces reported early Tuesday May 3, 2016, that ISIS militants had launched a series of attacks against them in areas north and east of the city of Mosul. Fierce fighting raged between the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Islamic State militants on the northern Iraqi town of Tel Skuf where 400 ISIS fighters were reportedly fighting.

On May 1, 2016, two suicide bombs were detonated in Samawa, southern Iraq, a mainly Shiite area. The blasts have killed at least 32 and injured 75. The first bomb was detonated near a local government building, whilst the other went off at a nearby bus station. The attack took place after a weekend of violent protests in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The protests were said to be inspired by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who called Iraq’s leaders corrupt in a recent speech.

On Saturday May 7, 2016, we were told that an American service member has died as a result of a non-battle related injury in Iraq. Coalition forces have been providing Kurdish and Iraqi forces with training and advising in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northern Iraq.

On Friday May 6, 2016, we were told that more than 50 mass graves have been found in Iraq territory that was once held by the Islamic State. Three of the 50 graves were found on April 19 in the soccer grounds area of Ramadi. ISIS remains a formidable and determined enemy that constantly adjusts its tactics and attack patterns. The most recently discovered graves found in Ramadi in April might contain the remains of up to 40 people.

Iraq Saturday May 7, 2016:

• Four jihadi commanders from the radical group of Islamic State (ISIS) were killed in northwestern Iraq as a result of airstrikes by the US-led coalition’s warplanes and ground operations by the Iraqi army.
• ISIS jihadi commanders Shaker Wahib, Kaddouri Hamid Farraj, Louay al-Kubaisi, and Abu Hajer at-Tounisi were killed by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes and Iraqi army attacks in northwestern Iraq. They were targeted by the Iraqi joint forces on the highway near al-Rutba area in the province of Anbar on the Syrian border.
• The operation also targeted a car parked near the house of Kaddouri Hamid Farraj [an ISIS military commander] beside the cemetery of Mosul and killed him along with several companions.
• Louay al-Kubaisi and Abu Hajer at-Tounisi, also prominent members of ISIS, were killed in American airstrikes in Mosul of Nineveh province.
• Iraqi army forces shelled ISIS strongholds in the northern province of Nineveh, killing the ISIS senior official and the oil minister Wahid as-Sabaawi. As-Sabaawi was killed during bombardment by the Iraqi army’s 15th Artillery Squad on the outskirts of al-Qayyarah area south of Mosul.

 

On Sunday May 8, 2016, 6 mourners gathered for a funeral near Baghdad were killed by a suicide bomber who attacked the funeral tent, killing six people. Another 11 people were wounded in the blast in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. The funeral was for a member of the Sahwa -Sunni tribal forces that have fought against al Qaeda. Some members of the Sahwa, also known as the Awakening Council, are now fighting ISIS.

A car bomb in the town of Baquba in Diyala province killed 12 and wounded 40 others on Monday evening May 9, 2016. The car bomb had targeted a group of Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi militia. ---

A suicide bombing in a commercial area killed at least 13 people we were told Tuesday May 10, 2016. The bomber blew up his explosives-laden minibus shortly before sunset Monday near a bakery and a falafel restaurant in a Shiite neighbourhood of the city of Baqouba. The explosion in the neighbourhood of Shifta also wounded at least 60 others.

Iraq says the areas under the grip of Daesh Takfiri terrorist group have significantly decreased to only 14 percent, compared to almost triple that number recorded two years ago. We were told Wednesday May 11, 2016, that the Iraqi army had retaken around two-thirds of the territory captured by Daesh in their sweep across Iraq in 2014.

Islamic State has reportedly buried alive dozens of its own militants, after the jihadists refused to fight and fled the battlefield in the face of the Iraqi government’s push to retake ground in Northern Province of Nineveh. The overall number of militants who have been executed remains ambiguous. The executions took place on the outskirts of Qayyarah, south of Mosul. Those who were buried alive were accused of fleeing clashes with government forces in the village of Bashir, just south of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. On Monday May9, 2016, ISIS command also shot and killed dozens of its fighters in the village of al-Hadar south of Mosul for escaping from battle in Anbar province.

Iraq Wednesday May 11, 2016:

   - Three car bombs killed 93 people across the Iraqi capital. The separate bombings also wounded 165 people.
   - The largest car bomb ripped through a crowded outdoor market selling food, clothing and household goods in the predominantly Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City during the morning, killing at least 63 people and wounding 85. The bomb was in a pickup truck loaded with fruit and vegetables. It was parked by a man who had quickly disappeared into the crowd.
   - Two more car bombs exploded elsewhere in the afternoon, killing at least 30 and wounded 80. One bomb targeted a police station in the northwestern Kadhimiyah neighbourhood, while another struck in the northern neighbourhood of Jamiya.
   - The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the bombings.

Iraqi forces have found a chemical plant belonging to Daesh Takfiri group in Hit in the western province of Anbar. The plant had refining equipment as well as large amounts of chlorine and toxic chemicals. The items were left behind after Takfiri militants fled the city last month. Earlier this month, Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Ahmet Uzumcu warned of “extremely worrying” signs that Daesh has developed the know-how to produce chemical weapons of its owns.

Iraq Thursday May 12, 2016:

• Islamic State fighters extended their barrage of suicide bombings in Iraq on Thursday, killing at least 20 Iraqi soldiers and tribal fighters outside the western regional capital of Ramadi, and five policemen in a coordinated attack outside the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad.
• More than 30 were wounded in the widespread assault that included at least 10 suicide car bombs.
• In Baghdad, an assault by eight militants on a police station in Al Zaydan, just southeast of Abu Ghraib district, left at least five policemen dead and wounded at least 15 others. Two of the attackers were suicide bombers who detonated their explosives at the station’s entrance.
• In Abu Ghraib other attackers armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers were eventually killed by police officers. A curfew has been imposed on Abu Ghraib district while the security forces looked for other potential attackers.

 

Islamic State militants have attacked a cafe frequented by supporters of the Spanish football club Real Madrid, killing at least 12 people. Three men opened fire with machine guns at the al-Furat Cafe in the mainly Shia town of Balad early on Friday May 13, 2016. The assailants fled and hours later one blew himself up after being cornered by Shia militiamen, killing four of them. A statement from Real Madrid said 16 members of a supporters club had died in the attack.

Takfiri Daesh terrorists have launched attacks in a town, Amriyat Fallujah, in Iraq’s western Anbar Province, killing at least six people. The victims —a civilian and five security forces— were killed when 14 Daesh militants launched coordinated raids at military, government and residential buildings in the town. Five of the attackers blew themselves up while clashing with security forces, and nine others who had been holed up inside buildings were later killed by security forces. 18 people were wounded in the attacks.

Islamic State militants killed at least 12 people and wounded 25 others Sunday May 15, 2016, in an attack on a natural gas plant. A car bomb exploded at the gate in Taji, just north of Baghdad, before suicide bombers entered the plant. ---

Iraq Tuesday May 17, 2016:

• Three bombings in Baghdad have killed at least 70 people and wounded more than 100.
• A suicide bombing in a marketplace in the northern, mainly Shia district of al-Shaab killed 38 people and wounded over 70.
• A car bomb in the nearby Sadr City neighbourhood left at least 19 more dead and 17 wounded.
• Another car bombing, in the mixed Shia-Sunni southern Baghdad neighbourhood of al-Rasheed, killed six and wounded 21.

 

Baghdad has witnessed a fifth car bombing in one day on Tuesday May 17, 2016,, hitting its eastern neighbourhood of Habibia. At least 44 people died and 90 others were wounded in four car explosions carried out in different parts of Baghdad on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear how many people died or were wounded in the latest attack. On Sunday, a car bomb went off in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing two Shiite militiamen and wounding seven.

An Australian working for a landmine clearance charity has been killed in northern Iraq while trying to defuse a bomb planted by Islamic State militants. The man was working under the non-profit Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) in the Daquq area. The man was killed instantly when the bomb containing up to 7kg of explosives blew up. 17 IEDs were removed but unfortunately one exploded and killed him instantly.

Iraqi security forces regained control of al-Rutba from Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants on Tuesday May 17, 2016, raising an Iraqi flag in the district. Counter-terrorism forces, Anbar and federal police stormed ISIS lines and entered al-Rutba, located in western of Anbar Governorate. ISIS fighters captured the district during their rampage across western and northern Iraq in June 2014, before making their way further east and taking over Anbar’s provincial capital, Ramadi.

The Pentagon admitted Monday May 16, 2016, it had retaken only 5 percent of ISIS-held territory in Iraq in the past five months. President Obama said in December that 40 percent of ISIS-held territory in Iraq had been recaptured by Iraqi security forces backed by thousands of airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition. But on Monday, the Pentagon said 45 percent of ISIS territory had been taken back in Iraq, or a modest 5 percentage-point gain from December. 16-20 percent of ISIS-held territory had been taken from ISIS in Syria, a similar estimate given in January. It is now unlikely ISIS would be pushed out of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, during the Obama administration. In recent months, the U.S. military reported it had destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in ISIS cash and robbed the group of 50 percent of its oil revenue.

Calm has been restored in Baghdad Friday May 20, 2016, hours after security forces opened fire to stop protesters storming the Green Zone, injuring dozens. Tear gas and live bullets were fired to drive back the mainly Shia Muslim crowds, as they protested against corruption and security failures. A curfew was imposed in the Iraqi capital, but has now been lifted. It was the second time this month that protesters had managed to break into the city's government area. Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr condemned the use of force, and voiced support for the demonstrators' "peaceful and spontaneous revolt".

Iraq Saturday May 21, 2016:

• Iraqi forces have foiled an attempt by bombers of the Takfiri Daesh terrorists to infiltrate the capital Baghdad, killing as many as 11 militants in the process.
• An armed unit attached to the ministry killed the terrorists near the Anbar province’s city of Fallujah.
• More than 200 people have been killed in bomb attacks in and around Baghdad over the past days. Daesh has claimed responsibility for all the assaults.
• Four Daesh militant commanders had been killed by Iraqi forces. The troops destroyed 21 explosive belts and a vehicle belonging to the group.
• Booby-traps went off in two districts across the capital, killing four people and injuring 11 others.

 

A suicide car bomber killed two fighters of the Hashd al-Shaabi Shiite militia and wounded six others, including a civilian, in the town of Suleiman Beg in Salahadin province on Sunday May 22, 2016. Suleiman Beg, a small town inhabited by Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs, has been under the control of the Hashd militia that is allied with the Iraqi military. The town is strategic because it links to Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, and is the gateway to the Kurdish-populated Garmian region.  Immediately after the attack, the Hashd fighters reportedly closed the main Kirkuk-Baghdad road, stopping traffic from passing through and leading to tensions with the Iraqi Federal Police.

As the Iraqi Army’s operation to recapture Fallujah continues, Islamic State militants were driven out of three more villages on Tuesday May 24, 2016. Serious clashes with the Daesh gunmen as a part of the Fallujah operation ended with the liberation of three villages, Haswahm, Albu Awda and Abbasian, from the gunmen. At least 10 Daesh were killed and four of their vehicles were destroyed. 80 families have escaped Fallujah in the last few days with more than 10,000 more stuck inside the city. The Iraqi army is less than a kilometre away from Fallujah. The military warned Fallujah's civilians to flee if possible ahead of the operation. This will, however, prove difficult given the IEDs planted on the roadsides leading out of the city. While Iraqi military and paramilitary forces have had the city encircled for over a year this is their first serious attempt to force the militants from the city.

A high-ranking commander of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group has been killed during an operation by the country’s air force in the western province of Anbar. We were told Thursday May 26, 2016, that Mil Mi-28 and Bell attack helicopters carried out a precision strike against a restaurant in central Fallujah, where the high-ranking Daesh figure and tens of his aides had gathered to dine. The unnamed militant commander served as a deputy to Daesh’s self-proclaimed Fallujah governor.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has called on Iraqi security personnel to spare no effort in liberating Fallujah and its residents from Daesh. On Wednesday May 25, 2016, prominent Iraqi Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged government forces and Popular Mobilization fighters involved in the Fallujah liberation operation to protect the trapped civilians.

The Islamic State group is preventing people from fleeing Fallujah before a military operation to recapture the city we were told on Wednesday May 25, 2016. Thousands of civilians are estimated to remain inside Fallujah which IS has held for over two years. On Sunday, government forces launched a large-scale offensive, teaming up with paramilitary troops and backed by aerial support from the U.S.-led coalition. Nearly 20 families have fled from Fallujah's outskirts, where sporadic clashes have been taking place, since the offensive started.

Iraqi security forces and supporting militias have retaken the key town of Karma from ISIS, the government's first significant victory in its push to reclaim Falluja we were told Thursday May 26, 2016. The recapture of Karma brings most of the territory east of Falluja under government control. ---

An Iraqi coalition of mostly Shi'ite Muslim paramilitary groups formed to fight Islamic State (ISIS), discovered a network of tunnels dug by the militants near the city of Falluja in Anbar province in Western Iraq on Saturday May 28, 2016. ISIS used the tunnels to approach, appear and escape from the front-line to reduce their casualties. U.S.-led coalition strikes supporting Iraqi forces in the recapture of Falluja have killed 70 ISIS militants including the group's commander in the city. The first phase of the offensive that started on Monday May 23 is nearly finished, with the complete encirclement of the city.

At least 12 Real Madrid fans have reportedly been slain in Iraq, as the Spanish club challenged Atletico for the Champions League title. Saturday May 28, 2016’s attack on the fans’ club in Baakouba reportedly took place as Real and Atletico were about to start the penalty shootout following extra time to finally determine the winner of the title. Four gunmen stormed the supporters’ venue, firing indiscriminately before fleeing the scene. However other sources said that the death toll could be lower, with four fans aged 18-30 dead, with five others injured.

Islamic State militants attacked Baghdad with a double bombing and a third explosion just north of the capital, killing at least 20 people. Monday May 30, 2016's bombings were a reminder of the dangers of a drawn-out political stalemate. Previous bombings led to a wave of street protests and angry calls for the government leadership to step down.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) estimated on Thursday June 2, 2016, that a total of 867 Iraqis were killed in violence in the month of May, 468 of them civilians.

Coalition warplanes bombed ISIS command centres and tunnel networks Friday June 3, 2016, in Falluja, killing dozens of militants. Militants had been meeting in southern Falluja at the time of the airstrikes, including a newly appointed ISIS military leader known as the "Emir of the Falluja State." It was unclear if the ISIS leader was among those killed. The airstrikes targeted the militant group's tactical units.

The United Nations reported on Wednesday June 1, 2016, that 867 Iraqis were killed and 1,459 others were wounded in May due to acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict. Casualty figures in May were higher than the previous month when 741 people were killed and another 1,374 were injured. Baghdad was the hardest hit governorate in the country with 267 civilians killed and 740 injured.

Iraq June 3, 2016:

• At least 15 people have been killed and more than 40 others were injured in bombings targeting a police checkpoint, a restaurant and two markets in and around Baghdad.
• The deadliest incident occurred when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at a checkpoint in Tarmiyah killing eight people and wounding 15 others. Three of the dead were soldiers.
• Another five people were killed in two separate attacks on markets in Baghdad.
• Two more were killed in a bomb attack on a restaurant in the capital.

 

Iraqi armed forces have liberated a key city in the Anbar Province as they continue to gain more ground in their military operations to retake the Daesh-held city of Fallujah. Saturday June 4, 2016, we were told that the city of Saqlawiyah, located north of Fallujah, is now under full control of Iraqi soldiers. ---

Civilians fleeing Falluja, an Iraqi stronghold of the Islamic State (IS), are being shot as they leave crossing the Euphrates River. Up to 50,000 people remained in the city.

An Iranian commander and two members of the country’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have been killed in the northern province of Aleppo. General Reza Rostami Moqadam was reportedly killed on Saturday June 4, 2016, along with Qodrat Abdiyani and Morteza Mosayebzadeh during clashes with rebel groups south of Aleppo. The number of Iranian forces killed in Syria has risen in the past few months with at least 15 reported dead in Aleppo and Khan Tuman in May alone.

At least five people were killed and 10 others wounded on Tuesday June 7, 2016, when a car blew up in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala south of Baghdad. The bombing comes as the Shi'ite majority community in Iraq marked the first day of the fasting month of Ramadan. Ramadan started on Monday for the Sunnis. Later on we were told that 10 civilians were killed and 28 wounded.

Satellite images confirm the destruction of the ancient Nabu temple near the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq the UN said late on Wednesday June 8, 2016. In its latest attack on a historic site under its control, IS released a video this week claiming to have blown up the 2,800-year-old temple, devoted to the Babylonian god of wisdom.

At least 28 people have been killed and scores more wounded in bombings targeting a commercial street and an army checkpoint in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. A car packed with explosives blew up on Thursday June 9, 2016, in a commercial street of Baghdad al-Jadeeda, an eastern district of Baghdad, killing more than 15 people and wounding more than 50. Separately, a suicide car bomber targeted a main army checkpoint in Taji, just north of Baghdad, killing seven soldiers and wounding more than 20 others.

Reports told us on Thursday June 9, 2016, that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (real name Ibrahim al-Samarrai) has been wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq. If true, Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders were wounded in a coalition air strike on one of the group's command headquarters close to the Syrian border.

Iraq’s army has secured the first "relatively safe" exit route - known as al-Salam (Peace) Junction- for civilians attempting to flee the city of Fallujah amid operations by the government forces to retake key areas from the Daesh Takfiri terrorists. There were exit routes previously, but this is the first to be completely secure and it's relatively safe we were told Sunday June 12, 2016.

On Wednesday June 15, 2016, we were told that sniper fire by Islamic State militants killed a senior Iraqi commander near Mosul, the extremist group's main bastion in Iraq. Brig. Ahmed Badr al-Luhaibi, the commander of Brigade 71st of Division 15, was killed by a sniper during an operation to retake a village south of Mosul. ---

At least 16 Daesh militants were killed in U.S.-led coalition strikes on a Daesh convoy in Ramadi on Wednesday June 15, 2016. Three vehicles destroyed during the raids. In another development, eight Iraqi civilians were killed and 29 wounded in a spate of bomb attacks in the capital Baghdad. Five bombings struck several districts across Baghdad.

The Islamic State group has killed 15 members of the local security forces in attacks on villages in northern Iraq we were told Friday June 17, 2016. The attack was launched late on Thursday in villages east of the restive town of Tuz Khurmatu. The clashes killed 15 members of the police, of a Turkmen paramilitary organisation and of the Kurdish Peshmerga.

At least 24 members of Iraqi security forces, among them Colonel Mustafa Amirli, chief of the Khurmatu police, were killed in the early hours of Friday June 17, 2016, as Islamic State (ISIS) militants rammed their base south of the town of Khurmatu; three Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers died as they helped repel the attack. The militants launched the attack by blowing up two bombs before attempting to ram their base. The attack took place at the villages of Pir Ahmad, Zanjar and Aboud. Colonel Hussein and his son were killed along with two first lieutenants and three national guards. Kurdish Peshmerga forces stationed in the area intervened in support of the Iraqi troops and Shiite militia and succeeded in repelling the attack after two hours of intense battle.

A car bomb attack in Iraq’s Salahuddin province killed four people and injured nearly 20 others Saturday June 18, 2016. The bombing was carried out in the city of Tuz Khurmatu. The explosives-laden car was detonated in the main street of Tuz Khurmatu near the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
 
On Sunday June 26, 2016, he Iraqi commander leading the fight to recapture Fallujah declared the battle “over”, after government forces entered the last Isis stronghold in the city. Iraqi troops, aided by US-led coalition air strikes and support from controversial Shia militias, fought for nearly 30 days to retake the city that is the longest held by the militant group in Iraq. Haidar al-Abadi, Iraq’s prime minister, prematurely claimed victory when government forces entered the city centre more than a week ago, but a group of fighters loyal to Isis held out in a northwestern district known as Golan. Now the struggle to clear that area, which for more than a decade has been a militant stronghold, was completed over the weekend.

A suicide bomber detonated explosives at a Sunni mosque near Baghdad where worshippers were gathered for prayers, killing at least nine people we were told Tuesday June 28, 2016. The attack on the mosque in Abu Ghraib, which also wounded at least 28 people, took place during evening prayers on Monday as Muslims mark the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Islamic State militants on Wednesday June 29, 2016, pushed back U.S.-trained Syrian rebels from the outskirts of a town on the Iraqi border, in a setback to a budding offensive that aims to sever the militants' transit link between the two countries. The IS militants repelled the New Syrian Army from an air base which the rebels had briefly captured earlier in the day. IS seized 15 hostages and ammunition, and was still advancing against the rebels. Earlier, the Pentagon-trained force entered the Hamdan air base —northwest of the border town of Boukamal— following intense clashes.

Baghdad Operations Command announced on Thursday June 30, 2016, that a lot of people were left injured while several others were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a busy market area in western Baghdad. The suicide bomber blew himself at a busy market area in Shrutah 4th area in western Baghdad. Apart from killing a number of people, several others were left injured in the blast.

On Wednesday June29, 2016, al-Jazeerah Operations Command announced killing ten ISIS fighters by artillery shelling west of Ramadi. The artillery of the Seventh Division shelled two ISIS boats on the bank of Euphrates River in al-Doulab west of Heet.  The shelling destroyed the boats completely and killing nine terrorists that were on-board. In another attack army troop demolished an ISIS motorcycle and killed one terrorist north of al-Baghdadi Island.

On Wednesday June 29, 2016, a blast in eastern Baghdad left nine casualties. The improvised explosive device exploded near shops in al-Amin area in eastern Baghdad, killing one person and wounding eight others.

Kirkuk Police on Wednesday June 29, 2016, arrested six wanted persons on charges of ‘terrorism’ in Turklan. They also seized quantities of weapons -14 Kalashnikov guns, 4 pistols, 2 shields and military uniforms- northwest of the province. The detainees were transferred to the headquarters of detention for interrogation.

A source in Nineveh announced on Thursday June 30, 2016, that the security forces liberated two villages south of Mosul - al-Bawawi and al-Derbas- from the ISIS control; fifteen ISIS fighters were killed during the operation. Four ISIS vehicles were destroyed during the military operations.

The UK is sending 250 more military personnel to Iraq, almost doubling its presence in the country. Most of them will be going to Al Asad airbase in Anbar province, western Iraq. They include 50 trainers, 90 soldiers to protect the base and 30 to set up a headquarters. About 80 engineers will work on infrastructure for six months. About 300 British personnel are already in the country helping to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces. British forces will not be there to fight and will be confined to the limits of the base.

Airstrikes destroyed dozens of vehicles described as a convoy of Islamic State fighters fleeing the western city of Fallujah following its recapture by the Iraqi military. Scores of militants are thought to have been killed. More than 20 helicopters took part in the mission and were able to destroy more than 138 vehicles.

We were told Friday July 1, 2016, that 11 people had been either killed or injured in a bomb blast that took place south of Baghdad. An explosive device went off near a shop in the vicinity of al-Yusufiyah, south of Baghdad, resulting in the death of one person and wounding ten others.

At least 20 Islamic State (ISIS) militants were killed in the early hours of Saturday July 2, 2016, in an attack on the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the Christian town of Tel Skuf, in northern Mosul. ISIS militants attempted to infiltrate Peshmerga frontlines in the town of Tel Skuf. But, before they could reach the front, they were repulsed by the Peshmerga and 20 militants were killed. There were no casualties among the Peshmerga.

On Saturday July 2, 2016, we were told that two top-ranked ISIS leaders were killed during an aerial bombing in Mosul by the international coalition aviation. The international coalition aviation carried out air strikes on June 25 near Mosul. The air strikes targeted ISIS Deputy Minister of War Bassem Mohamed Ahmed Sultan al-Bajari and the military leader in Mosul Hatem Taleb al-Hamdouni. Both leaders were killed on the spot. Bajari was a former al-Qaeda leader and supervised the attack that was launched to control Mosul in June 2014. On the other hand, al-Hamadouni was a military leader in Mosul and the military police chief of the area.

Saturday July 2, 2016, we were told that an Iraqi high-ranking officer was killed by an ISIS sniper east of Ramadi. The commander of the 41st brigade of the Army’s Tenth Division was killed by an ISIS sniper in Khalediya Island after the security forces advanced into Khalediya island, east of Ramadi aiming to liberate it.

Sunday July 3, 2016, we were told of five casualties by a bomb blast in western Baghdad. An improvised explosive device exploded targeting a patrol of al-Hashd al-Shaabi members while it was passing through al-Zidan village in Abu Gharib district in western Baghdad. One member was killed on the sport while five others were wounded apart from damages caused to the vehicle.

Sunday July 3, 2016, the security forces gained control over three villages west of Makhmour. Forces of the 91st and 37th brigades as well as the Iraqi army’s 15th Division liberated the villages of al-Karama, al-Asriya and al-Mahal, west of Makhmour, from ISIS. 29 ISIS elements had been killed during the operation.

On Sunday July 3, 2016, we were told that ISIS executed fifteen persons, including eight of its own members, on charges of cooperation with the security forces and deserting the battlefield southwest of the province. ISIS executed seven civilians from Hawija in front of a civilian gathering in central Hawija. Moreover, ISIS also executed eight of its own members charging them of showing cowardice and deserting the battle fronts.

A devastating truck bombing on a bustling commercial street in downtown Baghdad killed 115 people early Sunday July 3, 2016, underscoring the Islamic State group's ability to strike the capital despite a string of battlefield losses elsewhere in the country.

The Iraqi government has declared three days of national mourning after a huge bomb in Baghdad killed 165 people and injured 225 others. A lorry packed with explosives was detonated in the Karrada district while families were shopping for the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Whole families had been wiped out and many victims were burned beyond recognition. The Islamic State (IS) has said it carried out the suicide attack. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the mainly Shia area on Sunday but his convoy was greeted by angry crowds. ---

Residents of the Baghdad district of Karrada gathered in the streets on Sunday July 3, 2016, to pray for the victims of two bomb attacks. Nearly 120 people were killed and 200 wounded in the twin attacks, most of them in a busy shopping area as residents celebrated Ramadan. The toll climbed during the day as rescuers pulled out more bodies from under the rubble and people succumbed to their injuries. In a second attack, a roadside bomb also blew up in a market in al-Shaab, a Shia district in the north of the capital, killing at least two people.

The number of people killed in Sunday's suicide bomb attack in Bagdad has risen to 165, we were told Monday July 4, 2016. The government has declared three days of mourning after the huge blast, which also injured 225 people. A lorry packed with explosives was detonated in the Karrada district while families were shopping for the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. It is the deadliest single bomb attack in Iraq since 2007.

The death toll from Sunday's suicide bombing in Baghdad has risen to 250 on Wednesday July 6, 2016, making it the deadliest such attack since the 2003 US-led invasion. Iraq remains under an official state of mourning following the bombing. The destruction of the area was all but complete. Bewildered local residents have held candlelight vigils and prayed for peace.

On Wednesday July 6, 2016 an armed group launched 14 Katyusha rockets somewhere from northwest of Baghdad, and they fell near the Baghdad International Airport. Four rockets fell at the Liberty Camp, located inside Baghdad International Airport.

Tuesday July 5, 2016, the army successfully repulsed an ISIS attack near al-Karama village west of Makhmur. Seven ISIS fighters were killed in the retaliatory firing. The international coalition aviation backed the army forces in the operation.

ISIS executed seven of its own fighters by boiling them alive as punishment for fleeing an Iraqi battlefield. These terrorists ran away from a conflict in Sharqat in the Salahuddin province and were killed by order of Islamic State on Monday July 4, 2016. Before being thrown into a giant cauldron of boiling water, the seven absconders had their hands and feet bound tightly making absolutely sure of no escape.

Three persons were killed and twelve others injured due to shelling in southern Baghdad. Three mortar shells fell on an internally displaced people’s camp in al-Sayediya area of southern Baghdad.

The number of civilians killed by Islamic State suicide bomb attack in Baghdad’s Karada shopping district raised to 292 on Thursday July 7, 2016.

The international coalition air force destroyed a weapons cache and a mortar detachment and killed 4 ISIS members in al-Dolab area west of Heet.

At least 30 people have been killed in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide bomb, gun and mortar attack on a Shia shrine north of Iraq's capital Baghdad. The overnight assault on the Sayyid Mohammed shrine in Balad also wounded 50 people we were told Friday July 8, 2016. The shrine was first targeted with mortar rounds before suicide bombers arrived and opened fire. Two of the bombers blew themselves up in a market next to the shrine, while a third was killed and his explosives belt defused. ---

Iraqi forces recaptured a northern air base from the Islamic State group on Saturday July 9, 2016, a key step ahead of the long-awaited operation to retake the northern city of Mosul. The air base in the town of Qayara is an "important base to liberate Mosul," and called on Mosul residents "to get ready for the liberation of their areas."

A suicide car bomb ripped through an outdoor market in a Shiite-dominated northeastern district of Baghdad on Tuesday July 12, 2016, killing at least 12 people. Five more people died in bombings Tuesday elsewhere in Iraq.

A tribal sheikh and a civilian were killed on Wednesday morning July 13, 2016, in a suicide attack launched by unidentified men at sheikh’s house in central Baqubah.  Unidentified gunmen stormed into the house of one of al-Juraniya tribe’s sheikhs in central Baqubah, and opened fire towards the sheikh and one of his guests, killing both on the spot.

One person was killed and seven others injured in a blast southeast of Baghdad. A bomb exploded Wednesday July 13, 2016, near an intersection at al-Nahrwan southeast of Baghdad.

On Wednesday July 13, 2016, an unit from Diyala police carried out security operations at different areas west of Baqubah, and arrests four persons wanted on criminal charges and two others wanted on terrorism charges.

At least six civilians and two policemen have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack at a police checkpoint north of Baghdad. Wednesday July 13, 2016's bombing was the second attack in the al-Rashidiya district claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant  in as many days.

ISIS fighters shelled military troops belonging to Nineveh Operations 15th brigade that was stationed on the banks of the Tigris River near Qayyarah, south of Mosul. However, the shelling did not cause any casualty.

On Wednesday July 13, 2016, we were told that one of ISIS prominent leaders Abu Omar al-Shishani was killed in combat in Shirgat district, south of Mosul. Deceased Shishani was among one of the most wanted men according to a US program and he carried a bounty of $5 million on his head. Shishani was killed while fighting to defend southern Mosul areas in Shirgat district, northern Iraq.

An improvised explosive device placed under a vehicle of a doctor exploded Wednesday July 13, 2016, while it was passing through al-Arifiya neighbourhood in Diyala Bridge area southeast of Baghdad. The doctor was killed on the spot.

On Thursday July 14, 2016, the international coalition aircraft carried out air strikes on gatherings of ISIS at Heet, al-Dolab and north of Haditha Dam west of Ramadi. In the bombing 29 ISIS fighters were and five booby-trapped vehicles of the ISIS were also destroyed. ---

On Friday July 15, 2016, we were told that senior Islamic State fighter known as “Omar the Chechen” has died in combat in Iraq, more than four months after the US said he was killed by an air strike in Syria. Georgian-born Omar al-Shishani, who was described by the US Defence Department as the Isis “minister of war”, was originally thought to have died in a US airstrike on 4 March.

The international coalition carried out an airstrike in Kirkuk after receiving information from the Military Intelligence Directorate. In the aerial raid, two top-notch ISIS leaders -Teleb Hameed (alias Abu Saeed alias Wali of Hawija) and Mohamed Khalaf Mohamed Saleh (alias Abu Seif al-Jubouri alias Wali of Kirkuk)- were killed.

On Saturday July 16, 2016, an improvised explosive device exploded near a popular market at al-Taji district in northern Baghdad, killing three persons and injuring six others.

The international coalition aviation and Iraqi Air Force on Saturday July 16, 2016, carried out airstrikes west of Kirkuk targeting ISIS headquarters. Ten airstrikes were carried out and this included six strikes on ISIS’ six different headquarters at Hawija district. The aerial bombing destroyed four other targets at Arisha village near Zab near Tigris River.

An attempt to destroy the floating bridge over Tigris River south of Mosul foiled. The international coalition aircraft carried out an air strike that targeted a large boat carrying more than two tons of explosives near Haj Ali village. The boat was en-route to attack the floating bridge that was established by the Iraqi troops connecting Makhmur with Qayyarah south of Mosul. The boat was destroyed on Sunday July 17, 2016.

On Sunday July 17, 2016, ten ISIS fighters were killed in aerial raid carried out by international coalition aircrafts at the northern city of Ramadi. The International Coalition Flight, in coordination with the 10th Division of Anbar Operations, bombarded a terrorist hideout at Al-Bu Ali al-Jassim in Ramadi Island situated towards the north of Ramadi city. The bombing also destroyed ISIS hideouts and caused other damages.

One al-Hashd al-Ashaeri leader was killed in a blast that was targeted at his vehicle northeast of Baqubah. The blast was carried out targeting the vehicle of Sami al-Hassan -a leader of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri- while it was passing through Al-Jazeera in northern Muqdadiyah. Hassan was killed on the spot.

An improvised explosive device targeted a police patrol while it was passing through al-Yusufiya in southern Baghdad. A policeman died on the spot and four others were injured in the blast, apart from causing damage to the vehicle.

A number of ISIS members were killed, two headquarters and booby-trapped vehicles destroyed in an Iraqi air strike in Khalidiya Island, Anbar. The Iraqi Air Force carried out an airstrike against ISIS members in Khalidiya Island (Albu Bali). These members were preparing to launch an extensive attack on the security forces near the Japanese Bridge and al-Tharthar area, in order to open a passage for its besieged militants towards the desert of Ramadi. The airstrike resulted in the destruction of two headquarters, killing of a number of ISIS members, as well as shattering of a number of booby-trapped vehicles.

On Monday July 18, 2016, an improvised explosive device exploded which was targeted on an army patrol while it was passing through Arab Jabour village in al-Dawra in southern Baghdad. One army man was killed and five others were injured in the blast and the vehicle in which they were travelling was also damaged.

In a gunfight between the joint forces and the ISIS fighters in eastern Tikrit, seven ISIS members were killed; three policemen and four Al-Hashd Al-Sha’abi members received injuries.

Iraq Tuesday July 19, 2016:

• At least eight ISIS members were killed in an airstrike at al-Sharqat district, north of Tikrit. A laboratory used for making booby-trap vehicles and a vehicle and three motorcycles, which were supposed to be used by the ISIS against the security forces, were also destroyed in the strike.
• The air force also targeted a communication tower of the ISIS at Silo, in al-Sharqat. The tower, used by the ISIS for radio transmission and communication, was also destroyed completely in the strike and along with it, three ISIS members were also killed.
• In yet another air raid by the Iraqi Air Force that targeted the headquarters of ISIS Diwan al-Hisba in al-Sharqat, 15 ISIS suicide bombers was and seven others were injured. Among these also included Arab and foreign nationals. The headquarters was also destroyed completely in the raid,” the source concluded.

 

An IED explosion in western Baghdad killed one member of al-Hashd al-Sha’abi member and injured three others. The blast was targeting a vehicle of al-Hashd al-Sha’abi that was occupied by four members. In the blast, one member died on the spot while three others received serious injuries. The blast took place when the vehicle was passing through Abu Gharib district.

A suicide bomber, driving a vehicle, blew himself up Tuesday July 19, 2016, inside al-Rathba city (west of Ramadi), killing three policemen and wounding five civilians. ISIS attacked the city from four axes by suicide bombers and booby-trapped vehicles.

Diyala Police Command pulled apart 15 terrorist cells during a number of security operations in the last few days at different areas of the province. Moreover, 19 persons wanted on different charges were also arrested in the operations. Three of the arrested persons were wanted on terrorism charges, eight on charges of hijacking and blackmail and the other eight on different criminal charges.

On Thursday July 21, 2016, a sniper opened fire at an army checkpoint in Latifiya area in southern Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding two others.

On Thursday July 21, 2016, Security forces from the Military Intelligence Directorate and the Army’s 20 brigade arrested a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt while he was trying to blow up himself up in Diyala. ---

An improvised explosive device exploded, at noon Thursday July 21, 2016, near shops in al-Shaab area northeast of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding six others. An improvised explosive exploded Thursday July 21, 2016, while the police patrol was passing through al-Tarmiya are in northern Baghdad. Apart from the human casualties, the vehicle on which the policemen were travelling was also damaged badly.

And IED explosion in southern Baghdad Friday July 22, 2016, killed one army man and injured four others. An army patrol was passing through Arab Jabbour village in al-Dwara when the blast took place.

The Peshmerga forces Saturday July 23, 2016, foiled and ISIS attack at the Valley of Oil area, 30 km southwest of Kirkuk. At least five ISIS members were killed and nine others were injured. An ISIS vehicle was also destroyed.

The international coalition has 7000 soldiers in Iraq excluding the employees in the US embassy in Baghdad. The international coalition trained 23000 and 750 members of the Iraqi security forces including forces from the Anti-Terrorism Directorate, Army and Police.

On Saturday July 23, 2016, we were told that six civilians were killed and about eight others injured in a bomb blast that targeted the families escaping ISIS control in Sharqat Island towards the north of Salahaddin province. An explosive device planted to the side of a road in Sharqat Island exploded, while families escaping ISIS control from the district were heading towards Baiji. ISIS is planting explosive devices on the paths of the families fleeing their control. Taking risks, several families every day, are escaping through these roads and bomb blasts like the one day have claimed a number of innocent lives.

On Saturday July 23, 2016, Hashim Nassif Jassem al-Hayali, the assistant of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed and a number of his associates were injured during an operation carried out by forces of Tigris Operations at Mukhisa towards the north of Diyala province.

The Maysan Police arrested 33 wanted persons through security operations in the centre of Amarah city. The police conducted raids and search operations at different areas in the centre of the city and arrested 33 wanted persons on different criminal charges.

The international coalition aviation and the Iraqi Air Force bombed 11 ISIS headquarters in Khalidiya Island, 23 km east of Ramadi, on Sunday July 24, 2017. Not only were the headquarters destroyed, but a dozen ISIS members were also killed in the raids.

A suicide bomber attacked a security check point in northern Baghdad on Sunday July 24, 2016, killing at least 14 people. The bomber, who was on foot, detonated his device at one of the busy entrances of the Shiite district of Kadhimiyah, killing at least 10 civilians and four policemen. At least 31 other people were wounded. Three more civilians were killed and 11 wounded in a bomb explosion in an outdoor market in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib. ---

The Iraqi forces killed Abu al-Harith al-Libi in a military operation in al-Jahleh Village on the outskirts of the city of Shirqat early on Sunday July 24, 2016. An unspecified number of other Daesh terrorists were also killed in the military operation, which was launched on information provided by local residents.

Iraq Monday July 25, 2016:

• A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a checkpoint outside a Shiite town north of Baghdad killing at least 14 people. The bombing took place at one of the busy entrances to the town of Khalis, about 80 kilometres north of the Iraqi capital. Eight policemen and six civilians were killed and up to 41 people were wounded. The explosion also damaged nearly 20 cars lined up at the checkpoint.
• In Baghdad, separate bomb explosions rocked three commercial areas -Ghazaliya, Bayaa and al-Ameen- killing nine and wounding 26.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near shops at al-Obeidi in eastern Baghdad, killing two persons and wounding four others.
• 28 ISIS members were killed and 13 vehicles destroyed in an airstrike south of Mosul.
• Warplanes of the international coalition launched a raid at a gathering of ISIS members in Arkaba village south of Qayyarah city, killing 28 militants and destroying 13 vehicles.

 

On Tuesday July 26, 2016, a number of unidentified men targeted one of the headquarters of al-Hahsd al-Shaabi at Karada in central Baghdad. The headquarters, belonging to Babylon Brigades, was targeted by an IED while hosting a meeting that included senior leaders of al-Hashd al-Shaabi.

The terror group claimed Tuesday July 26, 2016, that it shot down a US fighter jet near the Ayn Asad Airbase in western Anbar. It reported that the crew have all been killed. However, the US Air Force spokesman said that no US aircraft have been shot down in Iraq at all. The airbase is a joint Iraqi Armed Forces and US armed forces base.

For nearly a decade, anyone driving through one of Baghdad's many checkpoints was subjected to a search by a soldier pointing a security wand at their vehicle and watching the device intently to see if its antenna moved. If it pointed at the car, it had supposedly detected a possible bomb. The wands were completely bogus. It had been proven years ago, even before 2013 when two British men were convicted in separate trials on fraud charges for selling the detectors. The devices, sold under various names for thousands of dollars each, apparently were based on a product that sold for about $20 and claimed to find golf balls. Yet the Iraqi government continued to use the devices, spending nearly $60 million on them despite warnings by U.S. military commanders and the wands' proven failure to stop near-daily bombings in Baghdad.

On Tuesday July 26, 2016, we were told that over 1,500 ISIS members comprising of Arab and foreign nationals and including several of its senior leaders have escaped from Mosul and have headed towards Riqqa in Syria. The number of ISIS members in Mosul, before releasing Qayyarah base and the surrounding villages, was around 9000 including Arab, foreign and local nationals. After the liberation of Qayyarah, the number of ISIS members have declined as a number of them have either been killed or escaped the city.

On Wednesday July 27, 2016, we were told that several ISIS members shaved their beard, took off their Afghan uniforms and fearing attack on Mosul by Iraqi forces left the city by pretending and dressing up like civilians. Also 17 ISIS members were executed by the outfit because they fled from the battlefield in Qayyarah. They were shot dead at a square in Shura, Mosul.

On Wednesday July 27, 2016, we were told that eight ISIS fighters were killed at northern Ramadi. The international coalition aviation bombed ISIS hideout in Albu Alli Jassim, north of Ramadi and as a result of this the hideout was destroyed completely, apart from killing eight ISIS fighters and destroying an arms depot.

Security forces found a mass grave inside the teachers’ institute building in the centre of Fallujah. The grave contained skeletal remains of 25 persons who were executed by ISIS during its control on the city. All the bodies have gunfire traces.

Iraq Wednesday July 27, 2016:

• Militants unleashed a series of attacks in and around Baghdad, killing at least 18 people.
• The deadliest attack killed three policemen and three civilians when a suicide bomber on foot blew up his explosives-laden vest at a police checkpoint in Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Shula. At least 15 people were wounded in the explosion.
• In the town of Youssifiyah, 20 kilometres south of Baghdad, a bomb explosion in a commercial area killed at least three shoppers and wounded nine others.
• Elsewhere three intelligence officers affiliated to the Interior Ministry were gunned down by drive-by shooters armed with pistols fitted with silencers in the northeastern suburb of Rashidiya.
• Another bomb explosion in a commercial area in the capital's southwestern Saydiya neighbourhood killed two civilians and wounded five others.
• Also, a mortar attack on a camp for displaced civilians south of Baghdad killed four and wounded eight.
• South of the Iraqi capital, a provincial council approved a decision allowing authorities to demolish homes of convicted militants and banish their families from the province. ---

We were told Thursday July 28, 2016, that dozens of detainees, from an ISIS prison in Mosul, fled after the prison was attacked by a youth group of the city. The youth group from Mosul attacked one of the ISIS prisons in the city centre with Kalashnikov and killed prison guard and helped a dozen of detainees to escape it. Most of the detainees were from Mosul and they were arrested on charges of collaborating with the security forces.

A bomb blast in a market south of Baghdad killed two civilians and injured seven others on Wednesday July 27, 2016. The bomb exploded near a fruit and vegetable market.

al-Hashd al-Shaabi informed that two members were killed in the explosion of a booby-trapped house in central Karma. A booby-trapped house exploded Thursday July 28, 2016, during an attempt to dismantle it in central karma. In the blast, two al-Hashed al-Shaabi members were killed in Karma Fallujah Brigade.

Wednesday July 27, 2016, a commander of the Federal Police and two of his aides have been killed in a bomb blast which had targeted their vehicle in al-Rathba district in western Anbar. A bomb exploded targeting a military vehicle in Akash, killing the commander of the Fourth Regiment of the Federal Police, Col. Qassim Hussein, and two of his companions, as well as, injuring four soldiers.

ISIS firing squad executed a youth in central Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk. The dead youth was charged of collaborating with the security forces. The deceased was a 20-year-old youth, who was a resident of al-Batoush village in Hawija district.

On Wednesday July 27, 2016, 17 ISIS members, including seven Chinese, were killed in an air strike carried out by the international coalition that targeted an ISIS parade west of Anbar.

Iraq Wednesday July 27, 2016:

• Militants unleashed a series of attacks in and around Baghdad, killing at least 18 people.
• The deadliest attack killed three policemen and three civilians when a suicide bomber on foot blew up his explosives-laden vest at a police checkpoint in Baghdad’s Shiite neighbourhood of Shula. At least 15 people were wounded in the explosion.
• In the town of Youssifiyah, 12 miles south of Baghdad, a bomb explosion in a commercial area killed at least three shoppers and wounded nine others.
• Elsewhere three intelligence officers affiliated to the Interior Ministry were gunned down by drive-by shooters armed with pistols fitted with silencers in the northeastern suburb of Rashidiya.
• Another bomb explosion in a commercial area in the capital’s southwestern Saydiya neighbourhood killed two civilians and wounded five others.
• Also on Thursday, a mortar attack on a camp for displaced civilians south of Baghdad killed four and wounded eight.
• South of the Iraqi capital, a provincial council approved a decision allowing authorities to demolish homes of convicted militants and banish their families from the province.

 

Iraq Friday July 29, 2016:

• A close aide to the leader of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group has been killed along with 12 senior figures from the terror outfit in an Iraqi airstrike in the western province of al-Anbar.
• Ahmed Hassan Abu Kheir, who was the brother-in-law of Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Daesh leader, was killed in an Iraqi airstrike in the town of al-Qaim. Tens of other Daesh extremists, including the 12 high-ranking ones, were killed and 11 others injured in the strike.
• Daesh’s self-proclaimed governors of Fallujah and Forat region as well as the terror network’s deputy war minister, identified by the nom de guerre Abu Qasourah, were among the slain militant commanders.
• The fatalities also included foreign militants from Russia and the North Caucasus region of Chechnya.
• Two car bombs, a weapons cache and a considerable amount of highly explosive materials were destroyed in the airstrike.
• Iraqi tribal fighters, backed by army artillery units, managed to clear the village of Shiala south of Mosul.
• Iraqi government forces also destroyed a workshop used by Daesh members to make car bombs and various improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

 

Iraq Saturday July 30, 2016:

• We were told that there were 10 casualties after a blast ripped through Mahmudiya in south of Baghdad. The bomb exploded near a popular market in Mahmudiya killing two people and injuring eight others.
• Ten ISIS members were killed in an airstrike in the centre of Mosul. The international coalition aircrafts carried out the air strike, which was targeted on a house that was been used as headquarters by the ISIS at al-Hadbaa neighbourhood in central Mosul. The house was completely destroyed in the bombing.
• Iraqi Security Forces entered Khalidiya Island, 23 km east of Ramadi, from four directions. ISIS resistance is weak in the areas and the villages of Khalidiya.
• Over 20 ISIS members were killed in aerial bombings jointly carried out by the International Coalition Aviation and Iraqi Air Force at Albu Bali area in Khalidiya. ISIS’ anti-armours and tanks were also destroyed in the bombing. ---

On Sunday July 31, 2016, four gunmen stormed into a gas station of the North Oil Company, situated some 20 kilometres from western Kirkuk along Kirkuk-Dibs road. Firing indiscriminately, the gunmen injured the guards and killed four employees who were stationed in the control room. Five IEDs were also planted by the gunmen inside the station, out of which two exploded and the remaining were diffused by the Civil Defence teams.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) announced that airstrike by internal coalition aviation in eastern Mosul killed six ISIS members. Aircraft of the international coalition aviation, launched an attack on Sunday July 31, 2016, and targeted a vehicle ferrying ISIS members at al-Ghabat area in eastern Mosul. Apart from completely destroying the vehicle, six ISIS members were also killed in the strike.

On Sunday July 31, 2016, two border police were killed and five others wounded in a suicide bombing attack that was targeted on their headquarters west of the province. A booby trapped vehicle, driven by a suicide bomber, targeted the headquarters of the Second Battalion of the border guard command in Anbar, west of Ramadi. The headquarters was also damaged in the bombing.

The death toll from the massive bombing in Baghdad’s Karrada neighbourhood on July 3 has risen to 324 we were told Sunday July 31, 2016. Forensic teams are still working to identify bodies and expect the death toll could still rise. 208 corpses of the Karrada blast are still unidentified because they were burnt. A truck laden with explosives was blown up early in the morning, targeting the popular shopping district busy with families just a few days before the Muslim Eid feast. The blast set building in the area on fire and many of the victims burned to death, making identification of the victims a challenge. Since the Karrada bombing, 209 people have been killed in Baghdad in 3 suicide bombings, one car bombing, and by improvised explosives devices (IEDs), mortars and gunfire.

Sunday July 31, 2016, we were told that a bomb blast in northern Baghdad killed at least two persons and injured nine others. The IED exploded near a popular market in Tarmiya district in northern Baghdad.

ISIS attacked the headquarters of the North Gas Company in western Kirkuk using a Katyusha rocket without causing any human or material losses.

Somoud brigade in Haditha district announced that 25 top ISIS leaders (that included Arabs and Foreigners) were killed in an aerial bombing which targeted a meeting west of Anbar. Accurate intelligence information allowed the international coalition aviation and the Iraqi Air Force to launch an air strike, targeting an ISIS gathering at al-Romana, north of Qaim -some 440 km west of Anbar.

We were told Tuesday August 2, 2016, that the Armoured Ninth Division and Iraqi Counter-Terrorism forces managed to cleanse the public road and al-Hathr junction, as well as the surrounding villages from Qayyarah base to Tlul al-Bj.

On Wednesday August 3, 2016, Iraqi F16 aircraft conducted an airstrike in Qa’im and destroyed ISIS laboratories used for manufacturing explosives. A cache of weapons was also destroyed in the bombing. Tens of ISIS fighters who were present in the laboratories were killed in the bombing.

An IED explosion Wednesday August 3, 2016, at Hor Rajab in Southern Baghdad, which targeted a patrol of al-Hashd al-Sha’abi, killed at least one member of the Shia militia and injured six others. The vehicle in which they were traveling was also damaged in the blast.

Shia militia fighters, supported by the international coalition fighters, Wednesday August 3, 2016, launched a wide military operation for liberating al-Waleed and al-Waleed port at Iraq’s border with Syria.”

Two members of ISIS were killed at al-Jadaa in Qayyarah (south of Mosul) in an airstrike led by the international coalition aviation we were told Wednesday Augut 3, 2016. Also the Commander of Nineveh operations confirmed the death of nearly 30 ISIS fighters in airstrikes led by the international coalition aviation towards south of Mosul.

British fighter jets have destroyed one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in Iraq that was being used as an Islamic State headquarters. The RAF used the largest bomb in its arsenal to target the site in the northern city of Mosul where foreign terrorist recruits were being trained. A pair of Tornadoes dropped the 2,000lb Enhanced Paveway III bombs that are dubbed the ‘bunker buster’ because of their strength.

Wednesday August 3, 2016, ten ISIS members were killed in an aerial bombing which was targeting a gathering of the outfit. The attack was made on al-Brghaliya village and three headquarters in Hawija 55 km southwest of Kirkuk.

We were told Thursday August 4, 2016, that 10 terrorists were killed in airstrikes to the east of Ramadi. Iraqi Air Force bombed a building in Zawiyat Albu Bali in Khalidiya Island, 23 km east of Ramadi. The Iraqi Air Force also bombed two ISIS vehicles that were carrying weapons. Apart from killing its occupants, the vehicle was also destroyed in the bombing.

Thursday August 4, 2016, a bomb blast in north of Baquba killed one al-HAshd al-Sha’abi member and injured three others. A suicide bomber in car drove his car to a Shia militia checkpoint and exploded himself. The explosion took place inside the administrative border of Salahuddin province and the car was heading towards al-Athim Dam.

The Islamic State group has killed several residents attempting to flee Hawijah we were told Friday August 5, 2016, as Iraqi forces prepared for an operation against the jihadist-held area. Hundreds of civilians have over the past few days managed to flee the area, which lies west of the Kurdish-controlled city of Kirkuk and about 220 kilometres north of Baghdad. Hawijah and its surroundings are one of the last major areas east of the Tigris still controlled by IS and possibly the next target of the forces battling the jihadists in Iraq.

ISIS militants have captured up to 3,000 people displaced from their homes trying to flee conflict zones in northern Iraq we were told Friday August 5, 2016, killing 12 of them. More than 4 million people have been displaced within Iraq. ISIS rounded up the thousands of internally displaced people Thursday from villages as they tried to escape to the city of Kirkuk. ---

An official from al-Hashed al-shaabi militia, Jabbar Maamouri announced on Saturday August 6, 2016, that 85 civilians were killed in a mass massacre carried out by ISIS in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk. The dead included women and children. Hundreds of families are being currently held hostage by the outfit.

al-Hashed al-Shaabi announced on Saturday August 6, 2016, the discovery of an ISIS mass grave in Khalidiya Island in Anbar province. The mass grave of around 200 bodies, which are believed to be that of ISIS fighters, was discovered. The graveyard of dead members of the outfit was from previous battles. ISIS buried its dead members in a collective manner.

On Saturday August 6, 2016, shelling towards southwest of Baghdad killed at least one person and injured around eight others. Two mortar shells were lobed near Radwaniyah.

An IED placed on a road in southern Kirkuk hit a family of five (three children and the parents); it killed one man and injured four others. The family was trying to escape ISIS grip from al-Rashad in southern Kirkuk. In the blast, the father was killed and the remaining four were severely injured.

Iraq Sunday August 7, 2016:

• Iraq has received four new F16 aircrafts from the US as part of its nearly $2 billion purchase of 36 such warplanes. The US has so far delivered 10 F16 aircrafts in three phases since 2014. The single engine, all-weather military aircrafts will enhance the air force’s capability to target ISIS inside Mosul when the looming operation sets off.  A total of 26 pilots are expected to be trained, and 16 have been in training so far by the Air National Guard Unit at Tucson International Airport.
• The security forces have destroyed four boats in the vicinity of Hamrin Lake northeast of Baquba district; ISIS used these boats to transport explosives and suicide bombers.
• The Waleed border port is fully destroyed due to the destruction of all governmental buildings, storehouses, checkpoints and all buildings in the border port with Syria west of Anbar. Security forces destroyed dozens of secret tunnels and hideouts used by ISIS west of Anbar.
• Dozens of ISIS members were killed while attacking Waleed border port. ISIS was forced to withdraw its fighters to the Syrian territories.

 

Iraq Monday August 8, 2016:

• A top ISIS leader was killed in west of Kirkuk when his vehicle exploded. An adhesive IED that was emplaced under the vehicle of an ISIS leader Mohamed Nassif al-Hosh exploded while he was passing through al-Abbasi in Hawija district. He was killed on the spot.
• A number of ISIS leaders from the southwestern regions of the province turned against the outfit’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and expressed their commitment for al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
• A al-Hashed al-Shaabi official said that ISIS executed three men, all residents of Hawija in southwest of Kirkuk. They were charged of targeting ISIS members.”
• A bomb explosion near a fruits and vegetables market at Yusufiya in southern Baghdad killed two persons and injured ten others.
• The international coalition aviation in coordination with Anbar Operations bombed a hideout of terrorists in Ramadi Island. The hideout was destroyed and two terrorists were killed in the bombing.
• Iraqi Defence Minister Khalid al-Obeidi survived an Islamic State (ISIS) mortar attack on his convoy near to Imam Gharbi village between Qayara air base and Najla area. Obeidi’s guards immediately retaliated, firing at ISIS positions from where they had launched the mortar shells against the minister’s vehicles. No casualties were reported, but there was some damage to vehicles in the convoy. A mortar hit the minister’s bulletproof armoured vehicle.
• ISIS beheaded seven people in the industrial district in Mosul on charges of spying and cooperation with the security services. This came after the Sharia court issued death sentence against them. ISIS members wrapped wire around the necks of the accused and cut their heads off. The execution was carried out in front of the citizens of the city.
• An improvised explosive device exploded targeting a convoy of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri in Abu Eitha village in al-Dawra area in southern Baghdad, killing three members and wounding seven others.

 

Iraq Tuesday August 9, 2016:

• Unidentified armed men launched three organized attacks targeting three ISIS headquarters at Karamah, the industrial left side and al-Bakr neighbourhood. The armed men used light and medium weapons to attack the headquarters. 14 ISIS fighters were killed and 20 others were injured.
• The Commander of Anbar Operations, Major General Ismail al-Mahalawi, said, that forces from the army’s 10th brigade during search operations conducted  at areas near Khalidiya Island in eastern Ramadi killed six suicide bombers wearing explosive belts.

 

If there were one safe place in Iraq, it should be a hospital nursery, locked down for the night with dozens of babies nestled inside. But here, not even that is a given. When a fire started late Tuesday night August 9, 2016, in the maternity wing of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, it quickly engulfed the babies’ room. Hospital workers raced to save the infants, but no one could find the keys to unlock the nursery. Inexplicably, no nurses seemed to be inside. Apparently, none of the fire extinguishers functioned. It took nearly an hour and a half for firefighters to arrive. Some thought the initial cause may have been an oxygen tank explosion that set off an electrical fire. But on Wednesday morning, only one thing was certain: At least 13 infants were dead, and with them a small piece of Iraq’s future. Many were still unaccounted for. And at least 25 people, mostly infants, were being treated for burns or smoke inhalation.

Gunmen blew up a bomb at the Bai Hassan oil field in the northern province of Kirkuk on Wednesday August 10, 2016. The Kurdish military forces, the Peshmerga, arrived at the scene after the militants had fled and found another two bombs at other installations in the oil field, but managed to defuse them. ---

An Air Force helicopter crashed Wednesday August 10, 2016, during a security mission in al-Majar district, southwest of Amarah city in Maysan province. The nine members on board survived the crash, but suffered various injuries. The helicopter was hit by a technical malfunction, the crew tried to make an emergency landing, but it fell to the ground, which led to the crash.

Wednesday August 10, 2016, ISIS launched an attack using a number of army’s Hummer vehicles that it seized earlier. ISIS managed to approach the army troops near Qayyarah Base south of Mosul, and detonated three Hummer vehicles killing 12 people and injuring several others.

The Army Aviation carried out an air strike, and destructed a number of ISIS headquarters in Nineveh province, in addition to killing 3 ISIS leaders and 12 members, including 3 members holding Arab nationalities. The Army Aviation also destroyed the biggest explosives laboratory in Nineveh axis, killing 3 Arab ISIS members and 7 Chechen members.

Kurdish counterterrorism and US special forces killed Haji Hamad (also known as Sami Jassim Mohammed Al-Jabouri), a senior Islamic State (ISIS) leader responsible for the group’s natural resources in the vicinity of Qaim near the Iraqi-Syrian Thursday morning August 11, 2016. Hamad was responsible for ISIL's natural resources in Iraq and Syria. He and an aide were killed in the operation.

On Tuesday August 9, 2016, 20 young detainees in Bakara base in Hawija were set ablaze by ISIS as they refused to join the outfit. ISIS demands huge sum of money as ransom from the inhabitants of the region. It also demanded the accession of women to its ranks by force.

On Thursday August 11, 2016, a bomb exploded near a car showroom in al-Bayaa area, southwest of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding seven others.

A booby-trapped vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded at noon Thursday August 11, 2016, targeting an al-Ameed police checkpoint in al-Memalha area 45 km southeast of Samawa killing two policemen.

In its continued operation to take the town of Qayyara from the Islamic State (ISIS) the Iraqi army recaptured the village of Imam on Friday August 12, 2016. ISIS militants put up little resistance to the advancing troops and that engineering teams started defusing explosives the militants had left behind. Moreover ISIS prepared 3 explosive cars to blow up among the Iraqi army, but fortunately coalition airstrikes destroyed the cars.

Iraq Saturday August 13, 2016:

• The international coalition aviation bombed an ISIS-controlled building in Ramadi Island. Apart from the destruction of the building, 10 ISIS men were also killed in the bombing. The international coalition aviation further destroyed a mortar detachment of the outfit to the north of Ramadi.
• An adhesive bomb placed on the gate of ‘Daniel coffee shop’ at al-Wofoud Street in central Basrah. The explosion damaged the shop heavily, but no casualties was reported.
• A bomb blast in central Baghdad killed one person and injured seven others. The bomb exploded near some shops at Kifah in central Baghdad.
• Security forces launched a military operation and stormed into the remaining tunnels of ISIS in Albu Bali area in Khalidiya Island. Tens of ISIS members were besieged inside the tunnels.
• The nephew of the governor of a key province has been gunned down in the country's north. The killing of Aqoub's nephew, who was also his personal driver, comes as Iraqi forces prepare for the battle to retake Mosul. Sifuk Watban al-Sultan died of a single gunshot to the head on Friday night near the governor's house in Arbil.
• We were told that IS fighters had fathered children under temporary marriages, a practice used by the extremist group to motivate its militants. Some of the women involved -including some of those who travelled to the Middle East to support IS- have apparently participated voluntarily, but others may have been coerced.
• Daesh has executed five individuals who had been helping civilians in Iraq flee the areas controlled by the Takfiri terrorist group.
• Separately, we were told that 16 Daesh operatives in the north-central provinces of Salahuddin and Kirkuk were killed on Friday.

 

Iraq Sunday August 14, 2016:

• ISIS executed six persons in Mosul for collaborating with Nineveh Operations Command. The death sentence was issued ISIS Sharia Court. The six persons were placed inside tanks containing boiling tar and the execution was carried out in one of ISIS headquarters at al-Shora. The execution took place in public and it was done with an aim of inciting fear among the citizens.
• International coalition aviation bombed a booby-trapped vehicle driven by a suicide bomber and carrying an ISIS cache of weapons in al-Zawya, Heet. The airstrike destroyed the vehicle and killed the suicide bomber who was inside it. The cache of weapons was also destroyed in the blast.
• Combined troops of Anti-Terrorism Directorate and the Army’s 5th Brigade liberated Qayyarah Gas Station and al-Hawija and al-Hawasem villages. The troops entered Qayyarah from the old bridge side and they were covered by international coalition aviation’s jets.
• Kurdish forces have captured several villages near Mosul. The offensive was backed by air strikes from the US-led coalition battling IS. Kurdish and Iraqi government forces have been encircling Mosul ahead of an offensive to take the city itself. The militants reportedly responded to the air strikes by trying to ram explosive-packed vehicles into Kurdish lines. More than 5,000 troops were involved in the latest operation.
• Wednesday blaze at Baghdad’s Yarmuk hospital that killed 13 people was likely an act of arson.
• The Health Ministry spokesman, Ahmed al-Rudeini, said Sunday that the fire on Wednesday, which killed 13 people, was likely started intentionally. All those killed were babies, some of them premature; two more are being treated for smoke inhalation. It took about three hours for firefighters and hospital staff to put out the blaze which broke out late on Tuesday. Dozens of female patients at the ward were transferred to other hospitals.
• An Iraqi Kurdish reporter was killed and another wounded on Sunday during a military operation against the Islamic State group in northern Iraq. The incident occurred during an operation launched by the Kurdish peshmerga forces near Mosul.

 

Iraq Monday August 15, 2016:

• Peshmerga forces regained control of 12 villages including- Abzakh, Karkasha, Tel Hameed, al-Takhi, small Kanchi, Shanf, Sutaih, Homaira and Amiriya and other three villages -Hasudiya, small Kahnash and big Kahnash- which previously were under ISIS control. The offensive has achieved its targets and also killed 15 ISIS members at small Kahnasha and big Kahnasha. Another 150 ISIS members were killed during military operations on Sunday and Monday.
• A ISIS Sharia Court issued death sentences against 25 residents of Hawija city. They were charged of spying and cooperating with the security forces. The residents were first locked in a room and later the room was blown away.
• The Peshmerga forces reached the strategic bridge of al-Kwir connecting Erbil, Mosul and Kirkuk province.
• Peshmerga forces are currently stationed about 18 km away from the center Mosul city.
• An armed ISIS group attacked several al-Hashd al-Sha’abi militia at Bir Ahmed village, west of Tuz Khurmato district. al-Hashed al-Shaabi later killed six ISIS members and wounded 12 others in an ambush. The security situation is now under control as al-Hashed al-Shaabi forces forced the ISIS men to withdraw and seized their weapons. ---

Iraq Sunday August 14, 2016:

-     At least 66 people have been killed in fighting across the country in the past 24 hours as government and Russian air strikes have carried out fresh bombarding of Aleppo and neighbouring Idlib province. There were 26 air strikes in Idlib killing at least nine people.
-     At least 35 people were killed and many more injured, some critically, after a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest inside a bus in Idlib province. The bus was carrying opposition fighters when the blast happened near the Atmeh border crossing. The explosion occurred at the entrance of Atmeh refugee camp in Idlib.
-     Turkey sent several ambulances to the scene of the attack; eight injured rebels who were in critical condition were taken to hospitals in Turkey's Hatay province. The rest are being treated in Syrian hospitals.
-     Authorities in Hatay said on Monday that four of the injured fighters later died in Turkish hospitals.

Iran forces shot dead three alleged Islamic State (ISIS) militants housed near its border with Iraq on Tuesday August 16, 2016. Assault rifles, knives and an explosives vest were found among the three men’s possessions. This comes after 10 ISIS militants were arrested along with 100 kilograms of explosives by Iranian intelligence forces last June. Another senior member of ISIS was killed in a different city in Kermanshah on Monday.

ISIS executed some of its own leaders, including commander of the Uzbek battalion Abu Katada in Mosul. The leaders were executed by their counterparts from the outfit as they escaped from battlefields in Mosul without fighting against the security forces. Because the leaders ran away, ISIS suffered heavy loss -both material and of loss of their men.

Iraq Tuesday August 16, 2016:

• A bomb blast in northwest Baghdad killed at least two persons and injured eight others. The bomb exploded near shops at al-Shoala in northwest Baghdad.
• Federal Police forces killed a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt and also destroyed an ISIS tunnel at Khalidiya Island in eastern Ramadi.
• ISIS militants attacked a headquarters of Iraqi border guards situated on the road linking Ratba city with the borders of Trebil crossing with Jordan. At least seven Iraqi border guards were killed and 17 others injured in an ISIS attack at western Anbar. A number of ISIS members were also killed in the attack,” added Dulaimi.
• The Anti-Terrorism Forces liberated four villages - al-Hawish, al-Jawa’na, al-Jubla and al-Ghazeya- in Qayyarah, situated to the south of Mosul, and raised the Iraqi flag.
• Anjem Choudary, Britain's most high-profile Islamist preacher whose followers have been linked to numerous plots across the world, has been found guilty of inviting support for the Islamic State (ISIS). Choudary, 49, was convicted at London's Old Bailey court of using online lectures and messages to encourage support for the banned group which controls large parts of Syria and Iraq. Prosecutors said that in postings on social media, Choudary and his close associate Mizanur Rahman, 33, had pledged allegiance to the "caliphate" declared by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and said Muslims had a duty to obey or provide support to him.
• The ISIS ‘Minister of Media’ was killed during a military operation carried out by Peshmerga forces for liberating villages east of Mosul. ISIS has transferred about 165 bodies of its members to Mosul and among the dead was also the body of Abu Ahmed al-Shami.
• International coalition aviation’s air crafts launched an airstrike on an ISIS site in Mosul, killing at least 6 militants.

 

Iraq’s government is preparing to execute 36 captive Islamic State (ISIS) militants for their role in the massacre of an estimated 1,700 Shiite cadets at Camp Speicher in Tikrit back in June 2014. Iraq’s President Fuad Masum has approved the executions with mass hangings. There were a total of 47 defendants on trial for suspected involvement in that infamous massacre. Forty were already sentenced to death last February at the central criminal court in Baghdad. The upcoming execution comes two weeks after the United Nations urged Iraq not to speed up the execution of terrorist suspects currently in its jails in the wake of a more recent atrocity, the massive bombing of the Karrada shopping district in Baghdad, which killed over 320 people on July 3.

Iraq Wednesday August 17, 2016:

• An airstrike of the ISIS headquarters at Masaref, Kahera, Ghabat and Somer in Mosul carried out by the US-led international aviation killed at least 50 ISIS men and destroyed a chunk of their vehicles (at least 22) and other belongings.
• International coalition aviation bombed an ISIS gathering in Hayy al-Bakr, Heet Island some 70 km west of Ramadi, killing three ISIS members and destroying a cache of weapons and rockets. A search discovered four plastic containers containing explosive substances and 17 IEDs. The security forces also cleaned 10 buildings in Juba of military remnants.
• The Peshmerga forces foiled an ISIS attack. ISIS shelled Peshnerga sites in the center of Dagug which is 30 km from Kirkuk. Peshmerga forces repulsed the attack and killed at least six ISIS fighters and wounded eight others.

 

Iraq Thursday August 18, 2016:

• Dozens of ISIS members were killed while trying to attack Haditha district, west of Ramadi. Iraqi Security Forces backed by al-Hashd al-Shaabi fighters repulsed an ISIS attack targeting the front berms of al-Khasfa area and approach of one of the army headquarters. Dozens of ISIS men were killed in the operation.
• Forces of the Jazeera Operations first monitored an ISIS hideout and then shelled it, killing 12 members of the organization and destroying several machines of the outfit.
• An improvised explosive device exploded in Ambar province killing one policeman and injuring two others. The IED blast was targeted on a police patrol that was carrying out a raid and search operation in al-Heraymat, located in southern Fallujah.

 

Iraq has allowed conditional opening of the country's airspace to Russian fighter jets; Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Tuesday August 16, 2016 confirmed the decision. The Iraqi government has opened its airspace to Russia with American consent.

At least 12 displaced people were killed and 36 others wounded on Thursday August 18, 2016, in a mortar barrage by the Islamic State (IS) militants on a displacement camp in the northern central province of Salahudin. IS militants fired many mortar rounds on a displacement camp at an abandoned cement factory in north of the town of Baiji. The camp was established to receive hundreds of displaced families who left their homes in the besieged town of Shirqat. Many of the killed and wounded were women and children. Families in Shirqat and other militant-seized cities and towns were prevented from leaving their homes by IS militants who used them as human shields during armed military attacks. ---

Iraq Saturday August 20, 2016:

• A technician working with an Iraqi media channel was killed and a journalist wounded in Iraq’s western Jazirat al-Khaldiyeh while covering military operations against the Islamic State (ISIS) in that area. Both worked for Al Ahad TV, a channel affiliated with Asaib Ahl al-Haq, one of the most powerful Shiite militias in Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary umbrella. The two were hit by a mortar while covering confrontations between the Iraqi army and ISIS militants in Jazirat al-Khaldiyeh in the area in western Anbar province. Last week, a reporter for Kurdistan TV who was embedded with the Peshmerga was killed by a mortar that targeted the Kurdish forces on the Khazir front near Mosul.
• 14 ISIS members were killed during raid and search operations, carried out at several places of Khalidiya Island.
• Security forces discovered several ISIS hideouts in Khalidiya Island and clashed with the members of the outfit. 14 ISIS men were killed and three cache of weapons at Albu Obeid and Albu Bali were destroyed. Among the dead ISIS men, several members were Arabs and foreigners. The military troops are still dealing with ISIS at al-Zawya and Kartan in Khalidiya Island, as well as shelling their strongholds and gatherings.
• A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt blew himself up near an al-Hashd al-Sha’abi gathering in al-Yusufiya, Baghdad. Two members of the organization were killed on the spot while eight others were severely injured.
• Al-Hashed al-Sha’abi leader Jabbar Maamouri said that ISIS executed two of its own leaders and transferred four others to Mosul, a day after they were arrested near Hawija, south-west of Kirkuk. They were linked to the Emir of ISIS in Kirkuk, who was executed yesterday. The Emir was arrested because in an audio recording he was heard of appealing to the ISIS fighters to withdraw and fall back from Hawija.
• ISIS detained over 30 of its own men due to the chaos and internal confusion in the ranks of the organization. Rifts among the leaders have also surfaced and the morale of the fighters have also gone down in the past few weeks.
• ISIS killed 14 civilians in al-Faisaliah, central Mosul, for allegedly collaborating with the government and Peshmerga forces. The entire execution process was filmed on camera by the outfit. The death penalty against the civilians were issued by the Sharia court in Nineveh.

 

Iraq Sunday August21, 2016:

• A senior ISIS leader was killed in Anbar province. An airstrike carried out by the international coalition aviation killed ISIS Wali of Baghdadi Island Abu Arrab inside one of ISIS headquarters in al-Wasiliyah, to the west of Ramadi. Acting on a tip off the international coalition aviation bombed the headquarter, killing all the ISIS members inside. The dead members also included Abu Arrab.
• A bomb exploded near a popular market at Mahmudiya district to the south of Baghdad. Two persons were killed and nine others were severely injured.
• The international coalition aviation today bombed 12 ISIS vehicles that were carrying crude oil in Nineveh. Four ISIS members were killed and the vehicles were completely destroyed. ISIS was planning to set fire to the vehicles to obscure the vision of the joint security forces.
• Security forces at the recently liberated al-Jawaana village discovered a mass grave containing the remains of 30 policemen in Nineveh. Victims’ bodies show signs of torture and were fired in head and chest. The security forces discovered the grave during a search operation in the village.
• More than a dozen commanders of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group have been killed when Iraqi fighter jets carried out a strike in Iraq’s northern province of Nineveh. The military aircraft struck a militant gathering in al-Sahel al-Aysar region, which lies east of the militant-held city of Mosul, leaving 19 senior Daesh figures dead. The self-proclaimed Daesh governor Ayad Hamed Mohal al-Jumail, better known by the nom de guerre Abu Yahya, was among those killed in the aerial attack.
• A bomb exploded targeting a convoy of ISIS gunmen at the entrance to Telkaif district north of Mosul, killing six ISIS members.
• The Peshmerga forces repelled an ISIS attack Al-Kwyr axis east of Mosul, killing 13 ISIS fighters and wounding several others.
• Security forces in Kirkuk foiled an attack by a boy about 12 years old who attempted to blow himself up in a residential district using an explosives vest concealed beneath an oversize football shirt. The boy told police during interrogation that he had been forced to attempt the attack by a gang of masked men, who kidnapped him and placed the explosives vest on him.

 

Iraq Monday August 22, 2016:

• One policeman was killed and three others were injured, when an IED exploded while the police team was carrying out a search operation in the liberated areas of Khalidiya Island in eastern Ramadi.
• Islamic State (ISIS) militants bombarded Iraqi forces’ headquarters with chlorine gas in Qayyarah, south of Mosul. A number of Iraqi soldiers suffered from difficulty with breathing. Before ISIS militants fired a barrage of mortar containing a chemical agent against Peshmerga forces at the front lines in Khazir, wounding two Peshmerga on April 30, 2016.
• A British explosives expert has been killed and a colleague injured while trying to dismantle an improvised explosive device in Ramadi. The Briton was working for the US-based company Janus Global Organisation, which was awarded a contract to clear the hundreds of IEDs and booby-traps left behind by jihadis in the city. ---

Iraq Tuesday August 23, 2016:

• We were told that ISIS leader was killed in Qayyarah after the security forces entered the district. Iraqi troops and ISIS militants were engaged in a heavy gunfight in Qayyarah, which destroyed 23 car bombs of the outfit. In the battle, forces gunned down dozens of ISIS militants including Abu Futuhi, the Chechen ISIS leader in Qayyarah. Iraqi troops have entered Qayyarah in southern Mosul on the west bank of Tigris River.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a sheep market at Suwaib, south-west of Baghdad, killing two persons and wounding six others.
• A sniper attack on an Iraqi army security checkpoint at Latifiyah to the south of Baghdad, killed an army lieutenant and injured two other soldiers.

Iraq Thursday August 25, 2016:

• The Iraqi army has dislodged Islamic State from the Qayyara oil producing region located south of Mosul. Iraqi forces last month captured the Qayyara airbase which it plans to use as a hub to support forces advancing on Mosul, 60 km further north. The Qayyara region produces heavy sour crude and has a small refinery to process some of the oil.
• Iraq has received the second batch of 2 Czech L159 aircraft –out of a total of 13/15 aircrafts- that arrived in Balad air base north of Baghdad on.
• The Iraqi Air Force destroyed an ISIS convoy, which consisted of eight Kia trucks while the convoy was trying to escape from Sharqat to Hawija, south of Kirkuk.
• Forces from Saraya al-Salam seized five vehicles in an area of Salahuddin province carrying materials from fertilizers factory in Baiji, while a faction of al-Hashd al-Shaabi was trying to get it out of the province. Saraya al-Salam handed the seized materials to the office of Salahuddin governor.

 

Iraq Friday August 26, 2016:

• Twenty-two ISIL terrorists were killed in and around Mosul in airstrikes by the international coalition fighting the group, and in a car bomb attack.
• Warplanes launched airstrikes southeast of Mosul’s Al-Hadar district, killing 12 militants and destroying an ammunition depot.
• Separately, at least 10 ISIL members were killed when explosives in a car belonging to the terrorist group detonated in a village located between Makhmur and Qayyara towns southeast of Mosul.

 

Iraq Saturday August 27, 2016:

• A unit of federal police shot down an ISIS drone in al-Rathba district, some 310 km west of Ramadi. The drone was attached with a camera, which was used by ISIS to record the movements of the security forces and the tribal fighters of al-Rathba district.
• An ISIS leader was killed in airstrikes by the US-led coalition in the ISIS-occupied city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Abu Yahya Alwaizi, who is considered to be a top ranked ISIS leaders and who also fought in the Syrian city of Aleppo, was killed at al-Shurah district.
• A group of ISIS members attacked a checkpoint in Rutba district, killing four Federal Police officers.
• A number of ISIS members tried to flee Hawija district and surrender in front of the Peshmerga forces. These members were intercepted by some other members of the outfit and both the parties got engaged in an armed clash. In the clash, two ISIS men were killed while eight others were severely injured.
• Qayyarah was completely liberated after the ISIS were defeated by the joint efforts of Iraqi Army the US-led international coalition, those ISIS members who are still scattered in the province are trying their best disrupt this hard earned normalcy of Qayyarah. The small remaining number of militants are attempting to disrupt the hard earned normalcy of the city. Frustrated due to defeat, they opened oil pipes and this had flooded the city with crude oil, which now is a threat as this can be easily set on fire, which in turn will cause severe damage. ---

Iraq Monday August 29, 2016:

• Attackers armed with suicide vests, rifles and grenades killed 18 people in the Iraqi oasis town of Ain al-Tamer (at least 26 others were wounded), many of them guests at a wedding party. One of the attackers blew himself up in the midst of our citizens and the others were killed by the security forces. Ain al-Tamer, southwest of Baghdad, is located 50 kilometres from the Shiite holy city of Karbala and on the edge of Anbar province. Five members of the same family were among the dead. Some of the attackers were wearing civilian clothes, others military clothes. One of them may have managed to flee.
• Iraq has put out fires at four oil wells in the oil-producing region of Qayyara which Iraqi forces recaptured from ISIS last week. Work is underway to put out flames in the remaining wells or oil spots that Daesh set ablaze before fleeing the city. We do not know how many fires were still ablaze.
• A fire broke out in an IDP camp in Lailan district in Kirkuk province. An electrical short circuit led to the incident in the camp, which charred seventeen tents until the civil defense crew arrived at the scene and doused the fire. The IDPs in Yahyawa camp are mainly Turkmens from Tal Afar town, which is still held by ISIS.
• A bomb exploded near shops at the intersection of Nahrawan, south-east of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring nine others.
• Iranian authorities destroyed a bridge on the border with the Kurdistan Region in an effort to tighten security. The bridge, which connected Kurdish villages on both sides of the border, was reportedly used by merchants transporting goods between the Kurdistan Region and Iran. Although not a major crossing point, villagers in the area said the bridge was an important transport route for them. Part of it was in Iran and the other part in Iraq.

 

Iraq Tuesday August 30, 2016:

• An explosive device exploded this morning, near a popular market in Sabaa al-Bour, north of Baghdad. Two people killed and nine others wounded.
• ISIS abducted 40 civilians from Hawija while they were trying to escape from the ISIS-controlled areas to the south-west of the province. The abductees were intending to escape to Kirkuk and Salah al-Din.
• The international coalition aviation launched an airstrike targeting an ISIS unit at Albu Ali al-Jassim in northern Ramadi. Four fighters of the outfit was killed and a mortar detachment and a rocket launcher was also destroyed in the attack.
• A bomb exploded near a cemetery at al-Madain district in southern Baghdad, killing two persons and wounding four others.
• An improvised explosive device, which targeted vehicles carrying a number of internally displaced persons, exploded killing two IDPs and injuring four others. The IDPs were travelling from al-Baj hills to Baiji district.

 

Iraq Wednesday August 31, 2016:

• ISIS members have executed a number of Mosul youths by slicing them with chainsaws. The outfit said that they belonged to an anti-ISIS resistance faction. The death sentence pronounced by ISIS sharia court stated that the men should be tied to an iron pole in the center of Tal Afar Square in Mosul and then sliced into two with an electric chainsaw. ISIS, since gaining control of Mosul in 2014, have executed thousands citizens of the city on different charges and allegations. In most cases, the executed residents were charged to be cooperating with the security forces.
• An investigation into mass graves made by Islamic State (ISIS) militants concluded that between 5,200 and 15,000 people are buried in 72 mass graves in territory the militants formerly controlled.
• Seven convicted al-Qaeda terrorists of various Arab nationalities have been executed. The terrorists, who were from some Arab countries including Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, and Jordan, had been arrested over four years ago. ---

The Assyrian-led “Nineveh Protection Units” launched a successful assault against the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham” (ISIS) in the southern Mosul countryside on Thursday September 1, 2016, liberating the village of Badanah. For the Assyrians, this fight to liberate Mosul is a personal one: ISIS not only occupies their ancestral lands, but the aforementioned terrorist group has attempted to destroy much of their history.

On Thursday September 1, 2016, we were told that a total of 691 Iraqis were killed and another 1,016 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq, excluding Anbar, in August 2016. The number of civilians killed in August was 473 (including 16 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department), and the number of civilians injured was 813 (including 21 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department). A total of 218 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army but excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 203 were injured. Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 907 civilian casualties (231 killed, 676 injured). Ninewa 116 killed and 83 injured, Kirkuk had 81 killed and 13 injured, while Karbala 17 killed and 25 injured, Salahadin 14 killed and 04 injured and Diyala 06 killed and 05 injured.

Summary of the number of civilians killed and injured in Iraq between November 2012 and August 2016:


Iraq Friday September 2, 2016:

• An explosion at a weapons store in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad has killed at least four and injured 12 more, setting off explosions which struck neighbouring districts. The blast was caused after the storage room caught fire. Rockets, which launched from the weapons cache, hit a number of cars and houses at eight different locations including a flour factory where fires raged for hours after the initial impact.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a popular restaurant in Hayy al-Jihad area in western Baghdad, killing two persons and wounding four others.
• A Christian militia, called the Nineveh Plain Protection Units, has taken back the traditionally Christian village of Badanah in in the southern Mosul countryside from the Islamic State terror group with the help of the U.S.-led international coalition. This was their "first operation" supported by airstrikes and weapons from the international coalition.
• At least 24 Iraqi people were killed - including 20 police officers- and 60 more were injured in clashes with members of the Daesh terrorist group in the northern Saladin province. An unspecified number of security forces went missing. Around 60 Daesh militants infiltrated the Mutaibijah region of Saladin coming down from the Hamrin Mountains and clashed with police for several hours.
• Fighters from the Islamic State group killed nine members of the Iraqi security forces in clashes that broke out in a remote area north of Baghdad. Fighters based in the Hamreen mountain range attacked army and police forces in an area called Mutaibijah, 110 kilometres north of Baghdad.

 

Iraq Saturday September 3, 2016:

• Six people were killed and nine others injured in two coordinated explosions in the northern central province of Salahudin.
• The first attack occurred when a roadside bomb detonated at a neighbourhood inhabited by Shiite Turkomans in the town of Tuz-Khormato, some 190 km northeast of Baghdad, causing no casualties.
• But minutes later, a booby-trapped car went off when security forces and civilians gathered at the site of the first blast, leaving six killed and nine others wounded.
• ISIS set ablaze to most of the oil wells in Qayyarah during Iraqi army’s offensive to regain the area. ISIS set the wells on fire in order to keep themselves out of sight of the US-led coalition’s warplanes by covering themselves under the dense smoke cover. ISIS also spilled oil on the roads, which affected the environment and health of the residents. ISIS has completely damaged the infrastructure of the city and destroyed all the public buildings, as well as killed and abducted a dozen of residents. ISIS, so far, have burnt 11 oil wells out of 63 wells in Qayyarah while they retreated from the city.
• The international coalition aircraft conducted an airstrike on ISIS hideout in Albu Assaf area, which killed 18 ISIS members. They also destroyed an armed vehicle in Albu Ali al-Jassim area. Moreover the aviation has destroyed a weapons’ storage belonging to ISIS west of Ramadi.
• A suicide bomber blew up a car at Shasaiwan village in Khurmatu, 90 km east of Tikrit. The explosion brought people out of their homes and then a terrorist opened fire on the people. Later, he blew himself up. Six civilians were killed and seven others wounded.
• Three women were killed and three men injured when ISIS shelled Hayy al-Moalemeen area in central Heet from Khalidiyah Island, west of Ramadi.

Iraq Sunday September 4, 2016:

• A bomb exploded near a popular market at Hamamiyat area in Taji district, north of Baghdad. Two people were killed and eight others were injured. ---

Iraq Sunday September 4, 2016:

• At least 10 Iraqi soldiers and 8 civilians have been killed in an explosion at a booby-trapped house in al-Awsajah Village in the district of Qayyarah, Northern Province of Nineveh, southern Mosul. Four other people were also injured in the blast. The explosion was triggered when the Iraqi soldiers and civilians entered the house, touching off the explosives.
• Seven ISIS members were killed and a laboratory of booby trapping cars was destroyed in airstrike west of Mosul. The International coalition aviation launched an airstrike targeting a factory belonging to ISIS making bombs in Tall Afar, west of Mosul, killing seven ISIS members. The bombing completely destroyed the laboratory.
• Two ISIS members were killed while trying to infiltrate into the district across the Euphrates River to Khalidiya centre, 23 km east of Ramadi.
• A prominent leader of Islamic State (IS) group - close to the top IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi- and four extremist militants were killed in a U.S.-led coalition airstrike near the IS stronghold of Mosul in northern Iraq. The airstrike destroyed four IS positions near the newly-freed town of Qayyara. Six other IS militants were injured in the airstrike.

 

Iraq Monday September 5 2016:

• A veiled woman carrying a pistol killed two members of ISIS who were standing in a checkpoint in Sharqat, north of Salah al-Din. The incident surprised the organization and forced them to issue an alert of similar attacks. Another veiled woman attacked an ISIS member in Mosul a few days back, prompting the organization to take up precautionary measures, preventing the entry of any veiled woman.
• An explosive device exploded targeting a police patrol while it was passing through Tarmiya district in northern Baghdad. One police officer was killed and four others injured in the bomb blast.

 

Iraq Tuesday September 6, 2016:

• Iraq has managed to put out a total of six oil well fires started by retreating Islamic State (ISIS) forces in the Qayyara region, leaving three more left to extinguish. The firefighters had to remove explosives from these wells, putting out the fires and preventing crude oil from leaking into the river to prevent pollution.
• ISIS has bombed with Katyusha rockets the headquarters of the Border Guard Command in Rutba city in Anbar. The rockets landed in the courtyard of the headquarters, causing no damage or injuries.
• Detachments of Kata’ib al-Imam brigade discovered three mass graves containing the remains of Speicher camp’s victims inside the presidential palaces in central Tikrit. They contained the bodies of more than 30 victims
• The international coalition aviation bombed ISIS headquarters in Ghabat area in northern Nineveh, killing 18 ISIS members and wounding seven others. The strike also destroyed 12 vehicles belonging to the organization.
• Fire broke out in the main building of ISIS finance directorate in central Mosul. The fire was accompanied by explosions inside the building due to the extension of the fire to a warehouse containing munitions. Detachments of ISIS wearing black uniforms arrested the financial official and five of his associates over the incident. The building was used for the management of ISIS salaries file.
• A car bomb attack has killed at least nine people in the centre of Baghdad. The explosives-laden pick-up truck exploded in the predominantly Shia Muslim commercial district of Karrada. Twenty people were also injured by the blast, which set several shops on fire.
• An IS statement said the Sunni jihadist group had targeted a gathering of Shia civilians on Monday and boasted how it had managed to carry out the attack despite heightened security in the area.
• At least five civilians fleeing the fighting between Iraqi forces and the ISIL extremist group were killed in two separate bombings in northern Saladin province. At least one person had been killed when a bomb went off in the Al-Shirqat district. The explosion occurred in a local mosque in which fleeing residents had sought shelter. A second blast in the Al-Zawya area north of Baiji killed at least four people and injured another 10.
• 12 displaced persons have been either killed or wounded in a bomb blast north of the Salahuddin province. An ISIS device exploded in an area located between al-Zawiya and Sharqat. It targeted families fleeing from the areas controlled by ISIS in Sharqat and surrounding villages. Four civilians were killed and eight others were injured due to the explosion.

 

We have been told on Tuesday September 6, 2016, that the Islamic State group has banned women from wearing a burka, a veil that covers the entire face, as a security precaution in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. The new rule is striking in part because ISIS has beaten and killed women in the past for refusing to wear the conservative garment. Militant leaders banned burqas after a group of veiled women carried out attacks against several ISIS commanders. Women wearing burqas will no longer be allowed to enter buildings in Mosul while wearing the full-body covering. Instead, they must wear gloves and gauze to cover their eyes. ISIS' morality police will continue to require women to wear the burqa outside of Mosul's new security rule. ISIS has a poor record when it comes to women's rights. The group is accused of raping and trading women and limiting women's freedom of movement, access to health care and education. Some women said they felt deeply humiliated by their treatment by ISIS, and two said they felt so depressed they had wanted to kill themselves.

Iraq Wednesday September 7, 2016:

• At least four civilians were killed and ten others injured in two separate attacks.
• Mortar shells struck a marketplace in al-Qayyara, south of the Mosul city and two people were killed and five others injured in the attack.
• Two civilians were also killed and five others injured in a bomb blast in the capital Baghdad.
• The cousin ('Abdel-Salaam Al-Subhan) of the Saudi Ambassador to Iraq, Thamer Al-Subhan, was reportedly killed while fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) against the Iraqi Army two weeks ago. Abdel-Salaam Al-Subhan's death sparked outrage in Iraq after Thamer Al-Subhan refused to denounce the actions of his cousin. Finally, after several days of trading insults with the Saudi Ambassador, the Iraqi government has requested that Riyadh send a replacement for Thamer Al-Subhan, citing his anti-Iraq comments as the primary reason for the turmoil.
• Forces from the border guards’ Intelligence Command in Anbar, in cooperation with the people of Rutba arrested an ISIS executioner called Kaddouri Sahab. The forces handed over the terrorist executioner to the Federal Police forces in Rutba city.

 

Iraq Thursday September 8, 2016:

• A bomb exploded, this morning, near shops in the Euphrates neighborhood, southwest of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding five others.
• The international coalition conducted a number of air strikes on ISIS headquarters and strongholds in al-Bakr neighborhood in Heet Island and al-Kusairat area in Haditha district, killing 7 ISIS members. The air strikes also destroyed a large cache of weapons and three armed vehicles in al-Bakr area and another cache or weapons in Kusairat area. ---

At least 40 people were killed late on Friday September 9, 2016, when two ISIS suicide bombers attacked a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad. More than 60 people were wounded in the attack at Nakheel Mall opposite the oil ministry. One bomb went off at the entrance to the mall, the other in the parking lot. The Islamic State claims the bombing targeted “a gathering of Shia” outside the mall. The Islamic State is an organization of extremist Sunni Muslims and often targets devotees of Shia Islam.

Four Iraqi civilians were killed on Saturday September 10, 2016, in the centre of Baghdad in a suicide attack claimed by the Islamic State. At least 11 more civilians were also wounded when the suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up at a main bus stop in the Allawi area of downtown Baghdad. The suicide bomber wearing a vest had targeted a gathering of security members. The blast was one of five explosions in and around the Iraqi capital on Saturday that killed at least 12 people and wounded 27 others.

Iraq Sunday September 11, 2016:

• The international coalition air force bombarded ISIS headquarters in Shura area and Kahara village south of the Nineveh province, killing 18 ISIS militants and wounding seven others. The airstrike also destroyed five tactical units and a heavy cannon belonging to ISIS.
• The international coalition air force bombarded a gathering of ISIS terrorists in al-Baghdadi Island killing a number of them. The bombardment came in preparation for the military operation that will be launched to liberate the islands of Heet and al-Baghdadi in the next few days.
• The Shia militia of al-Hashd al-Shaabi in Haditha killed five members of the Federal Police in an armed attack west of Ramadi. The victims include the regiment’s commander.

 

American warplanes eliminated a "significant chemical threat" to Iraqi civilians by bombing a complex of buildings near the northern city of Mosul that Islamic State militants had converted from pharmaceutical manufacturing to chemical weapons production we were told Tuesday September 13, 2016. The target was an Islamic State headquarters also used to produce lethal chemicals, possibly including chlorine and mustard gas. The airstrike was a large, well-planned operation, which destroyed more than 50 targets at the site with a variety of U.S. warplanes, including Air Force B-52 bombers and Marine Corps F-18D attack planes. A total of 12 U.S. planes were used. The mission was part of a broader effort to cut off the Islamic State's main sources of revenue, kill their leaders and create "organizational dysfunction" in ways that will eliminate the group as a military threat in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq Tuesday September 13, 2016:

•  ISIS launched an offensive near the wilderness area on the road linking between Baghdad and Mosul. The army and police killed 100 ISIS men and wounded dozens more during the attack. Five booby-trapped vehicles were destroyed during the attack. No human or material casualties were inflicted on the security forces.
• At least three people were killed and 15 wounded by a two bomb attacks in Baghdad. The first attack was in Baghdad’s northern area and the second in the south.
• An explosive device exploded close to commercial buildings in the Adhamiyah district of northern Baghdad, which led to the death of one person and injured seven others.
• The second explosion shook the Mahmoudiya neighborhood, which killed two people and wounded eight.
• The international coalition aircraft conducted air strikes targeting a gathering of ISIS members in al-Tarabesha area. The airstrikes resulted in the killing of eight ISIS members, as well as destroying three mortar detachments and a vehicle carrying an anti-aircraft weapon. ---

Iraq Thursday September 15, 2016:

• Security forces backed by al-Hashed al-Shaabi fighters foiled an ISIS attack on Ajil oil field east of Tikrit. ISIS suffered severe casualties in the attack.”
• A bomb blast targeting an army patrol to the south of Baghdad, killed two army personnel and injured five others. The bomb targeted an Iraqi army patrol at Arab Jabour village in Doura, to the south of Baghdad. An army vehicle was also damaged severely.
• Unidentified gunmen attacked an ISIS gathering at al-Moalmeen neighbourhood in central Qaim, using light and medium weapons. Four ISIS leaders were killed, including the official of Diwan al-Hisba in Qaim Abu Ibrahim al-Mohajer. The gunmen also set fire to a vehicle of ISIS and seized weapons and communication devices, before fleeing. The ISIS militants prevented the residents of Qaim from approaching the area of incident, and also raided and searched the houses and nearby buildings to search for the gunmen.

 

Iraq Friday September 16, 2016:

• Daesh organization executed four of its members by firing squad in the vicinity of Matbija on the border between the provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala. The Daesh Takfiri terrorist group accused them of providing information to the Iraqi air force for a recent airstrike that claimed the lives of a number of its senior commanders. The Iraqi airstrike targeted a Daesh position in Matbija and claimed the lives of six senior commanders of Daesh as well as scores of their aides and bodyguards, Khadran added.
• International aviation coalition bombed a plant used by ISIS to manufacture missiles carrying mustard gas and chlorine gas, in Zab are- around 75 km southwest of Kirkuk. The strike completely destroyed the plant.
• The strike also targeted ISIS sites in Rashad and Riyadh killing 15 ISIS members and injuring seven others, apart from destroying tactical units.

 

Iraq Saturday September 17, 2016:

• Two people were killed and seven others injured in bomb blast west of Baghdad. The bomb exploded near a fruit and vegetable market in Amiriyah, west of Baghdad.
• ISIS information minister Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad has been killed in a US airstrike in Syria. The airstrike near Raqqa in Syria killed Wa’il Adil Hasan Salman al-Fayad, also known as Dr. Wa’il. He was one of the very limited number of ISIS leaders who had “direct access” to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. The US conducted the strike using a drone, hitting him on a motorcycle just outside a house in Raqqa, ISIS’s self-declared capital.
• Warplanes of the US-led coalition bombed Syrian regime positions in al-Tharda Mountain near Deir Ezzor airport causing losses in lives and equipment.
• The Federal Police’s 13th brigade targeted vehicles mounted with heavy weapons belonging to ISIS in Makhoul Mountains, destroying a vehicle and killing its occupants.

 

Iraq Sunday September 18, 2016:

• At least four people were killed and 21 wounded in separate attacks in and around Baghdad.
• Security forces also shot dead a suicide bomber before he could reach an army checkpoint and detonate his explosives.
• In the town of Taji north of Baghdad, an improvised bomb killed 10 people and wounded eight others.
• In the town of Madaeen southeast of Baghdad another improvised bomb killed one and wounded five others.
• An explosion at a popular market in Baghdad’s Mahmoudiya district killed one person and wounded eight.
• Peshmerga forces successfully thwarted two separate ISIS offensives at Bashiqa and Gwer fronts.
• ISIS carried out the first attack attack against the Peshmerga forces at Gwer, southeast of Mosul.
• Meanwhile, the ISIS carried out another offensive on Peshmerga bases at Bashiqa front in northeastern Mosul.
• After nearly two hours of clashing, the Peshmerga forces successfully repelled both ISIS offensives, inflicting them with serious damage. ---

Iraq Sunday September 18, 2016:

-     Security forces killed a suicide bomber who was wearing an explosive belt in al-Suwaib area southwest of Baghdad. The suicide bomber was intending to attack a military gathering in the area.
-     The international coalition aviation jets bombed an ISIS laboratory used to make booby-trapping cars in al-Dabs vicinity, 40 km north-west of Kirkuk. In the bombing, the laboratory was completely destroyed and killed seven members and injuring ten members of the outfit.

Iraq Monday September 19, 2016:

-     One member of the Iraqi security forces was wounded and another two were detained in a confrontation with Kurdish security in Khurmatu, south of Kirkuk. The incident occurred when a vehicle from the Iraqi national security tried to cross a Kurdish checkpoint in Khurmatu, located between Khurmatu and Slemanbag, without following the rules, but were stopped by the security. When the vehicle tried to get through the checkpoint without following the rules, one of them got off and opened fire. The security forces responded and injured one of them, and detained another two.
-     ISIS released another propaganda video showing a man tied to a pole before he is shot dead with a machine gun. The man is then beheaded by an assailant. In typical ISIS fashion the man is interviewed by soldiers before his death where he refers to himself as a rafidi. A rafidi or rafida, is an Islamic term meaning ‘rejectors’ or ‘those who refuse’ and refers to people who have rejected ‘legitimate’ Islamic authority and leadership.

Iraq Tuesday September 20, 2016:
 

• ISIS members stoned a woman to death in al-Jazaeir, east of Mosul, for fornication. ISIS had previously stoned a number of people in different occasions in the city of Raqqa, its most prominent stronghold in Syria.
• A roadside coffee shop in Baghdad was severely damaged when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded near it during mid-afternoon. There was no human loss in the explosion.
• al-Hashd al-Shaabi Command announced that Wadi al-Sakran, west of Ramadi, was liberated and that 22 ISIS members were killed in the battles. The security forces also detonated 30 IEDs, mines and four rockets launchers, apart from destroying seven vehicles used by ISIS and a mortar detachment.

Iraq Wednesday September 21, 2016:

• An explosive device exploded targeting a patrol of al-Hashd al-Shaabi while it was passing through al-Moshahda area in Tarmiya district, in northern Baghdad, killing two of its members and wounding four others.
• ISIS beheaded 12 of its own members on charges of fleeing the battlefront in Syria’s northeastern Raqqa province. The ISIS members were executed in front of hundreds of people in central Raqqa. ISIS-led Sharia Court supported the execution, describing the dead militants as ‘traitors’ who refused to ‘serve the Caliphate’.”
• The army troops and tribal fighters liberated the entire Haditha Island from ISIS control. Haditha Island includes Alkseriaat, Khalidiya and Alamierih villages. The army troops and tribal fighters headed towards al-Baghdadi Island for liberating it from ISIS grip, after the liberation of Haditha Island.
• The Iraqi Air Force, backed by the international coalition aviation, this morning destroyed nine ISIS booby-trapped vehicles, southwest of Sharqat.
• Security forces from the army’s 7th brigade liberated Ounaya and raised the Iraqi flag over its buildings. The forces also detonated 190 IEDs. They are preparing for the second phase that is to liberate Heet Island.

 

Iraq Thursday September 22, 2016:

• We were told that ISIS attacked a military base in northern Iraq on Tuesday using a shell that may have contained a ‘chemical agent we. The base is home to both the American and Iraqi troops. The shell did not explode and no American or Iraqi troops were injured in the attack.
• While the unexploded shell initially tested positive for a mustard agent, a second test was negative. Additional tests were ordered and accordingly tests were carried out which tested positive for a powdered mustard agent. It was mustard agent in a powderized form.
• The 9th armored division and the 73rd brigade of the Iraqi Army liberated Al–Sabkha and Ba’aja villages north of Sharqat. These two villages are located on the outskirts of Sharqat district.
• The troops of the Seventh Division, al-Hashed al-Sha’bi forces and tribal fighters freed Jawaana, Jaba, al-Masira and al-Maamira villages to the north of al-Baghdadi Island. These villages were liberated after the killing dozens of ISIS members and destroying a number booby-trapped wheels, as well as dismantling hundreds of mines and improvised explosive devices.
• The joint security forces of the army, police and the 5th brigade, backed by the international coalition aviation and Iraqi Army Aviation liberated Bravo Camp near Ramadi and killed dozens of ISIS members. The security forces raised the Iraqi flag over the buildings of Bravo Camp, and started to dismantle the improvised explosive devices that were planted in the main roads. ---

Iraq Saturday September 24, 2016:

• Rocket launched by Islamic State militants at American troops did contain a mustard agent. No-one was hurt in Tuesday's attack on the Qayyarah air base near the IS stronghold of Mosul. The group's capability to deliver chemical weapons was rudimentary but the attack was a "concerning development".
• Isis has launched a triple suicide bombing attack at a checkpoint north of Baghdad, killing at least 11 members of the Iraqi security forces and wounding 34. Three jihadists drove vehicles packed with explosives into a guard post near al-Salam, in Salahuddin province.
• Militants have killed at least a dozen members of the Iraqi security forces in early morning attacks in the city of Tikrit. Four police officers were shot dead at a checkpoint on the west side of the city. Security forces returned fire and killed one gunman. Other militants continued north to a second checkpoint where they detonated a vehicle rigged with explosives, killing eight more police officers. Dozens more were wounded. The local police chief and head of the provincial security committee were visiting the second checkpoint at the time of the attack, but both escaped unharmed.
• Twelve ISIS members and three specialists who were inside a tunnel in the chemical field were killed in an airstrike by the US-led coalition at Bashiqa, north of Mosul.
• The International Coalition aircraft bombed ISIS military sites in Rashad district, 35 km south-west of Kirkuk, killing its security official Ahmed Aziz al-Jawali along with three of his companions. The bombing also killed Abu Qatada, the commander of ISIS’ Kata’ib Salahuddin.
• A fire at one of Iraq's oil fields could hinder military and humanitarian efforts as operations to recapture the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul get underway. Black smoke continues to billow into the air from the Qayara oil field, damaged by IS militants last month as they fled the town, creating health risks for civilians and troops amassing there. The fires are also clogging up the skies in the area, where critically important airstrikes and aerial reconnaissance missions are taking place almost daily. Qayara is an important staging ground for military and humanitarian efforts ahead of the Mosul operation. Everything for the Mosul operation hinges on Qayara.

 

Iraq Sunday September 25, 2016:

• An explosion in central Baghdad marked the third attack of the day in the Iraqi capital, where a total of eight people were killed and at least 25 wounded in the three blasts.
• The latest attack left one person dead and five others hurt.
• Earlier, ISIS claimed responsibility for the day's deadliest attack, a suicide bombing that killed at least six people. Eighteen people were wounded. The suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt in the Iskan city area of western Baghdad.
• The bomber struck when a small group of Shia pilgrims was preparing in a tent for the holy month of Muharram. The attack was targeting Shia militia members.
• Separately, at least one person was killed and two wounded when a bomb exploded on a bus in central Baghdad.
• Nine ISIS boats were destroyed and their occupant killed in an airstrike southeast of Nineveh. ISIS members were using the boats to transfer food and weapons between Sidaw, Makouk, Khabata, Salihiya and Khalidiya villages that are located on the banks of the Tigris River.
• Meanwhile, the US-led coalition’s warplanes have reportedly sunk over 100 ISIS boats near Qayyarah and Sultan Abdullah, destroying 65 of them as part of efforts to blunt the ISIS use of watercraft to transport fighters and conduct attacks.
• Seven people have been killed, including two Iraqi soldiers, and 28 injured in a suicide bomb attack targeting a checkpoint in Western Baghdad. The attack targeted a checkpoint close to a vocational high school in Iskan neighbourhood. The attack was carried out by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest.
• Seven senior ISIS leaders, including the member of ISIS Shoura Council in Nineveh Abu Hammam al-Souri, escaped from Mosul towards Syria through Tel Afar district. They fled as the battle to retake Mosul approaches near.
• ISIS called the residents of Mosul to stay inside their houses starting next month intending to impose a comprehensive curfew in Mosul.

 

7 members of ISIS terrorist group fled Sharqt battle were trampled to death by a bulldozer in Mosul we were told Monday September 26, 2016. The victims had their hands and legs chained before they were executed in a public square. The majority of the victims were from Arab and foreign nationalities. The executions were carried out in front of citizens and other ISIS members. The group wanted the victims to be an example of the punishment its members would receive if they thought of fleeing the battlefield.

Iraq Tuesday September 27, 2016:

• Separate suicide bombings ripped through busy commercial areas in Shiite-dominated neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital killing at least 17 civilians.
• The deadliest attack took place in the eastern New Baghdad neighborhood, where a bomber approached a gathering of construction workers and set off his explosives-laden vest, killing 11 civilians. At least 28 civilians were wounded and the explosion damaged nearby shops and cars.
• Hours later, another suicide bomber blew himself up in an outdoor market in the southwestern neighborhood of Bayaa, killing six shoppers and wounding 21 others.
• An improvised explosive device exploded targeting an army patrol while passing in al-Moshahda area, in northern Baghdad. The explosion killed one soldier and wounded four others, as well as damaging the vehicle.
• ISIS group launched an attack on the security forces stationed north of Tlul al-Baj area, north of Tikrit, using seven booby-trapped vehicles driven by suicide bombers. The security troops backed by the Iraqi Air Force and International Coalition Air Force managed to repel the attack and destroy the booby-trapped vehicles. The security forces were also able to kill 15 members of ISIS during the attack.
• Five houses in the Daur District Council in Salahuddin Province were destructed by IEDs planted by ISIS in eastern Tikrit.

 

Iraq Wednesday September 28, 2016:

• An explosion occurred in a meeting of ISIS members in al-Mahawes village in Hawija district (55 km southwest of Kirkuk). The explosion killed 16 members including senior leaders, as well as wounding of 16 others. Some ISIS members were wearing explosive belts; the explosion was due to a defect in one of them. The meeting was to prepare an attack on the security forces in Hamrin Mountains, al-Zawiya area and Ajil area in Salahuddin Province.
• A woman from a village near Hawija attacked an ISIS militant, who was trying to kidnap her 9-year-old daughter. She stabbed the militant in chest several times with a knife. The woman fled with her children before the arrival of a force belonging to ISIS, which burned her house and carried out a search operation.
• The security forces liberated five areas (Sumaia School, al-Mawali, Albu Mubajl, Albu Judai and al-Walaa center) in the island of Albu Ziab, in northern Ramadi, from the control of ISIS terrorist. The combat troops killed dozens of ISIS members during the military operations.
• Iraqi security forces also liberated al-Taliha and al-Safaqiya in Heet Island. 33 ISIS members were killed during the battle.
• Earlier today, al-Hashd al-Shaabi Command announced the start of a military operation to liberate Heet Island, west of Ramadi, from the ISIS grip.

 

Iraq Thursday September 29, 2016:

• The security forces captured 32 members of the Islamic State group (ISIS) during security operations in the cities of Tikrit and Baiji, in northern Salahuddin.
• The Islamic State’s (ISIS) Deputy Military Chief, Abu Jannat, was killed in a coalition airstrike in Mosul. Abu Jannat was responsible for military operations around Mosul and manufacturing chemical weapons. The US-led coalition said it had killed three ISIS commanders in the past week. Coalition strikes are relentless—hunting ISIS in Mosul and taking out their leaders on the battlefield.

 

Iraq Saturday October 1, 2016:

• Anbar Operations Command liberated an area, known as al-San’a, in northern Ramadi from the Islamic State group’s control. Ten rockets launchers were destroyed as well as an explosives factory and four mortar cannons.
• ISIS executed a woman by firing squad for trying to flee from the areas controlled by the group in Sharqat district, north of Tikrit. The woman was executed by firing squad in front of her children, on charges of leaving the land of caliphate and collaborating with the security forces and al-Hashed al-Shaabi.
• ISIS kidnapped 17 civilians for attempting to flee areas controlled by the terrorist organization southwest the province of Kirkuk. The kidnapping took place after ISIS militants, lying in ambush, waited for the civilians to flee the area under the control of the terrorist group.
• ISIS militants launched a mortar attack targeting Turkish troops in Camp Zilkan and forces of al-Hashd al-Watani in a military camp both near the city of Mosul. The attack also targeted fighters of al-Hashd al-Watani, but the bombardment did not cause any losses.
• The estimated number of the Turkish troops stationed at Camp Zilkan near the town of Bashiqa is 1200 soldiers.

 

Iraq Sunday October 2, 2016:

• The joint security forces carried out an operation in the areas of al-Jawa’na and al-Dankiyah located between the Islands of Baghdadi and Heet. They freed 17 families that were used by ISIS as human shields during battles.
• An improvised explosive device exploded in a main road in al-Nassaf area in western Fallujah, while bomb squad forces were trying to dismantle it, killing one policeman and wounded two others severely.
• A suicide bombing in a busy commercial area in Baghdad has killed at least seven civilians.
• A fighter jet targeted a BMW vehicle ridden by Mohamed Ali Mohamed nicknamed Henadi Abu Shawarib and three others in al-Houd village near al-Qayyarah. The air strike completely damaged the vehicle and killed all four passengers including Abu Shawarib who serves as ISIS military chief in south Mosul. Abu Shawarib committed several crimes and violations towards innocent civilians. He was responsible for shedding the blood of Iraqi security personnel, blowing up houses of Iraqi policemen and other crimes.
• ISIS blew up and robbed graves and archaeological sites in the areas under its control, southwest of the province Kirkuk.
• ISIS bombed nearly 100 archaeological graves in the vicinity of Hawija using explosive materials and bulldozers. ISIS groups exhumed a number of archaeological sites in the areas of Tel al-Mahwis and al-Riyadh and stole antiquities found in those locations.

 

Iraq Monday October 2, 2016:

• A suicide bombing in a busy commercial area in Baghdad has killed at least seven civilians. The attacker set off his explosives-laden vest in an outdoor market in the southwestern Shiite-dominated neighborhood of al-Amil. Up to 25 other civilians were wounded.
• At least 12 people were killed and 24 wounded in an explosion and two suicide bombings in Baghdad.
• In Baghdad’s eastern Mashtal neighborhood at least three people were killed and 10 wounded by a suicide bomber.
• Three people were killed and seven wounded in an explosion in Baghdad’s Saba al-Boor area north of the capital.
• ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, along with three leaders of the group suffered from severe poisoning after eating a meal on the Iraqi–Syrian border, southwest of the province of Nineveh. ---

Iraq Tuesday October 4, 2016:

• Militants have unleashed a series of attacks in Shi'ite-majority neighbourhoods in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least 16 civilians.
• The deadliest attack took place in the southwestern neighbourhood of al-Amil when a bomber set off his explosives-laden vest in a busy outdoor market, killing seven shoppers and wounding up to 25 others.
• Another suicide attacker on foot blew himself up among residents of the eastern neighbourhood of Mashtal as they were preparing for next week's Ashoura rituals, which commemorate the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and an iconic Shi'ite martyr. At least six civilians were killed and 21 others wounded.
• Three more civilians were killed and 10 wounded in a bomb explosion in a commercial area in the northern Sabi al-Bor area.
• 16 ISIS fighters, including senior figures, have reportedly been killed when the malfunctioning suicide vest went off in one of their meetings. The terror group had been meeting in the village of al-Mahaws to plan an attack on security forces.
• Security forces and Iraqi Army Aviation carried out extensive military operation and air strikes, targeting three convoys belong to ISIS in Aana district, Rayhana area and al-Zawiya area, west of Anbar killing 40 ISIS members.
• They destroyed the first convoy of ISIS, which included 26 armed vehicles, in Aana district, as well as destructing a second convoy in Rayhana area, and a third convoy that included five vehicles in al-Zawiya area.
• The Army Aviation accurately bombarded gatherings of ISIS in the area using rockets.
• The security forces managed to liberate the majority of cities of Anbar, including Ramadi, Fallujah, Rutba and Heet.
• The artillery of the Turkish troops stationed in Zalikan Base, north of Mosul, shelled al-Fadiliyah village, killing two persons and wounding four others. The shelling also destructed civilian houses in the village.
• Forces from the 1st regiment conducted operations in different areas of al-Saeediyah vicinity, and found a booby-trapped vehicle. The security forces arrested a number of ISIS members in al-Saeediyah area and seized large quantities of weapons and equipment.

 

Iraq Wednesday October 5, 2016:

• An air strike has killed at least 20 Iraqi pro-government Sunni tribal fighters in the east of the town of Qayyarah south of Mosul.
• It was unclear whether it was the Iraqi military or the US-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) that mistakenly hit the fighters.
• The commander of the fighters who were killed, said they had succeeded in repelling an attack by ISIL in the area, and were bombed when they gathered after the end of the fighting.
• An improvised explosive device exploded while a bomb squad team was trying to dismantle it in al-Dayoum area, killing an explosives expert and wounding another one.
• Four ISIS suicide bombers were killed during an operation that targeted a hideout of the ISIS in southern Kirkuk. The suicide bombers were planning to attack the Husseiniya celebrations in the province.
• Security forces from Kirkuk emergency police arrested a suicide bomber belongs to ISIS in Hayy al-Qadisiyah, east of Kirkuk; he guided the security forces to other suicide bombers in Hayy al-Wasity.
• The security forces cordoned off the area and clashed with the suicide bombers who blew up themselves, killing the fourth suicide bomber who guided the security forces to them and wounding three security members.
• The Directorate of Yazidi Abductees Affairs announced the rescue of 1,071 Yazidi women and girls from Islamic State (ISIS) captivity. More than 2,000 Yazidi women and girls have been freed from ISIS captivity, of whom 1,071 were rescued by the Directorate of Yazidi Abductees Affairs.

 

Iraq Thursday October 6, 2016:

• An improvised explosive device exploded targeting a patrol of al-Hashd al-Shaabi while passing in al-Moshahda vicinity in Tarmiyah area, north of Baghdad. The explosion killed three volunteer soldiers and wounded seven others, as well as causing damage to the vehicle.
• The security forces carried out several security operations in different areas of the Karbala province, and found military supplies, including 82 mortar shells, 8 hand grenades and 97 detonators. 18 persons wanted on different criminal and terrorism charges were arrested including two drug dealers from al-Basra province.
• Four ISIS members were killed in an armed attack launched by unidentified men in central Qaim, west of Anbar. The gunmen managed to seize the weapons and communications devices of the ISIS members.

 

Iraq Saturday October 8, 2016:

• A person from Baquba who had joined ISIS through social media was captured by security forces in Qaratapa. He gave information on five more militants who had plotted to carry out terror attacks, together with him in Qaratapa and the area. One of the seven was captured with five improvised booby traps at a village near Qaratapa by Iraqi intelligence.
• ISIS recaptured the centre of Sharqat district in Salahuddin Province, mayor’s office and the entertainment city, after attacking the district from two axes and sneaking from the left coast of the city. There are ongoing violent clashes with the ISIS members that killed three members of the security forces and wounded two others so far.

 

Iraq Sunday October 9, 2016:

• Three bomb attacks have killed 10 people and wounded at least 37 across the Iraqi capital.
• The largest attack killed five people and wounded 22 in eastern Baghdad when a suicide bomber targeted Shiite pilgrims marking the holy month of Muharram.
• Two other attacks in southern Baghdad killed five people and wounded 15.
• Islamic State (ISIS) extremists demolished an Assyrian Church in northwestern Nineveh Governorate. Barbara Fouq Attal Church was in the town of Karmlis, near Mosul city. ISIS jihadists detonated a number of explosive devices inside the church. It was completely destroyed.

 

The Assyrian town of Karmlis and adjacent Christian villages have been completely depopulated since ISIS invaded Nineveh Governorate in June 2014. Thousands of Christian families fled their hometowns as ISIS advanced, taking shelter in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iraq Monday October 10, 2016:

• A female fighter belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was executed after she had attempted to desert from the party and failed. The female fighter was from Van, a Kurdish city in southeast Turkey, and was named “Ronahi” by PKK. She was captured in the areas of Doli Ballayian, near Choman district of Kurdistan Region, while attempting to desert from the PKK and was executed right where she was caught. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party imposes huge penalties on its fighters who want to leave in order to prevent them from abandoning the party.
• A booby-trapped vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded targeting AsiaCell checkpoint near New Iraq Camp, on Azim-Khalis road, killing six persons including three security members and wounding one other severely.
• Earlier a security detachment repulsed a car bomb attack on AsiaCell checkpoint on the road between Azim and Khalis.

 

Iraq Tuesday October 11, 2016:

• The international coalition aircraft carried out an air strike targeting ISIS Diwan al-Hisba in Hayy al-Tayaran area, in central Mosul. The air strike destructed the headquarters and killed eight members of ISIS.
• The security forces fully liberated Heet Island from the ISIS control. It was done without any resistance from the ISIS side. The international coalition air force, Iraqi Air Force, Army Aviation and Artillery participated in the liberation battle of Heet Island.
• Forces from the army’s 10th brigade found nine explosives factories and three local-made rockets launchers in Ramadi Island, north of the city,.
• A booby-trapped drone launched by Islamic State militants killed two Peshmerga fighters and wounded two French soldiers north of the Isis-controlled city of Mosul, French and Kurdish officials have said. The drone exploded when Peshmerga fighters tried to lift it after it crashed. It was booby-trapped.”
• The drone had been intercepted in flight on 2 October and exploded near the Kurdish and French soldiers when it hit the ground. The French soldiers had been training Kurdish fighters near the site of the drone crash, close to the town of Dohuk. ---

Iraq Tuesday October 11, 2016:

• Iraqi government forces launched an offensive in the western province of Anbar, and managed to liberate a region there from the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.
• Iraqi forces took full control over Jazirah Hit region, north of Hit and about 140 kilometres west of Baghdad; Daesh members did not resist and fled away from the area.
• US-led military aircraft struck a workshop used for making improvised explosive devices near Bash Tapia Castle on Monday, causing a huge blaze. Six Daesh Takfiris were reportedly killed in the airstrike.
• US-led fighter jets also pounded another bomb-making workshop in the eastern sector of Mosul.
• Iraqi soldiers engaged Daesh members in Anah town of Anbar Province, killing 17 terrorists in the process.
• In the town of al-Ubaidi, government forces destroyed a bomb-making workshop as well as a fuel station belonging to Takfiri militants.
• A child lost his life and nine other people sustained injuries when a roadside bomb targeted civilians fleeing from the city of Hawija in the northern province of Kirkuk.

 

Iraq Wednesday October 12, 2016:

• Iraq rejected Ankara’s justifications for keeping troops on its soil and stressed that no foreign ground forces would take part in an upcoming offensive to eject the Islamic State (ISIS) from its Mosul stronghold.
• Turkish forces are training a Sunni militia called the Hashd al-Watani at Bashiqa. Its deployment of additional forces, which included tanks and artillery, to secure that base in December 2015 sparked these current tensions.

 

Iraq Saturday October 15, 2016:

• Around 55 people were killed in attacks that targeted a Shi'ite Muslim gathering, a police check-point and the family of a Sunni paramilitary leader opposed to Islamic State.
• The heaviest toll was caused by a suicide bomber who detonated an explosive vest in the middle of a Shi'ite gathering in Baghdad, killing at least 41 people and wounding 33.
• The escalation comes as Iraqi forces are getting ready to launch an offensive to take back Mosul, the last Iraqi city still under control of Islamic State, in northern Iraq.
• The international coalition air force bombarded the headquarters of ISIS in one of the villages in Qayyarah vicinity, killing five ISIS members and wounding seven others. The killed ISIS members include the official of booby-trapped planes brigade.
• Two ISIS suicide bombers attacked a tribal leader’s house in the Eshaq sub-district south of Tikrit. They killed all the members of the family. After security forces surrounded the house and confronted the ISIS militants, they blew themselves up.
• An explosion in the Amin neighbourhood in Baghdad al-Jdida killed one and wounded eight. 

 

Iraq Sunday October 16, 2016:

• A suicide bomber blew up himself in front of a Hussainiyah march near Aghsan al-Zaiton restaurant under al-Jardiyah Bridge in central Baghdad. Two persons were killed and four wounded.
• A Shai solider was killed and two others were wounded in the explosion of two bombs that exploded sequentially targeting security detachment while searching the gardens of Sensil villages.
• An ISIS suicide bomber killed at least 4 people and wounded 10 at a Shiite mourning ceremony in Baghdad. The suicide bomber who was wearing an explosive vest, blew himself up at a mourning where Shiites where gathered. The attack took place on the Tigris River, where the explosive-laden bomber approached Shiites commemorating a mourning ceremony for one of their most important saints.
• Iraqi fighter jets destroyed an ISIS convoy of an estimated 45 militants in Anbar province on the Syrian border. The convoy, armed with light and heavy weaponry as well as explosives, was attempting to halt the advance of the Iraqi army in the Rawa district of Anbar province.
• The Iraqi Army on October 7 deployed thousands of troops to the Syrian border to liberate al-Rutba and A’ali al-Furat which includes al-Qa’im, Anah, and Rawa. These are the last remaining territories under the control of the Islamic State in the country’s western-most and largest province.

 

Iraq Monday October 17, 2016:

• An Iraqi operation to recapture the city of Mosul, the last major stronghold of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in the country, has started.
• Artillery began firing on the city in a long-awaited assault from Kurdish Peshmerga, Iraqi government and allied forces. Tanks are now moving towards the city, which has been held by IS since 2014.
• The UN has expressed "extreme concern" for the safety of up to 1.5 million people in the area.
• Iraqi pro-government forces have made gains at the start of a large-scale operation to retake Mosul.

 

Iraq Tuesday October 18, 2016:

• Warplanes bombed a large convoy of 30 vehicles carrying Arab and foreign members of ISIS and their families, destructing the convoy and killing most of its occupants. The ISIS members and their families were trying to flee from Mosul towards the Iraqi-Syrian borders. ---

Iraq Wednesday October 19, 2016:

• One US service member has been killed by an improvised explosive device in northern Iraq. The member of the US military died from the injuries suffered in an IED explosion.
• There are more than 5,000 US troops in Iraq, officially in the "advice and assist" capacity, training the Iraqi army and militias for their ongoing war against the so-called Islamic State.
• A mysterious fire started 24 hours ago inside the empty headquarters of the ISIS in the city of Mosul. The headquarters were immediately evacuated by the ISIS before the launch of the battle to liberate Mosul.
• Nineveh Provincial Council announced that the ISIS militants detonated the buildings of the government (City Hall) and the General Directorate of Nationality in central Mosul using explosive barrels.
• The Rapid Intervention Forces and Federal Police backed by al-Hashed al-Shaabi forces liberated the villages of Shami, Khirbet Hadid and al-Bayda, south of Mosul.

 

Iraq Thursday October 20, 2016:

• Peshmerga forces liberated Imam Reda village in Bashiqa city. The ISIS militants are collapsing while security forces are advancing toward the center of the city.
• Peshmerga forces also regained control over the strategic intersection of Khorsabad road in al-Shalalat area, north of Nineveh.
• ISIS planted explosive devices and bombs in these road to hinder the advance of Peshmerga forces and Iraqi army in the battle to liberate Nineveh.
• A U.S. Navy sailor died from a blast from an improvised explosive device. Chief Petty Officer Jason Finan was assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit 3 and was advising Operation Inherent Resolve when the blast took place and injured him fatally.

 

Iraq Friday October 21, 2016:

• Islamic State (IS) militants have mounted a ferocious counter-attack killing at least 19 people in and around the city of Kirkuk. They attacked government buildings, killing at least six police officers, and a power station under construction, where 13 employees died. Twelve IS fighters also reportedly died and fighting seems to be continuing.
• The Turkish military killed 12 Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey and another six in air strikes in northern Iraq, while also targeting their allied fighters in northern Syria.
• Twelve of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas were "neutralized" on Thursday in the Cukurca district of Hakkari province, near the Iraqi border.
• In northern Iraq, the Turkish air strikes hit the Avashin Basyan region, killing six PKK fighters and destroying four targets on Thursday.

 

Iraq Saturday October 22, 2016:

• The ISIS Deputy Wali of Mosul was killed by an Iraqi air strike in the district of Tel Keppe, northwest of Mosul.
• The Iraqi army forces entered the center of Tel Keppe, and liberated the neighborhoods of Somer and al-Askari, as well as raising the Iraqi flag over their buildings.

 

Iraq Sunday October 23, 2016:

• Police and Peshmerga forces killed five ISIS militants in the village of Ibada in Daquq district who were trying to withdraw from a neighborhood in Kirkuk.
• In Kirkuk province, an ISIS suicide bomber blew himself up, after being besieged in the fourth bridge area in the center of the province.
• The Mayor of Rutba district in Anbar province, Imad al-Dulaimi said that ISIS attacked the district from three axes, and called Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to send military reinforcements.

 

Iraq Monday October 24, 2016:

• Kurdish forces have surrounded Bashiqa, which lies on a crucial supply route 12km from Mosul, and are preparing to launch a full assault.
• The threat of suicide bomb attacks means they are advancing with caution.
• A Counter-Terrorism Service commander also said its troops had gained ground around Bartella, 10km to the south.
• They had stormed the villages of Khazna, Khazna Tabba and Tob Zawa.
• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group took full control of Rutba in the western province of Al Anbar as thousands of troops try to expel its fighters from Mosul. ---

Iraq Tuesday October 25, 2016:

• Diyala Police Command arrested two senior leaders of the Islamic State in al-Tahrir area in central Baqubah. The two leaders escaped from the city of Mosul after the security forces started the military battles to liberate Nineveh Province.
• A member of Daesh [ISIS] wearing an explosive belt attempted to enter Qara Tepe district, but he was killed by police and Asaysh security forces. Qara Tepe is located in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province and known for its multiethnic population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen.
• The joint security forces imposed their full control over the district of Rutba, after eliminating the ISIS presence in the areas of al-Mithaq, al-Hara and al-Zaitoun. The security troops secured the civilian houses and governmental buildings in the district.
• On Monday ISIS launched a violent attack on Rutba district from several directions.
• Police forces carried out extensive raid and search operations in Daquq district, 35 km south of Kirkuk, and arrested Nizar Mahmud Abdul Ghani, cousin of former president Saddam Hussein, along with one of the ISIS members who attacked the province recently.
• The strikes of international coalition air force, Iraqi Air Force and army troops killed 40 ISIS militants, as well as destroying 14 vehicles belonging to the ISIS in Rutba district that is fully liberated.

 

Iraq Wednesday October 26, 2016:

• Peshmerga forces recaptured the village of Dirk, west of Bashiqa; it had been besieged by the Peshmerga for several days. Large quantities of weapons were seized inside the village. 98 persons were freed from the village and transferred to secure places.

 

Iraq Thursday October 27, 2016:

• Unidentified gunmen attacked a liquor store near the national theater in Karada area, in central Baghdad, using a hand grenade, killing one person and wounding four others, as well as inflicting material damage to the shop.
• Earlier this week, Iraqi Parliament voted to ban the sale, import and production of alcoholic beverages, while the supporters of the decree said that availability of alcohols contradicts Islam and is unconstitutional.
• An estimated 800-900 ISIS militants have been killed since the beginning of the ongoing operation to recapture Mosul.
• There are approximately 3,500 to 5,000 ISIS militants in the city, with up to another 2,000 in the wider region. Since the encirclement of the city ISIS is unable to move in large convoys or substantially reinforce and resupply its forces entrenched in Mosul.
• The international coalition air force bombed 10 vehicles belong to the ISIS, south of Rutba district (310 km west of Ramadi), destructing them completely. 25 ISIS members who were inside those vehicles were killed.
• ISIS militants electrocuted 22 civilians in al-Magmoa al-Thaqafiya area in central Mosul, for collaborating with security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters. The ISIS militants kept these civilians inside a prison in Mosul for nearly four months.
• On Wednesday, Parliamentary Human Rights Committee revealed, that the ISIS executed 232 civilians in Hamam al-Alil area and al-Arij village, south of the city of Mosul.
• The joint security forces, backed by the Army Aviation and international coalition forces, continue advancing in the battle to liberate Mosul from ISIS occupation.

 

Iraq Saturday October 29, 2016:

• Chairman of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, Abd al-Rahim al-Shammari said that that the Islamic State group executed 100 civilians in the city of Mosul, for collaborating with the security forces. He asked the Prime Minister and the international coalition to speed up liberating the ISIS-held areas to limit its crimes against civilians.
• The Federal Police Command stormed into al-Shura area, south of Mosul, from four axes. They liberated the villages of Ayn al-Nasr and Albu Hamad, as well as killing five ISIS members and detonating three booby-trapped vehicles.
• Anbar Police Command foiled an attempt by the Islamic State to attack the city of Ramadi. Security forces arrested 11 ISIS members planning to attack Ramadi. The security operation targeted a number of hideouts belonging to the ISIS in Tash area, south of the city.
• Al-Hashed al-Shaabi forces liberated ten villages during the battles to liberate the western axis of Nineveh. This axis includes several cities, caves and valleys that were used by ISIS.
• After liberating and cleansing every village in the area, the forces dismantled explosive devices, as well as keeping the residents in their houses and providing them with everything they need.
• At least two people were killed and 13 others wounded after a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt targeted a Shia Muslim gathering in Baghdad. The bomber struck a mourning tent in the Shia neighborhood of Tobchi, northwest of Baghdad. Shia Muslims set up the tent to commemorate the 7th century death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad. ---

Iraq Sunday October 30, 2016:

• At least 15 people were killed in five bombings in Baghdad.
• Eight were killed and another 30 wounded by a car parked in a shopping street in the capital’s Shiite Hurriya neighbourhood.
• Improvised explosives killed three and wounded 10 at a busy market in the northern neighbourhood of Shaab.
• Two explosions at markets in Topchi and Zataria areas reportedly killed four and wounded 16.
• A fourth bombing on a microbus in Sadr City district wounded six but caused no deaths.
• The Badr Organization liberated five villages (lower al-Gorn, upper al-Gorn, al-Amrini, al-Salmani and al-Zarka) west of the city of Mosul from the control of the Islamic State.
• The Badr Organization announced that 23 families who were held hostage by ISIS as human shields were freed in the village of al-Gorn from captivity.
• Nearly seven thousand civilians, mostly women and children, are besieged in the city of Anah by ISIS. ISIS is preventing those civilians from leaving the city and using them as human shields.

 

Iraq Monday October 31, 2016:

• Troops of the Anti-Terrorism Directorate started to advance toward the village of Kokjla, a village considered the first of the western areas of Mosul.
• Iraqi security forces stormed into Hayy al-Karama area, in eastern Mosul, after two weeks of ongoing battles.
• Asayish of Sulaymaniyah, Garmian and Gharbeya arrested a number of ISIS terrorist cells in Sulaymaniyah, Halbja and Garmian. These terrorist cells were planning to launch several attacks and capture a number of governmental organizations in Sulaymaniyah.
• More than 40 members of the terrorist cells were arrested; the troops killed a number of ISIS members and seized equipment, IED and explosives.

 

Iraq Tuesday November 1, 2016:

• We were told that a total of 1,792 people were killed and 1,358 wounded in Iraq in October. 1,120 civilians and 672 members of security forces, including Peshmerga forces, were among the casualties. The number of civilians injured was 1,005 and 353 members of security forces were also wounded. The largest number of casualties were reported in the Baghdad Governorate, with 1,075 civilian casualties, and the Nineveh Governorate with 566 killed and 59 injured in the governorate. Figures reported for October were considerably higher than those from September, when a total of 1,003 Iraqi were killed and 1,159 injured.
• Troops of the 35th and 36th regiments of the army’s 9th brigade liberated the villages of Khowaytela and Shahrazad in Bartella area, in eastern Mosul. Security forces are advancing toward al-Hayy al-Arabi area in central Mosul.
• Four persons were killed and nine others were wounded due to the explosion in an IED, while fleeing from the Islamic State-held regions. The families targeted by the bomb at Riyadh-Rashad road were leaving their residences at Hawijah.

 

Iraq Wednesday November 3, 2016:

• Eight ISIS militants were killed in an air bombing by US-led international coalition, west of Ramadi.
• In Baqubah, the army forces defused seven IEDs planted inside a school at a liberated village, Kahilaniyah 13Km north of Maqdadiah northeast of the city.
• Khailainiyah is the largest villages north of Maqdadiah that had been cleared from ISIS fighters who occupied it in June 2014. Its citizens, however, have not yet returned home.
• Al-Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) have managed to cut the route between Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, both the main strongholds for the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
• The Shia militia, fighting IS by the side of Iraqi government forces, cut the road between the two cities as battles intensify to liberate Mosul from IS fighters.

 

Iraq Thursday November 4, 2016:

• Islamic State militants have exploded government buildings in Anah city, 190 km west of Ramadi; they exploded the agriculture department and military drafting buildings, among others.
• The ISIS militants had planted landmines and IEDs inside the buildings before detonating them by remote controls, an apparent revenge as security forces and tribal militias embark on a campaign to clear the city of Islamic State militants.
• The leader of Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has expressed confidence in victory as Iraqi forces entered the city of Mosul where he declared a “caliphate” two years ago.
• ‘This total war and the great jihad that the Islamic State is fighting today only increases our firm belief, God willing, and our conviction that all this is a prelude to victory” said Baghdadi in a recording.
• ‘Do not retreat. Holding your ground with honour is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame’. ‘To all the people of Nineveh, especially the fighters, beware of any weakness in facing your enemy’. ---

Iraq Saturday November 5, 2016:

• 32 members of the Islamic state group were either killed or wounded in a blast while preparing a booby-trapped vehicle in western Kirkuk. The vehicle exploded while a number of ISIS members were equipping it with explosives in the industrial neighbourhood area, in Hawija district killing 10 members of the extremist group and wounding 22 others. The ISIS started to prepare booby-trapped vehicles, in order to be deployed in different areas with the approaching battles to liberate the district.
• Seventeen civilians have been killed by roadside bombs as they fled from a northern town held by so-called Islamic State. Several families were riding in a lorry when it was hit by two explosions. A policeman also died. They were fleeing from Hawija, west of the city of Kirkuk.
• Iraqi forces also attacked Hamam al-Alil, south of Mosul on the Tigris River, and overcame fierce resistance before raising the Iraqi flag in the centre.
• An Irish former altar boy has become the latest suicide bomber to blow himself up as part of Islamic State’s furious defence of Mosul. Khalid Kelly, born Terrence Edward in south Dublin in 1967, converted to Islam while serving a jail term in Saudi Arabia for illegally brewing homemade alcohol. He was known in Iraq by the nom de guerre Abu Usama al-Irlandi – a reference to his eldest son and homeland.
• At least 10 people have been killed and 37 others wounded in a series of bomb explosions that ripped through residential neighborhoods in and around Baghdad.
• Three people lost their lives and nine others sustained injuries when an improvised explosive device went off close to a market popular with mechanics in Sheikh Omar neighborhood of central Baghdad.
• Other bomb attacks struck the southern al-Obaidi and al-Rashid neighborhoods plus the town of Abu Ghraib.
• The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) says a total of 1,792 Iraqis were killed and 1,358 others injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in October.

 

Iraq Sunday November 6, 2016:

• At least 21 people were killed in two suicide bomb attacks in Tikrit and Samarra, where authorities imposed curfews citing fears of further attacks.
• The deadliest attack targeted the southern entrance of Tikrit, the capital of Salahaddin province; the bombing killed at least 13 people.
• The second bomb, about 67 km south of Tikrit and reportedly planted in an ambulance, targeted a main entrance of Samarra city. Ten Iranian pilgrims were killed.
• The Iranians were getting off a bus when an ambulance carrying the suicide bomber approached them and blew up. Samara is one of the holiest cities for Shiite Muslims and attracts pilgrims from Shiite Iran and beyond. There were two Iranian pilgrims among the casualties.
• The extremist group beheaded seven of its members for fleeing battlefields in Kokajli, west of Mosul. The so-called legislative court affiliated with the group sentenced them to death for delinquency.
• Government forces have liberated the village of Razkia, south of Mosul, from Islamic State militants. The forces raised the Iraqi flag in the village after causing the enemy severe losses in lives and equipment.

 

Iraq Monday November 7, 2016:

• ISIS has announced the killing of its most outstanding propaganda moviemaker, while the group also ceased its paper propaganda in the city of Mosul.
• Shehata al-Masry, the group’s moviemaker, was killed in an airstrike on a main road near al-Baaj, west of Mosul, along with two of his aides.
• ISIS is known to have recruited several people with expertise from around the world to tap into their experience in its psychological war. The group has relied on films and video clips adopting the style of American thriller movies to deliver its messages.
• ISIS had halted its paper propaganda completely.
• Kurdish Peshmerga fully recaptured the city of Bashiqa from the grip of the Islamic State extremist group. Peshmerga forces are now stationed in all neighborhoods of Bashiqa.
• A mass grave containing the remains of about 100 beheaded civilians has been discovered. The mass grave was found by Iraqi forces in the School of Agriculture on the outskirts of Hammam al-Alil, a town that was recaptured from ISIS on Monday.
• At least two people have been killed and hundreds more exposed to choking fumes after ISIS torched up to 19 oil wells and a sulphur plant near Mosul.
• The militants began lighting the infernos in August, possibly to mask their movements as US-backed Iraqi forces launched an offensive to regain control of the city. For some time one could see two enormous plumes rising, dark brown smoke from the Qayyarah oil field and clouds of white sulphur dioxide from the Al-Mishraq sulphur plant.
• The sulphur blaze was extinguished on 23 October, but the toxic fumes killed two people and 1000 others have reportedly sought treatment for breathing problems. The ferocity of the oil fires has hampered the efforts of local fire crews to extinguish them amid fears that explosive devices may have been planted around the wells.
• Local people say the smoke is burning their throats and lungs, blocking out the sun and coating their skin in black, oily soot. Civilians are also suffering from headaches, skin rashes and chest pains, according to Oxfam.
• When crude oil is burned, a large number of toxic chemicals are released, including carbon monoxide, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds. These can harm the passages of the nose, airways and lungs, making it difficult to breathe.
• There is now the danger that ISIS will set alight the other six oil fields that it controls near Mosul, says Oxfam.
• Federal police, army and elite interior ministry forces established full control over Hamam al-Alil, the last town of note on the way to Mosul from the south. It lies on the west bank of the Tigris river, about 15 kilometres southeast of Mosul.
• Over the first two weeks of the ground military operation in Mosul, 16 US servicemen were killed and another 27 were injured mainly the result of hitting a landmine, or coming under artillery or mortar shellings. In addition two Special Forces members died in the airstrike delivered at Mosul’s outskirts by B-52H US aircraft.

 

Iraq Tuesday November 8, 2016:

• A civilian was wounded when an IED blast rocked a street leading to Al-Muthana Airport in central Baghdad.
• An improvised explosive device exploded targeting a patrol in the orchards of al-Zour area (35 km northeast of Baqubah), killing a member of al-Hashed al-Shaabi and wounding two others.
• During the process of clearing Sharqat from war shells, the Iraqi security forces found two mass graves in the middle of the town that contained 40 bodies, most of them of women and children. One of the mass graves was found in an old storage that contained 10 bodies, and the second one was nearby and contained 30 bodies.
• At least seven children and two pregnant women were killed in an air strike in the province of Idlib. The strike, which hit the town of Khan Sheikun, in the south of the province, was done by Russia.
• The strike hit a street where children were playing. Three of the dead children were from one family and were visiting their grandfather. The dead children were four girls and three boys.

Iraq Wednesday November 9, 2016:

• Leader at al-Hashd al-Shaabi, Odai al-Khedran, said that the Islamic State extremist group executed three Arab suicide bombers, including a 20-year old Saudi, in the district of Hawija, after escaping from a detention centre. ---

Iraq Saturday November 12, 2016:

• Six Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants were killed by Turkish drone strikes in northern Iraq.
• Two PKK militants were killed in Nirva Seytu Mountain and another four were killed in Aşuş Mountain.
• Turkish warplanes also conducted an air operation in the Zap region in northern Iraq killing another three PKK militants.
• The air strikes also destroyed one gun emplacements and two sanctuaries belonging to the PKK.
• ISIS terrorist gangs detonated the buildings of the Mayor’s Office, Local Council, Court House and Civil Defense in the city of Anah in the province of Anbar , using improvised explosive devices.
• The extremist group also stole the power station in the city of Anah and transferred it outside the district.
• Iraqi government forces have captured Nimrud, the site of an ancient Assyrian city overrun by Islamic State group militants two years ago.

 

Iraq Sunday November 13, 2016:

• At least 11 civilians have lost their lives and nearly three dozen others sustained injuries in a spate of bomb attacks that ripped through residential and commercial neighborhoods in and around Baghdad and in other areas in the country.
• Three people were killed and eight others injured when a car bomb went off in the Kamaliya neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad.
• Two civilians also died and eight others were injured when an improvised explosive device went off near a commercial district in the town of Abu Ghraib.
• Additionally, one civilian lost his life and five others suffered injuries when a car bomb struck Baghdad's northeastern district of Sadr City.
• A bomb exploded as a car was travelling along Muhammad Qasim road in eastern Baghdad, leaving one person dead and three others injured. The explosive device had apparently been placed under the vehicle.
• Earlier, a civilian was killed and three others injured when a car rigged with explosives was detonated in the al-Obaidi neighborhood of eastern Baghdad.
• Separately, four people were injured when a bomb attack struck the capital's northern neighborhood of Sha'ab.
• Elsewhere in the town of Hawijah two civilians were killed and seven others injured in a bomb explosion that targeted displaced families.
• An improvised explosive device also went off in farming lands southwest of Baqubah, leaving one civilian dead and another injured.
• The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said 1,792 Iraqis were killed and 1,358 others injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in October.
• The number of civilian fatalities stood at 1,120. Violence also claimed the lives of 672 members of the Iraqi security forces. A great portion of the fatalities was recorded in the capital province of Baghdad, where 268 civilians were killed.
• Iraqi forces re-captured the historic city of Nimrud from ISIS terrorists. Government soldiers entered the site of the ancient Assyrian city which was overrun by ISIS two years ago.
• In March 2015, ISIS destroyed major parts of the archaeological site, which dates back to the 13th Century BC.
• The Iraqi army’s success in taking the city is a symbolic moment in the fight against ISIS.
• Iraqi forces have also captured two villages on the outskirts of Nimrud as they move ahead to drive Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters from Iraq's second city Mosul.
• ISIL still controls other Assyrian landmarks, including the ruins of Nineveh and Khorsabad, as well as the 2,000-year-old desert city of Hatra.

 

Iraq Monday November 14, 2016:

• At least 14 people were killed and 26 wounded in attacks near the Iraqi city of Karbala and in Fallujah with ISIS claiming responsibility for the attacks.- m
• A suicide bomber killed six people and wounded six others in Ain near Karbala. The security forces killed five attackers, and the suicide bomber blew himself up inside a house after being surrounded.
• In Fallujah, two car bombs rocked the city targeting a police checkpoint. Eight people were killed and 20 wounded in those attacks.
• The Iraqi air force killed 20 Islamic State militants in airstrikes west of Mosul. They destroyed a number of havens as well as a fighters-loaded pickup truck at Atasa district. ---

Iraq Tuesday November 15, 2016:

• Almost three months after the retreating Islamic State set oil wells ablaze in Qayyara, 60 km south of Mosul, more than a dozen oil wells continue to burn and release black smoke into the sky.
• The Iraqi government sent in firefighters to control the fire and they put out six out of nine burning oil wells. In fact only one oil well is under control.

 

Canadian troops supporting Kurdish allies have destroyed three explosive-laden vehicles with anti-armour missiles Wednesday November 16, 2016. The three suicide vehicles were charging the Kurdish lines and could have caused "mayhem" if they had not been destroyed.

Iraq Thursday November 17, 2016:

• At least 40 people have been killed and more than 60 wounded after a suicide car bomb attack targeted a police officer's wedding in Amiriyat al-Fallujah. Police said they believed that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group was responsible for the attack.
• Amiriyat al-Fallujah, 35km south of Fallujah, is home to pro-government Sunni tribal fighters, who fought ISIL for more than two years and repelled many attacks on their town before the armed group was pushed out of Fallujah in June.
• A teenager recruited by the Islamic State in Mosul killed the whole of his 6-member family when his explosive belt went off inside their home east of the city.
• The boy, who belonged to the so-called “Cubs of the Caliphate” squad, was going back home at al-Wehda district, putting on an explosive belt given out to him and other comrades of the squad. The teenager’s belt exploded inside his home. All of his family, including three children, were killed.
• Two civilians were killed and eight others were wounded when a roadside IED exploded southeast of Baghdad. The bomb was placed on the side of a road in Diriya, southeast of Baghdad.
• ISIS militants abducted 75 civilians from Hawija district, while fleeing the district. The civilians were abducted for leaving the land of caliphate and helping other civilians to flee the ISIS-held areas toward Kirkuk and Salahuddin. The abduction took place in the area between Hamrin Mountains and southwest of Kirkuk.

Saturday November 19, 2016:

• ISIS executed eight persons, including four former police and army officers, southwest of Kirkuk in a popular market, in central Hawija (55 km southwest of Kirkuk), after detaining them for collaborating with security and government forces.
• The group filmed the execution of the detainees, after being sentenced to death by the so-called ISIS Sharia court in the district.
• An ISIS bomb killed an internally displaced Iraqi infant in the Daquq district south of Kirkuk. The girl named Shayma Faruq Abdullah, an IDP, was killed by a planted bomb. The incident happened near Simudi in Daquq, a multi-ethnic district under the Kirkuk Governorate with a majority-Kurdish population. The bomb was planted by ISIS, he said.
• Shiite forces of the Hashd al-Shaabi continue to advance towards the outskirts of ISIS-held city of Tal Afar close to the Syrian border after recapturing the nearby airbase last Tuesday. They await orders from the Iraqi prime minister to launch the final attack and enter the city.
• Heavily supported by the Iraqi airpower, the Shiite militia launched a massive offensive Friday involving artillery shelling and airstrikes targeting ISIS positions in the outskirts of Tal Afar before Hashd al Shaabi ground troops move closer to the city.

Iraq Sunday November 20, 2016:

• Five people were killed and 15 others were wounded when two IED explosions rocked market areas in central and south Baghdad.
• A bomb exploded near a popular restaurant in Sheikh Omar neighborhood; three people were killed and six others were wounded.
• Another bomb exploded near a popular marketplace at Youssefiya, south of Baghdad, killing 2 and wounding 9.

Iraq Monday November 21, 2016:

• Three civilians were wounded in a booby-trapped bus explosion in al-Sadr City, east of Baghdad. An adhesive explosive device emplaced under a bus exploded, this morning, in al-Sadr City, east of Baghdad, wounding three civilians with different injuries.
• Troops of the army’s 9th Armored Brigade fully liberated al-Humayra village, north of al-Salamiyah. Security forces raised Iraqi flag over the buildings of the village, after inflicting heavy human and material losses on the enemy.
• Earlier Nineveh Operations announced liberating Urta Kharab village, north of Mosul and raising Iraqi flag over its buildings. ---

Iraq Wednesday November 23, 2016:

• An Iraqi paramilitary force has seized a key road west of Mosul, effectively encircling the city controlled by Islamic State. The Popular Mobilisation (Hashd al-Shaabi) declared it had taken control of the road between Tal Afar and Sinjar after linking up with Kurdish forces.
• IS militants still control the section of the road between Tal Afar and Mosul.
• Meanwhile, an air strike reportedly hit another bridge in Mosul, as troops advanced further into eastern areas. There is now only one functioning bridge left spanning the River Tigris, which flows through the city.

Iraq Thursday November 24, 2016:

• Some 77 people, most of them Shia pilgrims from Iran and Afghanistan, have been killed in a truck bomb attack. Some 40 people were wounded. The blast struck at a petrol station and restaurant near Hilla, some 100 km south of Baghdad.
• Busloads of pilgrims had stopped there on their way home from commemorating Arbaeen in the holy city of Karbala. The victims were on four buses filling up with fuel at the road stop near the village of Shomali, 80 km south-east of Karbala. A truck loaded with ammonia nitrate and other explosive material as well as fuel had been parked at the petrol station, and caused massive damage when it was detonated.
• An Islamic State executioner judge known for Nineveh locals as the “blood judge” was killed in an armed assault.
• The ISIS summary court judge, a French national, was killed by armed attackers boarding a car at the eastern coast of the province. The judge had sentenced any violator of the group’s directives to beheading and deprivation of burial.
• A bomb expert was killed when an IED went off while he was defusing it in Anbar. The deceased had fought the Islamic State over the past three years, and over that period, he had managed to defuse more than 1000 IEDs across the precinct.

Iraq Friday November 25, 2016:
 

• Fifty Islamic State militants were killed and 32 others were arrested as Iraqi Federal Police proceed with operations to liberate area south of Mosul.
• The operations have also resulted into the destruction of four barracks and efforts continue to comb the villages recaptured over the past few days, presumably from booby-traps and landmines.
• Two people were killed and six others were wounded when an IED blast rocked a commercial area north of Baghdad. The bomb went off near a commercial area in Hussainiya, 10 Km from Baghdad.
• Al-Hashd al-Sha’bi militias has recaptured one more village on its way to liberating the strategic town of Tal Afar, Nineveh, from Islamic State militants. They took over the village of Khodeir southwest of Tal Afar.
• Al-Hashd had also brought down an ISIS-run drone in Um Nekheila village and destroyed two booby-trapped vehicles.
• Earlier today, the militia announced the beginning of a fifth decisive phase of its advancement towards the town, beginning the operation with liberating the village of al-Aazal, west of Mosul.
• Twenty militants from the Islamic State and five security and army personnel died when Iraqi forces forestalled an attack by the Islamist group at the outskirts of Rutbah, Anbar.

Iraq Saturday November 26, 2016:

• Federal Police recaptured the road linking between the city of Mosul and Tel Afar district. Security forces also managed to liberate Umm al-Masa’id village within the southwestern axis of the battle to retake Nineveh from the Islamic State’s grip.
• An explosives mini-factory run by Islamic State militants in Salahuddin was destroyed by Iraqi army drones.
• CH4 drones destroyed a booby-trapped vehicle parked outside a haven for IED manufacturing in the village of Zawiya that contained more than 200 IEDs.
• All Mosul refugees at the Iraq-Syria border crossing where several had died of the cold have been evacuated and brought to a camp in Syria.
• 2,458 people have now been moved from Rajm Slebi border crossing point to Al Hol camp north-east Syria. The number includes 2,031 Iraqi refugees and 427 displaced Syrians.
• The crossing point, which is not an environment where humanitarian agencies can adequately meet people’s protection and humanitarian assistance needs, is now empty.
• At least four people, including three children, died in the cold at the border crossing his month.

Iraq Sunday November 27, 2016:

• Two new mass graves containing the relics of members of the Yazidi ethno-religious minority have been discovered in Sinjar, Nineveh, raising the total to 29.
• Two new mass graves of Yazidi Kurds have been found in the village of Shababik, 30 km east of Sanjar, with each containing the relics of ten persons. Most of the relics belonged to men.
• With those two graves, the total of mass graves discovered across Sinjar stands at 29.
• Three people were killed and five others were wounded when two separate IED blasts hit areas in east and southwest of Baghdad.
• Two people were killed and four others were wounded when an IED ripped through a popular marketplace in Mahmoudiya, east of the capital.
• An employee at the Iraqi trade ministry died in a bomb blast that occurred as his car passed by at al-Haswa, west of Baghdad. ---

Iraq Monday November 28, 2016:

• Eight Iraqi policemen were killed by ISIS militants in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Seven others were injured and three ISIS militants were killed after the extremists infiltrated the city. The militants entered from the eastern side and launched an attack on a security checkpoint.
• Two policemen were killed and 11 civilians were wounded late Sunday in a mortar attack in Sharqat, Salahuddin. The bombing occurred near the precinct’s police station.
• Eighteen Islamic State militants were killed when US-led international coalition fighter jets targeted their haven southwest of Kirkuk.
• ISIS is still in control of Kirkuk’s precincts of Hawija, al-Rashad, al-Abbasi, al-Zab and al-Riyadh, all launching points for its attacks on Salahuddin province and the outskirts of Kirkuk.
• The army’s 7th brigade in Anbar Province killed six members of the Islamic State extremist group by an air strike in Rawa.The international coalition air force destroyed two vehicles belonging to the Islamic State in Rawa city.

Iraq Tuesday November 29, 2016:

• The Salahuddin Operations troops liberated the villages of Shayyal al-Abli and Shayyal al-Imam in Sharqat.
• Earlier in the same day, the forces recaptured the village of Kan’ous, in the same region. The operations in Salahuddin come one day after an ISIS attack on a checkpoint in Samarra left five police officers dead and prompted a curfew in the area.
• Federal Police’s snipers killed nine members of the Islamic State group in the outskirt of Umm al-Masa’id village.” They also discovered a cache of weapons containing 6 improvised explosive devices, 134 mortar missiles, 11 rockets and 32 RBG missiles, west of Hamam al-Alil.
• Two mass graves were found west of Mosul, Nineveh and one in Fallujah, Anbar, by al-Hashd al-Shaabi forces.
• The bodies contained in the Mosul graves, discovered in a village near Tal Afar, are believed to belong to people executed by the extremist group.
• In Fallujah police found a mass grave of 15 dead bodies including those of security personnel killed by the group over the past three years.

Iraq Wednesday November 30, 2016:

• The Army liberated the 2nd area of Hayy al-AKhaa in the city of Mosul. Security forces inflicted heavy material and human losses on the members of the Islamic State group during the liberation operation of the neighborhood.
• Troops of the army’s 9th Armored Brigade and 3rd regiment of the 1st brigade managed to advance into the areas of Hayy al-Eintsar, Jadida Mofty, al-Salam, Younis al-Sab’awi and Palestine, and continue to cleanse roads and buildings in these areas.
• Anti-Terrorism forces managed to advance into the western side of the city, and started cleansing liberated areas, including the neighborhoods of al-Bakr and al-Zohour. The number of the cleansed areas reached 22 neighborhoods, in addition to liberating the 2nd area of Hayy al-Akhaa.

Thursday December 1, 2016:

• Nearly 2,000 soldiers and hundreds of civilians were killed in Iraq in November 2016, we were told Thursday December 1, 2016. The figure increased threefold from October, when tens of thousands of troops launched an assault to retake the Islamic State (IS) group's last major Iraqi bastion of Mosul. 1,959 Iraqi forces were killed last month and at least 450 others wounded. That figure is just under half the number of American soldiers killed after the US invaded the country in 2003. The toll includes members of the army, police who are engaged in combat, the Kurdish peshmerga, interior ministry forces and pro-government paramilitaries. At least 926 civilians were killed, bringing to 2,885 the number of Iraqis killed in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict last month.
• The U.S.-led coalition killed 54 civilians between March 31 and October 22, 2016, while carrying out air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria.
• Up to 24 civilians were killed in one strike in mid-July near the Syrian city of Manbij.
• Nine persons have been either killed or wounded in four different blasts in al-Shaab area, northeast of Baghdad. Four improvised explosive devices exploded at al-Shaab area, killing two persons and wounding seven others.

Saturday December 3, 2016:

• Twelve civilians were killed and 30 others injured in a suicide bombing in Mosul. Daesh militants had detonated an explosives-laden tanker in al-Qadesiya al-Thaneya district in eastern Mosul.
• At least four people were killed and nine others wounded in a car bomb explosion in Baghdad.
• The booby-trapped car detonated at a crowded area near a government building in Baghdad's central district of Shawaka.The blast destroyed many civilian cars and caused damages to several nearby buildings.
• Troops of Salahuddin Operations and the army’s 60th brigade liberated the villages of Jadida and al-Nahiya al-Kubra, in Sharqat district, in northern Salahuddin province.
• Iraqi forces killed two Islamic State suicide bombers in Anbar. However, ISIS said the attackers did enter the facility, engaged with the troops and blew up themselves, leaving more than 20 soldiers dead and some army vehicles destroyed.
• The attackers sneaked into a military outpost on Beiji-Haditha road , west of Ramadi. A sentry force managed to kill the suiciders and detonate the explosive belts before they could make it to the facility.

Iraq Sunday December 4, 2016:

• A deadly SAS sniper has successfully scored his 100th kill after blasting an ISIS chief during the battle of Mosul. The soldier, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, killed the ‘high value’ target during the fierce fight for the ISIS stronghold.
• He was struck by a single bullet which punched through his armour killing him instantly. The target was stalked by SAS snipers for a week as they hid one kilometre from the front gates of the compound waiting to catch their man.
• At least 13 people have been killed or injured in twin bomb attacks that rocked the province of Sulaymaniyah. Two bombers detonated their explosive belts near residential areas at a village close to the town of Darbandikhan.
• A third bomber also failed to set off his explosives and was killed by security forces. The exact number of casualties is still unknown. Following the blasts, clashes broke out between a group of armed men and Kurdish security guards in the area.
• Two civilians were killed and seven others were wounded when an IED exploded north of the capital. The bomb was planted on the side of a main road in Saba al-Bour, north of Baghdad. ---

Iraq Sunday December 4, 2016:

• ISIS members detained 35 former members of the 2nd intelligence division of the Iraqi army at the villages of Tal Ali, Mahouz, Sharia and Shawook. The extremist group accuses the former officers of collaborating with Iraqi forces which had advanced closer to al-Zab area, near Tigris River.

Iraq Monday December 5, 2016:

• One civilian was killed and five others were wounded in an IED blast south of Baghdad. The explosion occurred near a fish market in al-Qasr al-Awsat district.
• More than 150 workers were poisoned due to leakage of chlorine gas from one of steels factories in the province. The leakage happened due to the explosion of a gas cylinder containing chorine gas inside the factory.
• The agriculture ISIS agricultural minister nicknamed Abul Baraa al-Muhajer, and eight other members, were killed in the airstrikes that targeted a group gathering in central Hawija in central Kirkuk.

Iraq Wednesday December 7, 2016:

• More than 60 people have been killed in air strikes on al-Qaim, an Islamic State-controlled Iraqi town close to the Syrian border.
• One strike had missed a mosque used by IS militants as a headquarters and hit residential buildings.
• Nineteen children and 12 women were among the casualties.
• A sticky bomb fitted underneath a KIA passenger bus exploded as it passed through the Army Canal road east of the city, killing a civilian passenger and wounding three others.
• Another bomb exploded in a passenger bus while it moved through Jisr al-Bonouk Street in al-Qahera, north of Baghdad.
• Air strikes killed dozens of people, including many women and children, in an Islamic State-held town near Iraq's western border with Syria.
• The air strikes hit a busy market in the town of Qaim, in Iraq's Anbar province, describing the incident as a massacre. 55 civilians were killed, including 12 women and 19 children, in three air strikes. The bodies of eight militants were delivered to Qaim hospital morgue.

Iraq Thursday December 8, 2016:

• Resistance by Islamic State militants to al-Hashd al-Shaabi’s storming of the Mosul town of Tal Abta was supervised by the extremist group’s supreme leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He intervened personally to prevent the fall of Tal Abtak.
• Liberating that region would represent a military conquest of 25 other villages surrounding Tal Afar, and tens of kilometers advance towards the town’s center. Al-Hashd sl-Shaabisaid recaptured the southern section of Tal Abta, the only remaining area to consummate a siege on the town of Tal Afar, a major ISIS stronghold and a vital spot on the group’s supply lines from Syria.

Iraq Friday December 9, 2016:

• Iraqi forces captured a neighborhood - the Tamim district. in east Mosul pushing deeper to the heart of Islamic State's Iraq stronghold and destroying three sites where it produced car bombs used in waves of suicide attacks.
• Air strikes by Iraqi F-16 jets destroyed three production plants making car bombs in Mosul and three weapons stores.
• Turkish jets carried out air strikes against Kurdish militants in the Gara region of northern Iraq and killed 19 militants. The warplanes took off from an air base in Diyarbakir in response to threats that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were preparing an attack on military units at the border.
• Turkey frequently launches air attacks against PKK targets in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq near the Turkish border, where the Kurdish militant group's leadership has camps. ---

Iraq Sunday December 11, 2016:

• Eight people were killed in two car bombings in the Iraqi city of Falluja west of Baghdad. A suicide bomber detonated a car at a security checkpoint in the west of the city, and a second bomb in a parked car struck the centre, near a security checkpoint and a busy cafe.
• Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq destroying a headquarters of the militants and surrounding gun positions and shelters.
• The strikes, targeting Iraq's Zap region, came hours after a PKK offshoot claimed responsibility for Saturday night's twin bombings that killed 38 people and wounded 155 outside an Istanbul soccer stadium.
• The Badr Organization liberated the villages of Tel Ghazal, Tel Majan and Shouwaira, and repulsing a suicide attack by two booby-trapped vehicles and Kornet Rockets before approaching the forces, west of Ramadi. 163 civilians were evacuated and an explosives laboratory was found in the area.

Iraq Monday December 12, 2016:

• Islamic State militants executed an Iraqi journalist in central Mosul on Saturday. ISIS executed Hashem Fares, a photojournalist for al-Haqiqa, a local newspaper, and a former reporter for al-Diyar, a local TV. The reason for the execution is still unknown.

Iraq Tuesday December 13, 2016:

• The police forces discovered a large cache of weapons and explosive materials and devices inside one house in al-Jaghifi neighborhood, in central Fallujah. The ISIS members prepared a number of secret caches of weapons and hideouts in different areas of Fallujah, in order to be used against security forces after the liberation of Fallujah. Security forces are trying to discover the rest of ISIS hideouts that were prepared by the terrorist sleeper cells in Fallujah.
• Twelve Islamic State militants were killed as US-led fighter jets bombed their locations in Anbar’s western town of Rawa.
• The towns of Annah and Rawa are ISIS’s last major strongholds in Anbar, and Iraqi air forces, backed by international coalition jets, have been targeting the group’s location at those areas where they used to launch attacks on security and civilians.

Wednesday December 14, 2016:

• Two people were killed and ten others were wounded when a booby-trapped car exploded west of Baghdad. The car was parked near shops at al-Washash area. No one claimed responsibility for the explosion.
• Three ISIS militants were killed and two others were arrested while two others fled in a foiled attack on al-Haditha dam west of Anbar.

Iraq Thursday December 15, 2016:

• Iraqi army aircraft killed five Islamic State (ISIS) militants west of Ramadi, Anbar province. The five killed in a haven at the center of the town of Rawa were five foreigners. Military equipment belonging to the group were destroyed in the strike. ---

Iraq Sunday December 18, 2016:

• A car bomb exploded, west of the city of Fallujah. The booby-trapped vehicle, parked in al-Halabesa area, west of Fallujah, exploded leaving a number of casualties.
• Fifteen Islamic State extremists were killed and wounded after an attempted attack on federal police and popular troops, al-Hashd al-Shaabi, at a region between Salahuddin and Kirkuk.
• The militants wounded two members of Imam al-Hussein brigade after they attacked it at al-Fatha region on the borders of Salahuddin. Police and al-Hashd forces killed five militants and wounded ten others who fled away.

Iraq Tuesday December 20, 2016:

• The Iraqi Army Aviation bombarded a convoy of the Islamic State in al-Sakra area, west of the city of Haditha. They killed 12 members of the Islamic State, as well as destroying four vehicles.
• The Army Aviation also hit another convoy of three vehicles belonging to the Islamic State, destructing them completely and killing all terrorists inside them.
• Furthermore, the Army Aviation bombed a number of vehicles in al-Raihana area in Anah district, totally destroying them.
• Seven people have been killed and 15 wounded in a bomb attack on the offices of an Iranian Kurdish opposition party in northern Iraq.
• A parked motorcycle and an explosive device were detonated next to the headquarters of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (PDK) in Koy Sanjaq, east of Irbil. Five fighters and an Iraqi Kurdish policeman were killed. The attack took place as party members celebrated the winter solstice. The PDK alleged that Iranian forces were behind the blasts.

Iraq Wednesday December 21, 2016:

• Police forces killed two suicide bombers who tried to attack a military checkpoint southwest of Baghdad. The two were shot and consequently blown up by security forces upon their attempted entry to a security force headquarter in Darawsha, according to spokesperson of the Interior Ministry’ s Baghdad Operations. There were no losses among security forces.
• Four persons were wounded in a twin bombing, south of the capital. Two explosive devices planted in one of popular markets in Ouriage area, south of Baghdad, exploded, resulting in the wounding of four citizens with several injuries.

Iraq Thursday December 22, 2016:

• Four Iraqi aid workers and at least seven civilians were killed by indiscriminate mortar fire this week during aid distribution in two separate incidents in eastern Mosul. The attacks is a violation of humanitarian principles.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi Said that an air strike targeting the so-called “War Council” in Hawija district, southwest of Kirkuk, killed two elite leaders of the Islamic State.
• Three car bombs have ripped through an outdoor market in Mosul, killing at least 15 civilians and eight policemen. The attack occurred in the eastern Gogjali district.

Iraq Saturday December 24, 2016:

• At least ten people have been killed in a series of bombings and mortar strikes across the country as government forces and allied fighters press ahead with a massive operation to flush Daesh Takfiri terrorists out of Mosul.
• One policeman lost his life and four others sustained injuries in a car bomb attack, which targeted security personnel in Mustafa Jawad Square near the entrance of Khalis town.
• Another bomb struck refugee families as they were fleeing al- Hawijah district to the Turkmen-majority village of Turkalan in the southern part of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. The bombing had claimed the lives of five civilians and left 13 people injured.
• Five civilians were killed and 13 others injured when a barrage of mortar shells slammed into al-Zahour neighborhood in eastern Mosul.
• Meanwhile, Daesh terrorists have forced a total of 250 families in the al-Jazair district of eastern Mosul to leave the area, and seek refuge somewhere else.
• Security forces also managed to wrest control over Zaytoun region and Qaryat Tawilah village east of Mosul. Five police officers were killed during the operations.
• Separate bombings in and around Baghdad have killed at least 11 civilians and wounded 34 others. The deadliest attack targeting commercial areas, took place in the southeastern Nahrawan district and southwestern Suwaib district, where three civilians were killed in each. 15 civilians were wounded in these attacks.

Iraq Monday December 26, 2016:

• Security forces set up an ambush for the Islamic State’s leader Mohamed al-Badri Abu Khamis, near the salt company, east of al-Daur district and killed him. The IS leader was accompanied by three militants who succeeded to fled to an unknown destination.
• Two people were killed and six others were wounded when two separate IED bombings hit eastern districts of Baghdad.
• An IED planted near a workshops area in Kasra district exploded, killing one and wounding six. Another bomb fitted under a car owned by a Finance Ministry employee also exploded minutes later, killing the employee. --

Iraq Tuesday December 27, 2016:

• It will take “three months to eliminate” Isis in Iraq, according to the country’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi. Backed by US forces, the Iraqi military has been battling to dislodge the militant group from Mosul, the largest city held by Isis in either Iraq or Syria and the de-facto capital of its self-styled Islamic caliphate.
• Gunmen have kidnapped an Iraqi female journalist who has campaigned against widespread corruption in the country. Afrah Shawqi al-Qaisi was taken from her home in the Saidiya district of the capital, Baghdad by men claiming to be security personnel.
• On Monday, Ms Qaisi wrote an article in which she expressed anger that armed groups could act with impunity.
• The article criticised an interior ministry officer who she said had assaulted the principal of a school in the southern city of Nasiriya for refusing to punish a pupil who had quarrelled with his daughter.
• ISIS executed at least 13 people including two boys following a village uprising in October 2016, Human Rights Watch said. The executions, which are war crimes, took place in the villages of al-Hud and al-Lazzagah following local attempts to expel ISIS fighters controlling the villages.

Iraq Wednesday December 28, 2016:

• One person was killed and seven others were injured when an explosive device went off in southern Baghdad. The bomb exploded near a popular market area at the district of Mahmoudiya. Casualties were all civilians.
• Security forces arrested the terrorist Abu Harith al-Matuiti, the assistant of the Islamic State’s Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in Hayy al-Bakr areas in the eastern side of Mosul.

Iraq Thursday December 29, 2016:

• Coalition airstrikes hit Mosul's last bridge before the battle for Mosul restart; Army liberates parts of al-Quds. The coalition targeted three of Mosul’s bridges to reduce enemy freedom of movement, and to further disrupt ISIL's ability to reinforce, resupply, or use vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in East Mosul.
• Iraqi forces are advancing on multiple axes. To the north, the 16th Division of the army pushed south. To the east, Counter-terrorism forces moved west and south. And to the south, the Federal Police worked to clear neighbourhoods.
• The coalition, on the request of Baghdad, hit Mosul’s fourth and fifth bridges for a second time on Tuesday, and on Monday they struck the Old Bridge, the last bridge that had remained crossing the Tigris River.
• Islamic State militants executed an Iraqi army soldier after he sneaked into the group’s stronghold town of Sharqat, Salahuddin. An Iraqi army force entered that region and retrieved the dead body.
• One civilian was killed and ten others were wounded when two booby-trapped vehicle exploded south and east of Baghdad. The two cars exploded in al-Maalef area, south of the capital, and al-Nasr district in the east, leading to one death and seven injuries in the first and three injuries in the second.

Iraq Friday December 30, 2016:

• Security forces from the Federal Police’s 5th brigade killed the so-called Ammar al-Haweidi, who was considered one of the Islamic State’s elite leaders in al-Wehda neighborhood, in eastern Mosul. aweidi was from al-Humaira area in Nimrud vicinity, southeast of Mosul.
• Security forces were also able to detonate a booby-trapped vehicle driven by a suicide bomber.
• The international coalition air force conducted an air strike on a convoy belonging to the Islamic State near Sheikh Mazhar al-Asi village in Riyad area, in western Kirkuk. Six members of the terrorist group were killed.

Iraq Saturday December 31, 2016:

• Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces have taken control of two more neighborhoods in eastern Mosul as twin blasts in Baghdad killed 28 and wounded 50 others.
• ISIS was pushed back in both Quds one and two neighborhoods. The Iraqi army has liberated more than 40 neighborhoods in their operation that began on October 17 to recapture Mosul from the militants.
• ISIS militants have deployed a number of snipers inside residential houses in eastern Mosul, slowing down the advance of Iraqi forces.
• Two suicide bombers blew up their explosives in the busy al-Sinak market in the center of Baghdad, killing at least 28 people and wounding 50 others.

Iraq Sunday January 1, 2017:

• The Iraqi army and police forces have recaptured a strategic street and liberated three more districts in the eastern section of the city of Mosul. Federal police forces are in control over the strategic No.60 Street southeast of Mosul.
• Army forces have managed to liberate the districts of al-Malayeen, al-Kindi and al-Arabi al-Thania after storming them on Friday killing 40 IS militants, mostly foreigners, in the process. Forces have now become in control over more than 40 out of a total of nearly 60 districts of the city’s eastern section, and are hoping to push forward towards the west, where IS still maintain several locations near the borders with Syria.
• At least seven people have been killed and 15 others injured in an attack on a police checkpoint near the Shiite city of Najaf in southern Iraq. Three suicide bombers in a car bomb stormed the gate to Qadisyah neighborhood. Five of the dead were policemen and the other two were civilians.
• The neighborhood of southern al-Karama in the city of Mosul was liberated.
• A booby-trapped Islamic State’s flag, placed near al-Rashedeen school in Abu Karma village, exploded after an army patrol arrived in the area, killing an army officer and wounding three soldiers.
• Iraqi forces have retaken more than 60 percent of eastern Mosul from the Islamic State group since the battle for the city began in mid-October.

Iraq Monday January 2, 2017:

• We were told that the Iraqi forces completed the recapture of al-Karama district in eastern Mosul.
• Seven fighters from the Sunni al-Hashd al-Ashaeri (Tribal Mobilization Units) were killed in an attack by Islamic State militants in Diyala’s city of Baqubah.  The attack targeted a security checkpoint run by the militia near al-Bohamad village.
• At least 35 people have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack in a busy square in Iraq's capital, Baghdad. Sixty-one other people were injured by the blast in the predominantly Shia Muslim eastern district of Sadr City.
• Another car bomb later exploded in the car park of the nearby Al-Kindi hospital, killing three people.
• At least seven people are reportedly dead after three suicide bombers stormed and attacked a police station in the Iraqi city of Samarra. Those three men detonated themselves inside the al-Mutawakel police station in the city of Samarra. ---

Iraq Tuesday January 3, 2017:

• Iraqi fighter jets destroyed Islamic State warfare utilities in eastern Mosul.
• Airstrikes destroyed IS’s so-called hisbah (Islamic vigilantism) office on the road between eastern Mosul and Tal Afar town in the west. The strikes also destroyed booby-trapping workshops, arms storehouses, an IS-run oil station and booby-trapped cars in nearly five districts in the eastern section.
• Earlier army and police forces stormed three districts and claimed to have killed 50 IS militants.
• At least 6,878 civilians were killed in Iraq in 2016. Last year figures did not include casualties among civilians in Iraq's western Anbar province for the months of May, July, August and December. At least 12,388 civilians were wounded in 2016.
• A total of 386 civilians were killed and another 1,066 were wounded in December 2016.
• The worst affected area was the northern province of Ninevah, where government forces are fighting to retake the ISIL-held city of Mosul, with 208 civilians killed and 511 injured. The capital, Baghdad, came next with 109 civilians killed and 523 injured.
• Iraqi journalist Afrah Shawqi, who was kidnapped by a group of gunmen in December in Baghdad, has been released. She was released in Baghdad, where senior Iraqi officials have been calling for her release.

Iraq Wednesday January 4, 2017:

• An Iraqi attack helicopter crashed south of the Mosul battlefield due to technical failure, killing all four crew members, two pilots and two technicians.
• The helicopter was a Russian-made Mi-35 gunship. The intensity of the war on IS recently meant that the necessary maintenance work on such helicopters was not always satisfactory.
• The international coalition air force bombarded the headquarters of the Islamic State in the areas of Taza and al-Rashad (35 km southwest of Kirkuk), killing 20 fighters of the group.
• A mortar shell fell on one house in Radwaniyah area, in western Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding three others.

Iraq Thursday January 5, 2017:

• Federal Police services said three drones were brought down before they attacked.
• In western Mosul, al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) had killed 35 Islamic State combatants who waged an attack on a PMU location near the strategic town of Tal Afar. The deaths included an IS senior recruitment agent, nicknamed Abu Qaswara al-Shami.
• Security forces searching the area of Albu Shamlon, in Tharthar basin, north of Ramadi, resulted in confiscating 80 Jahannam (Hell) missiles and quantities of different rockets. The areas of Tharthar Lake (70 km north of Ramadi) were fully liberated from the Islamic State, four months ago.

Iraq Friday January 6, 2017:

• A civilian was killed and six others were wounded when an explosive device exploded in Suwaib, south of Baghdad. The IED was placed near a cattle market.
• Twelve joint security forces members were either killed or wounded when Islamic State militants attacked a police unit in al-Dour, east of Salahuddin’s city of Tikrit. Some of the attackers, including two suicide bombers, were killed.
• Gunmen separately attacked the police station a short distance away and set fire to the building before fleeing the area. There were no casualties from that attack.

Iraq Saturday January 7, 2017:

• Forces from Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) liberated the first and second neighborhoods of al-Ataba, east of Mosul.
• The Counter-Terrorism forces also recaptures the road leading to the 4th bridge in Mosul.
• An improvised explosive device exploded in the area of Hamrin, in eastern Salahuddin, targeting families fleeing from the IS-held areas in Hawija District. The blast wounded 19 civilians, including women and children.

Iraq Sunday January 8, 2017:

• A car bomb struck a market in eastern Baghdad, killing at least 11 people and injuring dozens more. A security guard fired on a suspicious vehicle and the driver then blew it up.
• A doctor working for the Islamic State was killed in an airstrike by international coalition jets on southwest Kirkuk.
• Islam Taha al-Obeidi, aka Dr. Muawiya, was killed along with four aides in central Haiwija in an airstrike by fighter jets from the US-led military coalition backing Iraqi government forces against Islamic State militants. Obeidi was senior frontline IS member who was in charge of handling wounded group commanders.
• Iraqi Special Forces reached the eastern bank of the Tigris River in Mosul for the first time and clashed with militants near a historic site in the city. Elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) units fought their way to a bridge over the Tigris which has been damaged in fighting.
• It was the first time Iraqi forces have reached the river in the city itself since the operation to drive IS out of Mosul began in October. Iraqi forces have so far only penetrated eastern districts of Mosul, which is bissected by the river. The city is Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq.
• Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and three others were wounded when Islamic State militants attacked an area recaptured recently by security forces west of Anbar province. Four militants were also killed.
• IS militants attacked a security force securing al-Sakra region, which was recaptured on Saturday by security and tribal forces. The forces also seized arms and vehicles used in the attack by the extremist group.
• Suicide bombings at two marketplaces in eastern Baghdad killed at least 20 people.
• In the first blast, the attacker drove an explosives-rigged car into a vegetable market in the mainly Shia district of Jamila and detonated it, killing at least 13 people.
• A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest blew himself up a few hours later at a market in the mostly Shia district of Baladiyat, killing another seven people. Both attacks wounded at least 50 people.

Iraq Monday January 9, 2017:

• One person was killed and eight others were wounded when an explosive device exploded near a shopping area west of Baghdad. The device went off near commercial stores at Ghazaliya district.
• Detachments of the National Security in Babel dismantled 20 improvised explosive devices, emplaced on the road to the shrine of Sharifa Bint al-Hassan (6 km southeast of Hillah. The detachments dismantled the explosive devices without causing any losses. ---

Iraq Tuesday January 10, 2017:

• Military intelligence teams detected a booby-trapped vehicle on al-Udhaim highway in Diyala. The force detonated the vehicle and killed the militant on board.
• Members of the Islamic State executed a former police officer and a teenager in al-Rashad area (65 km south of Kirkuk), for collaborating with security forces.
• Anbar police forces seized a booby-trapped vehicle and arrested it driver in Juwaiba al-Nassaf area, east of Ramadi.

Iraq Wednesday January 11, 2017:

• One person was killed and five others were wounded when three explosive devices went off north of Baghdad. The three devices exploded coincidently at Atifiya district, north of the capital.
• The blasts occurred shortly after two other bombs exploded at Bakriya in the west and Youssefiya in the south, killing one and wounding seven.
• Aircraft of the US-led international coalition bombarded key headquarters belonging to the Islamic State group in al-Rashad area and Maktab Khalid axis, southwest of Kirkuk. A number of the Islamic State’s leaders and members were killed.

Iraq Thursday January 12, 2017:

• At least 108 ISIS militants were killed, five car bombs were detonated and an unmanned drone was shot down in Mosul.
• The Iraqi joint security forces in northern Mosul launched a raid on liberated areas from ISIS, discovering and later detonating three car bombs. At least 15 ISIS militants were killed during the raid and an unmanned drone was shot down.
• Iraqi forces liberated two more neighbourhoods -Sahiroon and Somariya neighbourhoods- in southern Mosul bringing the total number of the liberated neighbourhoods to 55. 89 militants were shot, two boats, five car bombs and six shelters used by the militants were destroyed, and another unmanned drone was seized.
• Four ISIS militants were killed in southeastern Mosul.
• The village of Hajaf in southern Tal Abta was reclaimed from ISIS.
• Coalition military forces conducted eight strikes coordinated with and in support of the government of Iraq using attack bomber and fighter aircraft as well as rocket artillery against ISIL targets.
• Federal Police’s Rapid Intervention Forces liberated al-Salam District in the eastern side of Mosul.
• The international coalition air force bombarded a vehicle belonging to the Islamic State carrying an anti-aircraft weapon in al-Jamiyah area, in Central Qaim. The air strike destroyed the vehicle and weapon completely, as well as killing four members of the Islamic State.
• An improvised explosive device placed near shops in al-M’alef area south of Baghdad exploded killing one person and wounding four others.

Iraq Friday January 13, 2017:

• Iraqi special forces stormed a sprawling university complex in northeast Mosul and pushed Islamic State back in nearby areas to reach two more bridges across the Tigris River.
• Iraqi forces have now recaptured most districts in eastern Mosul.

Iraq Saturday January 14, 2017:

• Members of the Islamic State burned a whole family that consisted of a mother and four children (three girls and a 9-month-old boy) in Hawija, for leaving the land of caliphate and fleeing toward Kirkuk.
• The Islamic State captured the family on the road linking between al-Riyad area and Hamrin Mountains, and burned them in front of a group of civilians, who were in their way toward al-Alam area east of Salahuddin.
• The members of the Islamic State tied up the mother and her children, then poured crude oil over them and set them ablaze.

Iraq Sunday January 15, 2017:

• At least nine people were killed and 20 others injured in a suicide car bomb attack. The vehicle was detonated near a police checkpoint in the Al-Halis area northeast of Baqubah, Diyala’s provincial capital.

Iraq Monday January 16, 2017:

• Iraqi army forces recaptured two of the last few districts in eastern Mosul that remain under Islamic State control. The forces recaptured the districts of al-Kindi and Qayrawan north of the eastern section of Mosul. Federal Police invaded al-Shorta neighborhood.
• Government joint forces had retaken 80 districts in the city’s eastern section, accounting for 90 percent of neighborhoods at that region.

Iraq Tuesday January 17, 2017:

• Two car bombs have targeted the Tal Yabes district of eastern Mosul, killing 14 civilians and one soldier. The bombings also wounded 12 people.
• Three districts in eastern Mosul (al-Jazair, al-Darkezliyah and al-Zera’I) were liberated and the army recaptured the Great Mosque in central the city. They inflicted heavy human and material losses on the terrorists.
• One civilian was killed and four others were wounded when an explosive device went off on a roadside in southeastern Baghdad. The bomb exploded near a commercial shop in Nahrawan.

Iraq Wednesday January 18, 2017:

• Four members of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri were killed and nine others were wounded, while three members of the Islamic State were killed in an attack lunched by the group on Jalam al-Daur area.
• Thirty Islamic State militants were killed when Iraqi fighter jets pounded a location where they held a leadership meeting east of Anbar.
• The deaths included senior leaders of the extremist group who were leading a security meeting in central Rawa. The dead commanders belonged to the group’s branch in the Syrian Boukamal region.
• The meeting tackled the group’s status in the province’s western regions.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a popular market in Madain District, southeast of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding four others.”
• Forces from al-Hashd al-Shaabi’s 8th brigade liberated the areas of Upper Glokhan and al-Baraem neighborhood in Nineveh Plain.
• The security forces also detonated three car bombs, as well as killing six members of the Islamic State who attacked al-Hadr intersection, south of Mosul.
• Forces from al-Hashd al-Shaabi also managed to shoot down a drone belonging to the Islamic state, west of Mosul.
• Government troops are now in "full control" of eastern Mosul after routing Islamic State militants from that part of the northern Iraqi city.

Iraq Thursday January 19, 2017:

• After its defeat in the battle against security forces from army, police, al-Hashd al-Shaabi and tribal fighters, the Islamic State group abducted 150 children from Tal Afar, and forcibly recruited them in the so-called ‘Cubs of Caliphate’.”
• The Islamic State is training children that were abducted from Tel Afar, Yazidi families and Mosul’s families to kill civilians and security members using booby-trapped vehicles and explosive belts.

Iraq Friday January 20, 2017:

• Seven civilians were killed and eight others were wounded when a roadside bomb killed them in Salahuddin’s northern mountainous region of Hamreen. The group was fleeing Islamic State stronghold town of Hawija, Kirkuk. ---

Iraq Friday January 20, 2017:

• Airstrikes by Iraqi fighter jets killed 88 Islamic State fighters in northeastern Mosul as a few regions remain to declare the full recapture of the eastern part of the city.
• The airstrike targeted the region of Tel Kaif and al-Sehaji, killing the militants and destroying their combat equipment and hideouts.

Iraq Saturday January 21, 2017:

• An Iraqi policeman survived an explosive device blast in Anbar. The IED placed under a car belonging to a police captain at Anbar police exploded in the region of Hasiba, east of Ramadi, leaving only material damages.
• Security forces from Diyala police, emergency regiments and Diyala Intelligence detachments carried out security operations in different areas in Baqubah, al-Wajihiyah, Hamrin and Habhab, resulting in the capture of seven persons wanted on criminal and terrorism charges.
• Security forces on the base of information from detained members of the Islamic State found a mass grave in the presidential palaces area in central Tikrit, containing remains of Camp Speicher’s victims. A specialized committee of the Ministry of Health and Human Rights Watch examined the grave, and exhumed 89 bodies.

Iraq Sunday January 22, 2017:

• Iraqi forces retook two neighbourhoods, Al-Milayeen neighbourhood and Al-Binaa al-Jahiz area, from the Islamic State group in Mosul, the last central areas on the Tigris River's east bank not under their control.
• Federal forces had also retaken control of the road linking Mosul to Dohuk, a provincial capital in the west of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.
• An improvised explosive device left on the roadside in al-Sena’I neighborhood in Taji area, north of Baghdad, exploded killing one civilians and wounding four others.
• An improvised explosive device, emplaced on an agriculture road side near al-Aali village exploded targeting a vehicle of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri. A fighter of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri was killed, as well as causing damage to the vehicle.

Iraq Monday January 23, 2017:

• A civilian was killed, while seven others were wounded by mortar shells in the the old industrial area and al-Zera’i neighborhood in western Mosul.
• Six mortar shells fired by the Islamic State group fell near a group of children in Sharqat, killing three of them and wounding six others.

Iraq Tuesday January 24, 2017:

• Iraq's prime minister declared eastern Mosul "fully liberated" from Islamic State group militants after a day of fierce fighting and more than three months after a massive U.S.-backed operation to retake the city began.
• Iraqi forces drove Islamic State militants from one of their last bastions in the eastern half of the city, while aid groups expressed concern for the estimated 750,000 people still in the militant-held west.
• The Iraqi defence ministry has issued a statement retracting an earlier claim in which it announced the "liberation of the eastern part of Mosul" from ISIL, calling it a "mistake".
• On its website on Monday, the army said that the armed forces succeeded in liberating the left bank of the city completely after inflicting heavy losses in lives and equipment to the enemy.
• However, in a later statement on Monday, the defence ministry said that the 9th and 16th army brigades were still locked in fierce battles against ISIL in the Al-Rashidiya district, while Iraqi troops were still clearing other neighbourhoods and clashing with pockets of ISIL fighters.
• Iraqi military sources told Al Jazeera that ISIL still has a presence in the forest area on the banks of the Tigris River.

Iraq Wednesday January 25, 2017:

• Four members of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) were killed and wounded in an attack by Islamic State militants east and south of Tikrit. The attack targeted PMU deployments in Tal Kasiba and Mutaibija, east and south of Tikrit.
• IS fighters have made a significant advance in al-Haddadiya crossroad, a network of highways linking the city with Kirkuk and Diyala. Army fighter jets have started to bombard the group’s supply routes at those regions, and later strikes are expected in northern and eastern Tikrit, the source added.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi troops launched on Tuesday a military operation to secure the roads linking Baghdad and Salahuddin with Mosul. The extremist group has stepped up bloody attacks in Salahuddin and Baghdad in recent weeks, killing several security and PMU members.
• Iraqi army fighter jets killed 20 Islamic State fighters before they carried out an attack on army forces in Anbar’s city of Haditha. The militants were detected and targeted by the air force while approaching an army deployment west of Um al-Wez region, southwest of Haditha.
• A policeman was killed by a mortar shell near Alas oil fields, east of the province. The shell was fired from Islamic State-held areas in the province.

Iraq Thursday January 26, 2017:

• A drone belonging to the Islamic State group, flying in the area of Bab al-Toub in central Mosul, dropped explosives on a house in the area, wounding three persons, including a 3-year-old child. Many people in Mosul were victims of drones that drop explosives in the few last weeks.
• An improvised explosive device, emplaced on the roadside near a popular market in al-Wardiyah area in Madain District, southeast of Baghdad, exploded, killing one civilian and wounding five others.
• Earlier unidentified armed men launched an attack, using medium weapons, on a checkpoint belonging to al-Hashd al-Ashaeri in al-Yusufiyah area, south of Baghdad, killing a volunteer soldier and wounding two others.

Iraq Friday January 27, 2017:

• Theresa May tonight vowed there will be no more “failed” Iraq-style foreign invasions by British forces in the biggest foreign policy shake-up in 20 years.
• In her first US speech as Prime Minister, Mrs May called time on two decades of so-called 'liberal intervention' by Britain in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Kosovo. The days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over.

Iraq Saturday January 28, 2017:

• Iraqi forces killed four members of the Islamic State and wounded five others, after attacking the group’s stronghold with mortar shells in central Hawija.
• The group’s militants launched an attack on Peshmerga forces in Aski Mosul village, northwest of the city. The attack was foiled and the Iraqi forces managed to kill seven members of the Islamic State, including two suicide bombers.
• Military Intelligence Service was able to seize large quantities of weapons and ammunition in al-Latifiyah area, south of Baghdad. ---

Iraq Monday January 30, 2017:

• An elite leader of the Islamic State, Abu Taha al-Iraqi, was killed in Mutaibaja area by a mysterious blast on the borders with Salahuddin Province.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a house in al-Shuhada neighbourhood in al-Iskandariyah area. The explosion did not cause any human or material losses.

Iraq Tuesday January 31, 2017:

• Two workers at Hamorabi, a government constructions and housing company, were found dead at a valley near Zolo region with gunshot marks on their corpses. The fate of a third victim kidnapped with the dead pair remains unknown.
• Last Wednesday, a “terrorist group” attacked the company’s location at Naft Khana region and kidnapped five workers. The kidnappers belonged to the Islamic State extremist group.
• Thirty-nine fighters from Islamic State were killed after army forces pushed back an attack on troops at Tal Kusaiba, east of Salahuddin.
• Airstrikes by U.S.-led coalition fighter jets killed four Islamic State militants at a drones mini-factory run by the group in western Anbar.
• The strike destroyed the factory located near the Grand Mosque at the center of the IS-held town of Annah. The four militants killed in the strike included a Tajik drone expert.
• Iraqi fighter jets killed 17 Islamic State militants and destroyed six of their boats in western Mosul. The strike, which targeted the district of Badush, was carried out based on intelligence information. Six vehicles belonging to the group were also burned in the strike.
• Airstrikes by unidentified fighter jets left 15 civilian casualties at western Anbar.
• A woman and a child were killed and 13 other civilians were wounded in an airstrike by unknown military aircraft at a residential area at the city of al-Qaem, Islamic State’s biggest pocket in the province.

Iraq Wednesday February 1, 2017:

• Three Islamic State militants were killed after they had an argument over the fair way to share money plundered from civilians.
• The trio had an argument over amounts of money they had stolen from commercial shops at the town of al-Qaem, which turned into a deadly armed fight at al-Malaab area.
• IS cells in Qaem had used to steal money, electricity generators, civilians’ cars, building materials and even sheep and sell them to smugglers or transfer them to Syria to secure finances for the fighters.
• The Islamic State group executed five civilians in Hawija District, west of Kirkuk, on charges of spying and collaboration with government and Kurdish security forces. The Sharia Court of the Islamic State issued the death sentence.
• Security forces conducted an air strike targeting a booby-trapped vehicle carrying rockets, mortar shells and grenades in Shuaib area, in the outskirts of al-Rahaliyah area. The air strike destroyed the vehicle, which was prepared to attack civilians in the province.

Iraq Thursday February 2, 2017:

• The self-proclaimed Islamic State group amputated the hands of two children, in western Mosul, for refusing to carry out execution sentence on two civilians.
• The Islamic State’s leaders issued orders to train a group of children on fighting in the group’s camps in Nables neighbourhood, in the western side of Nineveh. The age of the abused children ranges between 10 and 12 years old.
• An improvised explosive device, planted near a popular market in Mahmudiyah area, south of Baghdad wounded two civilians.
• Earlier Baghdad Operations Command arrested a suspect for stealing a vehicle in al-Saidiyah area, southwest of Baghdad.

Iraq Friday February 3, 2017:

• A senior Islamic State leader was killed while two of his companions were wounded in an airstrike that targeted the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.
• The dead militant, nicknamed Abu Suhaib, was killed in an airstrike that targeted the region of Mutaibija. Abu Suhaib was the son-in-law of the Islamic State’s “emir” (governor) of Hawi al-Udhaim.

Iraq Saturday February 4, 2017:

• Seven Islamic State fighters were arrested in eastern Mosul as security forces conducted searches for the extremist group’s residual cells.
• Iraqi forces had imposed a curfew at the Qadisiyah district, cordoned both off and went on raids on their buildings, ending up with the arrest of the seven militants.

Iraq Sunday February 5, 2017:

• The Command of the Army’s 7th brigade in Anbar said that 16 members of the Islamic State were killed including two suicide bombers and two car bombs belonging to the group were destroyed, during a security operation in the desert area between Haditha and Anah (210 km west of Ramadi).
• Three premises belonging to the extremist group were also destructed during the operation, in addition to a mortar shell.

Iraq Monday February 6, 2017:

• Peshmerga said that an airstrike conducted by the international coalition air force killed 11 fighters of the Islamic State, in addition to destructing a headquarters and a tunnel belonging to the group, northwest of Kirkuk.

Iraq Tuesday February 7, 2017:

• Islamic State militants have executed 15 civilians in the village of Sheikh Mohamed in northern Mosul as the group braces for a new, decisive round of battles with Iraqi government troops.
• Unidentified gunmen, riding a motorcycle, shot a member of Sahwa Militia, while he was leaving his house in Sheikh Hamad area in Tarmiya District, north of Baghdad, wounding him with serious injuries.
• The international coalition air force bombarded a truck carrying a booby-trapped vehicle occupied by a suicide bomber, in Rawah District (230 km west of Ramadi). The bombardment truck and booby-trapped vehicle was destroyed and the suicide bomber was killed.
• One civilian was killed and four others were wounded when a bomb blast hit a market area in Radwaniya district in southern Baghdad.

Wednesday February 8, 2017:

• A roadside bomb blast killed two Iraqi troops in western Iraq. The explosion struck as a military vehicle was passing on a highway in western Ramadi. Two soldiers were also injured in the attack.
• Iraqi forces killed 26 Islamic State militants in separate locations in Mosul, while bringing down drones guided by the extremist group.
• Security forces shot down three Islamic State-guided drones that were heading to bomb civilians in the districts of al-Zohour, al-Masaref, al-Seddiq and al-Sukkar north of Mosul. Government forces had recaptured those districts from IS as part of operations between mid-October and January 24th that drove extremists out of eastern Mosul.
• In a separate encounter troops killed five Islamic State militants who attempted to sneak into Rashidya neighborhood, north of Mosul.
• 21 other militants were killed in an army airstrike in Umm al-Zanabir, south of western Mosul’s strategic city of Tal Afar. Three 4WD vehicles belonging to the group were also destroyed in the strike.
• A member of the Islamic State group, wearing a suicide vest, was trying to storm into the headquarters of the army’s 9th brigade in al-Daur District, north of Salahuddin Province.”
• The army forces shot the suicide bomber before reaching the headquarters, killing him and detonating the explosive vest. The attack did not result in any casualties among the army ranks.

Iraq Saturday February 11, 2017:

• An Iraqi policeman was killed and seven others wounded in clashes with protesters loyal to prominent Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who had gathered in Baghdad to demand political reforms.
• Thousands had gathered in the square to demand an overhaul of the commission that supervises elections ahead of a provincial vote due in September.
• Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada militia foiled an attack launched by the Islamic State group, west of the city of Mosul and killed 10 members of the group.
• They also burned three vehicles. One member of Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada was killed, while two others were wounded in the attack.
• The US-led anti-ISIS coalition killed a prominent leader of the radical group in an air strike in Mosul. Rachid Kassim, one of the group’s most notorious members who is a French national and believed to have masterminded some of the Paris terrorist attacks was killed near Mosul.
• The air strike that killed Kassim has been carried out in the past three days. ---

Iraq Saturday February 11, 2017:

• Iraqi security forces fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets at thousands of supporters of an influential Shia leader demonstrating near Baghdad's Green Zone to press for electoral reform.
• Four protesters and one police officer were killed during the protests. Hundreds of protesters and seven other policemen were also injured in clashes.
• Kurdish Peshmerga forces attacked three headquarters of the Islamic State in Rambousi Village and Telskuf area.
• Daesh (Islamic State) militants have burned to death 15 civilians –including children- belonging to three families from al-Shajarah village in Hawija. The group accused the victims of abandoning the land of the caliphate. They were submerged with tar and then set to fire before a crowd.
• The victims were bound to central Kirkuk and areas in neighboring Salahuddin province. They were captured by IS on a road between al-Riyadh and Hamreen mountains area.
• The group threatened citizens in the area they would be burned to death similarly if they try to escape.

Iraq Sunday February 12, 2017:

• Iraqi police forces destroyed a booby-trapped car and bulldozer belonging to Islamic State extremists south of Mosul.
• Forces hit the two tractors with kornet rockets after police drones had detected them in Lazaka, south of the city.
• Iraqi government forces, backed by troops and advisers from a U.S.-led coalition and popular militias, are currently preparing for a ground invasion of western Mosul to clear that region from Islamic State militants who took over the city in 2014. Security operations since mid-October have managed to recapture the eastern section of the city after killing more than 3000 militants.
• An Algerian journalist is in a coma after being shot by an ISIS sniper near Tal Afar, west of Mosul.
• Samira Mouaki, a journalist, was seriously injured after being shot in the head by an ISIS sniper while covering clashes between the militants and Hashd al-Shaabi forces west of Mosul.

Iraq Monday February 13, 2017:

• Three employees were killed, while seven others were wounded in an explosion at Bay Hassan oil field, northwest of Kirkuk. A tank exploded accidentally during the welding process at Bay Hassan oil field in Dibs District.

Iraq Wednesday February 15, 2017:

• Islamic State militants have kidnapped 16 civilians from a region in Anbar. The IS militants had kidnapped the civilians from al-Rouda, a district on the road between Rahaliyah and Ramadi.
• Two suicide bombers blew up themselves near a checkpoint belonging to al-Hashd al-Shaabi in Tal Abta area, south of Mosul. The two blasts resulted in the killing of 5 members of al-Hashd al-Shaabi, as well as wounding others with serious injuries.
• Unidentified gunmen launched an attack on two civilians near Abu Seba’ Village in Abu Saida vicinity (30 km east of Baqubah), killing them on the spot.
• A suicide bomber detonated a pick-up truck in Sadr City, a heavily-populated Shia suburb of Baghdad, killing at least 15 and wounding 50. The explosion, the deadliest in Baghdad so far this year, targeted a crowded street full of garages and used-car dealers.

Iraq Thursday February 16, 2017:

• Unidentified gunmen attacked the house of Baghdad Investment Commission’s Head, Shaker al-Zamili, in the area of Hayy al-Ghadeer, in eastern Baghdad. The attack was foiled, and the attackers were forces to flee. Zamili’s son was wounded.
• An improvised explosive device exploded in Qasbet Bashir (15 km south of Kirkuk), killing one civilian on the spot.

Iraq Friday February 17, 2017:

• Two civilians were wounded when an explosive device hit a road north of Baghdad. The device was placed on the side of a road in al-Shaab region, north of the capital. ---

Iraq Sunday February 19, 2017:

• The offensive to liberate western Mosul was formally announced by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
• Hundreds of military vehicles, backed by air power, rolled across the desert towards IS positions. The progress in the south of the city, the second biggest in Iraq, takes them within striking distance of Mosul airport.
• Fears have been voiced about the safety of many thousands of trapped civilians.
• Forces from the 3rd detachment of the army’s 5th Commando brigade killed two fighters of the Islamic State group, while trying to sneak into a checkpoint in the area of Naft Khana (95 Km northeast of Baqubah).
• The 37th regiment of the army’s 9th armored brigade liberated the village of al-Ibrahimiya in western Mosul. The security forces also raised Iraqi flag over the buildings of the village, as well as inflicting heavy human and material losses on the enemy.
• Federal Police troops are liberating al-Zakrotiyah Village on the Tigris River.
• Nineveh Operations Command announced earlier liberating al-Husseiniyah, Sheikh Yunis, al-Harakiyat and Tal Kaisoum villages in western Mosul from the Islamic State’s control.
• Three children died when a landmine planted by Islamic State militants in Ramadi exploded. The three kids, aged 9-13 years, were herding a cattle when one of them trod on the landmine at al-Baghdadi precinct, west of the city.

Iraq Monday February 20, 2017:

• Turkish warplanes launched air strikes against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq killing 34 militants in two separate bombardments. The strikes targeted militants in Iraq’s Zap region.
• A U.S. serviceman died in a non-combat related incident outside the Iraqi city of Ramadi. The United States has more than 5,000 troops deployed in Iraq.
• US-backed Iraqi forces have cleared ISIS fighters from the key village of Albu Saif overlooking Mosul's airport. The village is perched on elevated ground and has strategic value in the push to take the airport.

Iraq Tuesday February 21, 2017:

• Security forces killed a suicide bomber inside an inhabited house in al-Hayakel area in the vicinity of al-Ishaki area, while besieging another suicide bomber in the same area.
• An Islamic State Shura Council’s official was killed by an airstrike, northeast of Baqubah. The Islamic State Shura council’s official of Hamrin Basin was killed, along with two of his aides, by an airstrike on a location belonging to the group in Hamrin area, northeast of Baqubah.
• The Head of the Islamic State Shura Council in Hamrin is considered the second in command after the military Emir.

Iraq Wednesday February 22, 2017:

• Islamic State militants have released a video showing militants executing two Iraqi army officers. The two officers had disappeared from al-Nakhib area in Anbar province a month earlier.
• The first officer was Abbas al-Samarrai, who had been reported missing by his family. He was beheaded by the militants as the video reportedly showed. The second one’s name was not mentioned in the video, but he was shown lying into a hole in the ground and shot by a firing squad.
• Three civilians were killed and six others were wounded in Salahuddin province when a bomb planted by the Islamic State exploded while they were trying to flee group-held areas in Kirkuk.
• The civilians were escaping Islamic State-held areas in Kirkuk’s town of Hawija when an IED went off as they reached Hamreen Mountains area in Salahuddin.

Iraq Thursday February 23, 2017:

• Iraqi ground troops, backed by the army’s air force, have taken control of the Mosul airport.
• Members of the Iraqi federal police and rapid response forces were engaged in the multi-pronged offensive to liberate the airport.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi Organization said that Commander of al-Hashd al-Shaabi’s 10th brigade, Ali Abdel Kadim al-Saeedi, was killed during armed clashes with the Islamic State group in Tal Afar District, west of Mosul.
• Six Islamic State militants were killed in air strikes by fighter jets from the U.S.-led coalition that targeted group strongholds in western Anbar. The strikes also destroyed three rest houses used by the militants in Rayhana, in the western town of Annah.
• Four civilians were killed and nine others were wounded when attackers boarding booby-trapped cars, targeted checkpoints on the Kirkuk-Baghdad road in Diyala.

Iraq Friday February 24, 2017:

• A Kurdish reporter, Shifa Gardi), has been killed while covering on the battle for Mosul. She was killed by a roadside bomb.
• The Iraqi troops entered western districts of Mosul for the first time as part of an offensive begun in October to drive the jihadists from their main stronghold.
• The Islamic State group carried out an attack from several directions with a suicide car bomb and gunmen on an Iraqi border guard position near Jordan, killing at least 15 guards.

Iraq Saturday February 25, 2017:

• Four bombs went off near a minor pipeline from Bai Hassan oilfield close to Kirkuk. It caused a fire. The pipeline delivers crude from the Bai Hassan oilfield to a degassing station in Kirkuk. Pumping had been halted for maintenance at the time of the blasts.
• One member of the Kurdish security forces was killed and two were wounded when three more bombs exploded as they approached the location of the first blast.
• A number of the Islamic State’s members sneaked into al-Mazraa village in Baiji District and killed four members of one family.
• Another IS militant, who was wearing an explosive belt, blew up himself on a civilian, while security forces imposed a curfew in the village until further notice.

Iraq Sunday February 26, 2017:

• Iraqi militarized police captured two neighborhoods on the western side of Mosul amid fierce clashes with Islamic State militants. Thousands of people continued to flee the battle to government-controlled areas.
• Two leaders of al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia were killed in a booby-trapped houses explosion in western Mosul.
• Militia leader Arkan Kareem al-Mayahi, member of Martyr Sadr Forces, and leader Hussien Ajami al-Burki, member of Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia were killed during the battles in the vicinity of Tal Afar (56 km west of Mosul).
• The Islamic State planted explosives in several houses in the villages of Tal al-Zalat and Umm al-Masayed. The two leaders were killed due to the explosion of the booby-trapped houses, in two separate incidents.
• Security forces managed to recapture al-Harakiyat area, which is considered the biggest oil smuggling point belonging to the Islamic State from areas south of Mosul to outside the city.
• Six members of the Islamic Diyala State were killed in a blast and airstrikes in Kirkuk and Salahuddin.
• Three senior leaders from the Islamic State were killed in airstrikes that targeted their location at the outskirts of Hawija in southwestern Kirkuk. One of those killed was the group’s media official in the province.
• Also in Diyala, three other Islamic State members died while a booby-trapped ambush they were trying to set up in Mutaibija exploded. ---

Iraq Monday February 20, 2017:

-    The U.S. military is "not in Iraq to seize anybody's oil", Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said, distancing himself from remarks by President Donald Trump, as he held talks with Iraqi leaders.
-    Mattis was the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit Iraq since Trump irked Iraqis with a temporary ban on travel to the United States and for saying America should have seized Iraq's oil after toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Iraq Monday February 27, 2017:

-    Iraqi forces seized a damaged Mosul bridge which could link up their units on either side of the Tigris River. Once repaired, the bridge could help bring reinforcements and supplies from the eastern side.
-    Thousands of civilians are fleeing the fighting for Islamic State’s remaining stronghold in the west of the city.
-    Troops of the army’s 9 armoured brigade liberated Tal al-Rumman village as well as the College of Engineering and the Olympic Swimming Pool in Josaq neighbourhood. Iraqi flags were raised over the buildings, after inflicting heavy human and material losses on the enemy.”
-    The Islamic State group detonated Albu Hayat Bridge in the western side of Anbar Province. The Islamic State blew up the bridge using high explosives, causing it to collapse.
- Four bombs detonated at an oil pipeline in Kirkuk killed one and injured three members of the Kurdish security forces. At the time of the blasts, the pipeline was shut down for maintenance. The blown-up pipe is used to pump crude from the Bai Hassan field to a degassing facility in Kirkuk.
- The blasts come soon after Baghdad signed a memorandum of understanding with Tehran for the construction of a pipeline that would see crude from the Kirkuk area exported via Iran. ---

Iraq Tuesday February 28, 2017:

• Two improvised explosive devices, planted near a popular playing field in al-Shuhada neighborhood, south of Bagdad, exploded killing a civilian and wounding four others.
• Earlier another improvised explosive device exploded near a popular market in Bob al-Sham area, north of Baghdad, wounding two civilians.
• An Islamic State’s official was killed - along with one of his aides- in the Diyala province by artillery shelling. The IS official was responsible for the transfer of militant from Hawija to the borders of Diyala.

Iraq Wednesday March 1, 2017:

• Dozens of people were either killed or wounded in several blasts that hit different areas of Baghdad.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a popular market in al-Nahrawan area, southeast of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three others.
• Another bomb exploded near al-Sena’i neighborhood in al-Aamel area, east of Baghdad, injuring two persons.
• Earlier today, a civilian died and three others were wounded when an explosive device went off near a cattle market in Shatt al-Taji area, in northern Baghdad.
• Two British students who abandoned medical degrees in Sudan a couple of years ago to work as doctors helping Isis in Syria have been killed in fighting.
• Ahmad Sami Kheder ,25, originally from Carshalton in south London, has died last weekend when a convoy he was travelling with leaving Mosul was hit by gunfire. Hisham Fadlallah, from Nottinghamshire, was also killed.

Iraq Thursday March 2, 2017:

• Kurdish forces have seized an oil facility in Kirkuk to send a message to the Iraqi government to build a refinery. Oil flows from the facility have resumed after being temporarily disrupted. However Kurdish forces would stop flows again unless their demands were met within a week.
• Oil pumping from Iraq’s northern Kirkuk fields stopped on Thursday after Kurdish forces were deployed in the area to search for explosives. That caused a halt of Kirkuk oil exports to Turkey.
• One army soldier was killed and two others were wounded, while two civilians were wounded when armed gunmen targeted a checkpoint and in a bombing in al-Madaen southern Baghdad.
• Meanwhile, two civilians were also wounded when a bomb exploded in a commercial area in al-Makaseb, southwest of Baghdad.

Iraq Friday March 3, 2017:

• Rival Kurdish groups clashed in Iraq's northwestern Sinjar region. The deadly fighting erupted when Peshmerga Rojava forces moved towards the border with Syria, encroaching on territory controlled by a local affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
• The Peshmerga Rojava is made up of Kurds from Syria and was formed and trained in Iraq with the backing of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq.
• The clashes that lasted several hours, pitted them against the YBS, which was set up there by the PKK after it came to the aid of the Yazidi population when the area was overrun by Islamic State in the summer of 2014.
• There are martyrs and wounded on both sides.

 
Iraq Saturday March 4, 2017:

• Alleged chemical weapons attacks would constitute a war crime if confirmed, the United Nations said in a statement.
• Two members of the Islamic State were killed in Nineveh Province, and two others were wounded, while trying to plant explosives inside a house, west of Mosul.
• The house belongs to a security member, who was executed two years ago by the Islamic State group.
• Security forces foiled an attack launched by the Islamic State on an army battalion, west of the city of Rutba (310 km west of Ramadi). A number of the Islamic State’s members were killed, and a vehicle belonging to the group was destructed during the attack.
• The international coalition air force conducted an air strike on al-Najjar neighborhood in western Mosul, destroying an important headquarters belonging to the Islamic State.
• The air strike killed Abu Abdel Rahman al-Ansari, also known as Jund al-Khilafa along with 6 military emirs of the Islamic State. The killed emirs are the Saudi nationals Abu Khalid, Sabah al-Anzi, Abu Azzam, Abu Hejal; Abu Sayah (Jordanian) and Abu Taiba (Bahraini.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a popular market in al-Shaab area, north of Baghdad, wounding two civilians.
• Twelve people are being treated for possible exposure to chemical weapons agents in Mosul raising fears of the first chemical attack in the besieged city.  All 12 patients had been treated since 1 March in Erbil. Four of them showed “severe signs associated with exposure to a blister agent”.

Iraq Sunday March 5, 2017:

• Iraqi Air Force destroyed four headquarters belonging to the Islamic State group and a rockets plant in Qayrawan area and al-Sena’a area in Nineveh Province. They also destructed a number of vehicles belonging to the Islamic State inside a farm in Tal Afar District, west of the city of Mosul.
• Iraqi government forces pushed deeper into western Mosul storming four major districts.
• Federal Police and Rapid Response forces invaded the districts of Dindan and Dawasah, in the easternmost area of western Mosul, while the Counter-Terrorism Force invaded al-Sumoud and Tal al-Rumman in the westernmost area.
• Three members of the Islamic State were killed by an air strike that targeted a location belonging to the group in the vicinity of al-Sharqat District, north of Salahuddin.
• One of the killed members is the son of the group’s Security Official in Sharqat area, also known as Abu Yakoub.
• An improvised explosive device exploded near a blacksmith workshop in Khan Dari area in Abu Gharib District, killing one person and wounding four others.

Iraq Monday March 6, 2017:

• The Iraqi army captured a second bridge (known as "al Hurriya") that leads to the ISIL-held city centre from the south. The first was seized in the south during the offensive on western Mosul.
• All of Mosul's five bridges over the Tigris River have been destroyed in the fighting but their recapture and repair would aid in the government's fight.
• An Islamic State’s Detachments Official was killed in Houd al-Zour, northeast of Baqubah, along with one of his aides.
• Four civilians were killed and 25 wounded in an attack launched by the Islamic State group. The Islamic State group attacked the areas of Markaz Street, al-Numaniyah, northern Garage and al-Aramel with missiles containing chemical materials.
• The Islamic State extremist group also attacked the areas in eastern Mosul using drones and mortar shells.
• A civilian died when a bomb fitted beneath his vehicle exploded in western Baghdad. The bomb was fitted beneath a vehicle owned by an employee at Iraq’s industry ministry, and went off as he passed through the Tawayel neighborhood, west of the capital.

Iraq Tuesday March 7, 2017:

• An Iraqi army soldier was killed and another was wounded when an explosive device hit their patrol in northern Baghdad. The patrol was passing through al-Houra region, north of the capital, when a bomb placed on the side of the road exploded.
• Joint security forces started to storm the popular area of Bab Laksh, south of Mosul. So far the clashes in Bab Laksh resulted in the killing of 33 Islamic State militants, as well as arresting six others.
• The security forces are opening safe havens for civilians, to facilitate their exit from the combat areas.
• Earlier today, Iraqi Rapid Response forces took over the government complex in Mosul, after expelling Islamic State militants from the area.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) killed ten Islamic State combatants who staged an attack on the force’s entrenchments at al-Hadar desert area. The force detonated three booby-trapped vehicles belonging to the group.
• A member of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) was killed and three others were wounded in an attack by IS members at Mansouriyat al-Jabal village, 43 kilometers east of Baqubah.
• A dangerous IS member was also killed in encounters with forces from the army’s 5th division near Sheikhi village, 22 kilometers north of Baqubah.
• The Islamic State group abducted three members of al-Hashd al-Ashaeri in the outskirts of Mubarak al-Farhan village, on the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.

Iraq Wednesday March 8, 2017:

• A police officer was killed in an armed attack, north of the province. An armed group shot a vehicle, driven by a police officer, while passing in the area of Arafa Street, north of Kirkuk. The officer was responsible for books transfer between Kirkuk Police Directorate and the Ministry of Interior.
• Two suicide bombers have blown themselves up, killing 26 people, as wedding guests gathered in a village near the Iraqi city of Tikrit. At least 25 people were wounded.
• The first detonated an explosive vest among men who were dancing, then a second bomber targeted those who had gathered to help. Most of the dead were children.
• IS said it had targeted a gathering of the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of mostly Shia paramilitaries backed by Iran. ---

Iraq Thursday March 8, 2017:

• A fighter of the Islamic State group was killed, and three others were wounded by the explosion of a hand grenade, in central Tal Afar.
• The unidentified man attacked a patrol belonging to the Islamic State group in central Tal Afar, west of Mosul, using a hand grenade, killing one of its members and wounds three others.
• Three civilians were wounded in a car bomb explosion as a booby-trapped vehicle exploded in al-Cournish Street, north of the city of Hīt. It also caused damage to some nearby shops and outlets.

Iraq Friday March 10, 2017:

• Iraq has “no evidence” that ISIS had used chemical weapons in Mosul according to the country’s ambassador to the United Nations Mohamed Ali Alhakim.
• The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on March 3 that at least 12 people were been admitted to the hospital with symptoms indicating they were exposed to toxins from chemical weapons. The hospital has admitted five children and two women showing clinical symptoms consistent with an exposure to a blistering chemical agent. The ICRC subsequently tweeted that a total of 12 people had been admitted with similar symptoms to Rozhawa hospital in Erbil.

Iraq Saturday March 11, 2017:

• Security forces killed four members of the Islamic State -and an unidentified number of militants were wounded- after foiling the group’s attack by the Islamic State group on al-Fatha intersection on east of Baiji, north of Salahuddin. Security forces seized large quantities of weapons in the enemy’s area.
• Earlier, Iraqi security forces repulsed an armed attack launched by the Islamic State terrorist group on the western side of Sharqat that was liberated earlier by security forces, and killed 15 members of the group, who tried to sneak into the city.
• Forces from the army’s 1st brigade and coalition air force managed to foil an attack launched by the Islamic State on an army’s headquarters, west of Ramadi.
• The security forces, baked by the international coalition aircraft repulsed the attack and killed 11 members of the Islamic State group, as well as destroying three vehicles belonging to the terrorist group.

Iraq Sunday March 12, 2017:

• Security forces repulsed an attack on Tal Afar Airport, and killed 18 members of the Islamic State group including four suicide bombers driving booby-trapped vehicles, who tried to attack military forces stationed in the vicinity of the airport. Three members of the Islamic State were also arrested.
• The international coalition air force conducted an air strike on New Mosul neighborhood, in western Mosul killing Mahmoud Fathi al-Jabouri, also known as Abu Rusol, the Administrative Official of the Islamic State terrorist group.
• Earlier the US-led coalition carried out an air strike on the city of Mosul, destructing three booby-trapped vehicles and an explosives plant belonging to the Islamic State group.
• Troops of the Federal Police liberated Souk al-Arbaa and al-Remah Square in Bab al-Toub, in central Mosul.
• Earlier elite Counter-Terrorism Forces also took over al-Aghawat district, near Mosul’s Old City.
• Unidentified gunmen killed two members of the Islamic State terrorist group, while passing near one of popular markets in central Hawija, while the gunmen escaped to an unknown destination.
• The two militants are from Mosul, and joined the terrorist group since capturing the district of Hawija.

Iraq Monday March 13, 2017

• Iraqi forces battling ISIS/ISIL faced tough resistance from snipers and mortar rounds as they tried to advance on Mosul's Old City and a bridge across the Tigris River in their campaign to retake it.
• Progress was slowed by heavy rain but units were only 100 metres from the Iron Bridge that connects the Old City with the eastern side of Mosul.
• Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) gained control over Mosul al-Jadida district. Earlier, CTS troopers had managed to reclaim Naft neighborhood following bitter clashes with Daesh terrorists.
• The Iraqi Army repulsed an attack launched by the Islamic State on the area of Harariyat and Makhoul Mountains, north of Salahuddin killing 32 members of the terrorist group. Security forces also destroyed two vehicles, armored truck and two hideouts.
• Detachments of Salahuddin Operations Commands stationed on Makhoul Mountains destroyed four hideouts, using four Kornet rockets and killed their occupants.

Iraq Tuesday March 14, 2017:

• Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul's train station as well as a nearby bus station, both of which are located southwest of Mosul's Old City.
• The train station has not been operational since jihadists seized the city but was once one of the country's main rail hubs. The station was the "main corridor from the north to the south and carries goods from Turkey and Syria to Baghdad and Basra. ---

Iraq Wednesday March 15, 2017:

• Three makeshift prisons are holding nearly 1,300 detainees including young boys, who lack proper medical care and are being held in poor conditions. Four prisoners have died and two prisoners’ legs have been amputated.
• Human Rights Watch observed that the facilities are all extremely overcrowded, so that no detainee can lie down to sleep. Because of the overcrowding and lack of proper ventilation, the makeshift prison cells are overheated, with an incredible stench.
• Two of the detention centers named in the report are in the town of Qayyarah in southern Nineveh province, and the other is a police station in Hammam al-Alil about 30 kilometers south of Mosul.
• Joint forces from Asayish (Kurdish security forces) and Peshmerga conducted a security operation in al-Raml Village in Baiji vicinity. The operation resulted in seizing three explosive belts.
• A car bomb detonated in the Physicians Street in Tikrit downtown, killing 11 and wounding 41 others. The bombing targeted a crowded place as large numbers of people and patients visit the street to see doctors in the evenings. Due to the size of the bomb, the number of victims will likely rise.
• Unidentified gunmen fired indiscriminately on a checkpoint belonging to Sahwa militia in al-Raoud area, north of Baghdad, killing one members and wounding another.
• Anonymous gunmen launched an armed attack on al- Za’franiya area, south of the capital, Baghdad, killing a civilian.

Iraq Thursday March 16, 2017:

• Security forces that protect Badush city repulsed an attack launched by the Islamic State, while also killed 10 militants, including suicide bombers.
• Clashes broke out between the Islamic State militants and security forces near al-Kazak camp, leaving 8 IS casualties, while security forces destroyed vehicles belonging to the terrorist group and shelled their gatherings in the area.

Iraq Friday March 17, 2017:

• Pro-Iraqi government paramilitary forces killed 23 Islamic State members during an offensive in Samarra, Salahuddin, as the troops continue securing areas recaptured from the extremist group in the province.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) said they killed seven IS fighters and wounded 16 others in an offensive at Jalam Samarra region.

Iraq Saturday March 18, 2017:

• The Islamic State’s detachments official of Mutaibija, also known as Abu al- Qaqaa, was killed, along with one of his aides, by an air strike that targeted his vehicle, east of Salahuddin.
• Abu al-Qaqaa is one of the Islamic State leaders in Wilayat Salahuddin, and was based in Hawija, before moving to al-Mutaibija to handle the detachments file.
• Unidentified gunmen threw a hand grenade on a checkpoint belonging to al-Hashd al-Ashaeri in al-Taqa area in al-Rasheed vicinity, south of Baghdad, killing one of al-Hashd members and wounding two others.

Iraq Monday March 20, 2017:

• Airstrikes by Iraqi fighter jets and offensives by infantry divisions killed 67 Islamic State militants west of Mosul. Airstrikes targeted IS locations in Al-Mazraa, Tal al-Banat and Toula Bash in Tal Afar and Sinjar. The strike killed 47 militants and also destroyed five booby-trapped vehicles belonging to the group.
• A car bomb has exploded in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing more than 20 people and wounding many others. The blast went off in a market in the mainly Shia Amil district in the south-west of the city.

Iraq Tuesday March 21, 2017:

• Two members of the army’s Engineering Teams were killed and another one was wounded, while dismantling an improvised explosive device, south of Fallujah. They were trying to dismantle an improvised explosive device in al-Numaniya area. The explosive device exploded, while the teams were trying to dismantle it.
• Earlier, another improvised explosive device exploded near a popular market in al-Rashidiyah area, north of Baghdad, wounding two civilians.

Iraq Wednesday March 22, 2017:

- Islamic State militants shelled areas recaptured by Iraqi forces in western Mosul, hitting civilians fleeing the fighting early as troops edged their way through the narrow, dangerous streets of the Old City.
- Heavy mortar fire killed at least five civilians and wounded more than 20 in Mosul Jadida and Rifak districts –areas that the militants had recently lost to Federal Police and Rapid Response brigades.
-    An aerial bombardment in al-Karabla area in the city of Qaim resulted in the full destruction of an explosive plant, cache of weapons and hideout, as well as killing and wounding dozens of the terrorist group.
-    Another air strike targeted a gathering of terrorists in al-Okashat area, north of Rutba, leaving dozens of casualties among the ranks of the Islamic State group.
-    Iraqi security forces killed 15 members of the Islamic State group, as well as arresting sleeper cells belonging to the terrorist group, including four women, in central the city of Mosul.
-    Army forces also killed an IS suicide bomber, before blowing himself up near the great mosque in Mosul.
- Troops of the army’s 9th armored brigade liberated the villages of Al Yassin and Arhila, north of Badush. The security forces inflicted heavy human and material losses on the enemy.

Iraq Thursday March 23, 2017:

• Five civilians were killed and four others were wounded at the Hamreen Mountains region when they were trying to escape Islamic State-held areas in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk.
• At least 200 people have been killed in air strikes in the Mosul al-Jadida neighborhood of Mosul, most of them believed to be civilians. 130 people were killed inside one house alone. Around 100 others were hit inside another. ISIS militants could be among the dead.
• Some of the dead were taking shelter inside the homes. The advance of the Iraqi army has come to halt in the neighborhood due to the bombing. ISIS militants are deeply entrenched inside civilian homes.
• Airstrikes by Iraqi army jets killed three senior Islamic State leaders in western Anbar. The strikes targeted IS havens at the center of the city of al-Qaem, a major IS stronghold in the west of the province. ---

Iraq Saturday March 25, 2017:

• When visiting Washington, Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has been asked by the US administration to disband the Shi’ite militia Hashd al-Shaabi.
• The Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of Sadr Movement, has also come to the realization that Hashd al-Shaabi’s existence does not serve the national interests of Iraq; the militia may form a political list to participate in the upcoming elections to serve a political agenda of a regional power.
• Muqtada al-Sadr said that he had received death threats from some sides which he avoided naming. The threats are serious and they come from an Iraqi faction allied with a regional power who wishes to establish the Governance of the Jurist in Iraq.
• Four F-16 fighter jets have been delivered to Iraq at the Balad air base based on the agreement made between Baghdad and Washington in 2011, to buy 36 fighter jets.
• The newly received jets will increase the number of fighter jets in Iraq to 20 aircraft. Iraqi Air Force is currently relying on a limited number of old Russian jets “Sukhoi” and helicopters.
• 13 members of the Islamic State group were killed by an air strike on a city, west of Anbar.
• The international coalition aircraft bombarded an explosives plant, a cache of weapons and a booby-trapped vehicle, inside a building belonging to the Islamic State group in the city of Rawa.
• The U.S. military said a U.S.-led coalition strike had hit an Islamic State-held area of the Iraqi city of Mosul where residents and officials say dozens of civilians have been killed as result of an air raid.
• Initial reports from residents and Iraqi officials in the past week said dozens of people had been killed or wounded in Mosul's al-Jadidah district after air strikes by Iraqi or U.S.-led coalition forces.
• The Iraqi military has denied that it was an airstrike that claimed at least 100 civilians lives in Western Mosul on March 17. An investigation by military experts showed no sign of an airstrike against a house where the casualties were said to have taken shelter.
• The Joint Command instead blames a massive car bomb for the fatalities. A massive exploded vehicle borne explosive device (VBID) was being found near the house, and 61 bodies have been retrieved. ISIS rigged the houses with explosives, and forced the families to enter the basements and use those houses by the suicide bombers to fire towards our security forces.
• A team of military experts found that the house was 100% destroyed. All of its walls were rigged with bombs and there is no hole or signs that it was an air strike target.

Iraq Sunday March 26, 2017:

• Abu Hamza al-Tounsy a prominent booby trapping expert with the  Islamic State has been killed along with four of his assistants in Tal Afar district. The explosion took place in a residential building while attempting to booby trap it.
• Tounsy has become famous over the past few months being one of the experts of booby trapping buildings and houses. He came from Raqqa, Syria, in support of IS efforts in booby trapping.

Iraq Monday March 27, 2017:

• A member of the Islamic State’s police service was injured, while his wife was killed as a bomb exploded under their vehicle in Tal Afar.
• Army warplanes carried out air strikes on the Islamic State’s headquarters west of Mosul.
• The Army Aviation bombarded a gathering of the Islamic State members, who were coming from Syria and Husaiba, in Balij area, south of Tal Afar, killing nearly 50 terrorists and destroying 10 vehicles.
• The air strikes also destroyed a cache of rockets and explosive, as well as killing 8 IS terrorists in al-Qayrawan area, south of Tal Afar.
• Furthermore, the Army Aviation warplanes destructed a hideout belonging to the IS in Balij area, killing 12 militants inside it.
• A hideout of the Islamic State was destroyed and a number of militants were killed in al-Mahlabiya area in Mosul.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi foiled an attack by the Islamic Group against the Syrian city of Qamishli, southwest of Tal Afar; it is predominantly inhabited by Kurds.
• The troops “set more than six booby trapped motorbikes on fire, killing those on board. IS was attempting to escape toward Baaj.

Iraq Tuesday March 28, 2017:

• US-led international coalition air force carried out an air strike, west of the city of Mosul, killing three senior leaders of the Islamic State group. The killed leaders are the IS official of military intelligence in Wilayat Ninewa Ahmed Mazen (Abu Awda), a Norwegian national, the Sharia official Ibrahim al-Shaafi (Abu Khattab), an Egyptian national, and recruitment official Mohamed Abdel Rahman (Abu Hashem), a Belgian national.
• The international coalition aircraft managed to destroy a headquarters belonging to the Islamic State in al-Tenk neighborhood, in western Mosul.
• Iraqi Army Aviation destroyed several targets of the Islamic State terrorist group by air strikes, in western Mosul
• The international coalition aircraft also destroyed a cache of weapons, an explosive plant and drones warehouse belonging to the Islamic State in the city of Anah, west of Ramadi.
• The air strike also resulted in the killing of 10 members of the terrorist group, including two leaders and a suicide bomber, in addition to destructing an armored vehicle.

Iraq Wednesday March 29, 2017:

• A bomb planted on the side of the road near to the commercial stores located behind the market in al-Shaab neighborhood exploded leaving three civilians wounded.
• Violence in the country left nearly 392 dead and 613 injured, excluding security members, during February. Baghdad was the second most affected province with 120 deaths and 300 injuries.
• Nine Iraqi army members, including two officers, were killed while storming a new district in western Mosul to drive out Islamic State militants.
• The personnel were killed during an invasion of Yarmouk district, west of Mosul. Thirty-two IS members were killed in the encounters. Three suicide attacks were foiled.
• A rest house of the Islamic State, located at the outskirts of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, was hit by an airstrike, leaving its official in charge of the ‘grievances court’ called Abu Hassan, Iraqi national, wounded. His son and two guards were killed.
• Three children were killed and five other civilians wounded as a result of the IS shelling on al-Jazair area in east Mosul.”
• The militants also shot a civilian dead while he was attempting to escape to the liberated areas in the city of Mosul.
• At least 17 people were killed and 60 others wounded after a suicide truck bomb exploded in south Baghdad.
• The bomber detonated his explosives among other vehicles waiting to be searched at the checkpoint, setting some of them on fire.

Iraq Thursday March 30, 2017:

• The Iraqi Army liberated Qadib al-Ban district, located west of Mosul. Iraqi troops are now making their way toward al-Zangeli neighborhood.
• Airstrikes by the international coalition striked sites of the IS in villages of Olw Borhan, al-Sheikh Zakaa and al-Khabbaz, 35 KM southwest of Kirkuk. Seven members were killed including a prominent leader, while ten others were injured.
• An Islamic State firing squad shot dead 23 civilians from Ras al-Jada and Malaab areas in western Mosul for refusing to evacuate homes and move to other districts with the militants. The execution was carried out at Zanjili district in central Mosul.
• Unidentified gunmen attacked, using hand grenades, houses of three members of the Islamic State in a residential neighborhood in Tal Afar District, west of Mosul, resulting in the burning of two vehicles, as well as inflicting material losses on the houses.
• U.S-led coalition airstrikes have killed three senior Islamic State leaders in western Mosul, while two suicide bombers were killed before carrying out an attack.

Iraq Saturday April 1, 2017:

• The Islamic State group executed the official of an elite brigade, along with two of his aides, for breaching the pledge of allegiance to the group.
• Meanwhile, security forces continue the battles to retake the remaining areas of western Mosul, backed by al-Hashd al-Shaabi units.
• The second-in-command and war minister of the extremist group, Ayad Jumaili, known as Abu Yahiya, was killed by the Iraqi air force in al-Qaim, Anbar province on the border with Syria.
• Two other high-ranking officials were also killed. They were named as Turki Jamal al-Delaimi, al-Qaim’s military chief of affairs, and Salim Muthdafar al-Ajami, known as Abu Khatab, from ISIS’ administration department.
• Three members of the Islamic State group were killed by an improvised explosive device blast, which targeted a passing patrol, in al-Mutaibija area, east of Salahuddin.
• The Islamic State group planted dozens of IEDs in Mutaibija to target security forces and al-Hashd al-Shaabi units, but lately these IEDs started to kill its members who didn’t know where these explosives were placed. ---

Iraq Sunday April 2, 2017:

• Eights persons were killed and injured in two blasts, south of Baghdad. A bomb placed near the commercial stores in al-Wardiya region in al-Mada’en district, south of Baghdad, exploded on Sunday, leaving three civilians wounded.
• Another bomb was planted near a market at al-Sayyed Abdullah region in Mahmoudiya district, south of Baghdad. The explosion left one killed and four others injured.
• The Iraqi Air Force killed seven militants including two leaders in southwest of Kirkuk province.
• Unidentified attackers hurled grenades at houses in the city of Hiit belonging to locals whose sons had joined the extremist militant group. No casualties or material damages resulted from the attack.
• Two improvised explosive devices (IED) injured six Peshmerga troops in west of Tuz Khurmatu, south of Kirkuk province. The IEDs targeted a convoy of Peshmerga forces.
• Tuz Khurmatu is a disputed Kurdish area. It is a religiously and ethnically diverse city in northern Iraq where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens live altogether.

Iraq Monday April 3, 2017:

• 50 members of the Islamic State were killed and a Syrian booby-trapped tank was destroyed by an air strike in al-Ba’aj District, on the Iraqi-Syrian borders.
• Iraqi airstrikes destroyed three caches of weapons and explosives, as well as killing a number of Islamic State militants in the area of Jarijm in Qaim District west of Anbar.
• The Islamic State group is still controlling Anah, Rawah and Qaim, in Anbar Province; the security forces are preparing to launch an offensive to retake these cities.

Iraq Tuesday April 4, 2017:

• 13 members of the Islamic State were killed, and their headquarters were destroyed by an airstrike in western Mosul.
• The US-led international coalition bombarded five headquarters of the Islamic State group in the neighborhoods of 17 Tammuz, al-Refaei and al-Najjar, in western Mosul.
• A car bomb exploded in al-Iskandariyah area in Babel Province, near al-Shuhada School, leaving an unidentified number of casualties. Security forces arrested one of the explosion’s perpetrators.
• Islamic militants unleashed suicide attacks in the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people. Security forces killed three of the bombers while two blew themselves up. Ten policemen were among the dead and up to 31 people were wounded.
• Five suicide bombers on foot targeted a police patrol and broke into a police officer's house in Tikrit's Zihoor neighborhood.

Iraq Wednesday April 5, 2017:

• Two Iraqi security members were killed and four others were wounded when two separate attacks by the Islamic State targeted security deployments in Diyala province.
• A bomb planted on the side of a country road between Baqubah and Maqdadiah exploded when a police patrol was passing by, killing two officers and wounding others.
• A security force foiled an attack by the Islamic State that targeted an army checkpoint in the town. The forces repelled the attack which caused mild injuries to three soldiers.
• Kurdish security forces detained 13 people in Kirkuk province on suspicion of having links to the Islamic State (ISIS. Security forces detained the suspects in Sayada village in the sub-district of Taza Khurmatu on the main Baghdad-Kirkuk road.
• Military jets bombed houses in the west of Rutba. Four children were killed.

Iraq Thursday April 6, 2017:

• Iraqi government forces now control 90 percent of territory in western Mosul as operations entered a fifth month and continue to advance in central Mosul.
• Troops are currently preparing to retake “the remaining regions where Daesh (Islamic State) is positioned” in Tamuz, Refaie, Mesherfa and Hamodun districts.
• ISIS militants launched a string of surprise attacks on three areas in the Salahaddin province of north-central Iraq. At least 12 ISIS fighters have been killed in the clashes.
• ISIS militants used three car bombs to attack the villages of Mazraa and Abu Taama in southern Baiji district.
• The attack targeted security forces and their families, but locals stopped them and clashes erupted, resulting in the deaths of eight militants.
• Three security members and four civilians were also wounded in the confrontation.

Iraq Friday April7, 2017:

• An army officer and two soldiers were killed, while nine others were injured, when an explosive device hit their patrol in Saadiya region, northeast of Baqubah.
• Earlier al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) killed four IS members confronting an attack by the group in the same region.

Iraq Saturday April 8, 2017:

• Iraqi army forces killed seven Arab leaders of the Islamic State group, and arrested three others during the confrontations.
• US-led airstrikes have killed at least 15 civilians including four children in the ISIS-held village of Hunaida, west of Raqqa.

Iraq Sunday April 9, 2017:

• Iraqi forces foiled a double suicide car bomb attack by ISIL on a remote border crossing with Syria. The attack was launched from the desert on the Iraqi side of the border.
• The attack was repelled by the tribal forces manning the crossing, with the aerial support of the international coalition. The tribal fighters neutralized the two vehicles before they could reach the border position.
• The army’s elite Counter-Terrorism Forces took over al-Matahen district. The district was one of several areas where Iraqi forces engaged in intense fighting with IS over the past few days. CTF forces invaded the district on Saturday under an aerial cover from Iraqi air forces which bombarded the surrounding areas.
• The Iraqi troops thwarted an attack by IS on al-Waleed border crossing in Rutba desert area (440 west of Ramadi). The attack was launched from the Syrian city of Boukamal.
• Al-Hashd forces killed four of the attackers and destroyed three booby-trapped vehicles. ---

Iraq Sunday April 2, 2017:

• Eights persons were killed and injured in two blasts, south of Baghdad. A bomb placed near the commercial stores in al-Wardiya region in al-Mada’en district, south of Baghdad, exploded on Sunday, leaving three civilians wounded.
• Another bomb was planted near a market at al-Sayyed Abdullah region in Mahmoudiya district, south of Baghdad. The explosion left one killed and four others injured.
• The Iraqi Air Force killed seven militants including two leaders in southwest of Kirkuk province.
• Unidentified attackers hurled grenades at houses in the city of Hiit belonging to locals whose sons had joined the extremist militant group. No casualties or material damages resulted from the attack.
• Two improvised explosive devices (IED) injured six Peshmerga troops in west of Tuz Khurmatu, south of Kirkuk province. The IEDs targeted a convoy of Peshmerga forces.
• Tuz Khurmatu is a disputed Kurdish area. It is a religiously and ethnically diverse city in northern Iraq where Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens live altogether.

Iraq Monday April 3, 2017:

• 50 members of the Islamic State were killed and a Syrian booby-trapped tank was destroyed by an air strike in al-Ba’aj District, on the Iraqi-Syrian borders.
• Iraqi airstrikes destroyed three caches of weapons and explosives, as well as killing a number of Islamic State militants in the area of Jarijm in Qaim District west of Anbar.
• The Islamic State group is still controlling Anah, Rawah and Qaim, in Anbar Province; the security forces are preparing to launch an offensive to retake these cities.

Iraq Tuesday April 4, 2017:

• 13 members of the Islamic State were killed, and their headquarters were destroyed by an airstrike in western Mosul.
• The US-led international coalition bombarded five headquarters of the Islamic State group in the neighborhoods of 17 Tammuz, al-Refaei and al-Najjar, in western Mosul.
• A car bomb exploded in al-Iskandariyah area in Babel Province, near al-Shuhada School, leaving an unidentified number of casualties. Security forces arrested one of the explosion’s perpetrators.
• Islamic militants unleashed suicide attacks in the city of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, killing at least 22 people. Security forces killed three of the bombers while two blew themselves up. Ten policemen were among the dead and up to 31 people were wounded.
• Five suicide bombers on foot targeted a police patrol and broke into a police officer's house in Tikrit's Zihoor neighborhood.

Iraq Wednesday Apil 5, 2017:

• Two Iraqi security members were killed and four others were wounded when two separate attacks by the Islamic State targeted security deployments in Diyala province.
• A bomb planted on the side of a country road between Baqubah and Maqdadiah exploded when a police patrol was passing by, killing two officers and wounding others.
• A security force foiled an attack by the Islamic State that targeted an army checkpoint in the town. The forces repelled the attack which caused mild injuries to three soldiers.
• Kurdish security forces detained 13 people in Kirkuk province on suspicion of having links to the Islamic State (ISIS. Security forces detained the suspects in Sayada village in the sub-district of Taza Khurmatu on the main Baghdad-Kirkuk road.
• Military jets bombed houses in the west of Rutba. Four children were killed.

Iraq Thursday April 6, 2017:

• Iraqi government forces now control 90 percent of territory in western Mosul as operations entered a fifth month and continue to advance in central Mosul.
• Troops are currently preparing to retake “the remaining regions where Daesh (Islamic State) is positioned” in Tamuz, Refaie, Mesherfa and Hamodun districts.
• ISIS militants launched a string of surprise attacks on three areas in the Salahaddin province of north-central Iraq. At least 12 ISIS fighters have been killed in the clashes.
• ISIS militants used three car bombs to attack the villages of Mazraa and Abu Taama in southern Baiji district.
• The attack targeted security forces and their families, but locals stopped them and clashes erupted, resulting in the deaths of eight militants.
• Three security members and four civilians were also wounded in the confrontation.

Iraq Friday April 7, 2017:

• An army officer and two soldiers were killed, while nine others were injured, when an explosive device hit their patrol in Saadiya region, northeast of Baqubah.
• Earlier al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) killed four IS members confronting an attack by the group in the same region.

Iraq Saturday April 8, 2017:

• Iraqi army forces killed seven Arab leaders of the Islamic State group, and arrested three others during the confrontations.
• US-led airstrikes have killed at least 15 civilians including four children in the ISIS-held village of Hunaida, west of Raqqa.

Iraq Sunday April 9, 2017:

• The army’s Counter-Terrorism Forces took over al-Matahen district. The district was one of several areas where Iraqi forces engaged in intense fighting with IS over the past few days. CTF forces invaded the district under an aerial cover from Iraqi air forces which bombarded the surrounding areas.
• Pro-Iraqi government paramilitary forces killed four Islamic State members during an attack the group launched on the Iraqi borders with Syria. Three booby-trapped vehicles were destroyed.
• The troops thwarted an attack by IS on al-Waleed border crossing in Rutba desert area (440 west of Ramadi). The attack was launched from the Syrian city of Boukamal. ISIS executed 12 prisoners in Tal Al-Baeer area on the Riyaz-Hawija Road accused of trying to contact Iraqi security via cell phone in a forest near Hawija.
• It is not known why the prisoners were being held or whether they were civilians or captured fighters, just that they were accused of trying to contact Iraqi government entities.
• A group of gunmen opened fire at the convoy of Mosul Governor Nofal Hammadi al-Sultan in eastern Mosul, but the official survived the assassination attempt.
• The attack was foiled after his bodyguards engaged the assailants. No casualties were reported.

Iraq Monday April 10, 2017:

• A new mass grave of Yazidi victims of Islamic State massacres was found in the Sinjar region west of Nineveh. The grave contained relics of 1646 people, raising the total of Yazidi mass graves discovered in the region since November 2015 until January 2016 to 31.
• The Islamic State militants attacked a checkpoint belonging to al-Hashd al-Ashaeri, near al-Zor area (45 km northeast of Baqubah). The security forces repulsed the attack and killed one of the militants.
• Two Islamic State militants were killed as a mortar missile fell near the vehicle they were driving in Mutaibija region, east of Salahuddin.
• Several airstrikes were carried out in Qaim district. One of these strikes destroyed one of the havens, where IS militants hold meetings. Another strike targeted another haven. Several members who were inside the two havens were killed.

Iraq Tuesday April 11, 2017:

• Three soldiers were wounded in a blast that targeted their patrol in west of Baghdad. A bomb placed on the side of the road in Akarkouf region, in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, exploded targeting the military patrol.
• Earlier three people were killed by a blast near a market in al-Zidan region, western Baghdad.
• The Islamic State group has lost more than three-fourths of the territory it seized when it swept across the country in the summer of 2014.
• The group currently controls less than 30,000 square kilometers or 6.8 percent of the country's territory, down from more than 40 percent at its height.
• Three children died due to the lack of foodstuff and medicine supplies for 600 refugees who fled Hawija to the province. The refugees were held at the Khaled crossing for ten days.

Iraq Wednesday April 12, 2017:

• A bomb, placed near a market in al-Wardiya region in Madaen district, exploded leaving one person killed and four others wounded.
• The Army Aviation carried out an air strike on al-Sabuniyah area, in western Mosul, killing 20 Islamic State’s militants, as well as destroying a 23mm Cannon.
• Six leaders of the Islamic State were either killed or wounded by a US-led coalition air strike targeting a vehicle carrying a number of the Islamic State members.
• The air strike killed the terrorist Abu Hajar al-Ghareri, the media official of the so-called Wilayat al-Janub, media official of al-Hamza axis the terrorist Abu Ibrahim and the terrorist Abu al-Khattab, as well as wounding two other members.
• Furthermore, the air strike also resulted in the injury of Mohanad Abbas, also known as Abu Saif, the media official of the so-called Wilayat Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday April 13, 2017:

• Two policemen were killed by unknown gunmen in Diyala’s city of Baqubah. The two policemen were shot dead in an attack that targeted a police checkpoint in Abi Sayda, northeast of Baqubah.
• Two civilians were wounded in a bomb blast near a popular market, north of Baghdad. An improvised explosive device, emplaced on the roadside near the 4000 market in al-Shaab area, north of Baghdad, exploded, wounding the two civilians.
• Saraya al-Salam, backed by security forces, freed two abductees, north of Samarra District.
• A booby-trapped vehicle exploded near the city of Ramadi, west of Anbar, killing eight civilians including six women and children, as well as wounding two others.
• The booby-trapped truck exploded inside one of the houses in Abu al-Jeer area, south of al-Wafaa area (35 Km west of Ramadi).

Iraq Friday April 14, 2017:

• Two Islamic State officials were killed by missiles. The missile strikes targeted the IS security building in western Mosul. Two judges in charge of the supreme authority that supervises the group’s camps were killed including Mahmoud al-Hamdouni abu Saja.
• The strikes also killed IS Sharia jurist (Mufti) called Abdullah Bardani, known as Abu Ayoub Attar.
• Police in Kirkuk arrested two members of the Islamic State who had taken part in executions of Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
• They were arrested near Daqouq region, west of the province. The two members took part in battles against Peshmerga forces and also executed some of its troopers in the Islamic State stronghold town of Hawija, southwest of the province.

Iraq Saturday April 15, 2017:

• An Iraqi army commander was killed during battles in Mosul. Colonel Falah Hassan Salman, commander in the 91st brigade of the army, was killed during the ‘We are Coming Nineveh’ operations.”
• Three fighters of the Islamic State group were killed by an air strike that targeted their hideout in al-Mutaibaija area, on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.
• The hideout was specialized to hide the members who sneak from Hawija into Mutaibaija, then toward Diyala or other areas of Salahuddin.
• An Iraqi military officer said that Islamic State militants have launched a gas attack in a newly-liberated area in western Mosul.
• The attack occurred in the al-Abar neighborhood, when IS fired a rocked loaded with chlorine. Seven soldiers suffered breathing problems and were treated in a nearby field clinic.

Iraq Sunday April 16, 2017:

• The Islamic State attacked government troops in western Mosul with a type of gas, the second such attack in as many days. Six soldiers suffered breathing problems from the attack on Sunday and were treated in a field clinic.
• The attack occurred a day after an Iraqi military officer said ISIS militants launched a gas attack in the al-Abar neighborhood in western Mosul.

Iraq Monday April 17, 2017:

• Islamic State members raised alert in their stronghold town of Tal Afar after a senior aide to supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was assassinated.
• Unknown gunmen killed Hassab-Allah al-Qawqazi near his home in central Tal Afar. Qawqazi kept a low profile most of the time, and his assassination prompted wide-scale searches across the region for perpetrators.
• Dozens of the Islamic State members were either killed or wounded in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zour by air strikes conducted by the international coalition aircraft, which are believed to be carried out to target the group’s supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• The international coalition aircraft carried out air strikes on Albu Kamal City, located on the Syrian-Iraqi borders. The coalition air strikes also targeted al-Ahmar Oil Station in Hasrat town, in the rural area of Albu Kamal, and al-Labed neighborhood in the city of al-Muhasan.

Iraq Tuesday April 18, 2017:

• Iraqi’s army has built a new pontoon bridge over the Tigris River south of Mosul, after flooding had blocked all crossing points, opening an escape route for families fleeing fighting between government forces and Islamic State.
• On Friday, the army dismantled makeshift bridges linking the two parts of Mosul due to heavy rain, forcing residents leaving Iraq’s second-largest city to use small boats.
• The city’s permanent bridges have been largely destroyed during a six-month military campaign to seize back Mosul from the Sunni Muslim Islamists. Long queues formed at the new bridge with families crossing in public buses, trucks and taxis.

Iraq Wednesday April 19, 2017:

• Iraqi security forces have recaptured 30 percent of western Mosul’s Old City after a weeks-old siege on the strategic Islamic State bastion.
• Seven snipers from the group were killed during the advances.
• Forces from Diyala Police, backed by the National Security detachments, arrested a man wanted on charges of terrorism in Hamrin Dam area.
• Detachments of Bomb Squad directorate dismantled four improvised explosive devices (one in Balad Ruz District and three on the banks of Diyala River in al-Salam area).
• Paramilitary forces of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) killed four Islamic State militants, including a suicide bomber, after foiling an attack on Sheikh Ali village north of Tikrit, Salahuddin province.

Iraq Thursday April 20, 2017:

• Iraqi troops have freed al-Nasr district in western Mosul.
• Earlier the Joint Operations Command declared recapturing al-Thawra district in the west of the city.
• A bomb planted near Shia pilgrims on al-Resala al-Oula district in al-Baiyaa region, south of Baghdad, exploded leaving one person killed and four others wounded.
• The forces kept the pilgrims en route to Kadhimiyah neighborhood away from the place and guided them to alternative roads.
• A bomb placed on the side of the road in al-Bou’itha region, north of Ramadi killed two children.
• Two bombs planted under electricity pylons on the road linking between Hit and al-Baghdadi districts were defused without losses.    
• Three militants were killed and a fourth was attested, while an explosive device was neutralized in a “preemptive operation” by al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) in Kifri, a region on the borders with Diyala.
• F16 fighter jets carried out several air strikes on Tal Afar District, destroying 3 explosives plants and a hideout belonging to the Islamic State, as well as killing dozens of militants.
• The air strike also destroyed another explosives plant in al-Mahlabiyah area, west of Mosul.
• Security troops as well as the tribesmen, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, launched military operation to free some regions in the north Haditha Dam lake, 160 KM west of Ramadi city.
• The troops killed dozens of extremists and blew up several booby-trapped vehicles belonging to the Islamic State. ---

Iraq Friday April 21, 2017:

• A group of 26 Qatari royals held hostage in Iraq by an Iranian-backed militia have been released after nearly 18 months in captivity as part of an extraordinary regional pact centred on four besieged Syrian towns.
• The royals, many of them cousins of Qatar’s emir, were handed over to the Iraqi interior minister by the powerful Keta’eb Hezbollah group, which seized the royals during a December 2015 hunting trip in the deserts of southern Iraq.
• The fate of the Qataris had increasingly been tied up with that of two Shia villages west of Aleppo and two Sunni towns near the Lebanese border, whose populations had been part of delicate negotiations for the past year. On Friday evacuations from the four communities were continuing. 500 prisoners were released from Syrian regime jails, as another component of the deal.
• The so-called four towns deal has been brokered by Iran and Qatar and involved many of the region’s most powerful non-state players, including Lebanese Hezbollah and the latest incarnation of the al-Qaida-inspired Syrian group Jabhat al-Nusra.
• Two Islamic State suicide attackers were killed in an overnight foiled attack against a village in the city of Baiji, Salahuddin.
• The attackers targeted the village of Malha, but were held off by police and tribal troops. Two of the attackers, vested with explosive belts, were killed, while three civilians were lightly wounded.

Iraq Saturday April 22, 2017:

• Islamic State militants have killed 15 civilians in western Mosul for refusing to allow the group’s snipers to position or erect rocket launchers above their residences.
• Islamic State has regularly been reported to kill civilians for trying to escape areas under its control in western Mosul or collaborate with security forces since Iraqi forces launched an offensive in February to retake that region.
• Four Islamic State snipers were deployed at al-Refaie, Zanjili and al-Sihha districts in western Mosul.

Iraq Sunday April 23, 2017:

• Twenty-one militants, including leaders, of Islamic State were killed as three rest houses of the group were destroyed in Rawa, west of Anbar province by U.S.-led coalition jets.
• Iraqi forces repelled an ISIS surprise attack against the command center for the Iraqi federal Police south of Mosul following an hour-and-a-half of intensive fighting.
• Iraqi helicopters were called to the scene as at least four of the ISIS attackers disguised themselves in military uniforms —two of whom were suicide bombers who blew themselves up, as they were trying to force their way into the building.
• Fire broke out at stores located near the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, as Shia pilgrims were visiting to commemorate his death anniversary.
• The fire left several stores on the main street that faces the shrine burnt. Huge number of panicked visitors were there. The fire was probably due to electric short circuit. The congestion among visitors resulted in death of an elderly man, while 250 others were wounded.
• The elder son of the Islamic State Mufti (jurist) in Tal Afar was killed by an armed attack, west of Mosul. The unidentified gunmen attacked the vehicle occupied by the son of the Islamic State Mufti in Tal Afar District along with one of his aides, killing them both.
• Pro-Iraqi government paramilitary forces have killed two Islamic State militants after targeting their havens in Makhoul Mountains, north of Salahuddin province.
• Islamic State militants have attacked a police base in the town of Haman al-Alil that is being used as a staging ground for the Mosul offensive, killing at least one policeman.
• At least two suicide attackers entered the facility before detonating their payloads.
• Three Islamic State militants died when wild boars attacked them in southern Kirkuk. The animals went on a rampage near a farmland in al-Rashad region. They attacked the militants and left three killed.
• Three persons were wounded as an IED exploded in Gisr Diyala region, southeastern Baghdad.
• The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have taken control of all strategic highways leading to Islamic State’s (ISIS) de-facto capital of Raqqa. SDF entered Tabqa city on April 15, moving in on the center from the east and west of the city, securing arms, ammunition, and pick-ups from the militants.
• Four mortar shells fell on the agricultural Abu Karmavillage, northeast of Baqubah without causing any casualties.

Iraq Monday April 24, 2017:

• Police troops killed seven IS foreign militants, including abu Yassin al-Rousi, the group’s official of military planning, in western Mosul.
• The militants included three suicide bombers; they were killed on al-Farouq and al-Meshahda disricts, south of Mosul. Five civilians were arrested over collaboration with the militants.
• The pro-Iraqi government troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi killed IS leader abu Omar al-Aafri in Tal Afar. Also IS’s education department official Ali Reda Mahmoud was killed on Saturday in an airstrike by the international coalition jets in Tal Afar town, western Mosul.
• An Islamic State (ISIS) IED detonated near a pick-up wounding two Peshmerga in the village of Yarmuk in the southwest of Kirkuk. The condition of the two wounded Peshmerga is stable.
• Islamic State militants have executed a group of civilians in al-Hawija district over attempting to flee ‘the land of caliphate’.
• The executed people earlier helped their families escape to the liberated regions. The victims were held by IS as they tried to join their families at the freed regions
• Two persons were injured due to blast that occurred near a market in northern Baghdad as a roadside bomb placed near a market on Taji district exploded.
• Violence in the country left 1115 casualties, excluding security members, during March. Baghdad was the second most affected province with 84 deaths and 246 injuries.
• At least nine Iraqi security members were killed and three others kidnapped by ISIS militants in an attack in the Saqar area of eastern Rutba town in Anbar province. Militants attacked the convoy of three vehicles of Iraqi border guards.
• Pro-Iraqi government paramilitary troops have killed a suicide attacker inside a house in al-Ishaqi district south of Samarra, in Salahuddin province. The 313 brigade of al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Public Mobilization Units] troops besieged the bomber, vested with a suicide belt. The troops killed the attacker after exchanging fire with him.
• Militants have ambushed a convoy of off-duty soldiers near Rutba in Iraq's sprawling western desert, killing at least 10 and wounding 20. The attack took place on Sunday night. The militants were armed with assault rifles and rockets.

Iraq Tuesday April 25, 2017:

• Five Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were killed by mistake in a Turkish air raid on a nearby position of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq.
• A police agent was killed by a bomb blast in western Baghdad. A bomb stuck beneath a car driven by the police agent exploded while he was passing through al-Nasr and al-Salam regions, west of Baghdad; the police member was immediately killed.
• Iraqi forces retook full control of Tenek neighbourhood, one of the largest neighbourhoods of west Mosul, from the Islamic State group after a week of intense fighting.
• A civilian was injured in a bomb blast, south of Baghdad. The roadside improvised explosive device exploded, near shops in Arab Jabbour area, in al-Daura area, south of Baghdad.

Iraq Wednesday April 26, 2017:

• Paramilitary forces recaptured three more villages in the western flank of Mosul. The troops recaptured the villages of Im Kreiz, Ghanem al-Awwad and Harraj in al-Hadar retaking in total nearly 12 villages. Earlier on Wednesday mobilization forces reached al-Hadar’s archaeological area.
• An oil pipeline exploded in Kirkuk Province. The fire has not been controlled yet. Flames of fire occurred as an oil pipeline passing between villages of Drkai Arab and Sartika, in Sargaran district.
• Fifteen Islamic State members were killed as Iraqi security forces, backed by paramilitary troops in an operation to clear a border area between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces from Islamic State militants.
• Ten border guards of Mirjaveh County in Sistan-Baluchestan province were martyred in an ambush by the terrorists in the Pakistani border’s zero-point.
• The militant group Jaish al-Adl, or the Army of Justice, claimed responsibility.

Iraq Thursday April 27, 2017:

• Federal Police Command has killed dozens of Islamic State militants, as the troops advanced by 300 meters toward the Grand Nuri mosque in Mosul’s Old City.
• The Grand Nuri al-Kabir Mosque is the place at which Islamic State’s supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave his famous sermon in 2014 declaring the establishment of the group’s rule in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
• Pro-Iraqi government troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi have liberated the cemetery in al-Hadar region as well as Tureitaa village in western Mosul. The troops also liberated Tureitaa village in the northeast of Hadar.
• On Wednesday the troops recaptured three villages of Im Kreiz, Ghanem al-Awwad and Harraj in al-Hadar. All together the offensives, which entered its third day, resulted in retaking 17 villages and strategic areas as well as the archaeological area.

Iraq Friday April 28, 2017:

• Four Iraqi traffic policemen were killed when a suicide car bomb detonated outside their station, close to a street where several foreign media have offices in Baghdad.
• Five people were also wounded by the blast on Abu Nawas Street. The street runs alongside the east bank of the Tigris River and the French Embassy is located in the area.

Iraq Saturday April 29, 2017:

• A U.S. military service member was killed by an explosive device outside Mosul. He died from wounds sustained in the blast. This is the third American combat death this week in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Two U.S. service members were killed late Thursday and a third was wounded when they came under attack during a raid against Islamic State fighters in southern Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan. ---

Iraq Sunday April 30, 2017:

• 20 officials of the Wilayat Baghdad of the Islamic State group were killed by an air strike, in the district of Qaim. F16 fighter jets and Sukhoi aircraft of the Iraqi Air Force conducted four air strikes in al-Qaim District, in the areas of Husaiba, al-Obaidi, al-Karabla and al-Masharee’.
• The air strike was followed by several blasts, due to the explosion of IEDs and booby-trapped vehicles in the bombarded area, while the air strike also destroyed an explosives plant in al-Karbala area and killed 10 IS Arab members.
• Anah, Rawa and al-Qaim are still occupied by the Islamic State group, which imposed its control over these cities three years ago.
• One of the Islamic State elite leaders in Houd al-Zour was killed by an artillery shelling, northeast of Baqubah. Abu Yahia (The Hornet) was killed along with one of his aides by an artillery shelling on the area.
• The hornet is one of the elite leaders of Wilayat Diyala of the Islamic State. Islamic State cells are significantly active in Houd al-Zour area, and launch several attacks on the area and the nearby villages from time to time.

Iraq Tuesday May 2, 2017:

• Gunmen shot dead a senior official of Iraq’s state-run North Gas Company (NGC) as he was heading to his office in the northern oil city of Kirkuk.
• Deputy NGC manager Mohammed Younis, an Iraqi Kurd, and his driver were killed instantly when assailants in a speeding car fired on their vehicle. No claim of responsibility for the killings has been made.
• A child was killed, another was injured due to a blast that occurred north of Basra city. The child was killed, while another one was wounded as mortar missile fell on al-Karma region, north of Basra.
• Islamic State militant in charge of one of the group’s defense lines was killed by a sniper in the vicinity of Tal Afar.
• Abu Yusuf, one of the main leaders of IS in charge of one of the group’s important defense lines in the vicinity of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, was killed by a sniper shot coming from the side of a checkpoint of the paramilitary troops. He was nominated for the position of the military emir.
• Jihadist fighters killed at least 10 soldiers and wounded six in the western Iraqi province of Anbar. The attack near the remote outpost of Rutba brought to at least 26 the number of members of the Iraqi security forces killed by the Islamic State group in the area in recent days.

Iraq Wednesday May 3, 2017:

• From May 3, 2016 until May 2, 2017, a total of 21 journalists have been killed in Iraq.
• Iraq is the most dangerous place for them to work. Journalists have been beaten, faced violence and been arrested during the last 12 months. The rights group said it had recorded cases of government officials, parliament members and provincial council members having filed lawsuits against journalists.

Iraq Thursday May 4, 2017:

• Iraqi air force launched two airstrikes that destroyed a stash of weapon of the IS militants and a snipers’ haven in addition to killing 20 snipers in Hawija district, west of Kirkuk.

Iraq Friday May 5, 2017:

• Three Iraqi policemen were wounded when a bomb blast targeted their patrol in southern Baghdad. The patrol was passing through Arab Jabbour, a district south of the capital, when the explosive device went off, wounding the three officers.
• An Improvised Explosive Device exploded at dawn beside a vehicle of Peshmerga forces in the village of Zarga in Tuz Khurmatu district killed a Peshmerga commander named Jamal Fatih Mohammed. Another three Peshmerga were wounded.

Iraq Saturday May 6, 2017:

• Four Islamic State militants were killed during clashes that erupted near Hawija district, southwestern Kirkuk. The clashes occurred after an IS leader from Diyala killed an IS member from Hawija.

Iraq Sunday May 7, 2017:

• Federal Police killed dozens of Islamic State militants and destroying their anti-aircraft weapons as the troops advanced toward al-Haramat al-Thaniya district, in central Mosul. They also blew up several booby-trapped vehicles, destroyed three anti-aircraft weapons and ammunition stash and defused 50 bombs.
• The troops advanced toward al-Haramat al-Thaniya reached near al-Jisr al-Khamis regions in central Mosul. They are besieging the Grand al-Nuri al-Kabeer mosque, located in the Old City.
• Two Kurdish fighters and five Islamic State members were killed in an attack by the extremist group on the K-1 military base, northeast of Kirkuk.
• Six others security members were wounded. Three Islamic State members were killed by the security troops while two others blew themselves up at the base.
• Two people were killed and another eight wounded after two explosions occurred in northern and southern Baghdad.
• The first blast targeted a marketplace in the district of Tarmya in northern Baghdad, killing two people and wounding another five. A blast caused by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) hit the Arab al-Jabour area in southern Baghdad wounding three people.

Iraq Monday May 8, 2017:

• Twenty Islamic State members were killed and three booby-trapped vehicles, as well as a stash of weapons and rest houses were destroyed in wide regions southwest of Haditha district, west of Anbar.
• Unknown gunmen opened fire against a vehicle driven by a lieutenant general from the Interior Ministry’s General Directorate of Nationality, three kilometers west of Baquba. He was killed him immediately.
• A police colonel was killed last week in a blast as a bomb placed under his vehicle exploded.
• An IED exploded on a street south of Ramadi killing two policemen. The bomb went off while security troops were transferring it a place to blow it in the south of Ramadi.
• Islamic State members executed 47 of their prisoners in Kirkuk’s Hawija, including 12 of their comrades. Those executed were of several Arab nationalities. The sentence was applied as per an order from the group’s so-called wali (mayor) of Hawija at al-Bakara airbase.

Iraq Tuesday May 9, 2017:

• The Iraqi Joint Operations Command’s fighter jets killed 100 Islamic State members in strikes that targeted western Anbar havens. The strikes targeted the group’s western Anbar strongholds of Qaim and Annah, destroying booby-trapping workshops and drone airstrips belonging to the group. The group targeted used to supply weapons to cells carrying out attacks in Baghdad.
• There are more than 250 families besieged by Daesh (Islamic State). Most of Rawa residents had fled the town to the city of Ramadi and more secure areas. The families at the town of Rawa have been dying of hunger, and the group is encircling it and preventing them from leaving town.

Iraq Wednesday May 10, 2017:

• One policeman was killed when an armed individual shot at him north of Kirkuk. The gunman shot at the police agent in Raheem Awa district, killing him immediately before escaping to an unknown destination.

Iraq Thursday May 11, 2017;

• A booby-trapped vehicle exploded in al-Sabiyat region in al-Sho’la district; it left 4 persons killed and 10 injured.
• Three mass graves have been discovered in the western province of Anbar containing the bodies of civilians and members of the security forces.
• It was not yet clear how many bodies the graves contained; the victims had been executed by the Islamic State jihadist group.
• The three sites are in the Saqlawiyah region, north of Fallujah, in the Karma area, east of Fallujah, and behind the old central library in central Ramadi, the province's capital.

Iraq Friday May 12, 2017:

• A child and her parents died as a mortar shell, believed to be from Islamic State militants, landed on their house in Salahuddin. The missile was launched from the eastern side of the city of Shirqat, which is still under Islamic State control, and landed on the family’s house, killing the trio. ---

Iraq Saturday May 13, 2017:

• Pro-government fighters have captured five Iraqi villages near the Syrian border. The gains bring to 12 the number of villages captured by the Hashd al-Shaabi militia near Syrian border since Friday. All the villages are located near the Al-Qayrawan area, located some 120 kilometers west of the city of Mosul.
• The Iraqi war media cell targeted a meeting described as “important” to the leaders of ISIS in the district of al-Qaim, west of Anbar province; the meeting was a planning to carry out multiple attacks during the coming month of Ramadan.
• ISIS militants’ leaders were planning terrorist attacks against citizens during the holy month of Ramadan, the assassination of some judges and targeting the district of Haditha, Al Rutba, and the highway.
• The attack resulted in the deaths of 13 ISIS militants and some were wounded. Eight other targets were completely destroyed such as warehouses of weapons and missiles and a laboratory for bombs of the terrorist group, which killed many militants and ruined weapons, ammunition and explosive materials.

Iraq Sunday May 14, 2017:

• A former al-Qaeda leader and a close aide of Islamic State’s supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in an airstrike in western Mosul. The militant, a former Iraqi army brigadier, died along with four companions.
• The deceased member was al-Qaeda’s “emir” in al-Khales between 2006 and 2007. He had fled to Hawija, Islamic State’s stronghold in Kirkuk, where he stayed in hiding using a fake ID before emerging to the scene again to become IS’s military commander for that region. He later became a senior commander in Mosul.
• The deceased is the mastermind for Islamic State’s defense strategies; he had been involved in the killing of “hundreds of innocent people in many provinces, including Diyala.”
• At least 27 Islamic State militants were killed in airstrikes by international coalition against IS posts in the western province of Anbar. The US-led coalition aircraft conducted an airstrike on an internet cafe used by IS militants as a headquarters in the town of al-Qaim near the border with Syria, leaving some 20 of them killed.
• Another airstrike destroyed an IS post in the city of Aana killing six militants.

Iraq Monday May 15, 2017:

• Islamic State militants control only nine percent of territories in western Mosul as battles reach the group’s final strongholds.
• Iraqi forces invaded the northern section of 17 Tamuz, the first district Islamic State captured in the city in 2014. Only a few number of militants are remaining in the city, suffering scarcity of food and combat supplies.
• Army and police forces killed four Islamic State suicide bombers in western Anbar.
• The bombers were sneaking into the town of Haditha, west of Anbar, but were killed by security forces and tribal fighters. Iraqi troops controlling Haditha have resisted occasional attacks by IS fighters.
• Two car bombs killed at least six people and wounded several others in the sprawling Rukban refugee camp near the border with Jordan.
• One explosion was near a restaurant and the second targeted the camp’s market nearby.

Iraq Tuesday May 16, 2017:

• Iraqi government forces are invading the last district leading to the Islamic State-held Old City from the northwest. Troops invaded al-Najjar district, and managed to destroy ten booby-trapped cars belonging to the Islamic State at that district.
• Iraqi troops are in control of over 89.5 percent of territory at western Mosul, having killed more than 16000 militants since the launch of Mosul operations in October. The Old City is the next target.
• The Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi declared it had controlled four villages around the besieged town of Qairawan in the Shingal region, northern Iraq.
• The villages of Sarai Garaj, Talzananir, Talzia and Talbashuk near Qairawa town were now under the control of the Hashd forces. The Yezidi populated complex of Tal Qasab surrounded by the Hashd will soon be under their control.
• Two border troops personnel were killed, while three others were injured as Islamic State militants targeted their patrol, 70 kilometers west of Rutba district, western Anbar on the borders between Iraq and Jordan.

Iraq Wednesday May 17, 2017:

• Seven Islamic State militants, including an Egyptian and Saudi nationals, were killed and a mobile telecommunications facility was destroyed in a military operation, southeast of Rutba district, Anbar province.
• A truck and three other vehicles loaded with amounts of fuel and ammunition were destroyed. An underground shelter, used by the militants to hide from the jet fighters, was blown up.

Iraq Thursday May 18, 2017:

• Federal Police’s Rapid Response forces were able to liberate two Yazidi girls, who were held by Islamic State militants in 17 Tamuz district, in western Mosul. The two girls were in good health condition.
• The paramilitary troops have freed Washington military airbase, west of Mosul. Troops also liberated al-Amdina village, in the south, in addition to Karka village.
• 200 families from Mesei’da village, in the vicinity of Sahl Sinjar Airbase, were evacuated far from the battlefields.
• Earlier the troop freed six villages in north and south of Qairawan, in the west of Mosul and Ain Fathi village, north of Qairawan.
• The 10th brigade seized a booby-trapped vehicle and explosives inside al-Hassan mosque in Ain Fathi village. Ten Islamic State militants were killed while combing the village.
• The forces freed many villages including Ain Ghazal, Akhmeisa and Adheila villages in the north. They also liberated Khams Telool and Khalaf al-Deirs village, in the south. The troops inflicted huge losses in personnel and weapons on Islamic State militants.
• Nine civilians were killed, while eleven others were wounded as a blast occurred in a popular market in Tuz Khurmatu region, north of Tikrit, Salahuddin province.
• One army soldier was killed, while police and army personnel were injured as troops foiled an attack by Islamic State militants in Tuz Khurmatu region, east of Salahuddin province.
• Kurdish Peshmerga forces repelled a pre-dawn assault by ISIS in the predominately Kurdish town of Khurmatu in Iraq’s north Diyala province killing several militants, said a Peshmerga official.
• ISIS launched an assault from the Zargawa Bridge and engaged in a confrontation with Peshmerga.

Iraq Friday May 19, 2017:

• Two suicide car bombers blew themselves up at checkpoints on a highway near oilfields in the southern Iraqi province of Basra killing several people.
• There was no disruption to oil operations but oil police were put on maximum alert in response to the attack.
• More than 50 people have been killed in a string of suicide car bomb attacks in Baghdad and the southern province of Basra.
• At least 33 people were killed in two separate blasts at checkpoints on a highway near oilfields in Basra. The first explosion took place at the Rumeila checkpoint, and the second about one kilometre away at another checkpoint called al-Sadra.
• Separately, two more attacks killed at least 19 people, including security forces, and wounded 25 others in southern Baghdad. A suicide car bomber detonated explosives at the entrance of a checkpoint, just as another attacker blew himself up near a police station located about 100 metres away.

Iraq Saturday May 20, 2017:

• IS militants attacked soldiers in Rutba on the international road, west of Anbar, leaving a soldier killed and three others profoundly injured. The troops opened fire against the militants, but the attackers were able to escape toward the western desert.
• Suicide bombings at checkpoints in Baghdad and south Iraq claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 35 people and wounded dozens more.
• In Baghdad, suicide car bombers attacked in the area of a checkpoint in the city’s southern Abu Dsheer area, killing 24 people and wounding 20. Security forces were able to kill one of the attackers, but the second blew up his car bomb.
• And in south Iraq, a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-rigged vehicle at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city of Basra, killing 11 people and wounding 30. Another militant who left a second explosives-rigged vehicle was killed by security forces.

Iraq Sunday May 21, 2017:

• Fighter jets from the U.S.-led coalition have killed dozens of the group’s members and destroyed their combat vehicles in a raid in western Anbar. The convoy was arriving from Syria to Iraq’s Anbar. Islamic State militants have held Anbar’s western towns of Annah, Qaim and Rawa since 2014.
• The troops freed al-Mesabas, al-Niliya, Sadet Zawbaa and Thara al-Owaiset villages in south of Qairawan. Huge losses in lives and equipments were inflicted on the enemy.
• The troops cut off an IS supply route that extends between al-Hatmiya and Tal Qasab, north of Qairawan.
• The Islamic State militant in charge of the administrative affairs of Nineveh province in Iraq and the Syrian city of Raqqa, Mohamed Mejbal al-Jawari, has been killed in western Mosul. ---

Iraq Monday May 22, 2017:

• Iraqi security forces killed two suicide bombers who were heading for an attack on a police unit in the city of Samarra, Salahuddin. The bombers were planning to attack a police unit in Gallam, but were trapped inside a barn before they were killed.
• The incident raises the total of suicide bombers killed by the forces in the province over a month to ten.

Iraq Tuesday May 23, 2017:

• Pro-government forces recaptured Qairawan region, west of Nineveh, from Islamic State militants. Qairawan was recaptured in a “quick overnight operation” backed by Iraqi army fighter jets.

Iraq Thursday May 25, 2017:

• A Pentagon investigation has found that more than 100 civilians were killed after the U.S. dropped a bomb on a building in Mosul in March. The probe found that the U.S. bomb triggered secondary explosions from devices clandestinely planted there by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The secondary blasts caused the concrete building to collapse.
• The air strike had been requested by Iraqi troops who were 100 yards away and could see the location of the two snipers on the second floor of a two story building. However, the Iraqis could only see one side of the building and did not observe any civilians entering the building. When the strike was approved, coalition forces had no information that civilians had taken shelter inside the building.
• Both snipers were killed in the strike and ensuing secondary explosion, as well as 101 civilians taking shelter in the lower floors. Another four civilians died in a nearby building. He said 36 civilians remain unaccounted for.
• The collapse of the building could not have been caused by the 500 U.S. pound bomb, which contained 196 pounds of explosives. Explosives experts estimated it would take at least 1,000 pounds of TNT distributed throughout the second floor of the building to bring it down. Explosive residue found at the blast site did not match the type of explosives used in a 500-pound bomb, Isler said, but did match explosives previously used by ISIS
• Troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) freed Arfee’ al-Awal village, northeast of Qairawan, inflicting huge losses on the enemy. The 11th brigade liberated al-Wahbi village, northeast of Baaj.
• The mayor of Diyala, who was temporarily appointed by supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed with two other companions when members engaged in an infighting near the group’s stronghold town of Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk.

Iraq Saturday May 27, 2017:

• A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander has been killed in an explosion during clashes with the Islamic State group west of Mosul. General Shaaban Nasiiri was an adviser to Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force, who has acted as a key adviser to Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces —an umbrella group of Mostly Shiite militia forces sanctioned by the Iraqi government— in the fight against IS.
• An Islamic State bomb whiz died while planting an explosive device east of Salahuddin. The militant, nicknamed al-Aaraj (lame), an Iraqi national, died planting the bomb on the side of a country road in Sebeyat, on the borders with Diyala.

Iraq Sunday May 28, 2017:

• A Yemeni militant with the Islamic State in charge of executing women was killed by unknown attackers in southwestern Kirkuk. The gunmen invaded the militant’s home in central Hawija before fleeing to an unknown destination. The deceased was in charge of executing women who had attempted to escape the region months earlier.
• The coalition jets shelled the IS tunnels and weapon stashes in Houran valley, west of Rutba town. The strikes left the tunnels and stashes destroyed and dozens of IS militants killed.
• In a two-hour battle, Kurdish Peshmerga forces repelled an ISIS assault in Tuz Khurmatu in the northern province of Diyala. ISIS suffered casualties in the confrontations and six Peshmerga soldiers were also wounded.

Iraq Monday May 29, 2017:

• Shiite forces have reached the Syrian border, west of Shingal. The forces also ousted ISIS from the villages of Wadi al-Midar and Taru. The forces will start clearing the Iraq-Syria border of ISIS and will start the operation towards Qaim town from Um Jares village.

Iraq Tuesday May 30, 2017:

• Two car bomb attacks in the heart of Baghdad by so-called Islamic State have killed at least 26 people and wounded dozens.
• The first happened at an ice cream shop in the Karrada district, where a crowd had broken their Ramadan fasts.
• A few hours later there was a second blast near the Shuhada Bridge to the north in Shawaka.
• IS said both bombings had targeted "gatherings" of Shia Muslims. The Sunni jihadist group considers them apostates subject to punishment by death.
• Iraqi Special Forces evacuated 380 civilians from zanjili, a neighborhood in western Mosul, as operations against Islamic State militants approach their final stage.
• Kurdish security forces in western Kirkuk rescued a man kidnapped two Islamic State (ISIS) members the previous day. The man was abducted after witnessing the militants bombing an oil pipeline from the Bai Hassan oilfield. One police officer and a captain from the oil and gas police were killed and a lieutenant from Dibiz Police was wounded during the clashes with the ISIS fighters.
• A suicide bomber, wearing an explosive belt, blew up himself near al-Shaimaa School, in central Heet, west of Ramadi, leaving several casualties.

Iraq Wednesday May 31, 2017:

• Islamic State militants executed nine of their senior comrades West of Mosul on the backdrop of defeats to Iraqi government troops and allied militias. The nine leaders, of Arab and Western nationalities, were executed at the center of Tal Afar town.
• The executions came amid growing divisions and infighting among the group’s members which followed consecutive defeats to Iraqi security forces. Those executed included a Russian, a British and a Turkish, but he did not mention their names or ranks. There was also Abu Othman al-Suri, a Syrian who was the group’s mayor for Tal Afar, and Baisan Atallah, a member of an unidentified Arab nationality who was in charge of the town’s police force.

Iraq Friday June 2, “017:

• One Iraqi army soldier was killed and another was wounded when an explosive device went off in western Baghdad. The bomb exploded in Radwaniya and targeted an Iraqi army patrol.
• Violence and armed conflicts left 824 Iraqis dead and wounded during the month of May, according to a monthly count by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq which excludes security members deaths. Baghdad alone sustained 86 deaths and 226 injuries.

Iraq Saturday June 2, 2017:

• A huge underground prison with dozens of detainees from Anbar province was found in west of Mosul. While liberating western Mosul districts, Iraqi troops found a huge underground prison, where dozens of detainees from Fallujah, Ramadi, Saqlawiyah and Karma cities were held.
• The detainees were released. They were secured by Iraqi troops ahead of being treated. They were then transferred to another place to check their identities. ---

Iraq Saturday June 3, 2017:

• A pro-government fighter was killed in a suspected IS attack on a military site north-west of Baghdad. Four bombers attempted to force their way into the site in al-Halabsah district, triggering clashes with guards manning the site.
• Three bombers were killed while the fourth managed to blow himself up, killing a fighter and injuring several others.

Iraq Sunday June 4, 2017:

• Shi'ite paramilitaries have captured the Iraqi town of Baaj from Islamic State, further shrinking the northern region under jihadist control as part of a U.S.-backed campaign to retake the city of Mosul.

Iraq Monday June 5, 2017:

• Iraqi paramilitary forces fighting the Islamic State have recaptured nine more villages over the Iraqi borders with Syria.
• Badr Organization had taken over nine villages northwest of Baaj, with dozens of militants fleeing to Syrian border cities. Forces are liberating what is left of Iraqi-Syrian borders towards al-Waleed border crossing which is also close to the borders with Jordan. Operations on Monday left more than 45 Is members dead, including suicide bombers boarding booby-trapped cars.
• A suicide bomber, wearing an explosive belt, tried to approach the eastern checkpoint of Balad Ruz District, but the security members stopped him before blowing up himself at the checkpoint. Two security members were slightly wounded.
• Earlier, six unidentified bodies were found in al-Aitha area, northeast of Baqubah, while security members arrested five persons wanted on terrorism and criminal charges in different areas of the province.

Iraq Tuesday June 6, 2017:

• Islamic State militants shot dead 163 civilians on June 1 who were trying to flee battlefields in Mosul. This news confirms recurrent reports of targeted killings of civilians by the extremist group.
• The brutality of Daesh and other terrorist groups seemingly knows no bounds. Bodies of murdered Iraqi men, women and children are still lying on the streets of the al-Shira neighbourhood of western Mosul.
• News of civilians being targeted by gunfire or executed upon fleeing areas of encounters between IS and Iraqi forces have been recurrent since a U.S.-backed campaign launched in October to retake Mosul.
• Islamic State has blown up two pivotal bridges on the international highway, east of al-Waleed crossing on the borders between Iraq and Syria.
• Nine civilians, including children, were killed and two injured women in a suicide attack that took place in central Hit. A suicide attacker wearing suicide belt targeted a gathering of children in central Hit town, west of Ramadi.
• Followed by security services, the attacker tried to hide in one of the houses in al-Gara, central Hit. He gathered a group of children on the street and then blew himself up. Among the victims, there were six children below the age of six.

Iraq Thursday June 8, 2017:

• Thirteen civilians were killed and eight others, including Islamic State militants, were wounded in violent attacks in several regions in Diyala.
• IS militants stormed house of an air force agent in Qurret Tabah village, northeast of Baqubah, and shot him dead in front of his family.
• In a market in al-Hadi district in Abu Sayda village, northeast of Baqubah, a bomb blast left two civilians killed and two others wounded.
• Another bomb placed on the side of the road leading to Jalawla town exploded while an Iraqi army patrol was passing, killing three soldiers and injuring two others.
• Meanwhile, Iraqi army, backed by al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) carried out a military operation in al-Burda region, in the depth of Hamreen Mountains, killing four militants and destroying a booby-trapped vehicle.
• Unknown gunmen opened fire against three civilians at each of al-Asri, al-Tami and al-Tikiya al-Thaniya districts in central Baqubah and Muqdadiyah.
• A civilian was killed and two others were wounded in an armed attack in Balad District, south of Tikrit. Six gunmen fired indiscriminately in Balad District killing a civilian and injury two others.

Iraq Friday June 9, 2017:

• A woman detonated her explosive belt hidden under the customary full-body veil in a market in the town of Musayab east of the Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala killing at least 30 and wounding 35.
• Iraqi army jets have killed dozens of Islamic State militants in an airstrike launched northwest of Qairawan, in west of Mosul.
• Army jets launched several airstrikes destroying two tunnels, five guns and two motorbikes used by the militants.

Iraq Saturday June 10, 2017:

• Eight civilians were killed, while five others were wounded as five mortar missiles were shot by Islamic State against western Mosul regions.
• Ten civilians kidnapped by the militants from Zanjili were freed.
• Earlier the Iraqi government forces recaptured Zanjili district in western Mosul, leaving only one district in Islamic State’ grip before reaching its strategic stronghold in the Old City neighborhood.
• Three Islamic State militants were killed as an attack launched by the group against security checkpoint, north of Baqubah, Diyala province, was foiled.

Iraq Sunday June 11, 2017:

• Iraqi army warplanes destroyed a convoy of Islamic State vehicles that were leaving Hawija, Kirkuk, towards western desert areas. All on board of the five vehicles were killed in the airstrike.
• Meanwhile IS members set fire to the house of a fugitive finance official with the group and arrested his family members. The escaped member fled two days earlier with amounts of money that were supposed to be paid as salaries for fighters.
• An airstrike launched by the U.S.-led coalition against a two-storey building in al-Borsa region left 20 civilians under debris of a house in western Mosul.
• Four Islamic State militants were killed when Iraqi warplanes pounded their weapons factory in western Anbar. The warplanes bombarded a booby-trapping and weapons manufacturing workshop in the town of Rawa, west of Anbar.
• The factory also included underground tunnels linking the area to other nearby workshops.
• A suicide bomber driving a booby-trapped car targeted security checkpoint on the main road between Baghdad and Kirkuk at midnight, leaving two persons killed and five injured.
• The attacker was intending to pass through the security barrier toward Baghdad, however, he blew up the car as security personnel asked to check the car.

Iraq Monday June 12, 2017:

• Iraqi force launched strikes late on Monday against IS havens in Mutaibija on the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin. More than ten locations were targeted during the shelling, which he described as ‘heavy’.
• Twenty militants were killed and injured, while hideouts and rest houses as well as explosives were destroyed.

Iraq Tuesday June 13, 2017:

• Hundreds of people have fallen ill from suspected food poisoning at a camp for displaced people near Mosul. People were said to be vomiting and suffering dehydration after an iftar meal to break the daily Ramadan fast.
• The Hasansham U2 camp, between Mosul and Irbil, houses people displaced by nearby conflict. About 800 cases of food poisoning in the camp have been recorded, with 200 people taken to hospital.

Iraq Thursday June 15, 2017:

• Iraqi government forces took over a main entrance to western Mosul’s Old City, Islamic State militants’ last refuge in the city.
• The forces had taken over the Bab Sinjar area, effectively severing all routes to the Old City and putting militants under a consummate siege.
• Due to the impassable streets of the Old City, the 9th division’s armored vehicles will stop besieging the area, leaving the invasion to infantry forces from the army, the Counter-Terrorism Service and the Rapid Response forces. ---

Iraq Saturday June 17, 2017:

• The Iraqi forces have liberated the Shifa district in western Mosul from ISIS after weeks of fighting; now the extremist group remains besieged within the last remaining district in Old Mosul.
• The Iraqi are now clearing the Shifa district from any remaining ISIS militants and explosives. It took the Iraqi forces a few weeks before they could capture this area.
• The Iraqi army also recaptured the Walidiya border gate between the Iraqi-Syrian border following a joint operation from three fronts between the Iraqi army, Hashd al-Asahaari, backed by the Iraqi air force and US-led global coalition against ISIS.
• Iraqi forces also announced the liberation of Bab al-Sinjar on Thursday, and with today's advance in Shifa district, ISIS is expected to make the last stand in Old Mosul.
• Iraqi forces have seized from Daesh one of the official border crossings between the country and Syria, thus choking a key supply line feeding the Takfiri terrorist group. Al-Waleed, which together with two other passageways links Iraq and Syria, came under government control today.
• Al-Waleed is close to the al-Tanf crossing on the common border, which is the key to the Baghdad-Damascus Highway and also links up to the main Baghdad-Amman route. Daesh seized al-Waleed in May 2015. It used the bridgehead to expand its grip there to the entirety of the common border.

Iraq Sunday June 18, 2017:

• Four Daesh bombers attacked a position held by Kurdish Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. The bomber barricaded themselves inside the site in Tuz Khormato city in the northern Saladin province and detonated themselves after being surrounded by Kurdish forces. Two soldiers were injured in the attack.

Iraq Monday June 19, 2017:

• Iraqi army fighter jets struck a vehicle driven by Fawaz al-Rawi at the center of the city of Qaim, killing him immediately.
• Rawi was the Islamic State’s “finance minister”, and was among many of IS’s top brass who died in U.S.-backed Iraqi strikes in Anbar over the past months.

Iraq Tuesday June 20, 2017:

• French journalist Stephane Villeneuve has died after succumbing to wounds suffered in an explosion in Mosul earlier this week.
• The mine explosion killed Iraqi journalist Bakhtiyar Haddad and left reporter Veronique Robert wounded, while another freelance reporter suffered minor injuries.
• Iraqi forces repelled an attempt by Islamic State militants to retake areas under security control in western Mosul as forces moved deeper in the group’s last enclave.
• Iraqi warplanes killed 23 IS members who were trying to sneak into al-Dindan district, south of the Old City, IS’s last enclave in Mosul. The militants were planning to take over government buildings including the courthouse and the local police department. Iraqi forces took over Dindan district in March.
• Iraq's army had encircled Islamic State's stronghold in the Old City of Mosul after taking over an area to the north of the densely populated historic district.
• The army's 9th armored division seized al-Shifaa district, which includes the city's main hospitals, alongside the western bank of the Tigris River.
• The US-led coalition has shot down an armed "pro-Syrian regime" drone that it says was bearing down on its forces near a garrison close to the border with Iraq in Syria's southeast.
• US forces said the drone was fired on after it "displayed hostile intent and advanced on coalition forces", and a Western intelligence source said the so-called UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) was Iranian.
• The paramilitary troops have killed eight Islamic State militants as an attack against south of Mosul was thwarted.
• IS militants “attacked the defense line of the troops. The attack was repelled. Huge losses were inflicted on the enemy.

Iraq Wednesday June 21, 2017:

• Unidentified jet shelled a house of civilians near Okashat region, in the north of Rutba. The shelling killed four people, including two children, while nine others, including children, were injured.
• Fifteen Islamic State militants were killed in airstrikes by Iraqi jets targeting IS locations in Hawija and Tal Afar.
• Iraqi fighter jets launched several airstrikes that completely destroyed a booby-trapping workshop and missiles and killed three militants specialized in developing missiles in al-Abbassi district, in Hawija 55 KM west of Kirkuk.
• IS still holds three towns in western Anbar close to the borders with Syria, in addition to a few areas in Salahuddin, Diyala and Kirkuk. The Iraqi government is expected to aim at those strongholds once the Mosul battle is concluded.
• The landmark Grand al-Nuri Mosque of Mosul and its leaning minaret have been blown up. The Iraqi army is blaming ISIL for its destruction while the armed group is accusing a US-led coalition air raid.
• The Syrian forces were advancing toward their targets deep in the Old City and when they got to within 50 metres of the Nuri mosque, Daesh committed another historical crime by blowing up the Nuri mosque.

Iraq Thursday June 22, 2017:

• A Canadian sniper has broken the record for longest confirmed sniper shot in military history. The soldier, a member of Canada’s elite Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2) Special Forces unit deployed to Iraq, targeted and killed an Islamic State fighter in Mosul at a distance of almost three and a half kilometres.

Iraq Friday June 23, 2017:

• A suicide bomber blew himself up in western Iraq killing at least eight civilians and a soldier and wounding 11. He was one of a group of four suicide bombers who infiltrated a neighbourhood of Al-Baghdadi in the province of Anbar.
• Army forces were able to kill three suicide bombers after trapping them in a house in the Martyrs neighbourhood by detonating their belts with gunfire. The fourth managed to hide and later blow himself up in the midst of a group of civilians and soldiers.
• Three Islamic State members have died of a poisoned meal in Hawija, southwest Kirkuk. The trio died at a checkpoint run by the group when they were offered a meal by unknown individuals, but the food was apparently poisoned.
• Islamic State fighters were deployed immediately in the streets of Hawija in search for the plotters.

Iraq Saturday June 24, 2017:

• A French journalist has died of her injuries after she was hit by a landmine blast in Mosul earlier this week. Veronique Robert, 54, a Swiss national, died in a military hospital outside Paris where she had been transferred from Iraq.
• Suicide bombers have killed at least three people while attacking a shopping district in east Mosul. The attack struck the area's Muthanna neighbourhood as residents shopped in advance of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
• The first suicide bomber blew himself up as he was being stopped by a policeman, who died on the spot. A second bomber managed to enter a shopping arcade and blew himself up among civilians, killing at least two and wounding nine. A third suicide bomber was killed by police before he could detonate his vest.
• Three elite leaders of the Islamic State in Tal Afar, including Diwan al-Jund were killed by an air strike that bombarded a hideout that was hosting their meeting in the outskirts of the city. The air strike also killed the guards of the three leaders and several others.
• ISIS militants bombed with mortars the Kurdish-run town of Qaratapa. The bombing resulted in the death of two Women.

Iraq Sunday June 25, 2017:

• The Sharia court of the Islamic State group in Hawija District sentenced seven civilians to death, on charges of cooperation with Iraqi security forces then the terrorist group slaughtered the civilians after Eid al-Fitr prayers in public.
• The Islamic State militants cut the bodies of the civilians into small pieces, then put the flesh in plastic bags and threw them in the southern suburb of Hawija.
• A member of the Islamic State blew up himself amid a gathering of the group’s leaders in al-Qaim District, on the Iraqi-Syrian borders.
• The suicide bomber detonated himself after the significant defeat of the group in Mosul and the approaching battles to liberate areas west of Anbar. ---

Iraq Monday June 26, 2017:

• Twelve IS militants in Diyala in Mekheisa region, northeast of Baqubah, were bidding farewell to a comrade who was on his way for a suicide attack. Saadi said that the explosive belt on the bomber’s body went off to kill well-wishers instead.

Iraq Tuesday June 27, 2017:

• Counter-attacks by Islamic State militants on the western edge of Mosul have stalled Iraqi forces' push in the Old City, the last IS stronghold in the battle. The attacks forced Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition to pull some assets away from the Old City to again clear the Yarmouk and Tanak neighborhoods, which were declared liberated of IS in May. The assaults underscore the Sunni extremist group's resilience in the city.
• The latest counter-attacks began on Sunday by scores of IS fighters dressed as Iraqi Shiite paramilitaries. The following day, he said, a dozen coalition airstrikes on Mosul's western-most edge killed about 40 militants.
• The territory that the Islamic State group still holds in Mosul has been reduced to an area that now amounts to about 2 square kilometers in the ancient Old City district.
•  
• Iraqi troops have liberated al-Mushahada district in the Old City of Mosul and the Federal Police dislodged IS insurgents from the Ziwani mosque, located in Bab al-Beid area. Iraqi troops captured on Monday the neighborhood of al-Faruq in the northwestern side of the Old City, facing the mosque.
• Up to 350 militants are dug in there among civilians. More than 50,000 civilians, representing about half the Old City’s population, are believed to be still trapped behind IS lines with little food, water or medicines.

Iraq Wednesday June 28, 2017:

• Iraq's military has advanced in the Old City of Mosul, bringing it closer to driving out the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant of the area. The army has captured two neighbourhoods north-west of the historic Grand al-Nuri Mosque, which was destroyed last week.
• An IS member who belongs to the group’s “soldiers bureau”, was badly wounded while his seven-year-old child died while playing with a grenade at their home in Shirqat, north of Salahuddin.
• Two suicide bombers were killed before blowing themselves up at a wedding west of Anbar. The suicide attackers, whose ages were below 15, attempted to target a wedding ceremony in al-Doulab, Hit, west of the province, before security forces shot both dead.

Iraq Thursday June 29, 2017:

• Iraqi Special Forces captured the severely-damaged Al-Nuri mosque in Mosul, almost three years to the day that the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi stood at its pulpit and declared the foundation of the caliphate.
• The liberation of the mosque complex came after a dawn offensive that allowed Special Forces to secure the building and its surrounding streets. The capture of the complex has been expected for some time but it still represents a symbolic and major coup for Iraqi forces, which have been fighting in Mosul since last year. The 12th-century mosque, known for its leaning al-Hadba minaret, is in central Mosul's Old City.
• Islamic State militants have executed a top legislator for plotting armed dissent against the group at a major stronghold west of Mosul.
• Abu Zakaria, the first “mufti” to be appointed by the group in 2014 in the town of Tal Afar, was executed after he had been jailed for more than four months over accusations of plotting an armed dissent against the group there.

Iraq Saturday July 1, 2017:

• Iraqi forces have foiled a huge attack by Islamic State in al-Sakra village, west of Anbar using armoured and booby-trapped vehicles and weapons.
• The army and tribal troops thwarted the attack and inflicted huge losses on the enemy, killing twenty militants, including suicide attackers, and destroying their weapons. No casualties among civilians and security troops were reported.
• Interior ministry forces recaptured the Ibn Sina Teaching Hospital in Mosul along with other medical facilities including a blood bank and a clinic. The area where the hospital is located, Al-Shifaa, had been completely retaken.

Iraq Sunday July 2, 2017:

• At least 14 people, including civilians, have been killed after a suicide bomber disguised as a veiled woman blew himself up at a camp for internally displaced people in central Iraq.
• The attacker approached a checkpoint at the camp in western Ramadi, Anbar province, before triggering the blast. Most of the victims were women and children.
• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack at the "kilo 60" camp, which houses people forced out of Sunni Muslim areas controlled by the armed group in the Euphrates river valley.
• The Islamic State has executed a top leader whose slip of a tongue revived suspicions that the group’s runaway leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, might have been killed.
• Abu Qutaiba was burned to death in the group’s stronghold town of Tal Afar, shortly after his arrest over charges of “stirring sedition” through a Friday prayer sermon in which he inadvertently suggested Baghdadi’s possible demise.
• Earlier, the group ordered a punishment of 50 lashes for whoever brings up the issue of the survival of Baghdadi adding that the move came to avert a possible exacerbation of simmering conflicts of leadership.

Iraq Monday July 3, 2017:

• Islamic State militants sent female suicide bombers hidden among fleeing civilians, while Iraqi forces and the U.S.-led coalition unleashed punishing airstrikes and artillery fire that set dozens of buildings ablaze.
• A series of suicide attacks have killed 15 people and injured many others across Iraq.
• In western Mosul’s Old City, two female suicide bombers who were hiding among fleeing civilians near the destroyed al-Nuri Mosque, targeted Iraqi troops killing one soldier and wounding several others.
• At least four similar attacks have targeted Iraqi forces in the past three days as civilians attempt to flee the fierce fighting in Old Mosul’s congested streets.
• In one such attack, a suicide bomber dressed in women’s covering, targeted a camp for displaced persons in the western province of Anbar as camp authorities were assisting families that had fled from the ISIS held town of Qaim.
• A police colonel was among the dead; he had become suspicious of a person in a long robe approaching him, and immediately embraced him, presumably to reduce the number of potential casualties as the explosives detonated.
• Three civilians were killed, two others were injured due to a blast caused by a bomb planted by the Islamic State in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk. The three victims and the two wounded were of the same family. The blast occurred while the victims were trying to flee al-Therban village, in al-Riyad district, in Hawija town. The victims were trying to flee toward Hamreen Mountains.
• One civilian was killed and three others were injured when a bomb blast rocked an area in southern Baghdad. The explosive device was planted near a fish market in Yousseffiya.
• Violence and armed conflicts left more than 700 Iraqis dead and wounded during the month of June. This excludes security members deaths. Baghdad came second in terms of casualties, with 22 deaths and 88 injuries.
• Three Islamic State suicide bombers were killed as they attacked the Sunni tribal forces, in Jazeerat al-Bu’ebeid region, east of Ramadi, Anbar province.
• Troops killed one of them, while the two others blew themselves up. Several security agents were slightly wounded.”
• Iraqi troops battling to retake Mosul from the Islamic State group faced seven female suicide bombers. Most of the suicide bombers in Mosul are now women with seven blowing themselves up on Monday alone.

Iraq Tuesday July 4, 2017:

• Nine PKK terrorists have been killed in airstrikes in northern Iraq's Zap region.
• IS supreme leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s “mail man”, an Iraqi national, was killed in an ambush set for him in Beldrouz region, 30 Km east of Baqubah.
• One civilian was wounded when his car was hit by an explosive device in northern Baghdad. The civilian was on his way out of his home in Rashidya, north of the capital, when a bomb fitted beneath his car went off, causing him injuries.
• An explosive remnant left behind by Islamic State (ISIS) militants killed three children aged between six to ten years in the town of Bashiqa. The children died while playing with a Katyusha type rocket they had found in the village of Khorsibat.
• Twenty-five tribal forces personnel were killed and injured in an attack launched by the Islamic State against a village in Qayyarah, south of Mosul.
• IS militants attacked al-Imam village, west of Qayyarah, south of Mosul city, coming from Shirqat, and north of Salahuddin province. The Tribal Mobilization Forces confronted the fighters, which left two personnel killed and 25 others wounded. The confrontations are still ongoing.

Iraq Wednesday July 5, 2017:

• Four Islamic State militants were killed when government and tribal forces repelled an attack by the group on villages in Salahuddin province. The militants sneaked into the western side of the town to the villages of Khadraniya, Houriya and al-Suwaidan.
• Four attackers, two pro-government tribal fighters and one civilian were killed in the turmoil. Army warplanes intervened and bombarded the attackers’ locations.

Iraq Thursday July 6, 2017:

• Unknown gunmen opened fire against an army patrol in Ibn Sina region, in Tarmiyah district, north of Baghdad, which left one soldier wounded.
• Iraqi army troops thwarted an attack by IS militants against a security site in Shirqat town. The troops responded killing 45 fighters and arresting five others. ---

Iraq Wednesday July 5, 2017:

• Two journalists and a number of civilians have been killed after ISIS attacked the village of Imam Gharbi south of Mosul.

Iraq Sunday July 9, 2017:

• Mosul was ‘liberated’ today and Mr. Al Abadi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, congratulated the fighters and the Iraqi people for the great victory. But when the prime minister arrived, fighting was continuing in the city's historic centre, where ISIL had mounted a desperate last stand in recent weeks and where a small pocket of resistance still held out.
• The soldiers, who have been fighting in Mosul for months, were relieved that the extremists' self-declared caliphate had come to an end in Iraq's second-largest city. The soldiers burst out into song as they fired celebratory shots in the air.

Iraq Monday July 10, 2017:

• Iraqi army warplanes killed dozens of Islamic State militants and destroyed combat equipment west of Anbar.
• Army jets pounded three booby-trapping factories and three weaponry depositories, killing dozens of IS militants in the town of Rawa, west of Anbar. Thirteen other militants were killed in airstrikes that targeted three weaponry reservoirs in Annah.

Iraq Wednesday July 12, 2017:

• Three Yazidi women, detained by Islamic State, were freed, while other women were found by Tigris River in western Mosul.
• Security troops feed three Yazidi, who were held by IS militants in Mosul.  The troops also arrested a female Tajik IS militant in Mosul.
• Meanwhile, Nineveh Police have rescued 20 Yazidi females found near Tigris River in the western side of Mosul. The women were transferred to safe places in order to be sent to their families.
• On Tuesday, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Directorate of Yazidi Abductees Affairs in Duhok said a campaign will be launched to search for the kidnapped Yazidi Kurds.
• An Iraqi joint force have thwarted an attack by the Islamic state near Mosul, two days after the liberation of the city killing 17 militants. The attack is the fourth of its kind by the IS after losing the battle of Mosul. The militants used bicycle bombs driven by suicide bombers.
• 13 militants were killed in an attack against Jurn village, south of Mosul. Battles are still ongoing at Mqalae’ Jiyaa region, located near the village, after army troops were deployed to repulse the attack in Hatra.
• Meanwhile, Peshmerga troops foiled another attack by IS fighters as they sneaked into a village northwest of Mosul. Al-Hashd al-Ashaeri and Al-Hashd al-Shaabi also repulsed two other attacks near the city.

Iraq Thursday July 13, 2017:

• Three Islamic State elements were killed during their attempt to cross the Tigris River from the Old City of Mosul.  The forces also killed the IS booby-trapping official, Amer Saleh Ibrahim, in the Nineveh Plains area while he was crossing the river.
• The security forces are deployed around the banks of the Tigris River to kill the remnants of the group who are still hiding in Mosul’s Old City and other areas.
• An improvised explosive device (IED) exploded in southwest of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, leaving one dead and another wounded. A man died and his wife injured in al-Nahrawan area, southeast of Baghdad, when they rode a bicycle but with an IED fitted beneath it.

Iraq Friday July 14, 2017:

• al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) said IS fighters attacked a security checkpoint at Imam Wees region; two militants killed.
• On Wednesday, PMUs said six IS militants were killed as a secret meeting for the fighters was shelled in Wadi Thilab region, Naft Khana, northeastern Diyala.

Iraq Saturday July 15, 2017:

• Army jets launched airstrikes that destroyed four weapon stashes and killed dozens of militants in Qaim town, western Anbar.
• Also army troops destroyed a fuel tank and two trucks loaded with gas bottles that were going to be smuggled into the province.
• Army troops destroyed suicide belts and explosives in the desert, west of Ramadi.

Iraq Sunday July 16, 2017:

• Iraqi security services have arrested one of the most dangerous female terrorists of the Islamic State’s terror group. Ahlam Mohsen Ali, is considered by the world’s intelligence services as the leader of the Islamic State’s female terrorists.
• Ahlam grew up in al-Houd village in Qayyara district, south of Mosul, before becoming a fierce terrorist who pushed her son to join militant group. She also helped the group in the seizure of Mosul in mid-2014.
• Ahlam, who paid allegiance to IS on June 10, 2014, was arrested with her brother, a prominent IS member, in an operation by the security forces on a bridge that links the eastern and western halves of Mosul, during the liberation of the city on July 10.
• A security force revealed information about Ahlam’s work as an IS sleeper cell and a leader for the female terrorists since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003.
• Five IS members, including an Asian deputy chief of the group’s Hisbah (vigilantism) department, died in Tal Afar as they were all poisoned after eating a meal during a ceremony for one of the leaders.
• The number of the poisoned members were more than 30; several members who are involved in preparation of food were arrested and transferred to unidentified destination.
• Three Islamic State militants were killed while booby-trapping roads in western Anbar to hinder advance of security forces when launching operations to free the western regions of the province. The U.S.-led coalition shelled three IS members in al-Wata’ desert region, in east of Rawa city.

Iraq Monday July 17, 2017:

• IS militants raided a house in a village west of Jalawla (70 km northeast of Baquba), killed a woman and kidnapped two of her sons.
• On Sunday, one civilian was wounded in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion in northeast of Diyala Governorate.
• German prosecutors are investigating whether a 16-year-old German girl is among a group of suspected members of so-called Islamic State held in Mosul.
• She was reportedly found by troops in a tunnel under the Iraqi city on Thursday along with 19 other foreigners. Officials are trying to confirm if she is the same girl who went missing from the German town of Pulsnitz last year.
• Two women who had acted as informants for the Islamic State in Nineveh province were found dead. The pair was found dead in an abandoned house in the town of Tal Afar.
• The two women, who worked with the Islamic State’s “security squad”, had been involved in several kidnappings of women and children, besides reporting on the group’s opponents, which led many to execution or detention. Their dead bodies bore signs of gunshots in the heads and chests.

Iraq Tuesday July 18, 2017:

• Some ISIS militants stormed Chirakh village in Dubiz, capturing five people and killing five others. Among the slain was the village's chieftain named Sinan Othman; two of the slain were brothers.
• Upon their retreat they laid booby traps and now the Asayesh [security] forces, [Kirkuk] Suburban Police and Peshmerga forces are disposing bombs in the area.

Iraq Wednesday 19, 2017:

• Iraq will receive a large number of Russian T-90 tanks during 2017. This was part of a new deal between both countries. The tanks were a first part of a series of military equipment intended for Iraq.
• The price the deal is not known, but it is estimated to be more than one billion dollars.

Iraq Thursday July 20, 2017:

• Two children and a woman were killed, while two women and three children were wounded when a bomb planted on their way out of al-Murra al-Kobra village went off. They were escaping the Islamic State bastion in the town of Hawija.

Iraq Saturday July 22, 2017:

• A German girl who ran away last year from her home shortly after she converted to Islam has been found in Iraq. The girl named Linda Wenzel is currently getting consular assistance from the German embassy in Iraq.
• The German prosecutor could not confirm whether Linda W. had been fighting for ISIS in Mosul. The 16-years-old girl is from Pulsnitz in eastern Germany.
• Seventeen Islamic State female members were killed 10) and injured (7) as a missile was shot on a building, west of Mosul.
• An unknown missile targeted a two-storey building, which was the headquarters of the IS al-Khansaa brigade, in Tal Afar town, west of Mosul. The brigade included wives and sisters of IS members and leaders as well as foreigners.
• The wife of the emir of the so-called soldiers department, known as abu Youssef, were among the killed ones.
• Powerful blasts have rocked the western suburbs of Tal Afar west as airstrikes targeted a building with huge amount of explosives inside. ---

Iraq Monday July 24, 2017:

• An IED, planted on a side of an agriculture road, exploded near a security patrol in western Diyala, leaving two Peshmerga fighters wounded.
• Iraqi security forces have arrested three (IS) elements in northern Diyala.
• An elderly woman died and three others, two young men and a little girl, were wounded when celebratory gunshots went wrong during a wedding in Diyala.
• One attendant of a wedding in Sawaed district fired salutation shots in the air, but lost control over his Klashinkov, causing the disaster.

Iraq Tuesday July 25, 2017:

• A force from “Al-Jazeera Shield”, a regiment affiliated with the “Tribal Mobilization”, ambushed three IS militants at the Kilo 160 region, west of Ramadi. A third militant was arrested and a truck laden with light and medium weapons was also seized.
• IS militants burnt 10 members to death in front of dozens of civilians and group fighters because they were traitors who attempted fleeing. The militants included four Syrians and a Saudi national.
• The militants blame their defeat in Mosul on treason and retreat by some leaders and fighters who breached their vows to the group and collaborated with security.
• On Monday the group executed one of its prominent doctors in Tal Afar and arrested all of his family members without providing details.
• The group carried out emergency evacuations earlier this week at many of its main headquarters in the town over growing doubts on the people’s cooperation with security services.
• Non-Iraqi IS militants executed the last local leader in Tal Afar and the town is currently run by Arab and foreign members after eliminating all the Iraqi leaders.

Iraq Wednesday July 26, 2017:

• Unknown gunmen shot dead a senior Islamic State military official in Kirkuk. Tarek Amniya, the military bureau official of the Islamic State’s so-called Diyala State, was gunned down by unknown assailants.
• The attack took place at al-Madina, a village in Hawija. Amniya was one of the much-hated figures in Hawija and had carried out executions of many locals sentenced to death by the Islamic State.
• A prominent IS guide, known as Barhoum, was killed in a bomb blast while accompanying militants in Mutaibija, east of Salahuddin.
• Barhoum is known to be close to IS leaders. He is said to have guided Baghdadi [the group’s supreme guide] to Mosul and the Grand Nuri al-Kabeer mosque, when he gave his famous sermon. He played a pivotal role in organizing the militants infiltration between Hawija and Mutaibija as well as other regions, given the information he enjoys about their nature.

Iraq Thursday July 27, 2017:

• Security forces killed two Islamic State suicide attackers north of Tikrit. Police forces in Baiji killed the pair at Silo al-Haggag area after they were trapped inside an abandoned house.
• Islamic State has killed four civilians (including two women) and kidnapped others as the militants infiltrated into a village of Kakai Kurds, south of Kirkuk. The militants sneaked into Chechi village in Daquq town and stormed a house there.
• An airstrike targeted an IS alternative headquarters at the outskirts of Tal Afar killing at least ten militants. The group previously evacuated its main headquarters and moved to alternative ones to avoid airstrikes.
• The Islamic State has cut the ears of 23 of its elements over charges of “cowardice” and leaving the fighting fronts.
• A judge of the militant group’s so-called sharia court issued a decision to cut the ears of 23 IS elements who fled the battles west of Nineveh governorate; the punished elements were local residents.
• Two women died and three men were wounded in two consecutive landmine explosions in Diyala province.
• An IED exploded in a tractor driven by a man at a country road in Binikani, Maqdadia region, northeast of Diyala, wounding the driver. Two men and two women, who happened to be a few meters away from the blasts’ scene, hurried to the rescue before another bomb exploded, killing the two women and wounding the men.

Iraq Friday July 28, 2017:

• Iraqi security forces killed four suicide bombers while a fifth one killed a whole family west of Anbar. Security forces, backed by Tribal Mobilization troops, trapped five suicide bombers in al-Baghdadi region, 90 Km west of Ramadi.
• The suiciders sneaked into al-Baghdadi through the desert, four of them were killed, while a fifth one blew himself up inside a house, killing a whole family of six, two parents and four children.

Iraq Saturday July 29, 2017:

• At least four Islamic State (IS) militants and one paramilitary fighter were killed when the extremist militants attacked a paramilitary base in eastern Iraq. The paramilitary Hashd Shaabi unit fought fierce clashes with the attackers in Baquba in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• Another Hashd Shaabi member was wounded in the clashes, while the paramilitary fighters seized weapons and ammunition belonging to IS militants who fled the scene.

Iraq Sunday July 30, 2017:

• The Iraqi army and paramilitary Sunni tribal unit, backed by international aircraft, carried out an operation on IS posts in Um al-Waz area in northwest of the town of Haditha.
• The clashes and the airstrikes killed at least 15 IS militants and wounded many others, along with destroying four IS vehicles and a warehouse contains ammunition and weapons.
• Earlier, the Iraqi security forces dislodged IS militants from the key cities of Anbar province, including Ramadi and the nearby Fallujah. However the area near Haditha and the towns near the border with neighboring Syria, including Aana, Rawa and al-Qaim, as well as the vast rural areas across the province are still under IS control.

Iraq Monday July 31, 2017:

• The IS leader in charge of the so-called Islamic police in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk, was killed along with one of his companions, while five others were wounded as an airstrike targeted a group’s rest house at the outskirts of the town. The killed member was from the group’s second-line leaders in Kirkuk.
• On Sunday, nine IS militants were killed as U.S.-led coalition jets targeted IS locations in al-Rashad, al-Riyadh and Hawija, southwestern Kirkuk.
• Iraqi warplanes killed 20 Islamic State members near the borders with Syria. The airstrike was carried out at Tal Sufouq, a region at Nineveh’s borders with Syria, based on intelligence provided by the Popular Mobilization Forces. The strike also destroyed six vehicles.

Iraq Wednesday August 2, 2017:

• A Peshmerga fighter was killed by a planted bomb exploded near Jalawla in Iraq’s Diyala province.
• As of mid-July, the Peshmerga had lost 1,745 fighters and sustained 10,069 injuries.
• Three Iraqi soldiers were killed in an IED blast in northeast of Baqubah. A bomb, placed on the side of the road, exploded while an army patrol was passing at Nahr al-Imam village in Muqdadiyah city, northeast of Baqubah.
• Three civilians were injured as an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded in southern Baghdad.
• An IED, planted on the side of a road near a local market south of the capital Baghdad, exploded leaving three civilians wounded.
• Moreover, security forces dismantled an IED planted on a side of an agriculture road in southern Baghdad.
• On another note, security forces imposed curfew at al-Halabsa area, north of Baghdad, in search for wanted persons.
• Army jets shelled IS members gathering in Rawa and Qaim towns, western Anbar, killing 13 members, most of whom are foreigners.

Iraq Thursday August 3, 2017:

• Popular Mobilization Forces carried out a military operation east of Tal Afar, west of Mosul. The offensives came as part of reinforcements in preparation to invade the town.
• The PMF finished an operation to clear the road linking the regions of Adaya, west of Mosul, and ain al-Jahsh, southeast of Tal Afar. Forces took control of 17 villages and roads interconnecting them.
• abu Sijad al-Karbala’i, deputy commander of the 13th brigade, said that Iraqi fighter jets killed IS security chief known as abu Suhaib. Abu Suhaib was targeted by an army airstrike near the brigade in al-Jighaifi region, west of Mosul on the borders between Iraq and Syria.
• Thirteen Islamic State militants were killed in a security operation that was targeted al-Sahla valley, southeast of Rutba, western Anbar.
• The Security troops also destroyed three IS rest houses, exploded a weapon-laden truck and filled a water well and trenches dug by the group.
• Iraqi troops confiscated a rocket launcher, destroyed 22 bombs and 16 landmines; the forces also targeted a locally-manufactured telecommunications tower in al-Suhaila region.

Iraq Friday August 4, 2017:

• IS members attacked a Peshmerga patrol in al-Touz region, east of the province, killing an officer and two lower-ranking soldiers, and wounding a fourth officer.
• Local authorities ran into a mass grave containing the relics of 40 persons in Anbar province. The grave was found at al-Tash region, south of the city of Ramadi.
• The victims were decomposed and bore signs of gunshots in the skulls; the victims had probably been executed in 2015.
• A suicide bomber killed three Iraqi army members as operations continue to clear Islamic State remnant militants in western Mosul.
• The bomber, donning an explosive belt, invaded a makeshift headquarter belonging to the army’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service in al-Aghawat neighborhood, west of the city. He blew himself up and killed three CTS members in an initial toll.
• Iraqi warplanes targeted a convoy of militants moving from Kirkuk’s Abbassi towards Hamreen Mountains to attack security forces on the borders with Salahuddin.
• Nine senior members were killed and twelve vehicles were destroyed in the raid, according to the source. ---

Iraq Friday August 4, 2017:

• Three Islamic State militants were wounded in Kirkuk exchanging gunfire after all vied to get engaged to their cousin who is also a group member. The trio, all cousins, exchanged gunfire near a village in the town of Hawija, the group’s biggest stronghold in the province’s southwest, after all wanted to get engaged to the same woman.
• The woman, nicknamed “Um al-Hareth”, is a member of the Islamic State’s Hisbah (vigilantism) service, which observed civilians’ commitment to the group’s extremist code of conduct.

Iraq Saturday August 5, 2017:

• An Iraqi army officer was killed and five soldiers were injured when an explosive device went off west of Baqubah, Diyala.
• The bomb, planted on the side of a road in al-Bawiya village, east of Baqubah, exploded in a passing army patrol.
• An improvised bomb planted by Islamic State militants exploded in Anbar province. The IED went off inside a cemetery in Ramadi during a funeral ceremony, killing two and wounding three others.
• Islamic State militants had used to stash munitions inside cemeteries in the city, adding that they became battlefields between the militants and troops.

Iraq Sunday August 6, 2017:

• Three people were killed in separate bomb explosions and gunfire in northern Iraq.
• A member of a Kurdish security force (Peshmerga) was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near their vehicle west of the town of Daqouq.
• In a separate incident, a civilian was killed and another wounded when a bomb left by Islamic State (IS) militants in the house of a family, in the western side of Mosul, went off while the family members were cleaning their house.
• Also in Mosul, members of a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi unit, shot dead a would-be suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest before he blew himself up at a crowd of people in the western side of Mosul.

Iraq Monday August 7, 2017:

• Six paramilitary fighters were killed and wounded in a double bombing north of Babil governorate.
• Two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) exploded near a patrol of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) in Jurf Al-Nasr (formerly known as Jurf Al Sakhar) in northern Babil, leaving one fighter dead and five others wounded.

Iraq Tuesday August 8, 2017:

• The National Security Forces, in coordination with the Nineveh police, have arrested Ahmed Sabhan Abdel Wahid al-Dulaimi, a senior IS intelligence official, in the eastern side of Mosul.
• The detainee was the IS leader responsible for the intelligence units in eastern Mosul before liberation of the City.
• Iraqi fighter jets killed the IS security chief known as abu Fares al-Iraqi in an airstrike while being at one of the group’s headquarters in Hawija. “Three other militants were also killed by the airstrike.

Iraq Wednesday August 9, 2017:

• Iraqi Federal Police forces killed a senior Islamic State judge, Abdul-Sattar Mohamed Ali, aka Abi al-Hakam al-Aawar, in a raid in western Mosul’s Old City as troops continue to comb the city for remnant cells.
• The U.S.-led coalition shelled IS rest houses and two booby-trapped vehicles in the towns of Anah and Rawa. Ten militants were killed.

Iraq Thursday August 10, 2017:

• Two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) exploded in western and southern Baghdad, leaving one dead and seven others injured.
• A bomb planted by the side of a country road in Qurra Tabba exploded, wounding a farmer and a member of the Popular Mobilization Forces who happened to stand nearby.

Iraq Saturday August 12, 2017:

• The Hashd Shaabi force spotted a suicide bomber wearing explosive vest at a popular market in Tikrit and shot him dead before detonating himself in the crowded market.
• The Islamic State group executed the so-called Legal Judge in the area of Abbasi in Hawija, for trying to secede from the group.
• The Islamic State group has executed the legal judge of al-Abbasi area in Hawija District, southwest of Kirkuk, along with four of his aides, then the group’s militants hang the bodies on electricity poles, on charges of secession and forming new militia against the caliphate state.
• A civilian was killed in an armed attack southeast of the capital, Baghdad. A gunmen shot the civilian in front of his house in Nahrawan area, southeast of Baghdad, killing him immediately.
• Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units killed nine Islamic State (IS) militants in a fierce clash near the border with Syria. They wounded four others, destroying three IS vehicles, including two carrying heavy machine guns.
• The attack occurred when the Hashd Shaabi fighters, backed by artillery, repelled the attack of dozens of IS militants at a military outpost and forced them to retreat to their bases in Syria.

Iraq Sunday August 13, 2017:

• Two American soldiers have been killed while conducting combat operations in northern Iraq, but not as a result of “enemy contact.” Five other soldiers were wounded.
• Three Islamic State militants driving a booby-trapped vehicle blew themselves up, killing one soldier at Maamal al-Isment (cement factory) on the road between Karbala and Anbar provinces.
• Gun fights flared between security troops and militants after the explosion. ---

Iraq Monday August 14, 2017:

• A U.S. Army artillery "mishap" was responsible for the deaths of two U.S. service members in northern Iraq over the weekend. Two U.S. service members were killed and five injured in northern Iraq on Sunday.
• The U.S. Army is investigating the incident.
• Joint troops killed five militants who were planning for suicide attacks.
• IS deployed militants from Mutaibija and al-Zarka regions in Diyala to carry out suicide attacks and explode electricity pylons.

Iraq Tuesday August 15, 2017:

• Twelve militants, including prominent leaders, were killed as coalition F-16 jets targeted the town of Tal Afar.
• Six huge blasts occurred in Tal Afar as fighter jets were flying above the town targeting a workshop used to manufacturing explosives.
• Meanwhile, the group reportedly ordered a sudden ban of women’s presence at its headquarters in the town.
• IS decided to ban women’s presence at its headquarters in the town and removed the detachments run by women, especially those near to districts where senior leaders live.
• The group also prevented families from moving to any district without permission from the security department. IS depends on women in many of its departments, detachments, controlling the markets and gathering information.
• A senior Islamic State mufti had been killed after a rocket was fired at his vehicle east of Salahuddin.
• Abu Hilal, 50, an Iraqi, was killed when a rocket, possibly fired by a drone, hit his vehicle in Mutaibija Basin, east of the province. Two other companions were also killed in the strike.
• Abu Huilal was the recently appointed mufti (religious legislator) with the Islamic State in Mutaibija. He had served as a subordinate mufti in Kirkuk but moved to Salahuddin a few months earlier.
• ISIS militants have continued attacks in the mountainous Hamrin areas outside of Tuz Kurmatu and Qara Tapa targeting a family in the village of Homarmandan.
• An ISIS bomb exploded near an Arab family in the village of Homarmandan. The explosion killed five members of the family.
• Many ISIS commanders and fighters from Mosul have relocated to the Hamrin Mountains.

Iraq Wednesday August 16, 2017:

• At least 10 security personnel and four suicide bombers were killed in three attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants on military bases in Iraq’s Salahudin province.
• Six suicide bombers wearing explosive vests carried out a pre-dawn attack on military bases in Baiji town leading to heavy clashes for several hours.
• A civilian was killed, while another was wounded as a bomb placed under a vehicle at a popular market in Mendali town, east of Baqubah, Diyala province exploded.
• On Tuesday, a family of five members, including children, on board of a vehicle were killed as a bomb exploded on an abandoned road linking between al-Assaf and Omar Manda villages at the outskirts of Qurret Tabbah, northeast of Diyala.

Iraq Thursday August 17, 2017:

• Islamic State militants have executed three brothers in western Anbar for refusing to join the group. The group executed the trio in the town of Qaim, its stronghold near the Syrian borders. They were less than 15 years of age, and were executed by a firing squad after refusing compulsory recruitment.
• ISIS militants seized a police officer, killing seven members of his family and briefly taking him hostage before he was freed by Peshmerga west of Kirkuk.
• Mohammed Azawi, the police officer said that militants killed three of his sons, three cousins, and another relative of his, all Arabs, who were in his house when ISIS attacked. The incident happened in Mahla village, about 35 kilometres west of Kirkuk.

Iraq Friday August 18, 2017:

• Unidentified warplanes killed a woman, her 13-year-old daughter and wounded her husband in Okashat, north of the city of Ramadi.
• The civilians died and sustained injuries when unidentified warplanes carried out an air raid near a house west of Anbar’s city of Ramadi.
• Three Islamic State militants died in a surprise police operation backed by civilians in Diyala.
• Civilians at al-Islah village (70 Km northeast of Baqubah) waged a surprise attack, backed by police forces, on an Islamic State “sleeper cell” that was hiding at a rest house near a farmland in the area.
• The targeted cell was preparing for an attack on local residents and was believed to have been behind the kidnapping of two civilians three days earlier.

Iraq Monday August 22, 2017:

• Iraqi troops have retaken five villages in Tal Afar town from Islamic State.
• The army’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service freed Tal Rihal, Jabbara, Hussein Idris, al-Mulla and al-Majeed villages, southwest of the town. Earlier on the day, Iraqi troops announced liberating villages of Toumi, Majarin, Mulla Jassim and Abret Aziz. Troops also cut off al-Kask road in Mahlabiya direction.

Iraq Wednesday August 23, 2017:

• Iraqi police forces killed two suicide bombers before they could attack troops in western Baghdad. The two suicide attackers, putting on two explosive belts, were killed before attacking police troops at al-Saklat Street in Abu Gharib region.

Iraq Thursday August 24, 2017:

• The bodies of 20 Iraqi sailors have been recovered after their ship sank following a collision off the country’s southern coast.
• The Al-Mesbar sank in Iraqi waters on Saturday following the collision with a foreign-flagged vessel, after which eight sailors were rescued and the bodies of four others found.
• 16 more bodies were found when the ship was raised on Thursday. Iraqi authorities have ordered the foreign vessel impounded following the collision, which took place in the Khor Abdullah maritime canal between Iraq and Kuwait.

Iraq Friday August 25, 2017:

• An official security source told Shafa News that a senior border guard officer was killed when a bomb blast ripped through his convoy at the city of Rutba, near Iraq’s borders with Jordan. The officer was heading to his service unit, according to the source.
• Meanwhile, an explosive device exploded in Shaqoufa, Hit, 70 kilometers west of Ramadi, wounding four police members.

Iraq Saturday August 26, 2017:

• Iraqi forces have driven the Islamic State from central Tal Afar and its historic citadel placing them on the verge of fully recapturing one of the last IS strongholds in the country.
• The CTS and federal police units had also seized three northern districts and the Al-Rabia neighbourhood west of the citadel, a day after taking the district of Al-Talia to the south.
• Clashes were ongoing on the northern outskirts and Iraqi forces were dealing with final pockets of jihadists inside the city.
• One Peshmerga onboard a minibus in the south of the Kirkuk Governorate and a driver were killed after a roadside bomb exploded wounding another six.

Iraq Sunday August 27, 2017:

• Six Islamic State militants were killed as the Shia-led paramilitary troops repelled an attack in Baaj in west of Mosul. The attack targeted al-Risala and al-Hamdaniya districts in the town.
• PMFs, backed by the army troops and fighter jets liberated the town, which is close to the Iraqi-Iranian borders, in June.
• Previously, the troops took control over the borderline with Syria liberating the remaining villages in the vicinity of Qairawan and Baaj, after the troops announced full liberation of Qairawan.
• The 29th brigade targeted a gathering of militants at al-Zawya crossroads in north of Salahuddin. The shelling left four militants killed and a vehicle burnt.
• Iraq’s military fully liberated TAL Afar FROM the Islamic State.
• The battle for Tal Afar, which lasted just eight days, highlighted the diminished capabilities of the Islamic State in Iraq. The relatively quick victory is likely to determine how future fights against the militant group will be pursued.

Iraq Monday August 28, 2017:

• A car bomb ripped through a busy market area in eastern Baghdad killing at least 12 people. The explosives-laden car went off at the wholesale Jamila market in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City. The explosion also wounded 28 other people.

Iraq Tuesday August 29, 2017:

• The general command of the Kurdish Peshmerga said 130 Islamic State militants were killed after fleeing Tal Afar town toward Syria.
• On Monday, Peshmerga troops announced arresting 200 militants who were hiding among displaced civilians fleeing Tal Afar.
• Also on Monday, the pro-government Popular Mobilization Forces, along with the army forces, managed to take over “Ayyadiya farms” and “Mohaled al-Khalaf” farmlands, east and south of the region where Iraqi commanders say the remaining militants are besieged.
• The troops also repelled an attack near Aiyadhiya killing four militants and captivating twelve others.

Iraq Wednesday August 30, 2017:

• Iraqi army warplanes killed 94 Islamic State militants in Anbar including a senior leader close to the group’s supreme commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• The air force bombarded six IS locations in the town of Qaim. Several group entrenchments were destroyed in the strike, leaving 94 members dead.
• Those killed included Zafer (Abu Ayman) al-Rawi, a senior security commander, and Millat Hashem Farahat, a former commander in Tal Afar and a close aide to Baghdadi.
• Seven Islamic State militants were killed by the Iraqi border guards while trying to escape from northwestern Mosul.

Iraq Thursday August 31, 2017:

• A civilian was killed, seven others, including army personnel, were wounded in two blasts that north and southwest of Baghdad.
• A bomb, placed near stores in al-Zaafaraniya region, leaving a civilian killed and four others wounded.
• Another bomb targeted an army patrol in al-Tarmiyah region in north of Baghdad, leaving three personnel wounded. ---

Iraq Saturday September 2, 2017:

• Disguised suicide bombers have killed seven people (four policemen and three workers) and wounded 13 others in an attack on a power plant north of Baghdad.
• Three attackers wearing military uniforms and armed with grenades entered the facility near the city of Samarra.

 

Iraq Monday September 4, 2017:

• An Islamic State convoy stranded in the Syrian Desert for five days has split up, and some fighters may have found their way into Iraq despite the U.S. military’s determination to stop them from reaching militant-controlled territory.
• Conflicting reports and claims put the 17 buses that made up the original convoy in a variety of locations, illustrating the difficulty of establishing with any certainty events in the remote desert war zone spanning Iraq and Syria.
• The buses set out in a convoy from western Syria on Tuesday under the terms of a deal brokered by the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement to relocate the fighters to the Islamic State-controlled town of Bukamal on the Iraqi border in return for the bodies of Lebanese army, Hezbollah and Iranian soldiers.
• The convoy became the center of a region wide controversy over whether such deals are acceptable, with the United States and its allies trading accusations with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and its allies over who is doing more to fight terrorism.
• Unidentified gunmen shot dead seven family members in the city of Ramadi. The gunmen broke into a house in Juweiba neighborhood in eastern Ramadi and opened fire on the family members and killed them all before they fled the scene.

Iraq Tuesday September 5, 2017:

• Ten Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were wounded in a roadside bomb blast west of Mosul.
• The ten soldiers sustained mild injuries when a bomb blast hit an area near Shaalan village, a place with a mostly Arab population.
• The police force, assisted by a number of civilians, killed three Islamic State suicide bombers before they could stage an attack against nightclubs in the town of Balad.
• On Monday, al-Salam Corps foiled an attempt by IS to detonate electricity pylons in al-Ishaqi Island in Salahuddin.
• Al-Salam Corps is the military wing of popular Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement.

Iraq Wednesday September 6, 2017:

• The coalition continues to monitor 11 of the 17 buses in an ISIS convoy in the Syrian Desert, after six returned to Palmyra in Syrian territory. Local Iraqi officials have reported the arrival of hundreds of ISIS militants in western Anbar province.
• Hezbollah stated it and Damascus had fulfilled their part of the deal as the buses had been transferred out of territory under Syrian government control “without exposing them.”
• An estimated more than 300 ISIS militants with their families were in the convoy.
• The coalition, which says it was not a party to the evacuation deal and opposes the move, arguing it just makes the ISIS fighters someone else’s problem. Baghdad has also expressed its outrage over the move that brings ISIS militants to its border.
• The coalition vowed to prevent the convoy from reaching the border and has targeted ISIS vehicles and fighters that have attempted to approach the convoy. It also cratered the road to prevent forward movement of the buses.
• Islamic State militants caught more than 50 families of their fighters while trying to flee the group’s stronghold in Kirkuk. Some of the families apprehended were fleeing along with their sons who were group members.
• Security forces have killed two PKK terrorists in northern Iraq. The PKK militants attacked the 34th Border Brigade Command in the Tekeli area of Semdinli district with mortars and an anti-aircraft gun.
• In a counter-attack operation, security forces targeted the PKK group on the Iraqi side of the Turkey-Iraq border.

Iraq Thursday September 7, 2017:

• Eight employees of the North Oil Company (NOC) were killed and injured in a blast that occurred due to a malfunction. Two employees, including a chief engineer, were killed, while six others were wounded as a pipeline exploded.
• Aerial bombardment of a rest house at the outskirts of the western coast of Shirqat town, north of Salahuddin, left three militants killed and others wounded. Four air raids targeted the town over the past 24 hours, which left several militants killed and injured.
• Islamic State militants have executed 12 civilians at their Kirkuk stronghold as the province awaits imminent military operations against the extremist group.
• Unidentified warplanes killed seven people of the same family in western Anbar, while Islamic State executed two security informants.
• Unidentified warplanes bombarded a house in the town of Rawa, an Islamic State stronghold west of Anbar, killing a family of seven, mainly children.
• The Islamic State militants executed two casual army members by a firing squad. The pair had been kidnapped a few days earlier from the town of Qaim, near the borders with Syria. The militants accused both of espionage by providing Iraqi air forces with information about militants’ locations.

Iraq Friday September 8, 2017:

• Nine persons were killed and injured in two bomb blasts that occurred in south and west of Baghdad.
• A bomb went off near a market in al-Wihda district, south of the capital. The blast left a civilian killed and six others wounded.
• A bomb, on the side of the road, at the Ibrahim bin Ali region, western Baghdad, exploded in the morning targeting police patrol. The blast left two personnel wounded.
• Fighter jets waged operations in al-Khalawiya region, near Hamreen Lake, northeast of Baquba. The air raids left fifteen militants killed, five rest houses, a vehicle and five motorbikes destroyed.

Iraq Saturday September 9, 2017:

• The Iraqi army, police and paramilitary Hashd Shaabi brigades, covered by helicopter gunships launched an operation to chase IS militants and advanced in three directions in the area between Naft Khana and the city of Khanaqin near the Iranian border.
• The troops killed six suicide bombers wearing explosive belts and are surrounding four others during the operation, while the troops destroyed three hideouts of IS militants in the oil-rich area of Naft Khana.
• Eight Islamic State members and a tribal fighter were killed in clashes between the militant group and security forces in southeast of Mosul. Another member was wounded.
• Army troops repulsed an IS attack in al-Tamarat region in west of Mosul, killing six of the attackers.
• Two other militants were killed by security personnel near Nimrud as they tried to escape via Tigris River toward Hammam al-Alil.
• Security personnel recovered three bodies of civilians with signs of torture and shooting on them. The bodies were found at al-Ghozlani camp, an old abandoned military camp in south of Mosul.
• More than 2,000 bodies of civilians were recovered since liberation of Mosul city, expecting between 400-500 bodies to be still under the rubble. 1,429 civilians and 30,000 militants were killed during the campaign.
• Four Kurdish fighters within the Hashd al-Shaabi were killed in clashes with ISIS militants in Diyala province.
• Fourteen Islamic State militants were killed in a security operation in Diyala.
• 
  Iraq Sunday September 10, 2017:
• At the request of Russia, Coalition surveillance aircraft have left the area where they were monitoring the movements of an ISIS convoy in the Syrian Desert. Russia made the request as part of deconfliction as Syrian forces on the ground continue to advance on Deir ez-Zor.
• Pro-Syrian regime forces advanced on the ground, passing the 11 buses of ISIS fighters and families Friday morning. The regime's advance past the convoy underlines continued Syrian responsibility for the buses and terrorists.
• The ISIS convoy originally consisted of more than 300 ISIS fighters with families on 17 buses that were evacuated from the Syria-Lebanon border in a deal with the Syrian army and Hezbollah that intended to relocate the fighters to Syria’s eastern border with Iraq.
• The Coalition and Iraq denounced the deal that would bring hundreds of militants to the Iraqi border along the Middle Euphrates River Valley, home to the largest concentration of ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria. ---

Iraq Monday September 11, 2017:

• A civilian was killed, four others were wounded in an IED blast in west of Baghdad. The bomb was placed on the side of the road in the industrial district in abu Ghraib region, west of the capital.

Iraq Tuesday September 12, 2017:

• Three persons, including a woman, were shot dead by armed individuals in eastern Mosul for having links with Islamic State militants. Unknown armed persons invaded a house in al-Sukkar district, northeast of Mosul, and killed three members of one family, while a fourth woman was wounded.
• The family had sons who served as Islamic State members, one of whom had been killed in battles. The woman killed in the raid was a member of the extremist group’s Hisbah (vigilantism) division.
• Baghdad’s central criminal court sentenced a Russian national to death by hanging for his membership in the Islamic State group. The man was arrested as Iraqi forces pushed the extremist group out of Mosul’s western half.
• The individual was tried under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law and confessed to carrying out “terrorist operations” against Iraqi security forces since 2015.
• Earlier this week, Iraqi forces announced they were holding more than 1,300 foreign women and children from 14 countries at a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq. The individuals from 14 countries surrendered to Kurdish forces at the end of August after an Iraqi offensive drove the extremist group from the northern town of Tal Afar.

Iraq Wednesday September 13, 2017:

• One civilian was killed and six others were wounded, including army soldiers, when two bomb blasts rocked areas west and south of Baghdad. An explosive device planted near brick kilns in Nahrawan, west of the capital, exploded, killing one and wounding four others.
• Meanwhile, two Iraqi army soldiers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded into their patrol in Sadr al-Youssefiya, south of Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday September 14, 2017:

• There was an attack on a restaurant frequented by Shia Muslim pilgrims in southern Iraq that was claimed by Islamic State. 84 people have been killed and 93 people injured in the attack in Nasiriyah, in Iraq’s southern Thi Qar province. Seven Iranians were among the dead.
• The attack began as a shooting at a checkpoint and restaurant along the main road that connects the province to Baghdad, followed by two suicide bombers, one driving a car laden with explosives.
• Twelve Islamic State suicide attackers were killed in armed attacks in west of Mosul.
• al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) said that troops of the 13th brigade clashed with fifteen IS suicide attackers in abu Raseen region in Qairawan, west of Mosul.

Iraq Friday September 15, 2017:

• Islamic State militants executed three young men accusing them of collaboration with security forces. The three young people were executed in the center of the town of al-Qaim.
• Three Islamic State militants were killed and injured in an explosion east of Salahuddin.
• A vehicle carrying IS militants in Mutaibija, Salahuddin, exploded, leaving two militants killed and a third wounded. It’s unknown if the blast was due to aerial bombardment or explosives on board of the vehicle.

Iraq Sunday September 17, 2017:

• Fifteen people were killed when a booby-trap exploded in a school building west of Mosul.
• 15 people, including 12 members of the Tribal Mobilization, a Sunni, pro-government paramilitary force, were killed, while 23 others were wounded when a booby-trap exploded inside a school building in Magarn, a village falling between the town of Badush and Tal Afar.
• The school’s building had been handed over to Tribal Mobilization commanders for training purposes. Some of the school rooms were booby-trapped.
• Three suicide attackers targeted a US military base near a village in Makhmour, southwest of Erbil. The attack did not result in any losses among the US servicemen.
• One of the attackers blew himself up, while the other two were killed by the US fire.
• Unknown attackers killed Abu Ayman al-Iraqi, Islamic State’s Hisbah (vigilantism) chief in Hawija, the group’s stronghold in southwest Kirkuk, and stuck a donkey’s poster on his dead body, understandably an action of humiliation.
• The Syrian army captured al-Jafra district on the western bank of the Euphrates River with the help of Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, breaking an ISIS siege of an enclave there that had lasted three years.
• Islamic State controls much of the desert region around Deir al-Zor city, where its fighters are also under attack from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance.

Iraq Tuesday September 19, 2017:

• Two suicide bombers killed at least three people and wounded 34 in a restaurant frequented by militiamen of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation), a paramilitary force mainly composed of Iran-trained militias which has played a major role in the fightback against IS in the town of Hajaj, in Salaheddin province between the cities of Tikrit and Baiji.
• A third assailant was shot dead by the security forces.

Iraq Wednesday September 20, 2017:

• Two Islamic State militants died when Iraqi army warplanes pounded the group’s locations northeast of Diyala province. They were stricken by fighter jets while riding their motorbike in Wadi Thallab, Naft Khana, northeast of the province. ---

Iraq Thursday September 21 2017:

• Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has announced the launch of the Hawija offensive, promising to clean every bit of Iraqi land of the ISIS militants.
• The Peshmerga do not take part in the operation. They will only keep their defense lines strong, and will not allow the ISIS militants to infiltrate Peshmerga lines. They will not allow any units of the Iraqi forces to cross the front lines of Peshmerga-controlled areas.

Iraq Saturday September 23, 2017:

• A French Special Forces soldier was killed in combat in the Iraq-Syria region.

Iraq Sunday September 24, 2017:

• Iraqi troops have killed Islamic State militants while repelling an attack in Salahuddin province.
• Nine militants, including a leader, attempted attacking security troops deployed near al-Zarka Bridge, west of Tuz Khurmatu.

Iraq Monday September 25, 2017:

• The pro-government paramilitary troops have foiled an attack by Islamic State militants on the borders between Iraq and Syria.
• The first brigade troops repulsed a wide-scale attack by IS militants on the Iraqi-Syrian borders in al-Muthalath region. Militants who were on board of a vehicle were killed.

Iraq Wednesday September 27, 2017:

• Anbar security forces killed 20 Islamic State militants after brief encounters flared when group members invaded areas in the west and south of Ramadi.
• Security declared a curfew in Ramadi at al-Tash and the 5th Kilometer regions, south and west of Ramadi, with army and police forces putting the militants under siege there.
• The militants did take over al-Tash and al-Jamea (university) areas after invading them with 20 pickup trucks. The website added that the militants are currently holding civilians there.
• Anbar police service said later that the troops retook the two areas and killed 20 militants.
• IS militants executed five youths from Qaim, after arresting them three days ago at cybercafes. They were accused of communicating with and sending information to apostates from land of infidelity.
• The group informed residents in Qaim, Rawa and alBu-Kamal that it regained control over Ramadi once again.

Iraq Thursday September 28, 2017:

• While troops were combing the center and outskirts of Tal Afar, an IS mass grave was found near the military district in the town.
• The grave includes relics of 40 members, most of whom were women and foreign militants. Some gravestones had foreign letters similar to Latin not English. Maybe they indicate names of Russian and Chechen murdered ones.
• Their death happened in the beginning and mid this year, most probably in airstrikes not during liberation offensives of Tal Afar.
• Twenty Islamic State militants were killed in air raids launched by the anti-IS international coalition airstrikes in Ramadi.
• The Islamic State militant group (ISIS) has released a new audio message delivered by its elusive leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who had not spoken since November 2016, in which he mentions North Korea’s “nuclear threat to the U.S.” The audio suggests he remains alive despite speculation over his fate.
• The date of the audio recording remains unclear but the reference to North Korea’s nuclear threat appears to point to a recent war of words between President Donald Trump and Pyongyang’s leader Kim Jong Un.

Iraq Friday September 29, 2017:

• Twelve persons were killed and injured in two separate blasts in north and south of Baghdad.
• A bomb went off near stores in al-Mada’in in Dar’iya village, south of Baghdad, leaving four persons killed.
• Another bomb exploded near a market in Tarmiyah, in al-Mushahada village, north of Bagdhad, leaving a person killed and six others wounded.
• Forty five Islamic State militants were killed in airstrikes by the anti-IS international coalition jets, south of Hit, Anbar. The U.S.-led Coalition jets shelled a convoy of IS vehicles in the desert in south of Kubaisa, south of Hit.
• The shelling left forty five militants killed and six vehicles destroyed. The militant group was planning to target safe places in Anbar before foiling its attempt.
• Iraqi fighter jets targeted an IS vehicle near Hamreen lake, northeast of Baquba, killing four militants on board and destroying the vehicle completely.
• Iraqi forces launched an assault on the northern town of Hawija and surrounding areas, one of the last bastions still held by the Islamic State group in the country.

Iraq Saturday September 30, 2017:

• Two IS militants, who have been hiding in Mosul’s Old City since battles were ongoing there, attacked Federal Police using guns and hand grenades, killing two police personnel. Police responded killing the militants immediately.
• Police at the eastern side of Shirqat killed a suicide bomber in Asdira village before he blows himself up near a police station. No casualties were reported.
• Five Islamic State members, including suicide attackers, were killed in airstrikes by Iraqi jets in northeast of Baqubah.
• Aerial bombardment targeted IS rest house near al-Assyoud village, north of Muqdadiyah. Three militants, including a leader, were killed.
• The shelling was the second in Diyal today, after shelling another rest house in Hamreen, where two suicide attackers were killed. Military units seized explosives.
• On Friday Iraqi fighter jets targeted an IS vehicle near Hamreen lake, killing four militants on board and destroying the vehicle completely.

Iraq Sunday October 1, 2017:

• An Islamic State’s member responsible for flying drones was killed in an explosion in the town of Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk, as government troops advance to retake the town.
• The so-nicknamed “al-Mulla” was killed in an explosion of a weaponized drone while trying to fly it on the outskirts of Hawija. Islamic State has been relying on bomb-laden drones both reconnaissance and for attacking security troops over the past few years.
• Earlier Iraqi forces and allied paramilitary troops had retaken 28 villages as part of operations to recapture Hawija. Forces advancing from the south and the east of the city have converged.
• A coalition service member was killed and another was wounded the previous day in Iraq when an explosion from a bobby-trapped device struck their vehicle.
• So far, seven American servicemen have been killed in Iraq in the fight against the Islamic State group, including two in the battle to retake the northern city of Mosul.
• Additionally, a French paratrooper was killed in the fight against IS last month.
• More than 1,200 Iraqi forces were killed in the battle for Mosul and more than 6,000 were wounded.
• A photojournalist from al-Nujabaa channel, Warith al-Shemari, has been killed while covering the ongoing battles between Islamic State and Iraqi joint troops in the group’s holdout in southwest of Kirkuk.
• The Iraqi army has killed 21 suicide attackers from the Islamic State near the holy city of Karbala where Shia pilgrims marked a major, annual religious festival (Ashura).
• The militants were killed in an air and ground operation on the borders between Anbar province and the holy city of Karbala.
• Two IS militants were killed in a blast as they were trying to plant a bomb in the roads beneath Makhoul mountains, north of Salahuddin.

Iraq Monday October 2, 2017:

• The pro-government forces, commonly known by their Arabic name as Hashd al-Sha’abi, had establish full control over 18 villages, including Abdul Aziz, Sayyed Hassoun, al-Saan, Mulla Nasif, Tar al-Hamar, Kordarah, Tal Khadija, Al-Fashka, al-Sakhour and Dukmat. al-Sha’abi fighters had also recaptured Heynas air base.
• A high-ranking Daesh commander had been killed in fierce clashes with Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters.
• The slain terrorist, Abu Bilal al-Masri, better known by the nom de guerre, al-Hummer was an expert using rocket-propelled grenades to target the Iraqi military’s Humvees.
• Pro-government Hashd al-Sha’abi fighters and members of the Federal Police force have discovered a mass grave south of Hawijah on the outskirts of the recently-liberated al-Zarban village. The grave contained the remains of dozens of army and police conscripts. ---

Iraq Thursday October 5, 2017:

• Iraqi armed forces have retaken Hawija from ISIS. The 9th armored division, Federal Police, Rapid Response force, and brigades of the Hashd al-Shaabi have “completely liberated” Hawija. Operations continue to clear ISIS from areas east of the town.
• Three Islamic State militants were killed south of Ramadi. Security services killed three IS suicide attackers after confrontations in al-Tash region, south of Ramadi.
• Troops currently controls the whole region after repulsing the infiltration attempt.

Iraq Friday October 6, 2017:

• A senior Islamic State leader was killed in an airstrike by the international coalition in western Anbar. The airstrike targeted an IS headquarters in the desert of Qaim leaving Majid Mete’b Ojail al-Mahallawi, and five of his guards killed.
• Mahallawi pledged allegiance to the group in 2006. He took part in the first attack against Fallujah as well as the operations in Mosul and Qaim, where he settled. He kidnapped and tortured a lot of police and army personnel in Qaim after the group took control on it. He also recruited many youth in Iraq and Syria,” the source added.
• On Thursday, the U.S.-led Coalition pounded IS locations in Qaim killing five militants.

Iraq Sunday October 8, 2017:

• The pro-government paramilitary troops have killed several Islamic State militants who refused to turn in themselves in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk.
• On Saturday, the Joint Operations Command said 385 IS members, including five snipers, were killed during the second phase of Hawija offensive. 150 villages in Hawija were freed, in addition to al-Abbassi region and the northern side of the town.
• Sixteen Islamic State militants were killed as they got out of tunnels in Mosul during a security operation.  Security troops launched an operation to blow up IS tunnels in regions of al-Midan, al-Shahwan, al-Dakka and Qulai’at, in center of the Old City of Mosul.
• Troops found that militants were hiding at the tunnels so they can move between the districts. Sixteen of them were killed.
• Five Islamic State militants were killed, while three others were arrested, after besieging them in southwest of Kirkuk. Troops seized explosive belts and RPGs.
• Earlier paramilitary troops killed several IS militants who refused to turn in themselves in Hawija.
• A woman was killed and a man was wounded as a mortar missile was fired in north of Salahuddin. The mortar missile fired by unknown people fell on the military district, in central Shirqat, north of Salahuddin.

Iraq, Tuesday October 10, 2017:

• Hundreds of suspected Islamic State militants surrendered last week to Kurdish authorities after the jihadist group was driven out of its last stronghold in northern Iraq.
• The suspects were part of a group of men who fled toward Kurdish-held lines when Iraqi government forces captured the Islamic State base in Hawija.

Iraq Wednesday October 11, 2017:

• A suicide bomber has struck a cafe in the western city of Hit, killing 11 people. 15 other people were wounded in the blast; the victims are all civilians.

Iraq Thursday October 12, 2017:

• ISIL suicide attackers have killed dozens of people, including Syrian refugees and Kurdish security personnel, with car bombs in northeastern Syria.
• The attack took place at Abu Fas, near the border of Deir Az Zor and Hasakah provinces, and the dead included refugees, as well as members of the Kurdish Asayish security force.
• The pro-government paramilitary troops, al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), have killed an Islamic State militant who was attempting to target the troops in north of Salahuddin.
• Several IS suicide attackers are besieged in a tunnel at Makhoul mountains.

Iraq Friday October 13, 2017:

• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] repulsed an attack by IS in Tal Safuk region, on borders with Syria. Troops killed six militants and burned down a vehicle loaded with weapons.
• The 31st brigade of Al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces killed five IS militants and arrest the sixth in al-Siniyah region, north of Salahuddin.

Iraq Saturday October 14, 2017:

• A number of unknown armed persons attacked the main office of Korek Telecom network in Hillah in the province of Babil. They blew up the building after they kidnapped seven employees.
• The Korek Telecom network in Hillah, the network of Korek in the provinces of Najaf, Karbala, Babil, Diwaniyah and Muthanna is cut off.
• Around 100 Islamic State armed militants launched attack on the main headquarter of security troops in Tal Safuk village, in Nineveh province, on borders with Syria.
• The confrontations left eleven militants killed and forcing the rest to run away toward the common desert between Iraq and Syria. Five army personnel were killed, including a captain, while thirteen others were wounded. Three watchtowers and an armored vehicle for the army were damaged.
• On Friday al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] repulsed an attack by IS in Tal Safuk region, killing six militants and burning down a vehicle loaded with weapons.
• Two Islamic State militants were killed, while a third was arrested as security troops repelled an attack in Salahuddin. Police troops repulsed an attack by IS militants in Tal al-thab village, south of Balad.

Iraq Sunday October 15, 2017:

• Aerial bombardment carried out by Iraqi fighter jets targeted four rest houses of IS, destroying them in Wadi Thilab, in Neft Khana, northeast of Diyala.
• The shelling left two militants, on a motorbike, killed.

Iraq Tuesday October 17, 2017:

• Iraqi troops and the Hashd al-Shaabi forces have taken control of Khanaqin in the Diyala province and Bashiqa near Mosul. The Yezidi town of Snune, near Shingal, is now also under the Hashd al-Shaabi.
• The Peshmerga withdrew from Khanaqin following an agreement with the Peshmerga commanders as the forces were advancing.

Iraq Thursday October 19, 2017:

• Iraqi fighter jets launched airstrikes that destroyed three vehicles in north of Akashat region, west of Anbar. The shelling left more than 10 IS militants killed.
• An Islamic State suicide attacker was killed by security troops in Salahuddin province.
• One of the personnel of Samarra Operations Command at a checkpoint opened fire against a suicide attacker who tried to approach Dijla weapon stash, northwest of Samarra, which caused his immediate death.

Iraq Friday October 20, 2017:

• Iraq’s military took over an area north of Kirkuk following clashes with Kurdish Peshmerga troops, further establishing its influence in the disputed province.
• Counter-Terrorism Service, Federal Police and Popular Mobilization forces took over Alton Kobri area, on the Kirkuk-Erbil road. There was an exchange of artillery fire between Peshmerga and security forces at the area.
• Meanwhile, a senior Peshmerga commander said in Kirkuk that the force had lost 26 of its fighters during encounters over the past four days.
• A firing squad from the militant group shot dead three senior members for sneaking outside the town of Qaim, along with their families, towards Syria’s Boukamal. The execution was witnessed by a large number of group commanders near the town’s hospital.
• Iraqi army forces have taken control of Zummar, Ain Zalah and 44 oil fields in northwest of Mosul. They are seeking to impose Baghdad’s authority over territory which the Kurdish authorities took after the Islamic State (ISIS) captured large swathes of territory in the country. 
• On Monday and Tuesday, federal troops and Hashid al-Shaabi retook the province of Kirkuk and its lucrative oil fields, as well as formerly Kurdish-held areas of Nineveh and Diyala provinces, all outside the Kurdistan region’s administration. ---

Iraq Saturday October 21, 2017:

• Iraqi forces have claimed control of all of Kirkuk province after intense fighting against Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
• The army captured the last town, Altun Kupri, near Erbil, with the help of Shia paramilitaries after a three-hour battle.
• Peshmerga were sending reinforcements to fight the army and their allied militias on the front line north of Kirkuk, while Iraqi forces were trying to push the Peshmerga further towards Erbil.
• The army launched airstrike against IS militants in Tal Faris region, southwest of Mosul, leaving eight militants killed.
• A family composed of a woman and her two sons were reportedly killed by IS militants, who infiltrated via Tigris river toward Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul.

Iraq Sunday October 22, 2017:

• U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said it was time for Iranian-backed militias and their Iranian advisers who helped Iraq defeat Islamic State to “go home”, after a rare joint meeting with the leaders of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
• The foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control,” Tillerson said at a joint news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir. Does this include the Americans?
• The United States is concerned that Iran, a Shi‘ite regional power, will take advantage of gains against IS in Iraq and Syria to expand the influence it gained.
• Tens of thousands of Iraqis heeded a call to arms in 2014 after IS seized a third of the country’s territory, forming the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which receive funding and training from ) Four Islamic State militants were killed in aerial shelling on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, a member from Diyala provincial council said on Sunday.
• Four IS militants were killed as an airstrike targeted a rest house at the outskirts of Mutaibija, on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.

Iraq Monday October 23, 2014:

• Joint security forces of Dijla Operations Command and al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] repelled an infiltration attempt by IS leaders through Sarha region, north of Baquba. Six militants were killed as they were escaping Hawija.
• Six Iraqi were killed and injured as Islamic State militants attacked joint troops deployed in villages, west of Kirkuk. The attack was carried out near Qaysouma and al-Wardiya villages, in al-Abbassi. The attackers were between 30-40 IS militants.
• The confrontations are still ongoing; so far two army personnel were killed and two others from al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] were injured.

Iraq Tuesday October 24, 2017:

• Three IS attackers, two of whom were wearing suicide belts, were killed by Salahuddin Operations Command as they attempted to infiltrate into Makhoul mountains to attack troops there.

Iraq Wednesday October 25, 2017:

• Seven IS militants attacked a checkpoint for Federal Police in al-Rifa’ie district. The confrontations left five personnel killed.

Iraq Thursday October 26, 2017:

• Iraqi forces have launched an offensive to recapture the last bastion of so-called Islamic State in the country. Soldiers, police, Sunni tribesmen and mostly Shia paramilitary fighters are taking part in the assault on al-Qaim and Rawa, in the Euphrates river valley close to the border with Syria.
• The jihadists still control part of the Euphrates valley in the neighbouring Syrian province of Deir al-Zour. But they are under pressure there from Syrian pro-government forces and a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters who recently took the city of Raqqa.

Iraq Friday October 27, 2017:

• Five persons were wounded as an attack in southern Baghdad. Unknown gunmen hurled a hand grenade against a coffee shop in al-Ta’meem district, south of Baghdad, leaving three persons wounded.

Iraq Monday October 30, 2017:

• Massud Barzani, the president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, told a closed-door session of the regional parliament that he was stepping down amid the fallout from a controversial independence referendum.
• Kurdish forces agreed to surrender to central government control the strategic border post of Fishkhabur, through which pipelines export oil to Ceyhan in Turkey.
• That came after weeks of armed clashes in which Baghdad reasserted control over swathes of oil-rich Kurdish-held territory, dealing a severe blow to Barzani's ambitions of Kurdish statehood.

Iraq Thursday November 2, 2017:

• Iraq has received three new F16 aircraft from the United States, bringing the total to 17 since Baghdad signed a nearly $2 billion purchase-deal with Washington in 2014.
• The deal was for 36 fighter jets, but Iraq will receive only 34 since two crashed during training of Iraqi pilots in the United States.

Iraq Friday November 3, 2017:

• Iraq, with the help from Sunni tribal fighters and the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), a Shia paramilitary force, recaptured al-Qaim, the ISILs last stronghold in Iraq. Iraqi forces took full control of the city on the Syrian border after seizing the last border crossing held by ISIL.

Iraq Saturday November 4, 2017:

ISIS militants launched an assault on a customs point in Uzaim, Diyala province, killing three, two of whom were employees and the third, a truck driver; the attack inflicted heavy material damages on the trucks as well. ---

Iraq Tuesday November 7, 2017:

• Two suicide bombers, wearing suicide belts, attempted to target visitors of Arba’ineyat al-Imam Hussein [40 days after his death] in al-Radwaniyah region, southwest of Baghdad. However, security troops managed to kill them immediately.
• One of the attackers was blown up after he was killed, with no casualties reported.
• Iraqi troops have repulsed an Islamic State attack against security checkpoint in north of Diyala.
• Several IS members attempted launching an attack against joint security checkpoint of al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] and police on the borders of the liberated al-BouEissa village, located in the vicinity of Udhaim town.

Iraq Friday November 10, 2017:

• The artillery of Al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] shelled Islamic State militants who attempted infiltration from Hamreen mountains toward Tuz Khurmatu region. Three militants were killed, while nine others were wounded.
• The militants attempted fleeing toward west of Tuz Khurmatu and north of Diyala to launch attacks.
• A drone that was flying above governmental building toward Atlas Street in central Kirkuk has been downed by the Counter-Terrorism Service.
• Investigations have been conducted to identify the drone’s type and work and whether it was for taking photographs.

Iraq Saturday November 11, 2017:

• Based on intelligence information, Salahuddin Operations Command and the troops from the province’s police, backed by army jets, carried out an operation in al-Shiha village, west of Tikrit. The operation left thirteen militants killed, seven of them were sheltering in a tunnel.
• A rest house of the militants, including TNT explosives and food supply was destroyed.
• Having recaptured Hawija in Kirkuk, Mosul and Tal Afar in Nineveh as well as Annah and Qaim towns in Anbar, Iraqi troops still have only western Anbar’s towns of Rawa and Qaim remain under the militant’s control.
• Earlier Iraqi joint forces launched a wide-scale operation to liberate al-Rummana and Rawa regions.
• Operations were launched, late October, to liberate Qaim and Rawa towns. Both have been held by the extremist group since 2014, when it occupied one third of Iraq to proclaim a self-styled Islamic “Caliphate”.- An American soldier has succumbed to injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident at a military base in Iraq.
• US soldier, Chief Warrant Officer Lee M. Smith, 35, of Arlington, Texas died due to injuries sustained from a non-combat related role at Camp Taji, near Baghdad. He was assigned to the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Iraq Sunday November 12, 2017:

• An Iraqi army helicopter crashed during a routine flight killing all three people on board. The Russian-made Mi-17 helicopter crashed while it was on a training mission in the town of Kut, the capital city of Wasit.
• The accident was due to a technical problem.

Iraq Monday November 13, 2017:

• Five Islamic State militants were killed in airstrikes launched at the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces after a fighter jet of the army followed an armed IS cell, composed of three militants, in hills located near al-BuJumaa region, on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.
• Meanwhile two militants were killed as aerial shelling targeted a vehicle on the borders between the two provinces.
• Earlier the Dijla Operations Command announced launching a wide-scale operation in Hawi al-Udhaim region, north of Diyala.

 

Iraq Thursday November 16, 2017:

• Troops of the 29th brigade managed to repulse an attack by IS against units in Tal Sufuk, on Iraqi-Syrian borders. The troops killed seven militants and burnt a vehicle. The remaining attackers ran away.

Iraq Friday November 17, 2017:

• The Iraqi army retook the last town in the country still held by the Islamic State group as the jihadists' self-proclaimed "caliphate" faced collapse on both sides of the border with Syria.
• The recapture of the small Euphrates valley town of Rawa came as the jihadists were also under attack for a second day in the last town they still hold in Syria, Albu Kamal just over the border.
• The Islamic State group (IS) has lost 95 percent of the cross-border "caliphate" it declared in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Its losses include all of its major bastions, virtually confining it to pockets of countryside.
• Police checkpoints deployed near Tawakol region, north of Muqdadiyah were attacked by IS cells. They repel the attack without casualties. The region, from where fire was opened, was combed. Situation has been under control.
• Iraqi forces recaptured several areas and facilities as they sweep through Islamic State’s last bastion in Iraq. The troops, backed by tribal troops, seized back four neighborhoods at the city of Rawa, west of Anbar, besides the city’s mayoral building, post office, grand market and bridge.
• IS members attacked a house in Jahouni village, in Hammam al-Alil. They opened fire against the residents, killing the father and one of his sons and injury of another son.

Iraq Saturday November 18, 2017:

• Two security personnel were killed, while four civilians were wounded in a bomb blast and armed attacks in Baghdad.
• Unidentified gunmen targeted a house in Gisr Diyala region, using a hand grenade. Two persons of the family in the house were wounded.
• A bomb, placed under a vehicle, driven by a conscript, exploded while passing in al-Subaihat region, west of Baghdad, leaving him killed.
• A tribal fighter was killed, while two others were wounded in armed attack in south of Baghdad.
• Unidentified gunmen opened fire against a checkpoint of the Tribal Mobilization Forces in Ersan region, south of Baghdad. One of them was killed, while two others were wounded.
• Last month 114 Iraqi civilians were killed, while 244 others were wounded as result of terrorism, violence and armed conflicts. Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate, coming in the first place with 177 civilian casualties (38 killed, 139 injured). Anbar province followed with 36 killed and 55 injured, and then Kirkuk with 18 killed and 33 injured.
• Security troops and tribes arrested fifteen IS members, while checking identities of families in Rawa, western Anbar.
• Also Eastern Anbar Operations Command confiscated 160 explosives that were planted by IS in al-Karma region, east of Anbar.
• Sixteen IS members were killed on Friday during battles in Rawa.

Iraq Sunday November 19, 2017:

• Two kidnapped girls have been freed at al-Obaidy District, east of Baghdad. Two of the kidnappers were arrested and referred to the bodies concerned for interrogation.

Iraq Tuesday November 21, 2017:

• A suicide car bombing has killed at least 20 people in Tuz Khurmatu in Salaheddin province in northern Iraq.
• Dozens more were wounded near a marketplace in Tuz Khurmatu a home to a mixed Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen population. Tuz Khurmatu is one of the disputed areas between the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
• An armed attack in Baghdad left a paramilitary fighter dead and two others wounded.
• A member of the Tribal Mobilization was killed and two others were wounded when armed attackers shot at their checkpoint at Jisr Diyala, southeast of Baghdad.
• Two young girls were arrested before carrying out a suicide bombing in western Anbar. The pair was arrested before targeting an officer’s residence in the city of Haditha.
• Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that the Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective but that he would only declare final victory after IS militants were routed in the desert.
• Iraqi forces on Friday captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control, signaling the collapse of the group’s “caliphate” proclaimed after it overran much of Iraq’s north and west in 2014.
• Iraqi troops have thwarted an attack by Islamic State militants against southeast of Mosul. Four armed groups of IS launched an armed attack against Hushter and al-Khattab regions in Qarraj town in southeast of Mosul.
• The militants clashed with deployed troops for 40 minutes, before the Iraqi forces managed to defeat them. The army killed nine militants and destroyed an armored vehicle and three others laden with weapons.
• The militant group’s target was to control the road linking Makhmur region, southeast of Mosul with Kirkuk desert, in order to move freely in this region.
• A commander and two soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped house in west of Anbar. The booby-trapped house exploded while army troops were trying to defuse it in Rawa.

Iraq Wednesday November 22, 2017:

• Two people were injured in a bomb blast north of Baghdad. An explosive device planted near a market in Suleikh region in Baghdad went off, leaving two civilians injured.
• On Sunday, two security personnel were killed, while four civilians were wounded in a bomb blast and armed attacks in Baghdad.
• Unidentified gunmen targeted, today, a house in Jisr Diyala region, using a hand grenade. Two persons of the family in the house were wounded. ---

Iraq Thursday November 23, 2017:

• Iraqi forces have launched an offensive to clear the desert bordering Syria of so-called Islamic State (IS). Army, police and paramilitary units are advancing into areas of Salahuddin, Nineveh and Anbar provinces that form part of a region known as al-Jazira.
• The operation comes days after Iraqi forces recaptured Rawa, the last Iraqi town controlled by the jihadist group.
• Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has said he will announce "the final defeat" of IS once it is routed in the desert.
• Iraqi servicemen, backed by al-Hashd al-Shaabi and federal police, dislodged IS militants from 77 villages and retook control of an airport south of Hatra city, southwest of Mosul. The joint troops also destroyed nine armored vehicles that were used by IS militants.
• Earlier in the day, pro-government paramilitary troops have liberated several villages within operations that were launched to free al-Jazeera regions, located between three provinces of Nineveh, Salahuddin and Kirkuk.

Iraq Friday November 24, 2017:

• Iraqi paramilitary forces killed three Islamic State suicide bombers in southwest Kirkuk before perpetrating an attack on civilians. The militants, wearing explosive belts, were killed at al-Rashad area in Hawija, a former Islamic State bastion, southwest of Kirkuk.
• Iraq declared the end of Islamic State territorial influence last Friday with the recapture of its last haven in Anbar province.
• A government campaign, backed by the PMF and a U.S.-led coalition, recaptured all of the group’s major bastions in Iraq, but Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Tuesday final victory over the group would be declared once the militants are expelled from desert areas.

Iraq Saturday November 25, 2017:

• Four Iraqi Turkmen have been abducted in the eastern Diyala province.
• Gunmen stormed Ashtukani village, north of Baquba, late Friday and kidnapped a local Turkmen councilor, his two sons and a nephew at gunpoint. One of the abductees was injured after he resisted his abduction.
• Four Islamic State militants were killed in an airstrike carried out by Iraqi army in Nineveh province.
• Iraqi fighter jets targeted six locations of IS remnants at the boundaries of Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul.
• Al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), along with the army and Federal Police units, backed by the army jets, resumed the second day of operations to liberate the desert between Salahuddin, Anbar and Mosul, reaching to Iraqi-Syrian borders. Thursday the forces had cleared 55 villages in al-Jazirah.
• Twenty-one Islamic State members, including Arab and foreign militants, were killed, while twenty villages were liberated. Troops gained control on headquarters of the group’s leadership in the depth of the desert as well as a booby-trapping workshop.
• Earlier on the day, the mobilization forces’ media said IS members escaped their locations toward the desert depth of desert in Mosul, Salahuddin and Anbar.
• Iraqi forces thrust north from the Euphrates Valley into the desert, opening up a new front in the drive to flush out fugitive Islamic State group fighters.
• The troops and tribal militia pushed north from Al-Qaim and Rawa, two Euphrates Valley towns recaptured from IS earlier this month, in a pincer movement against retreating IS fighters.
• Troops and paramilitaries had advanced into the desert from the east and north on Thursday at the start of an offensive.

Iraq Sunday November 26, 2017:

• Security forces, in cooperation with military intelligence officers, arrested three IS terrorists while trying to infiltrate into Tal Afar district via desert routes bordering Syria. They were taken to a police station for interrogation.

Iraq Monday November 27, 2017:

• Military intelligence officers from the 39th brigade have found an underground IS arms depot at al- Bakr district in Hit city in Anbar. The arms warehouse included mortar shells and oil tanks.
• On Sunday policemen destroyed two arms depots that were used by IS militants at al-Karmah city and near the Japanese bridge in Anbar.
• An explosive device planted near a market at Jisr Diyala neighborhood, southeast of Baghdad, went off, leaving three people injured.
• On Sunday, seven people were killed and injured in a bomb blast south of Baghdad.
• PMF’s 2nd brigade, in cooperation with the Iraqi army’s 20th brigade, shot dead an IS fighter, identified as Abu Hafsa, at a village in al-Hawija district west of Kirkuk governorate.
• Abu Hafsa planned to attack several civilians at al-Hawija district.
• A bombing in southeast Baghdad has killed 11 people. The attack targeted a popular shopping district and left also 26 civilians wounded.
• Security services in Kirkuk arrested eight suspects over involvement in counterfeiting official seals in Kirkuk.
• An operation was launched to follow IS remnants who escaped toward north of Hawija, toward al-Zab region. “Two militants were killed, while eight others were arrested.

Iraq Tuesday November 28, 2017:
 

• The army’s 1st brigade destroyed an IS camp at a desert area near Ar-Rutbah town in Anbar. The camp included a booby-trapped vehicle, explosive charges and a laboratory for making bombs.
• On Monday, a woman was killed, while her husband and daughter were injured as a booby-trapped house exploded in Anbar province.
• A former member of the Sahwa (Awakening) Councils died when a bomb fitted beneath his vehicle exploded on his way out of his home in Hur Ragab south of the capital.
• Six IS militants launched an attack on security forces and al-Hashd al-Shaabi in the desert area in Hawija; their attack was foiled. Security forces killed all IS attackers.

Iraq Wednesday November 28, 2017:

• Theresa May has become the first British prime minister to visit Iraq since 2008, touring a military base near Baghdad and holding talks with her counterpart while promising to increase UK efforts to boost the fight against Islamic State.
• At Taji, May met some of the 100 or so UK military personnel stationed at the predominantly Iraqi base, where they have helped train local forces, including some of the Iraqi troops who took part in the recently completed battle for Mosul against Isis.
• She later flew to Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, before flying on to Saudi Arabia.
• The United States-led international coalition launched an airstrike on an Islamic State hideout in Anbar. The air raid left a number of IS militants dead, and destroyed a large cache of their weapons.
• The bodies of 54 people executed by Islamic State militants and killed in battles between the group and Iraqi forces were discovered in Mosul and Anbar.
• 14 dead bodies of people apparently killed in encounters between IS and security troops were found under the rubbles in Mahallat al-Maydan and Qleyat districts in the Old City, Mosul.
• In Hit, west of Anbar the bodies of 40 people executed by IS were found inside a mass grave in the city of Hit, west of Ramadi.
• The corpses, found during a security search at al-Gamiya neighborhood, belonged to civilians from Albu Nemr, a local clan.
• Army warplanes pounded an Islamic State hideout in Wadi Hawran, west of the province, killing 27 militants, including foreign nationals. A number of vehicles and a restroom belonging to the militants were also destroyed in the raid.

Iraq Thursday November 30, 2017:

• Iraqi troops have found 42 explosive charges and seven mortar shells south of the Iraqi capital.
• Also, the troops arrested a large number of outlaws, who are wanted on criminal and terror charges.
• A security operation carried out by Iraqi army and al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] to follow on Islamic State militants in Abbassi region, west of Kirkuk left six members killed.

Iraq Friday December 1, 2017:

• A bomb, placed near stores in al-Hamamiyat region, Taji district, went off leaving five persons wounded.
• On Friday, a bomb exploded near a market in al-Mada’in district, southeast of Baghdad, leaving one killed and seven others wounded. Another bomb, placed on the side of the road in Suwaib region, went off leaving three people injured.

Iraq Saturday December 2, 2017:

• Two mass graves containing relics of women and Children were found in Sinjar, in Nineveh province.
• Troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi [Popular Mobilization Forces] found a mass grave in Mujammaa al-Jazeerah region, south of Sinjar. Remains of 80 civilians were found inside. Most of them were Yazidis.
• Moreover, troops of the 53rd brigade discovered a mass grave in Qaboussi village, south of Sinjar. Remains of more than 20 Yazidi women and tens of children were found.
• Army jets targeted militants gathering at al-Husseiniyat region, near Wadi Hawran, north of Rutba, leaving seventeen members of foreign nationalities killed. The militants were planning to attack the nearby military units.
• Army jets launched an airstrike in al-Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, targeting a rest house of the Islamic State. The airstrike left the rest house completely destroyed and the five members inside were killed.
• Earlier a bomb, placed near stores in al-Hamamiyat region, Taji district, went off leaving five persons wounded.
• An Islamic State member was killed, while another committed suicide in a security operation in in eastern Diyala.
• An Islamic State leader and one of his companions were killed as clashes broke out between the senior leaders of the group at the region on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin.

 

Iraq Sunday December 3, 2017:

• A total of 117 Iraqi civilians were killed and another 264 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in November. The number of civilians killed in November (not including police) was 114, while the number of injured (not including police) was 264.
• Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate, with 201 civilian casualties (51 killed, 150 injured). Salahaddin Governorate followed, with 24 killed and 60 injured, and Kirkuk had 12 killed and 28 injured. UNAMI has not been able to obtain the civilian casualty figures from the Anbar Health Department for the month of November.
• In October 114 Iraqi civilians were killed, while 244 others were wounded as a result of terrorism, violence and armed conflicts.
• A kidnapped policeman was found shot dead north of Ramadi city. The police officer, who was kidnapped by an armed group while going out of his house 10 days ago, was found shot dead at Albu Aitha region north of Ramadi city.
• Two bodies of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were found after one day of their disappearance in northeast of Diyala. The victims were not on duty, they went fishing. The two bodies were found killed near the borders of Qurret Tabbah region.

Iraq Monday Decembr 4, 2017:

• Intelligence officers from the 18th brigade launched an attack on an IS hideaway at Wadi al-Kalal area east of Diyala. Fierce clashes erupted between the two sides, prompting an Islamic State militant to blow himself up; the troops killed another IS militant on site.
• The police in Diyala managed to kill a suicide attacker and arrest three others of foreign nationalities in an operation that took place in the depth of Hamreen Mountains.
• Eight Islamic State militants were killed in an airstrike by the U.S.-led Coalition, west of Ramadi in Anbar.
• The Coalition jets also bombarded a vehicle and militants gathering at the 75 Kilometers region, southwest of Rutba.

 

Iraq Tuesday December 5, 2017:

• The United States-led international coalition fighting Islamic State estimates that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria.
• A group of Islamic State armed militants attacked, in the evening, al-Khuzeifi village, in Riyad region, southwestern Kirkuk, leaving five civilians including the mayor of the village, killed.

Iraq Wednesday December 6, 2017:

• People in Mosul have found six Islamic State militants’ corpses buried under their houses. People who returned to clean up their houses in Mosul’s Old City found three corpses of Daesh (Islamic State) militants under debris.
• Thousands of Islamic State militants and Iraqi civilians were killed since Iraqi forces, backed by a U.S-led coalition, launched an offensive to clear IS-held regions, starting with Mosul in October 2016. Intelligence services in Diyala have killed the Islamic State’s commando chief in the province. An intelligence team managed to infiltrate the Hamreen Mountains area, ambushed the militant and killed him.
• Hamreen has been a hotspot for Islamic State militancy between Diyala and Salahuddin, with the area’s tough geography serving as a suitable haven for the group.
• A policeman was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk city. Unidentified gunmen driving an Opel car opened fire at Major Samer Abdel Nabi Jassam at a Kirkuk neighborhood.
• Earlier a police officer was seriously injured in a shooting incident west of Baghdad. The police officer from the Justice Ministry’s prisons protection sector was shot by unidentified gunmen in the area between Ghazaliya and Abu Ghraib neighborhoods west of Baghdad.
• The United States has about 5,200 troops in Iraq and 2,000 in Syria, and those numbers are trending down.
• There are fewer than 3,000 Islamic State group fighters clinging on in the remnants of its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
• Seven persons were killed and injured during the blast, which took place in a refugee camp, southeast of Mosul.
• The blast was explained in two ways: the first one is the presence of a booby-trapped vehicle and the second is a blast from a weapon stash inside the camp.
• Makhmur refugee camp hosts around 2700 families, estimated at 12,500 persons, who were displaced from Turkey. They are supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Iraq Thursday December 7, 2017:

• Troops of the Kirkuk Operations Command killed a militant and arrest another of those involved in a terrorist operation that targeted civilians in al-Khuzeifi village, east of Riyad town, west of Kirkuk.
• During the campaign, a rest house for the militants, at which they were hiding, was destroyed.

Iraq Friday December 8, 2017:

• Iraq announced their latest offensive against ISIS in its remaining holdout in the country’s western deserts. Iraqi forces and Hashd al-Shaabi militias launched a major drive to clear areas of the al-Jazeera region between Nineveh and Anbar.
• While ISIS no longer holds any urban centres in Iraq, Prime Haider al-Abadi has said he will not declare final liberation until the remote desert areas along the Iraq-Syria border are cleared of the militants.
• Russia, after announcing the defeat of ISIS across the border in Syria, has offered its assistance to the US-led global anti-ISIS coalition to defeat the militant group in Iraq.
• Five civilians were wounded in a bomb blast that exploded near a market in al-Nahrawan region, south of Baghdad.
• An army officer was killed, while two other soldiers were wounded as a booby-trapped house exploded in western Anbar. While security troops were inspecting regions in Rawa, a booby-trapped house in al-Mu’alimin district exploded, leaving a lieutenant general killed and two soldiers severely injured.
• Security services arrested for suspects while being on their way back to the liberated town of Annah, western Anbar. They were arrested during a security campaign to check identities of the suspects.
• Earlier, the troops uncovered three underground tunnels and a pickup truck belonging to the group south of the city of Haditha, Anbar. 15 explosive devices were detonated in the city of Ramadi.
• Seventeen IS militants were reportedly killed in an army airstrike near Wadi Hawran, north of Rutba in west of Anbar. ---

Iraq Saturday December 9, 2017:

• Iraq has formally declared its fight against Islamic State over after three years of heavy combat, although surviving militants are widely expected to launch a guerrilla war.
• Isis has been driven from all the territory it once held inside Iraq, the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, announced.
• At the peak of its military power, the extremist group controlled nearly a third of the country, including Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
• Fourteen persons were killed and injured as mortar missiles were fired against district inhabited by Turkmen in Salahuddin.
• Thirteen missiles were fired from behind the mountains in Tuz Khurmatu against of the districts of Turkmens in the region. A child was killed, while thirteen others were wounded. All the wounded are Turkmen civilians.
• Earlier five mortar missiles were shot without casualties reported.

Iraq Monday December 11, 2017:

• Unidentified gunmen hurled a bomb at a house in al-Shu’ala neighborhood in Baghdad, injuring two people.
• Earlier, Iraqi security forces seized 18 mortar shells and defused seven bombs in Baghdad.
• Several IS members found hiding inside a tunnel in al-Badiya island, near Hit city, are being besieged by security troops. Those militants previously killed a soldier as he knew about their hideout.
• Earlier, seven IS members were reportedly killed as joint troops of army’s seventh division and tribes carried out an operation in the desert, north of Baghdadi town, west of Anbar.

Iraq Tuesday December 12, 2017:

• About 22 people were killed and injured in a mortar attack on Tuz Khurmatu city east of Salahuddin province.
• Five mortar shells were fired from a Kurdish-controlled mountainous area towards Tuz Khurmatu city, leaving two people dead and 20 others injured. One of the mortar shells fell on a secondary school in the city; the attack caused damage to several buildings.
• Two Federal Police agents were wounded when an IED blast targeted their vehicle in Zummar, northwest of Mosul.
• The blast took place as troops were pulling out from some areas they took over in October during a standoff with Kurdistan Region’s Peshmerga forces.
• Security forces arrested the wives of three Islamic State leaders, including the terrorist group’s wali (governor) in Mosul. The three wives were arrested at a security checkpoint in Tal Afar district west of Mosul, while trying to move to another area using fake IDs.
• They were remanded into custody for interrogation on crimes committed by their husbands; the prosecutors will want to know where their husbands could be hiding.
• Intelligence services in Salahuddin, backed by Popular Mobilization Forces and Tribal Mobilization chased four IS members in an island at the center of the Tigris River. Forces engaged with the militants at the town of Shirqat, killing three, while the fourth blew himself up.
• In a separate incident a joint security force foiled a sneaking attempt by IS members inside Al-Bou Essia village, on the borders between Diyala and Salahuddin. The force chased the militants, some of whom escaped to Mutaibiha region, a former IS militancy hotbed.

Iraq Wednesday December 13, 2017:

• Three policemen were killed in a bomb blast in the northern city of Mosul as an improvised device exploded at a federal policy convoy in Hakna village, west of Mosul. Another policeman was seriously injured in the attack.
• Security forces cordoned off the area and launched a manhunt for the attackers.
• Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has valued he contribution of Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s forces (Peshmerga) in the country’s fight against Islamic State militants.
• Peshmerga is part of our forces, and we have greeted them as we did other troops,” Abadi said. “Peshmerga have fought alongside the Iraqi army and the rest of our troops to liberate Mosul, Abadi said.
• Unidentified gunmen hurled a bomb at a house owned by a brother of an IS militant at al-Askari (military) district south of Mosul, injuring three people.
• Acting upon intelligence information, security forces arrested six IS members at the 18 Kilo camp west of Ramadi during a clampdown to check IDs of the displaced families.
• Also five women were arrested at Tal Afar district in Mosul while trying to infiltrate into the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Iraq Thursday December 14, 2017:

• Troops of the 29th brigade and intelligence of Jazira Operations of the army, backed by tribes, carried out an operation that targeted al-Mahboubiya region in Hit Island, west of Ramadi, which left around 13 Islamic State militants killed and underground hideouts and tunnels destroyed. A soldier was killed and another wounded.
• Iraq has hanged 38 jihadist militants convicted of terrorism offences. They were all members of so-called Islamic State (IS). The death sentences were carried out in a prison in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

Iraq Friday December 15, 2017:

• Army jets destroyed two IS rest houses in al-Mayta region, located on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin, north of Baqubah. The shelling of the rest houses left 10 IS members killed.
• Security services in Diyala destroyed several IS rest houses over the past few months in sporadic regions across the province, especially near borders with Salahuddin.

Iraq Saturday December 16, 2017:

• Iraqi troops have killed a member of the Shia militias Saraya al-Salam (Peace Brigades) in Karbala city.
• A police patrol stormed into a house of a member of the brigades in al-Ghadeer district in Karbala. Armed clashes occurred between the patrol personnel and the member who refused to turn in himself, leaving him killed.
• On Friday two persons were killed and six others were wounded in a suicide attack that was launched against the brigades in al-Howeish region, northwest of Samarra.
• The number of Islamic State bodies found between Diyala and Salahuddin borders have reached 10.
• Security troops of Dijla Operations Command found five IS members inside a rest house in al-Mayta region, between Diyala and Salahuddin. Five other IS bodies were killed in airstrike in the same region.
• Security troops blowed up two booby-trapped houses at the boundaries of al-Mayta region.
• Earlier on the day, the Dijla Operations Command said joint troops of Dijla and Samarra operations as well as the PMFs and tribes, backed by army jets, launched a military operation to purge Mutaibija region, on borders between Diyala and Salahuddin provinces.
• Five Christians were wounded as the Shia-led paramilitary forces opened fire against demonstrators who were protesting against assaults by the troops in Nineveh.
• Tens of Christians gathered today at Bartala village, east of Mosul, in protest against frequent assaults by the PMFs against the Christians.

Iraq Sunday December 17, 2017:

• Forces from Tigris, Samarra and Salahuddin operations commands, backed by Iraqi Air Force and al-Hashd al-Shaabi fighters, have launched a wide-scale security campaign to pursuit terrorists and criminals at Mteibijah area near the border between the provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala.
• So far, 25 villages have been liberated, 15 bombs detonated and three tunnels of Islamic State destroyed; Iraqi warplanes destroyed two booby-trapped motorbikes and an Islamic State hideout that was used for making bombs.
• IS militants launched an attack on a patrol of Federal Police at al-Nahrawan area in western Mosul, killing three policemen. Police launched a manhunt for the assailants, who fled the scene after the shooting.
• Earlier in the day a bomber with an explosive belt was killed after one of the bombs he was carrying exploded while trying to blow himself up outside a house owned by the father of the former mayor of Mosul.

Iraq Tuesday December 19, 2017:

• Violence between security and anti-government protesters in Iraqi Kurdistan left at least five protesters dead and 80 injured during encounters in Ranya area as violent demonstrations enter a second day to demand payment of delayed salaries and enhanced services.
• Joint Iraqi troops carried out separate security campaigns, targeting Islamic State militants in eastern Diyala, killing two of them.
• Iraqi troops killed four Islamic State militants during security campaigns in Diyala.
• A Peshmerga force stormed a hideout of Islamic State remnants near Qarachogh Mountain in Makhmur town, south west of Erbil, killing eight IS militants.  The IS terrorists were hiding inside a cave in the mountain.
• Earlier in the day a fighting had erupted between Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and an IS group near Makhmour.
• Airstrikes left the Wali of Kirkuk, known as Abu Adam, killed in Wadi al-Shai region, 45 kilometers south of Kirkuk. The airstrike also left four companions of the leader killed.
• Iraqi troops killed six Islamic State militants in a security campaign launched in southeast of Mosul.

Iraq Friday December 22, 2017:

• Several Islamic State members were killed as Iraqi troops attacked a rest house in Anbar province. One of the military personnel hurled hand grenades against the militants. After the tunnel was destroyed, eight IS bodies were found, along with 43 bombs.
• Four paramilitary Sunni tribal fighters were killed and a fifth wounded in an attack by gunmen in Iraq's central province of Salahudin. The unidentified gunmen opened fire on the paramilitary fighters at an outpost near the main road, some 30 km south of Tikrit.

Iraq Saturday December 23, 2017:

• In operations related to Iraq, a total of 4,533 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war. Another 32,310 U.S. service personnel have been wounded in action.

Iraq Sunday December 24, 2017:

• An explosive charge went off near a popular market at al-Wehda district in southern Baghdad, leaving one person dead and five others injured.
• Two members of the terrorist Islamic State group were arrested at Kanaan area in central Diyala. The pair admitted belonging to Islamic State and adopting its ideology.
• Earlier in the day, a Diyala court sentenced two Islamic State militants to death over carrying out several terrorist operations.
• Four paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members were killed and six others injured in an overnight attack by Islamic State (IS) in Iraq's central province of Salahudin.
• The attack began with mortar barrage on Hashd Shaabi base near the town of Dour in east of the provincial capital Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad.
• Following the barrage, heavy fighting erupted when more than 30 IS militants riding ten vehicles attacked military base, sparking fierce clashes with the paramilitary fighters who defended their position during the night hours.
• Reinforcement troops arrived to the scene and forced the attackers to withdraw after leaving at least three bodies of their militants and two destroyed vehicles in the area.
• Five people including a police officer were killed in an ambush by Islamic State (IS) militants in the northern province of Kirkuk.
• The incident took place when IS militants set up a fake checkpoint on a road connecting the town of Ryadh and Hawijah in southwestern part of Kirkuk province, and intercepted a car carrying the five people, including Colonel Fadhel al-Sab'awi head of a police station, and shot them dead. The extremist militants fled the scene after killing the five people.

Iraq Monday December 25, 2017:

• Iraqi forces have killed six militants responsible for the assassination of a Kirkuk police official and his son. Police Chief Fadil Said al-Sabawi and his son were killed in an armed attack Sunday evening on the Kirkuk-Hawija road. Sabawi was the head of police in Shariyah village, 67km west of Kirkuk. Army units killed three ISIS militants who were involved in the attack. They were killed in clashes near the village of Saadiya.
• Another three militants were killed by Hashd al-Shaabi forces in Bashir, south of Kirkuk.
• The 88th brigade of al-Hashd al-Shaabi [popular Mobilization Forces], backed by police, carried out a wide-scale campaign in Hamreen mountains killing two IS militants and destroy their vehicles.

Iraq Wednesday December 27, 2017:

• The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) 88th brigade destroyed a training camp of Islamic State in Hamrin Mountains and killed three militants who were inside it. The troops also destroyed the militant group’s food store; the training camp was made up of over 20 hotbeds.
• On Tuesday, the pro-government troops destroyed two vehicles loaded with weapons for IS militants in Hamreen mountains. The troops also killed the militants who were on board the vehicles. Unidentified gunmen opened fire at two intelligence agents on a road leading to Shoraw neighborhood in Kirkuk, killing them immediately.
• Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb planted by Islamic State went off at a village south of Kirkuk, leaving two security men, including an officer, dead.
• Two other soldiers were wounded in clashes with Islamic State militants immediately after the bombing.
• Fewer than 1,000 Islamic State fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, the United States-led international coalition fighting the hardline Sunni militant group said, a third of the estimated figure only three weeks ago.
• The pro-government paramilitary troops have killed four Islamic State militants in Salahuddin province.
• While a patrol of al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) was setting up an ambush at al-Qawshaja region, south of Amerli, in Salahuddin, confrontations occurred with Islamic State militants. The troops killed four IS members and destroyed their vehicle; the rest run away.

Iraq Thursday December 28, 2017:

• IS members launched an attack against al-Awamer village, at the outskirts of Qurret Tabbah town, northeast of Diyala. The attack left a tribal figure from al-Jabour tribe killed.
• Security troops repulsed the attack and followed the militants to outside the village. ---

Iraq Friday December 29, 2017:

• A local leader of Islamic State (IS) group and two of the group's militant were killed in an airstrike in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• The Iraqi aircraft bombarded an IS hideout in Wadi Thlab area, some 90 km northeast of the provincial capital Baquab, destroying the hideout and killing the three militants.

Iraq Saturday December 30, 2017:

• Three people were wounded when a bomb blast hit an area south of Baghdad. The three people were injured when an IED placed near commercial stores in al-Bayya went off.

Iraq Sunday December 31, 2017:

• Relics of more than twenty security personnel were found in a mass grave in north of Mosul. The relics were recognized by the identity cards with them.
• Eleven Islamic State militants and an emir were killed by the Iraqi army in northeast of Diyala. Cooperation between the command with al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) resulted in locating an IS hideout in north of Muqdadiyah in Diyala. The hideout was shelled by army jets, leaving eleven militants killed.
• IS lost a new emir in Neft Khana basin, northeast of Baquba, in an operation by army jets.
• Joint troops eradicated three havens of IS in Wadi Thelab and Hawi al-Udhaim.
• Security checkpoint between al-Kabbah and Shikhi villages, northeast of Diyala, was attacked by IS snipers, who killed one of the security personnel there.
• Daesh gunmen in a car attacked a number of civilians in al-Farhaniya area, northwest of Balad district in Saladin province. He killed at least three people and injured 12 others. The gunmen escaped immediately after the attack.

Iraq Monday January 1, 2018:

• A bomb placed under a vehicle, driven by a member of the Tribal Mobilization Forces, exploded at noon, while passing at al-Radwaniyah region, west of Baghdad. The tribal fighter was badly wounded.
• The blast is the first in Baghdad in 2018.
• A local leader of Islamic State (IS) group and two of his aides were killed in an airstrike in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• The Iraqi aircraft bombarded an IS hideout near a village named Sansal, some 45 km northeast of the provincial capital Baquba, destroying the hideout and killing the three militants.
• At least 36,898 people were killed, and another 8,753 were wounded in Iraq during 2017.
• According to a report published by the Antiwar.com, at least 9,036 civilians were killed, and another 6,607 were wounded in Iraq last year.
• At least 1,696 security personnel were killed and 1,827 were wounded.

Iraq Tuesday January 2, 2018:

• Federal Police killed 15 Islamic State militants moving on the border between Iraq and Syria. The security operation was launched after tracking down the Islamic State cell for a few days; the troops seized medium arms and explosive belts.
• An explosive charge targeted an army patrol at Al Tarmia area north of Baghdad, leaving two servicemen injured. The explosion damages some military equipment.
• Three lawyers were killed in the northern Nineveh Province by attackers believed to have ties with the Islamic State (IS. The deadly assault took place on the main road linking the city of Mosul and the Hamam al-Alil district, south of Nineveh.
• Gunmen stopped the car of lawyer Mohamed Ahmad al-Khalidi, who was accompanied at the time by two other lawyers. The gunmen then opened fire on the three men, killing them instantly. The three victims had been working on local court cases related to terrorism in general, specifically crimes committed by IS members or sympathizers.

Iraq Wednesday January 3, 2018:

• A tribal fighter was killed, while two police personnel were wounded in confrontations with Islamic State members, northwest of Kirkuk. The armed confrontations occurred between the Tribal Mobilization Forces and IS members in Dibs town, northwest Kirkuk.
• Two terrorists were apprehended in Abu Gharib area west of Baghdad. The troops also seized and defused a large amount of explosive charges at al-Halabsa area in western Baghdad.
• Troops of Samarra Operations Command, composed of police, army and intelligence killed four suicide attackers in al-Kassarat region, southwest of Dujail.
• Security forces launched a combing operation at an island in the center of the Tigris River south of Mosul city, killing six Islamic State militants. The troops also seized several explosive belts and light weapons at the scene.
• Earlier, three Iraqi lawyers were shot dead by Islamic State militants on a road between Hamam al-Alil and Mosul cities south of Nineveh.

Iraq Thursday January 4, 2018:

• An Islamic State senior member was killed in an operation, launched northeast of Diyala province. ---

Iraq Friday January 5, 2018:

• A prominent ISIS executioner nicknamed White Beard has been captured by Iraqi forces, and now could himself face execution.
• Abu Omer was known for his appearances in ISIS execution videos and presided over the killings of many who ran afoul of the so-called “caliphate.” He was captured in Mosul last week.

Iraq Saturday January 6, 2018:

• At least three people were killed in bombing attacks targeting an anti-IS tribal leader in the eastern province of Diyala.
• A booby-trapped car detonated near the guest house of Sheikh Haitham al-Houm, the leader of al-Nedah tribe in al-Nedah area, some 60 km east of Diyala's provincial capital Baquba.
• Shortly after the car bombing, a suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt at the guesthouse. Al-Houm's wife and two of his relatives were killed.

Iraq Monday January 8, 2018:

• Several mortar rounds landed on the city of Tuz-Khurmato, some 90 km east of Tikrit, leaving 12 people wounded, including three women and two children, along with damaging several houses.
• The ethnically-mixed city of Tuz-Khurmato is mostly made up of Turkoman Shiite as well as sizable Kurdish and Sunni Arab population.

Iraq Tuesday January 9, 2018

• A policeman was killed and two others wounded in a roadside bomb attack in the central province of Salahudin.
• The attack occurred in Mteibijah area, some 100 km southeast of Tikrit, when a roadside bomb planted outside an abandoned house went off near a police patrol and destroyed one of its vehicles, leaving a policeman killed and two others injured.
• The attack occurred while the policemen have been conducting a search operation in the rugged area of Mteibijah, which has long been a redoubt of Islamic State (IS) militants despite repeated anti-IS military operations in the sprawling rugged areas.

Iraq Thursday January 11, 2018:

• The Head of Hit City Council Mohannad Mohamed and Member of Anbar Provincial Council Asmaa Osama Abdul Rahman have survived a bomb attack the targeted a football pitch in Anbar province.
• An explosive charge placed at the exit gate of a soccer field at al-Qadisiyyah district in Hit city, Anbar, went off following a football match, leaving six people injured.

Iraq Friday January 12, 2018:

• Islamic State (IS) militants killed three family members in their house in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Militants broke into the family house at al-Sa'diyah village in the west of the once IS stronghold in Hawijah area.
• The attackers slaughtered a woman and two of her sons with knives, and critically wounded a man, before they fled the scene.

Iraq Saturday January 13, 2018:

• A suicide bombing in Baghdad has killed eight and wounded at least 10 others. The blast struck a northern Baghdad neighborhood targeting a police checkpoint on a busy street; a number of policemen were among the wounded.

Iraq Monday January 15, 2018:

• Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a busy street market in central Baghdad, in back-to-back explosions that killed at least 38 people. The attackers struck during rush hour in the city’s Tayran Square, which is usually crowded with labourers seeking work. The twin explosions also wounded at least 105 people.

Iraq Wednesday January 17, 2018:

• Two policemen and a civilian were killed and eight other people injured in bomb and gunfire attacks, mainly targeting security forces, in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• In one of the attacks, two policemen were killed and seven others wounded when a roadside bomb went off near their patrol in Tubaj area. The police patrol was securing the newly-liberated villages from Islamic State (IS) militants in the areas north of Baquba.
• In a separate incident, unidentified gunmen shot dead a civilian at a village in northeast of Baquba, before they fled the scene.
• Also in the province, a policeman was wounded when unknown armed men opened fire on him at checkpoint outside a village in northeast of Baquba. ---

Iraq Friday January 19, 2018:

• Four people including an Islamic State (IS) militant were killed in a bomb and gunfire attack in the eastern province of Diyala.
• The deadliest attack occurred in the mountainous Himreen area when IS militants ambushed a group of paramilitary Sunni tribal fighters in the northern part of the province, leaving two paramilitary fighters and an IS militant killed. Reinforcement fighters of the paramilitary unit carried out an operation in the area and destroyed four IS hideouts.
• In another incident, unknown gunmen shot dead a government employee that works for the provincial health department when they broke into his family's orchard in Shirween area in the northeast of the provincial capital Baquba.

Iraq Saturday January 20, 2018:

• A court has sentenced a German woman to death after finding her guilty of belonging to the Islamic State (IS) group. She was sentenced for providing logistical support and taking part in attacks on Iraqi security forces.
• The woman, who has not been named but is said to be of Moroccan descent, was captured during the battle for Mosul last year. She travelled from Germany to Iraq to join IS with two daughters, who married members of the jihadist group.
• Another German female, teenager Linda Wenzel, was arrested in Mosul at the same time for belonging to IS.

Iraq Monday January 22, 2018:

• Eleven Islamic State (IS) militants were killed during an operation in Hawijah area in the western part of the Kirkuk province.
• A joint force from local police and paramilitary tribal fighters carried out a search campaign looking for IS militants in several villages in the rugged area of Zab in west of the town of Hawijah, some 230 km north of Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday January 25, 2018:

• Four Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in an airstrike and a bomb explosion in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• In one incident, a helicopter gunship pounded an IS hideout in Wadi-Thlab, destroying the hideout and killing the three militants inside.
• Separately, another IS militant was killed while trying to plant a roadside bomb at a main road in al-Zour area; the killed militant was wanted for involvement in previous bomb attacks.

Iraq Saturday January 27, 2018:

• Friendly fire from the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State killed 10 members of the Iraqi security forces and a local official in an air strike west of Baghdad.
• Iraqi forces had called in an air strike against a local police force in the town of al-Baghdadi, 170 km north-west of Baghdad, assuming that they were militants.
• The local police group hit by the strike had come to the area without coordinating with an Iraqi army detachment that had been sent there to arrest an Islamic State suspect. The strike was called in after the army detachment arrested the suspect and withdrew from the area.
• Eight people were killed and 20 others were wounded in an Iraq military operation and US airstrikes.
• A bodyguard, a civilian and six police officers were killed after Iraqi military and special police forces raided a house. The bodyguard and civilian died during the raid.

Iraq Sunday January 28, 2018:

• Udai Salih al-Obeidi, a member of the town council of al-Rashad, some 30 km south of Kirkuk, was killed when gunmen opened fire at him in al-Khadraa district in the city of Kirkuk.
• Four people were killed and nine others wounded in separate gunfire and bomb attacks in the Diyala and Salahudin provinces.
• In one of the attacks, a tribal leader Sheikh Turky al-Nadawi and his brother, a lawyer, were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their car east of Baquba. Sheikh al-Nadawi was a leader of a Sunni tribe known of fighting Islamic State (IS) in Nedah rural area east of Baquba.
• Also in Diyala, the provincial police carried out an operation to hunt down suspected IS militants in Mekheisa area near the town of Abu Saida. The operation destroyed an IS hideout and defused a roadside bomb, along with seizing four containers filled with explosives.
• In neighboring Salahudin province, a policeman was killed and nine others wounded when a booby-trapped house detonated on them while the police force was searching an IS hideout in Mteibijah area.
• Colonel Kareem al-Aboud, the commander of the provincial Special Forces, known as Rapid Response, was among the wounded by the blast.

Afghanistan Monday January 29, 2018:

• At least 11 soldiers have been killed and 16 others wounded in an attack on a military compound in Kabul.
• The fighting at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University was over after the attackers, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles, were subdued.
• There were five attackers, two of them detonated their suicide vests, two others were gunned down by security forces and one was arrested alive. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Afghanistan Tuesday January 30, 2018:

• Two U.S. drone strikes this week hit a building where dozens of Taliban were meeting in southeastern province of Ghazni, killing 26 insurgents and wounding 22.
• The drone assault was carried out during an offensive in Ghazni province's Andar district where the U.S. military came to the aid of Afghan security forces battling the Taliban.
• Among those killed was a senior commander, known only as Aqhani, who ran the insurgency in Ghazni province. The first U.S. drone strike hit the building, the second struck an hour later after more Taliban had gathered at the scene.

Iraq Wednesday January 31, 2018:

• A British soldier serving in Iraq has died. Captain Dean Sprouting of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland, was stationed at Al Asad Air Base. His death was not the result of enemy action. ---

Iraq Monday February 5, 2018:

• At least 17 militants were killed in airstrikes carried out by the Iraqi air force in the desert region of Iraq’s northern Nineveh's province; four pickup trucks destroyed, he said.
• The militants had crossed into Nineveh from Syria “with the aim of staging attacks and destabilizing the region”.

Iraq Friday February 9, 2018:

• The Kurdish Asayish police force last year executed dozens of Islamic State fighters in their custody and disposed of their bodies in a mass grave northwest of Mosul. The bodies belonged to militants who were killed fighting.
• In operations related to Iraq, a total of 4,534 members of the U.S. military have died. Another 32,310 U.S. service personnel have been wounded in action.

Iraq Monday February 19, 2018:

• The Islamic State group killed 27 members of a paramilitary group in an ambush. IS members disguised as soldiers attacked a Hashed al-Shaabi unit in the Hawija region about 300 kilometres north of Baghdad on Sunday.

Iraq Tuesday February 20, 2018:

• Russia has delivered 36 T-90 main battle tanks to Iraq. The tanks will be integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces' armored brigades.

Iraq Wednesday February 21, 2018:

• Twenty-seven members of Hashd al-Shaabi, Popular Mobilization Forces, were killed after clashes broke out late Sunday in Hawija, Kirkuk province.
• The PMF, a paramilitary group aligned with the Iraqi government in its battle against IS, said the attackers had been wearing Iraqi army fatigues and were manning a fake checkpoint.
• PMF soldiers were conducting security operations around Hawija at the time of the attack. Most of the bodies had been beheaded.

Iraq Saturday February 24, 2018:

• A large number of ISIS terrorists attacked a post of the oil police force near well 43 in the Khabbaz oilfield, killing two and wounding a third.

Iraq Tuesday February 27, 2018:

• Three civilians lost their lives in an attack carried out by Daesh terrorists west of Mosul. Daesh militants staged an attack on the outskirts of Karashabak village in Sinjar [located some 80 kilometers west of Mosul. More than 10 terrorists were involved in the attack.
• A high-ranking Daesh terrorist -who had been on Baghdad’s “most-wanted” list - had been captured in the Al-Nour district east of Mosul.

Iraq Wednesday February 28, 2018:

• During a military operation to hunt for Islamic State militants in Kirkuk, paramilitary troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi found a hideout that was used by the militant group at al-Aziziyah village in southern Kirkuk.
• The troops immediately stormed the hideout and killed eight Islamic State militants, including a suicide bomber adding that one of al-Hashd al-Shaabi fighters was killed in the clashes as well.

Iraq Sunday7 March 4, 2018:  

• A bomb placed by unknown people went off at the entrance of Tel Kaif town in northern Mosul leaving a cop killed and three others wounded.
• Earlier in the day, unknown gunmen opened fire at an officer from the Rapid Response Force’s 2nd brigade, leaving him dead. ---

Iraq Sunday March 11, 2018:

• Islamic State militants killed at least 10 people including a local Sunni tribal sheikh in two separate attacks in the northern provinces of Mosul and Kirkuk.
• In a village near the Sunni town of Shirqat, south of Mosul, Islamists stormed the house of a tribal sheikh who led a Sunni militia that had fought against the militants, killing him, his son and two guests.
• In the town of Nijana, south of the oil city of Kirkuk, five members of one family were killed by militants who set up a fake security checkpoint on a main road. The family were Shi'ite Turkmens -a father who is an Iraqi soldier, his pregnant wife, his two children and his brother-in-law.
• Five charred corpses were found inside the burned-out car, after the militants fled the scene. Another passer-by was also killed inside his car during the attack.
• Seven pro-government fighters were killed in a Daesh attack in northern Iraq. Another fighter was injured in the attack.
• Daesh militants attacked a house where the Sunni fighters were meeting in the town of Mukeshefah, southwest of Mosul. The attackers had seized the weapons of the victims before fleeing the scene.

Iraq Wednesday March 14, 2018:

• Troops of the Anbar Operations Command’s first brigade, in cooperation with federal police, paramilitary troops of al-Hashd al-Shaabi and the U.S.-led international coalition, carried out a military operation to hunt for Islamic State militants hiding in western desert areas.
• The troops killed seven IS militants and seized two of their vehicles, in addition to a large cache of explosives and weapons.
• Furthermore, the U.S.-led international coalition warplanes destroyed a tunnel that was used by IS militants in western Iraq.

Iraq Sunday March 25, 2018:

• Seven people were killed in attacks across Iraq including Baghdad.
• Four civilians of a family were killed in an armed attack against a security point in As Sa'diyah sub-district of Diyala's central district of Baqubah.
• Meanwhile a bomb attack targeting a patrol car of Hashd al-Shaabi in Al Mansouryah, northeast of Diyala province killed one, injured three others.
• In addition one person was killed in an attack against a military vehicle carrying Hashd al-Shaabi forces in Tikrit.
• One civilian was killed after being shot by an unknown attacker in the Bub Al-Sham region located in north Baghdad.

Iraq Monday April 2, 2018:

• A Baghdad court sentenced six Turkish women to death and a seventh to life in prison for membership of the Islamic State group. The women -all accompanied by small children in the court- had surrendered to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters having fled Tal Afar.
• The women told the court they had entered the country to join their husbands fighting for IS in the so-called "caliphate" which the group declared in 2014 in territory straddling Iraq and Syria.
• In February, Iraq condemned another 15 Turkish women to death on the same charge. Since January, a German woman and a woman from Turkey have also been handed the death penalty.
• A total of 20,000 people are being held in jail in Iraq for alleged membership of IS. Iraq has detained at least 560 women - as well as 600 children - identified as jihadis or relatives of suspected IS fighters.
• Separately, authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan said in early February they had detained some 4,000 suspected IS members, including foreigners. ---

Iraq Thursday April 5, 2018:

• All seven service members aboard a US helicopter that crashed in western Iraq were killed.
• The crash did not appear to be the result of enemy activity.

Iraq Saturday April 7, 2018:

• A suicide attack targeting a political party headquarters in western Iraq has killed four people and injured seven others, including a candidate in polls set for May.
• Two suicide bombers disguised as soldiers entered the Al-Hal Party headquarters. One of the attackers detonated his explosive belt while political leaders held a meeting at the campaign headquarters in the city of Hit.
• Three members of the security forces were killed and seven people, including candidate Zineb Abdel Hamid al-Hiti, were wounded. A municipal employee also died of injuries sustained in the attack.
• The second attacker detonated his belt shortly after the first but did not cause any casualties.

Iraq Monday April 9, 2018:

• At least six Daesh terrorists, including a top group leader, were killed in two separate security sweeps carried out in the northern Kirkuk province.
• Security forces killed senior Daesh leader Abu Walid al-Shishani in a remote area close to Kirkuk city. al-Shishani was a “close associate” of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and “the mastermind” behind a string of recent Daesh attacks in Kirkuk.
• Elsewhere, Iraqi forces killed five armed men in the village of Al-Hamra in the Rashad district during a raid on a suspected Daesh hideout.

Iraq Wednesday April 11, 2018:

• Two suicide bombers were killed as they were attempting to attack visitors of a Shiite shrine, north of Baghdad.
• The two attackers, wearing explosive belts, approached a house, where the ambush was to be.
• The intelligence department opened fire against the bombers and killed them.

Iraq Thursday April 12, 2018:

• Ten people were killed and 14 wounded when explosive devices went off at a funeral for Sunni Muslim tribal fighters in the town of Shirqat.
• The funerals were for three fighters who had died a day earlier from the Tribal Mobilization Forces, a network of Sunni militias that back the government in its fight against Islamic State militants.
• Militants planted explosive devices at the grave site and set them off during the funeral procession.
• Later news said that 25 people were killed and 18 wounded.

Iraq Sunday April 15, 2018:

• A car bomb attack targeted an election candidate in Kirkuk, killing one person and wounding 11. The blast in the multi-ethnic city came as war-torn Iraq gears up for legislative elections on May 12.

Iraq Monday April 16, 2018:

• Thirteen people, including 11 convicted on charges relating to "terrorism" were executed by Iraqi authorities.
• They included individuals responsible for car bombings, "killings of security forces personnel" and kidnappings.
• The executions are the first since the beginning of the year in Iraq, which according to rights group Amnesty International, put to death at least 111 people in 2017.

Iraq Tuesday April 17, 2018:

• A French woman and two other Russians were sentenced to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State group.
• Djamila Boutoutaou, a 29-year-old of Algerian origin left France with her husband. She said he forced her to join IS and live in their so-called "caliphate". Her husband was killed near Mosul and her son died in bombardment.
• Two Russian women, both holding children in their arms, were also sentenced to life in prison at the same hearing, while five from Azerbaijan were condemned to death along with a woman from Trinidad. ---

Iraq Sunday April 29, 2018:

• A civilian was wounded in a car bomb blast in northern Baghdad. An explosive charge fixed into a car went off at Bub al-Sham neighborhood in northern Baghdad, leaving the driver wounded.

Iraq Monday April 30, 2018:

• An Iraqi taxi driver was killed after a bomb exploded near popular markets in Diyala province. An explosive charge planted near busy street markets on the outskirts of al-Wajihiya district, in northeastern Diyala, went off.

Iraq Friday May 4, 2018:

• At least three Daesh terrorists were killed in airstrikes by the Iraqi army 40 kilometers east of Kirkuk.

Iraq Sunday May 6, 2018:

• A fisherman was arrested in Dhi Qar governorate as he was found implicated in killing two schoolgirls via his locally-made landmines.
• The Counter-Terrorism Service raided the fisherman’s house in al-Nasiriyah district in Dhi Qar and took him to a detention center as he will face charges of manufacturing landmines that killed two schoolgirls and injured another. The three students were on their way to school when the landmine exploded.
• The suspect is believed to be “manufacturing the landmines to use them in his business,” and not for terrorist attacks.

Iraq Tuesday May 15, 2017:

• Unidentified attackers in southern Iraq bombed a military site and religious establishment affiliated with Iraq’s Sadrist movement.
• The attackers bombed an office of the Saraya al-Salam [the Sadrist movement’s military wing] and an office of the Malek al-Ashtar [a Sadrist-linked religious organization] in the southern Maysan province.
• Both offices were empty at the time of the attacks. The twin attacks come days after Iraq’s Sairoon coalition, led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the Sadrist movement’s eponymous leader), swept parliamentary polls, according to initial election results.

Iraq Sunday May 20, 2018:

• Five Daesh militants were killed in an ambush in northern Kirkuk province. The militants were ambushed by Iraqi security forces while preparing to attack a village in the al-Rashad district, southwest of Kirkuk. Several other militants fled unscathed.

Iraq Tuesday May 22, 2018:

• Dozens of foreign ISIS brides are being sentenced to death as the country exacts its revenge after three years of jihadi occupation. Begging that they themselves are victims, the women were given 10 minutes to plead for their lives before judges decide their sentence.

Iraq Wednesday May 23, 2018:

• A suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded park in Iraq’s capital, killing at least seven people.
• Police and emergency workers intercepted the bomber as he entered the park in Shoala, a mainly Shiite district in northern Baghdad, but he managed to set off his bomb before being caught. At least 16 people were wounded in the attack.
  Iraq Thursday May 24, 2018:
• Three civilians and two Islamic State militants were killed in clashes between the IS and the security forces in the eastern province of Diyala.
• Wednesday, IS militants attacked the village of Um al-Hunttah near the town of Jalawlaa, 135 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sparking heavy clashes with the security forces. Three civilians were killed and four others wounded by the clashes.
• On Thursday morning, a joint force from the Iraqi army and paramilitary Hashd Shaabi fighters killed two IS militants and wounded four others during an operation outside the village of Um al-Hunttah.

Iraq Friday May 25, 2018:

• Two homemade bombs targeted the headquarters of the Iraqi Communist Party, which is part of an alliance with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that won Iraq's parliamentary election.
• The explosive devices were hurled into the garden of the building in Baghdad and did not cause any casualties.

Iraq Saturday May 26, 2018:

• Four Iraqi police officers were killed during an operation to hunt down remnants of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in the central province of Salahudin.
• A joint force from Iraqi army, provincial police and a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi brigade, backed by helicopter gunships, advanced from two directions to clear the rugged Mteibijah area near the border between the provinces of Salahudin and Diyala.
• During the operation, a huge roadside bomb explosion hit a police vehicle, killing Mohammed al-Jubouri, police chief of the town of Alam, some 15 km east of the provincial capital Tikrit, his deputy Salih Samir and two policemen.
• The operation in Mteibijah aimed to take control of the entire area, where hundreds of IS militants are hiding, in order to prevent their attacks against civilian and military targets in Salahudin and Diyala.

Iraq Sunday May 27, 2018:

• Two Shiite Iraqi men were savagely beheaded by Islamic Sate militants after being kidnapped for months ago.
• Ahmad Hasseb and his nephew, two Swedish nationals of Iraqi origins, visited Iraq last December for pilgrimage but went missing ever since before ISIS released a video last month featuring the two men being brutally executed.
• ISIS kidnapped the two men on the Kirkuk-Baghdad highway while heading to Baghdad International airport in order to return back to Sweden.
• Iraqi army forces dismantled four Daesh positions during a military operation in eastern Iraq. The operation came after a senior police officer was killed on Saturday in a roadside bomb blast in northern Tikrit.
• Meanwhile, Iraqi forces nabbed a Daesh militant in the northern city of Mosul. The militant, who was identified as Nezar Saleh, was responsible for a series of car-bomb attacks in Mosul. ---

Iraq Tuesday May 29, 2018:

• Two policemen, including a lieutenant, were injured in a bomb blast in Kirkuk. An explosive charge went off while a police patrol was passing by Gheida village in Daquq district, 35 km south of Kirkuk.

Iraq Saturday June 2, 2018:

• At least 12 civilians, all members of the same family, have been killed when the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group stormed a house in the northern province of Salahuddin.
• The militants launched the attack in al-Farhatiah town. Several women and children were among the victims.

Iraq Tuesday June 5, 2018:

• The Saraya Al-Salam brigade affiliated with Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said that its fighters killed 13 Islamic State militants during a military operation between Anbar and Salahuddin provinces.
• The operation comes one day after four fighters of Saraya Al-Salam were killed in clashes with Islamic State militants in Salahuddin province.

Iraq Wednesday June 6, 2018:

• Gunmen shot and killed two Iranian border guards, both sergeant majors, near the border with Iraq.
• At least 17 people have been killed and 80 wounded by explosions that destroyed a mosque in Baghdad. The blasts were the result of the detonation of an ammunition cache in the Shia Muslim district of Sadr City.
• The cache was inside the mosque that was used by supporters of the Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.

Iraq Friday June 8, 2018:

• At least one woman was killed and 14 people including women and children were wounded when a bomb exploded in the ethnically-mixed Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk.
• The improvised explosive device went off near a mosque in a crowded market area in the evening, a peak shopping time in the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
• A second explosive device went off near a coffee shop, injuring one man.
• A missile was also fired at a school but there were no casualties, a military statement said.

Saturday June 9, 2018:

• At least two people were killed and 20 were wounded after a bomb went off at a market in the Iraqi town of Khalis in Diyala province. Diyala is a mixed province where both Sunni Arabs and Shi'ite Arabs live. ---

Iraq Sunday June 17, 2018:

• Six Daesh terrorists were killed in an army airstrike carried out in Saladin province north of Baghdad. Joint Army/Hashd al-Shaabi forces located six Daesh militants and surveilled their hideout in Saladin’s southern Ishaqi sub-district. Iraqi warplanes later struck the position, destroying the hideout and killing everyone inside.
• The slain militants had been “planning to carry out attacks on military and civilian targets.

Iraq Monday June 18, 2018:

• Iraqi border guards killed two members of Islamic State (IS) group while attempting to infiltrate into Al-Qa’im district in Anbar coming from Syria.
• The troops intensified their security presence along the borderline with Syria starting from Ar-Rutbah town to Al-Qa’im district to face any terrorist threat by Islamic State.

Iraq Tuesday June 19, 2018:

• Three Iraqi civilians were abducted by suspected Daesh militants in the western Anbar province.  The three were kidnapped in the Rutba city, west of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province. 
• Government forces have launched a manhunt for the captors and to free the abductees. 

Iraq Friday June 22, 2018:

• An army officer and two soldiers were killed in a tunnel bomb explosion in the central province of Salahudin; two soldiers were wounded. The incident occurred during an operation by the joint army and police forces to clear areas from Islamic State (IS) militants in the west of Shirqat city.
• The troops destroyed several IS tunnels and hideouts during the operation, but one of the tunnels was apparently booby-trapped and detonated while the troops were searching it.
• Iraq has killed 45 jihadists from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), including senior members, in an air strike in eastern Syria. Iraqi F-16 fighter jets carried out a "successful strike targeting a meeting of Daesh (Isil) leaders in the Hajin region, in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor.
• Among those killed, it said, were a senior member of the jihadists' "ministry of war", his deputy, a local commander and a media official. Three houses linked by an underground tunnel were also destroyed.
• Hajin, about 50 kilometres from Iraq's border, is the largest populated hub still under IS control in Syria.

Iraq Monday June 25, 2018:

• Attackers have slit the throats of a mother and three sisters of an Iraqi election commission employee in their home. The employee himself, from the Turkmen minority in the town of Hamrin in ethnically mixed Diyala Province, was not at home at the time and was unharmed.
• Daesh threatened to attack Iraq’s May parliamentary election and anyone who assisted in it. At least one candidate was killed before the vote but the group did not claim responsibility for his killing.

Iraq Tuesday June 26, 2018:

• At least 11 Daesh terrorists were arrested in different parts of Iraq’s northern Nineveh province. 
• The security forces also capture Hussein Salim Yassin Mustafa, who had been in charge of recruitment for the terrorist group. 
• The Nineveh police rapid-reaction forces arrested seven other wanted Daesh members in a separate operation conducted in Mosul. 

Iraq Wednesday June 27, 2018:

• Iraqi security forces have found the dead bodies of eight men kidnapped by Islamic State; the bodies were mutilated and rigged with explosives.
• Islamic State militants had kidnapped members of Iraq's security forces and showed six of them in a video posted online on Saturday, threatening to kill them within three days if the government did not release female Sunni Arab prisoners.
• U.S.-led coalition warplanes struck tunnels dug by the Daesh terrorist group in the western Anbar province.  Four tunnels were destroyed in five coalition raids in Al-Salajiyya area.  The tunnels were being used as a hideout by Daesh militants. 

Iraq Thursday June 28, 2018:

• Iraq has executed at least 12 people convicted of terrorism offences. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the "immediate application" of death sentences against convicted terrorists.
• A day earlier the bodies of eight captives held by the Islamic State group (IS) were found on a road north of the capital Baghdad. At least several hundred people, including foreigners, are believed to be on death row for terrorism in Iraq.

Iraq Sunday Juky 1, 2018:

• One person was killed in Kirkuk when a suicide car bomb went off near a storage site housing ballot boxes from a May national election, two days before a manual recount was due to begin. Another 20 people were wounded in the explosion. The warehouse holding the ballot boxes was not damaged.
• Iraq’s parliamentary election in May was clouded by allegations of fraud. On Saturday a judges’ panel announced that a recount of votes mandated by the Iraqi parliament and the courts was to kick off on Tuesday, starting with Kirkuk. ---

Iraq Thursday July 5, 2018:

• Islamic State (IS) militants executed seven people in the eastern province of Diyala after kidnapping them.
• The incident took place when IS militants set up a fake checkpoint on the main road between Baghdad and the provincial capital Baquba and kidnapped seven passengers from a minibus. Hours later, the bodies of the kidnapped people were found at a nearby orchard riddled with bullets.

Iraq Saturday July 7, 2018:

• Two Filipina women were kidnapped on a road connecting Baghdad to oil city Kirkuk. The women were travelling with three other nationals of the Philippines on their way to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, when their car broke down.
• The two women exited the car after it broke down. Unknown men drove by in a yellow car and took them.
• At least eight members of the security forces were kidnapped and later killed by the ultra-hardline militants on that same highway last month.

Iraq Sunday July 8, 2018:

• Two women from the Philippines kidnapped in Iraq on Saturday have been freed. The women had been traveling with three compatriots on the road connecting Baghdad to oil city Kirkuk when their car broke down.
• Five security members were killed and three others wounded in an attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in the western province of Anbar.
• The incident occurred when IS militants attacked a joint patrol of Iraqi army and Sunni tribal fighters with rockets on a desert road west of the provincial capital Ramadi. The attack destroyed two military vehicles; the killed were three soldiers and two tribal fighters.

Iraq Monday July 9, 2018:

• Islamic State militants killed three government-backed militia fighters near Iraq’s biggest oil refinery in the northern city of Baiji.
• At least seven militants opened fire on the militia forces in Baiji. Four of the attackers were killed and at least two others were still at large. Some of the militants were identified as wanted Islamic State members.
• At least five other fighters from a government-affiliated militia known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were critically wounded.

Iraq Friday July 13, 2018:

• An airstrike in an area controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in eastern Syria has killed dozens of civilians. Warplanes of the U.S.-led coalition are responsible for the attack that killed 30 and wounded dozens.
• The airstrike hit an ice factory that dozens of families were using as a shelter near the village of Baghouz close to the Iraqi border in the Dier Ezzor province. At least 54 civilians were killed.
• ISIS still controls small pockets in eastern Syria.

Iraq Wednesday July 18, 2018:

• At least 10 people were injured in four bombings in Kirkuk.  Roadside bombs were planted by unknown persons. Three explosions occurred in Shorca while another on a Baghdad highway.

Iraq Tuesday July 24, 2018:

• Protests against corruption, unemployment, and a lack of basic services in southern cities have left at least 14 people dead since they began two weeks ago. Security forces have used tear gas, water cannons, and live fire to break up protests that have raged across southern Iraq for over two and a half weeks.
• There had been fatalities in Basra, Samawah, the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, and in the provinces of Diwaniyah and Babylon.
• Up to 275 protesters and 470 security personnel have been injured and more than 800 people have been arrested, but the majority were later released. ---

Iraq Wednesday July 25, 2018:

• Two Islamic State militants were killed while trying to infiltrate into Baiji district in Salahuddin.
• A security force from al-Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) killed the pair as they were trying to sneak into Baiji district via desert routes.

Iraq Sunday July 29, 2018:

• Nine Islamic State (IS) militants were killed during an operation in a mountainous area in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• A joint force from Iraqi army, police and paramilitary Hashd Shaabi fighters, backed by helicopter gunships, launched an operation to clear IS militants in Diyala's part of Himreen mountainous area. Three soldiers were also wounded during the operation.
• Iraqi security forces killed four Islamic state (IS) militants and captured a fifth during an operation in Iraq's central province of Salahudin.
• Acting on intelligence reports, the troops carried out a preemptive operation against an IS hideout in a desert area in west of the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. The troops opened fire on four IS militants and killed them all, three of them blown up after their explosive belts were detonated by the bullets, while another IS militant surrendered to the troops.

 
Iraq Saturday August 4, 2018:

• Three federal police officers were killed in a bomb explosion in Iraq’s northern Saladin province. A police vehicle struck a roadside bomb during a mopping-up operation in a desert area near Tikrit, the provincial capital of Saladin.
• More than 70 improvised bombs left by ISIL terrorist group have been defused in the area in the past two days. Security forces are continuing to hunt down ISIL militants and dismantle explosive devices in the area.

Iraq Thursday August 9, 2018:

• Four Iraqi soldiers were killed and five others injured in an attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in Salahudin province.
• Fierce clashes erupted late on Wednesday night when IS militants attacked an army outpost in the rugged area of Mteibijah near Salahudin's eastern provincial border with neighboring Diyala province.
• The soldiers in the outpost who repelled the attack killed and wounded some of the attackers, but their number is not known as the militants evacuated their casualties when they withdrew from the scene.
• A police conscript had been killed when three unidentified gunmen opened fire targeting his residence in al-Sahilya village west of Hit, in Iraq's Anbar governorate on 6 August.

Iraq Saturday August 11, 2018:

• An Islamic State cell killed five members of the same family at a checkpoint on the edge of their village north of Baghdad. The killings took place in Baiji district, around 200 kilometres north of the capital.
• A group of Daesh (ISIS) fighters came from the Hamrin Mountains, crossed the Tigris River and attacked the checkpoint at the entrance to the village of Albu Juwari, north of Baiji.
• All were members of a tribal militia operating under the umbrella of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary force that has fought the jihadists.

Iraq Tuesday August 14, 2018:

• Iraqi security forces repelled an attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in the eastern province of Diyala.
• The IS militants attacked a base of paramilitary tribal fighters in Mansouriyah area, some 110 km northeast of Baghdad, after a mortar barrage. The paramilitary fighters repelled the attack after a heavy clash with the attackers, who withdrew from the scene.
• In a separate incident, an Iraqi army helicopter gunship pounded an IS hideout near Albu Jum'a village in the western edge of Diyala, leaving an IS militant killed and two others wounded, Saadi said. ---

Iraq Sunday August 19, 2018:

• An American service member was killed and several others injured when their helicopter crashed. The aircraft was conducting a partnered counterterrorism mission in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.
• There are not indications the crash was caused by hostile fire.

Iraq Wednesday August 22, 2018:

•  Suicide attack on a former Iraqi lawmaker’s house killed at least six tribal militiamen and wounded seven others. A militant wearing a suicide vest blew himself up at Adnan al-Ganam’s house in the village of Asdira. The village is north of Tikrit, the capital of Iraq’s Salahuddin province.
• Those killed were members of the Tribal Mobilisation Forces, a network of Sunni militias that back the government in its fight against Islamic State said.

Iraq Saturday August 25, 2018:

• Abu Ahmed, a local IS leader was killed in a clash between two IS groups at the orchards of Mkheisa area in northeast of Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad. Ahmed was one of the aides of the former al-Qaida top leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2006.
• Ahmed, who is an Iraqi national, joined IS extremist militant group in 2014 and became one of the main group's leaders in Diyala province.
• Separately, a joint Iraqi army and police force killed two IS militants and destroyed their vehicle while they were trying to transfer fuel to the extremist militants in Himreen mountainous area in north of Diyala province.

Iraq Sunday August 26, 2018:

• Four Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in an ambush by paramilitary Hashd Shaabi fighters the central province of Salahudin. Hashd Shaabi fighters ambushed a group of IS militants who were trying to infiltrate from IS hotbed of Mteibijah to nearby villages.
• As the militants entered the ambush area, the troops opened heavy fire on them and killed four militants while the others fled the scene leaving their weapons and ammunition.
• Iraqi security forces repeatedly tried to retake control of Mteibijah, but the vast rugged land and mountains have made it difficult for them to dislodge the extremist militants from the region.

Iraq Wednesday August 29, 2018:

• At least eight people have been killed - five militiamen and three civilians- and 12 wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint near the Iraq-Syria border. A car rigged with explosives drove into the checkpoint in al-Qaim district, which was jointly manned by the Iraqi army and Shia militias.
• However, a security source said that the death toll was higher, saying 21 people were killed, 15 of those militiamen.
• The Criminal Court of Anbar Province, which includes al-Qaim, sentenced three men to death by hanging, finding them guilty of carrying out terror attacks in the province.

Iraq Thursday August 30, 2018:

• At least two policemen were killed and three wounded when a suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives at their checkpoint near Kirkuk.
• The attack took place in the town of Abbasi, around 65 km southwest of the oil city of Kirkuk. ---

Iraq Monday September 3, 2018:

• Israel has threatened to attack any Iranian military assets in Iraq as it has done in Syria, following reports Tehran has moved ballistic missiles closer to the Jewish state.
• Iran has transferred dozens of short-range ballistic missiles to Shia proxies in Iraq over the last few months.

Iraq Saturday September 8, 2018

• Rockets have struck the headquarters of two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region; at least 11 people have been killed and 50 others wounded.
• The missiles hit the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) in the town of Koya, 300km north of Baghdad.
• The PDKI blamed Iran for the attack and said that an adjacent refugee camp was also hit.

Iraq Wednesday September 12, 2018:

• At least six people were killed and 42 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car full of explosives at a restaurant on a highway near Tikrit.
• The attacker targeted the Qala’a restaurant which is usually frequented by security forces members and paramilitary fighters. Most of the casualties were a group of Iraqi tourists traveling on board of a bus that stopped by the restaurant.
• Extremists attacked a restaurant north of Bagdad with a car bomb killing five people and wounding more than 30. Suspected Daesh group members planted the bomb in a pickup left outside the restaurant by an important highway in Hajjaj near Tikrit city.
• Women and children were among those wounded. The restaurant had already been attacked by two suicide bombers in the spring.
• On Monday, security forces said they had killed 13 militants north of Tikrit.
• On Tuesday a suicide bomber killed a member of the security forces and injured four others in Anbar province. That attack came a day after militants killed four people in Khanaqin north-east of Baghdad, including two Kurdish fighters who were on leave.
• Daesh fighters kidnapped six people. Two were freed and four others were beheaded.

Iraq Tuesday September 18, 2018:

• Iraq will deploy troops along the border with Turkey in an effort to defend the frontier against any “violations” of its territory and airspace. The deployment of border guards is meant “to protect the country’s border areas and to prevent any violations.”
• The Foreign Ministry was instructed to “take the necessary measures to document the Turkish violations of Iraqi airspace to the United Nations.”
• During his last visit to Ankara the Iraqi Premier had expressed his intent to increase the presence of forces linked to the Interior Ministry along the border.

Iraq Friday September 21, 2018:

• A man described as being a deputy in Isis has been sentenced to death by a court in Iraq. Jihadist Ismail Alwan Salman al-Ithawi was extradited from Turkey where he was hunted down and caught.
• Ithawi has served Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who has been dubbed the ‘most wanted man on the planet’ with the US offering a $25 million reward for his capture.

Iraq Monday September 24, 2018:

• Six Islamic State militants were killed in an airstrike on the outskirts of Khanaqin district in Diyala. The airstrike was launched upon accurate intelligence reports.

Iraq Saturday October 6, 2018:

• Four civilians were killed in two separate attacks in northern Iraq.
• Suspected Daesh militants attacked the town of al-Asadiyah, south of Mosul, killing three people before fleeing the scene unscathed.
• Another civilian was killed when a vehicle hit a roadside bomb north of Tikrit in northern Iraq. Ten more people were injured in the blast.
• At least one person was killed and 14 wounded when a bus carrying workers at a small oil refinery in northern Iraq was blown up by an improvised explosive device.
• The bus was at the Siniya refinery, near Iraq's largest oil refinery of Baiji in the predominantly Sunni Salahuddin province, when it exploded.
• Separately, three civilians and a policeman were injured when a parked car exploded in a market area in Fallujah within the western, also Sunni, Anbar province. ---

Iraq Monday October 8, 2018:

• Four security personnel and two civilians were killed in two separate attacks in western and southern Iraq.
• A group of Daesh militants attacked military forces and allied Sunni militiamen in Hit district in the western Anbar province. Two soldiers and two fighters were killed in the attack.

Iraq Wednesday October 10, 2018:

• An army officer was killed and three soldiers were captured in western Iraq after militants attacked their vehicle.
• The attack took place in the town of Akaz, five kilometers from the Qaim district of Anbar province. The unit was delivering food to other troops.

Iraq Friday October 19, 2018:

• Unknown gunmen detonated an explosive device in front of a Sunni mosque in the southern suburb of Basra; no casualties were reported. The explosion took place in the town of Zubayr.

Iraq Tuesday October 23, 2018:

• At least six people have been killed and 30 others wounded in a car bomb blast south of Mosul. A vehicle packed with explosives was parked near a restaurant and a crowded market area in the northern Iraqi town of Qayyara.
• Iraq's top military commander in Mosul Major-General Najim al-Jabouri accused ISIL of carrying out the Qayyara attack.

Iraq Tuesday October 30, 2018:

• Three Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims were killed by a roadside bomb as they walked to a holy site near the northeastern Iraqi city of Khanaqin. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iraq Wednesday October 31, 2018:

• Iraq’s Shiite militias said that they had killed two Daesh commanders who ordered an attack last week on US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces along the Iraq-Syria border.

Iraq Friday November 2, 2018:

• Terrorists have killed three village chiefs in less than a week in Iraq’s north as the targeting of state representatives escalates.
• There, Daesh has attacked state infrastructure and government officials, especially targeting local administrative heads known as “mukhtars. The latest victim was mukhtar of the village of Mahmudiya near the town of Hawija. The town has long been a bastion of radical Sunni Muslim groups and was one of the last.

Saturday November 3, 2018:

• Two bombs have exploded in former strongholds of Daesh in central Iraq killing one person and wounding at least 16.
• The first blast occurred in the city of Fallujah west of Baghdad when a parked car exploded wounding two security men, three civilians and causing material damage.
• The second attack was a roadside bomb that targeted a bus carrying employees of the Al-Siniya oil refinery in the Beiji area in central Salahuddin province. The second blast killed one employee and wounded 11 others. The attack took place on the Beiji highway north of Baghdad.
• The number of bombings in Iraq have dropped sharply since Daesh suffered a major setback losing most of the lands it once controlled.

Iraq Sunday November 4, 2018:

• A series of four explosions hit Baghdad killing four people and injuring 20. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Iraq Tuesday November 6, 2018:

• More than 200 graves containing the corpses of thousands of victims have been discovered in areas formerly controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
• The report by the UN Human Rights Office and the UN Assistance Mission documented the existence of 202 mass grave sites in the northern and western Iraqi governorates of Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salah al-Din and Anbar.
• The dead include women, children, the elderly and disabled, as well as members of Iraq's armed forces and police.
• These deaths occurred in a systematic and widespread campaign of violence, "which may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide".
• It may be difficult to specify the exact number of people in the graves, with the smallest site in west Mosul believed to contain eight bodies while the biggest in the Khasfa sinkhole south of Mosul is believed to contain thousands of corpses.
• The UN has said previously that almost 33,000 civilians were killed by the group in Iraq, with more than 55,000 injured.

Iraq Monday November 12, 2018:

• Captain Misha'an Hazemawi and eight other people were killed when gunmen stormed Hazemawi's house near the Karma district, some 16km northeast of Falluja.
• The officer was a member of the Tribal Mobilisation Forces, a  network of Sunni militias that backed the government in its fight against Islamic State.
• A group of armed militants of the Islamic State (IS) killed 10 people, among them a Sunni militia commander working with Iraqi government forces, in an attack on a house east of Ramadi.
• The attack took place in the district of Dabtiya, near the town of Karma, about 60 km east of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi.

Iraq Saturday November 17, 2018:

• At least four Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in an airstrike in the eastern province of Diyala.
• Acting on intelligence reports, the Iraqi warplanes bombarded an IS hideout in Himreen mountainous area in northeast of the provincial capital Baquba, about 65 km northeast of Baghdad. The bombardment destroyed the hideout and killed four militants.
• The Iraqi forces are carrying continuing reconnaissance and surveillance in difference areas to track the extremist IS militants and destroy their locations.
• Despite repeated military operations in the Diyala province, remnants of IS militants are still hiding in some rugged areas near the border with Iran, and in the sprawling areas extending from the western part of the province to the Himreen mountain range.

Iraq Sunday November 18, 2018:

• A car bomb blast has killed at least five civilians and wounded 16 others in Tikrit. The car was parked near a restaurant in Tikrit, about 175km north of the capital, Baghdad. The blast set nearly a dozen vehicles on fire.
• Three of the dead were women. Tikrit's main hospital said it had received several patients wounded in the attack. There were no immediate claims for the attack.
• Nearly a dozen members of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group have been killed when Iraqi Air Force fighter jets carried out separate airstrikes against militant hideouts in the country's north-central province of Salahuddin.
• The military aircraft bombarded two terrorist hideouts and three of their trenches in Gan'ous village near the town of Shirqat, located 300 kilometers north of the capital Baghdad leaving 10 Daesh Takfiris dead.
• A prominent activist has been killed in southern Basra province amid protests against poor public utilities and corruption.
• Unidentified gunmen opened fire on Sheikh Wisam Ghazrawi outside his home in central Basra killing him on the spot.

Iraq Wednesday November 21, 2018:

• Iraq launched air strikes on Islamic State targets inside neighbouring Syria destroying two buildings housing 40 fighters and weapons.
• F-16 fighter jets destroyed a building where members of the ultra-hardline Sunni militant group were storing weapons, killing 10 of them. A second strike destroyed a building housing 30 Islamic State fighters.

Iraq Thursday November 29, 2018:

• A leader of Iraqi government-backed Hashd Shaabi brigade and his aide were killed in a bomb attack in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• Abu Jamal al-Janabi, a leader of Hashd Shaabi's 110 Brigade, was killed and four of his guards were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near their patrol in Himreen area in north of Diyala's provincial capital Baquba. One of the wounded guards died later in the hospital.
• Also in the province, Mizher al-Azawy, commander of Diyala Operations Command, a joint force from Iraqi army and Hashd Shaabi brigades, backed by aircraft, carried out a large-scale operation through three routes in Himreen mountainous area to hunt down Islamic State (IS) militants.

Iraq Saturday December 1, 2018:

• Troops of the Iraqi intelligence service arrested three Islamic State militants implicated in targeting civilians in Kirkuk province. The trio were wanted by Iraqi judiciary on terror charges.

Iraq Sunday December 9, 2018:

• Some 40 journalists were killed and 76 others were wounded in Iraq between 2015 and 2017, the Association for the Defence of Press Freedom in Iraq said.
• Most of the casualties fell during the 2017 military operation to liberate Mosul from Daesh, which occupied it in 2014.
• The majority of the 430 documented violations against freedom of the press in the country were carried out by government and security sides.
• Unknown armed groups continue to target journalists in Iraq. Iraq has become one of the most dangerous countries for media workers since the start of the American invasion in 2003. Estimates show that more than 455 journalists have been killed in the country since 2003. ---

Iraq Saturday December 22, 2018:

• Four Islamic State militants were killed in an airstrike that targeted their hotbed in Nineveh province.
• A force of the 20th division of the Nineveh Operations Command came under attack by a group of Islamic State militants during a security operation in Atshana Mountains in Nineveh. The assailants fled the scene after the attack into a tunnel at the Atshana Mountains. The U.S.-led international coalition later launched an airstrike targeting the tunnel, killing four Islamic State militants.

Iraq Tuesday December 25, 2018:

• A car bomb attack in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar has killed two people and wounded 11.
• The attack in the former Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) stronghold was claimed by the group through its news agency Amaq and Telegram messaging application on Tuesday. ISIL said three people were killed in the incident.

Iraq Saturday January 5, 2019:

• A terrorist wearing military uniforms was apprehended during his attempt to plant an explosive charge on a street, east of Samarra, in Salahuddin. The terrorist admitted to belonging to the terrorist Islamic State group.
• Iraqi authorities regularly announce the capture of Islamic State extremists in different parts in the country since the collapse of the group’s territorial influence in the country in December 2017.

Iraq Tuesday January 8, 2018:

• A car bomb killed two people and injured six in the Iraqi city of Tikrit. The blast - described by the military as a “terrorist attack” - occurred at a checkpoint at the northern entrance to Tikrit, 150 km north of Baghdad.
• The two dead were police officers. The wounded included two soldiers, a police officer and three civilians.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast in Tikrit, the hometown of late dictator Saddam Hussein which was controlled by Islamic State militants in 2014-15.

Iraq Friday January 11, 2019:

• Two people have been killed in an explosion in a city to which displaced families are being encouraged to return. 25 others were wounded in the blast in Al-Qaim.
• Al-Qaim, a city along the border with Syria in Iraq's western Anbar province, was one of the last cities liberated from Islamic State militants in 2017.
• The Iraqi army is closing camps for people displaced by war in Anbar and pressuring families to return to their communities before basic services have been restored. Nearly 40,000 Iraqis have returned to their communities in Al-Qaim and the surrounding district.

Iraq Sunday January 20, 2019:

• At least two paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members were killed and another wounded in a clash with Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• The clash erupted during an operation carried out by a Hashd Shaabi brigade to hunt down IS militants and destroy their hideouts in rugged areas in Diyala's provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad.
• Later in the day, the Hashd Shaabi carried out a search operation in the area and found different kinds of weapons and explosives left by the extremist IS group as they fled the scene.

Iraq Monday January 21, 2019:

• Iraqi forces, backed by U.S.-led international coalition, clashed with the Islamic State (IS) militants and carried out airstrikes in northern and western Iraq, destroying 10 IS hideouts and killing at least five extremist militants.
• The troops detonated more than 730 explosive devices in different areas, while Iraqi and coalition aircraft bombarded 10 IS hideouts as well as bombing a booby-trapped car.
• Separately, the IS militants attacked an Iraqi army patrol which was conducting a clearing operation near Attshana Mountain in west of the city of Mosul, the capital of Iraq's northern province of Nineveh. The Iraqi and coalition forces clashed with the attackers and carried out coordinated bombardments, destroying three tunnels used by the IS militants as hideouts and weapons caches.
• In western Iraq, Iraqi aircraft were attacked with small arms fire by the IS militants while conducting reconnaissance operation in Anbar province, pushing Iraqi forces in the area to fire back, leaving five of the extremist militants killed.

Iraq Wednesday January 23, 2019:

• A car bomb killed one soldier and injured at least two in a northern Iraqi town near the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
• A suicide bomber drove the rigged car into a security checkpoint at the entrance of the town of Riyadh, 40 kilometers southwest of Kirkuk.

Iraq Saturday January 26, 2019:

• Protesters have attacked a Turkish military camp in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, setting fire to watchtowers and standing on tanks.
• At least one person died in the attack where protesters stormed the military facility in Shiladze in Duhok province, some 70km north of Mosul. Kurdish security forces dispersed the protesters after a number of tents were set ablaze. The protesters were said to be demonstrating against recent Turkish air raids that killed four people.
• Turkey carries out regular air raids against fighters of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.
• Turkey's Defence Ministry wrote on Twitter: "An attack has occurred on one of the bases located in northern Iraq as a result of provocation by the PKK terrorist organisation. There was partial damage to vehicles and equipment during the attack.
• At least three Islamic State (IS) militants, including a group leader, were killed in an airstrike in Iraq's eastern province Diyala.
• Acting on intelligence reports, the Iraqi helicopter gunships pounded at dawn an IS hideout at Hawdh al-Waqf area, in the northeast of Diyala's provincial capital Baquba.
• Hawdh al-Waqf is an agricultural area that stretches near the town of Abu Saida in northeastern Baquba, about 65 km northeast of Baghdad. Five of the area's 17 villages have been the hotbed of IS militants who holed up in their farms and orchards.
• Islamic State militants launched an attack on a security checkpoint on the outskirt of the city of Khanaqin, injuring a number of security members.
• The attack took place at the Malak Sha checkpoint, also known as the Bakhtyari checkpoint, located at the southwestern entrance of Khanaqin in Diyala province.

Iraq Sunday January 27, 2010:

• At least four policemen were killed and 11 wounded by two roadside bombs that targeted police convoys in separate attacks in northern Iraq.
• Two died and eight were wounded when a bomb hit a bus carrying police on their way to work near the town of Shirqat.
• Another bomb struck a second group of officers that was heading to the location of the first explosion, killing two and wounding three. No organization claimed responsibility for the bombings.

Iraq Saturday February 2, 2019:

• Members of the Islamic State attacked an oil police checkpoint and a second location controlled by other Iraqi security forces late Saturday night, both in the province of Diyala.
• One member of an oil police unit died and another was injured; the incident occurred in the town of Buhriz, south of Baqouba.
• At the same time as the other confrontation, militants from the jihadi group also attacked security forces stationed northward in Khanaqeen. Iraqi troops were able to repel the second attack with no reported casualties.

Iraq Sunday February 3, 2019:

• Seven Iranian Shiite pilgrims traveling in central Iraq were wounded when their bus came under attack by unidentified gunmen.
• The bus carrying 10 pilgrims, seven of them Iranian, was some 50 kilometers north of the capital of Baghdad when gunmen opened fire.

Iraq Saturday February 9, 2019:

• Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb explosion in the western Anbar province. Two bomb disposal soldiers were defusing a device in the city of Hit, west of Ramadi, killing them on the spot. The device had been planted by "terrorists", but without specifying which group was responsible for the attack. 

Iraq Tuesday February 12, 2019:

• Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces killed two Islamic State members in Diyala province.
• PMF troops killed the pair in Hamreen mountains area while attempting to sneak into the province. There is an increase in IS activity in the desert areas between Salahuddin and Diyala provinces.
• Iraqi forces are still struggling against remnant IS havens in desert areas even after the government declared in late 2017 it had recaptured all of the extremist group’s strongholds.

Iraq Thursday February 14, 2019:

• Eight members of a militia linked to Iraq's powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were killed in a bomb blast north of Baghdad. The roadside bomb exploded when a convoy of Saraya al-Salam drove along a highway near Samarra: several people were also wounded in the attack.
• One of the eight militiamen killed was a commander who took part in anti-jihadist operations in Iraq.
• Samarra -a Sunni majority region- is home to a major Iraqi security headquarters and to an important Shiite shrine where a 2006 bombing touched off two years of sectarian bloodletting.
• The militia, led by Sadr whose political alliance triumphed in May 2018 parliamentary elections, has been deployed in the Samarra region since 2014 when the Islamic State group swept across Iraq.

Iraq February 17, 2019:

• Four Islamic State IS terrorists were killed in an airstrike in the eastern province of Diyala. The bombardment came as the security forces were conducting search operation to hunt down IS remnants in Hawdh al-Waqf agricultural area, which is a cluster of villages near Diyala River.
• Acting on intelligence reports, Iraqi helicopter gunships pounded an IS hideout near the town of Abu Saida, some 95 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Iraq Saturday February 23, 2019:

• Five fishermen have been killed in an attack by Islamic State group militants on a camp site near the Therthar Lake, 100 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. Three of the militiamen were wounded in a subsequent firefight.
• Hundreds of IS fighters have slipped into Iraq from Syria to link up with 5,000 to 7,000 militants already in the country. The militants are believed to be behind a string of ambushes, kidnappings and killings in the countryside.

 
Iraq Thursday February 28, 2019:

• At least one civilian was killed and 14 others injured when a car bomb exploded in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul. The bomb-laden car detonated on a main street in the city’s eastern side.
• The attack was believed to have been carried out by Daesh, and an extensive investigation has been launched in the area.

Wednesday March 6, 2019:

• Six fighters affiliated to the Popular Mobilisation Forces (Hashd AL-Shaabi) have been killed and 31 others have been wounded in an ambush by Daesh gunmen on the Mosul-Kirkuk road in northern Iraq. Daesh terrorists ambushed a group of Hashd fighters as they returned from patrol.

Iraq Thursday May 7, 2019:

• Militants ambushed a convoy of pro-government, Shi'ite Muslim paramilitary fighters in northern Iraq, killing at least seven of them and wounding 30.
• No group immediately claimed responsibility, but Islamic State militants often carry out such attacks. The Sunni group has switched to insurgent hit-and-run tactics after losing almost all the territory it once controlled.
• It has increased its attacks on the military, and such a high death toll especially among Shi'ite militias which were brought formally into the security forces last year is rare.
• Iraqi forces launched an operation pursuing "terrorist elements" who had attacked a group of fighters from the Popular Mobilisation Forces - the umbrella group of Shi'ite militias - near the town of Makhmour.

Iraq Friday March 8, 2019:

• A bomb blast in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed at least two people - a child and a member of the security forces - and wounded 10 others.
• The blast in Mosul’s Muthanna district wounded at least five security personnel, but the number of wounded was set to rise.
• It was the second explosion in just over a week to hit the city which was Islamic State’s de facto capital from 2014 to 2017. Such incidents are usually blamed on IS militants still at large in parts of northern Iraq. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Iraq Sunday March 17, 2019:

• United Nations forensic teams have begun exhuming bodies from mass graves around the northern town of Sinjar, home to the minority Yazidi group.
• It is estimated that more than 3,000 Yazidis were killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group when they took control of the area five years ago. The UN says their treatment at the hands of ISIL amounts to genocide.

Iraq Friday March 29, 2019:

• A total of five Islamic State (IS) militants, including a group leader, were killed in an operation by the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units in Iraq's central province of Salahudin. The operation was carried out against an IS position on the edges of al-Mu'tasim area, some 60 km south of the provincial capital Tikrit.
• The killed IS leader, identified as Mohammed Mukhtar, is responsible for coordinating IS activities in Salahudin and northern Baghdad. The other four killed IS militants were Mukhtar's associates, and three members of Saraya al-Salam were wounded in the operation. Mukhtar was behind many terrorist attacks against civilians, government officials and security forces in the area.
• Meanwhile, the international coalition aircraft conducted an airstrike on an IS position in the desert of Iraq's western province of Anbar, killing all militants inside.

Iraq Sunday April 8, 2019:

• Iraqi forces dismantled three Islamic State (IS) sleeper cells and arrested a number of IS militants, including a prominent group leader, in the eastern province of Diyala.
• The troops arrested a number of the extremist militants, including a prominent group leader said to be "the head of the snake" in the province. The security forces believe that the prominent leader is a close aide to IS top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• Also in the province, a force from the intelligence service ambushed and arrested three IS leaders at a rural area near the village of Mkheisa in northeast of the provincial capital Baquba. The three leaders are "very dangerous and very important for the structure of the terrorist organization of the province.

Iraq Wednesday April 11, 2019:

• At least five people were killed in attacks in Iraq's capital and Kirkuk province.
• In Baghdad’s Sadr City district, unidentified attackers opened fire from a car, killing three people.
• Meanwhile, a bomb attack in Mullah Abdullah town in northern Kirkuk province left two dead and another injured. ---

Iraq Saturday April 20, 2019:

• An American service member died in a "non-combat incident" in Ninawa Province.

Iraq Friday April 26, 2019:

• Iraq's Joint Operations Command will open "an investigation commission" after two Federal Police were wounded and one killed while the US-led international anti-ISIS coalition conducted activities around Kirkuk province.
• One Iraqi Federal Police member was killed and two were wounded by Coalition Forces supporting Iraqi Security Force counter-Daesh operations near al-Dib. The mountainous Hamrin area is located about 160 kilometers north of Baghdad and 70 kilometers south of Kirkuk.

Iraq Monday April 29, 2019:

• Five people have died after a deadly dust storm hit southern Iraq. More than 60 people were also injured after the storm swept through several cities.
• Victims are said to have suffered from injuries including suffocation and wounds caused by falling debris.

Iraq Monday May 6, 2019:

• Gunmen killed three Iraqi policemen during an attack on a guard post near the city of Kirkuk. Another federal police officer was wounded in the assault in the town of Altun Kupri, on the boundary between the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Erbil.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamic State militants are active in the area; it was likely they were involved.

Iraq Friday May 10, 2019:

• The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Baghdad market the previous day that killed 8 people.
• The extremist group released a statement saying the bomber detonated his explosives vest at the Jamila marketplace in Baghdad's sprawling Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday evening. Fifteen people were wounded.

Iraq Wednesday May 15, 2019:

• The US state department has ordered the departure of "non-emergency employees" from Iraq, amid rising tensions between the US and Iraq's neighbour Iran.
• Staff at the embassy in Baghdad and the consulate in Irbil must leave as soon as possible on commercial transport.
• Meanwhile, the German and Dutch armies have suspended training Iraqi soldiers.
• The US military said on Tuesday that the threat level in the Middle East had been raised in response to intelligence about Iran-backed forces in the region.
• Germany's Bundeswehr has halted its military training exercises in Iraq amid heightened tensions in the region. The US has put troops on high alert and removed nonemergency diplomatic staff from Baghdad and Erbil.

Iraq Friday May 17, 2019:

• Two separate bombings in the disputed district of Khanaqin, located in the Iraqi province of Diyala, resulted in the deaths of two civilians. This brings the week's death toll in the area from attacks suspected to have been carried out by Islamic State sleeper cells to four.
• The first incident occurring in the village of Mekhas killed a teacher. The second attack took place in Yousif Bag and caused the death of an elderly resident of the village.

Iraq Sunday May 19, 2019:

• A rocket hit the fortified area of Baghdad which houses the US embassy adding to jitters after American diplomats were evacuated from Iraq this week because of rising tensions between the US and Iran.
• A “rocket fell in the middle of the Green Zone” — the area of central Baghdad which holds foreign embassies and government buildings. The Katyusha rocket, a notoriously inaccurate explosive, caused no casualties.
• The US state department later confirmed the incident, saying there had been no claim of responsibility for the “low-grade rocket”.

Iraq Monday May 20, 2019:

• A UN team investigating the massacre of Iraq's Yazidi minority and other atrocities has excavated 12 mass graves and is collecting witness accounts that could be used in Iraqi and other national courts.
• In the report sent to the council, the head of the team, British lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, said efforts were focused on three initial investigations: the 2014 massacre of Yazidis, crimes committed in Mosul from 2014 to 2016, and the mass killing of Iraqi military recruits in the Tikrit area in June 2014.
• The team began work in October, with the first mass grave containing IS victims unearthed in March and April in the Murad's home village of Kojo in Sinjar in northwest Iraq.
• Ahmad Khan said "progress had been slower than hoped" in the investigation and stressed the need to establish "clear and effective channels" to use the evidence in Iraqi proceedings.

Iraq Tuesday May 21, 2019:#

• Iraqi forces killed 11 Daesh militants in a security operation in northern Iraq.
• The operation in the Saladin province resulted in the destruction of three tunnels and the seizure of two-car bombs and 13 explosive belts.
• The operation aimed at "imposing security and stability" in the area

Iraq Thursday May 23, 2019:

• A parked vehicle exploded in Iraq's western province of Anbar, killing two people and wounding two others the latest attack inside what was once Daesh's last stronghold in the country.
• The explosion occurred in Anbar's Qaim district, 300 kilometers west of Baghdad. Iraqi forces retook the area, which lies on the border with Syria, in December 2017, after which they declared final victory over the group.
• The vehicle was parked inside a car wash. The attack targeted members of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, a group of Iran-backed Shi'ite armed factions who helped defeat the Sunni militants, and successfully killed one, wounding two others. A car wash worker was also killed.

Iraq Thursday May 30, 2019:

• Several people have been killed and more than a dozen others wounded in a series of blasts that struck the city of Kirkuk. At least six improvised explosive devices went off in the northern city and two more were defused by security forces. Three people were killed and 16 others were wounded.
• The blasts killed at least four people and wounded 23, while medical sources in Kirkuk's general hospital told Reuters news agency that at least five people were killed and 18 wounded.
• The explosions struck in the centre of Kirkuk, in a commercial area that has several shopping centres, cafes and restaurants, sending people fleeing in panic.

Iraq Saturday June 1, 2019:

• Iraqi forces have found the bodies of nine civilians abducted and killed by Islamic State militants in an area near the border with Syria.
• The nine were seized months ago while trying to collect truffles in the desert of Iraq’s western Anbar province. Their bodies were found by guards and handed over to their families- .

Iraq Tuesday June 4, 2019:

• Four security forces members were killed and four wounded in shooting in the town of Tarmiya, 25 km north of Baghdad. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.
• Three Islamic State (IS) militants, including a would-be suicide bomber, were killed in two separate incidents in Iraq's western province of Anbar.
• The IS would-be suicide bomber was killed by a force from the Iraqi army while riding a motorcycle laden with explosives. He attempted to target a position of security forces near the town of al-Qaim on the border with Syria.
• In a separate incident, two IS militants attacked security forces in an area south of the city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad and were both killed.
• The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017. IS remnants, however, have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas as safe havens, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

Iraq Monday June 17, 2019:

• Three Katyusha missiles have hit Taji Military Base, north of Baghdad, where US forces are stationed, the second such attack on a military base in four days. Camp Taji, about 85 kilometers to the north of the capital Baghdad.
• Last Friday, three mortars hit Balad Air Base, which houses F-16 airplanes Iraq has purchased from the US, leading to fire in the dry brush around the camp.
• On May 19, Katyusha rocket struck Iraq’s Green Zone, missing the US embassy by just a mile.
• The assailants of the attacks are unknown, but many Iran-affiliated Iraqi Shiite militias are currently active in Iraq and are thought to be responsible.

Iraq Wednesday June 19, 2019:

• Three people have been injured after a rocket hit an Iraqi compound housing several international oil companies, including the US multinational ExxonMobil. A short-range Katyusha rocket struck the Burjesia residential and operations headquarters west of Basra. The wounded are all Iraqi nationals.
• The incident follows two separate attacks in as many days on bases that house US military personnel in Iraq and a series of attacks on oil infrastructure and tankers in the Middle East, which have raised tensions between the US and Iran.
• The US evacuated non-essential diplomatic staff from its Baghdad embassy last month and closed the country’s Basra consulate in September, citing unspecified threats from Iran against US interests in Iraq, where Tehran supports some Shia militias.
• ExxonMobil staff, previously ordered to leave after the departure of US diplomats, had begun to return to Basra when the rocket attack occurred. The company immediately began evacuating 21 foreign nationals to Dubai.

Iraq Friday June 21, 2019:

• Several people have been killed in a blast at a Shia Muslim mosque Baghdad. The explosion hit the Imam Mahdi al-Muntadhar mosque in Baladiyat neighbourhood during Friday prayers, near the massive and densely-populated district of Sadr City.
• The attacker was wearing an explosive-laden belt targetting the mosque. 10 people were killed and dozens wounded.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility. ---

Iraq Friday June 21, 2019:

• Two paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members, including the leader of a regiment, were killed and two others wounded in a bomb explosion in the province of Salahudin.
• The incident took place when a roadside bomb struck a convoy of vehicles belonging to Hashd Shaabi's 52nd Regiment, while the unit members were conducting a search operation on a main road in east of the provincial capital Tikrit, located some 170 km north of Baghdad.
• The blast destroyed one of the vehicles and killed Omer Edris, leader of Hashd Shaabi regiment, and another member of the paramilitary unit, in addition to wounding another two members.
• Previously, hundreds of the Islamic State (IS) militants fled their former strongholds in the cities of Salahudin province, including Tikrit, after the Iraqi forces cleared these areas during major anti-IS offensives.

Iraq Thursday June 27, 2019:

• One person was killed and at least 24 wounded when bombs hit two crowded passenger buses in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The two devices exploded as the buses drove through the city centre.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Iraq’s military called the blasts an “act of terrorism”.
• Two civilians were killed and five others wounded when Islamic State (IS) militants attacked a village in the northern province of Nineveh. A group of IS militants attacked the house of a local tribal leader in al-Khazrajiyah village in al-Baaj area near the border with Syria.
• The extremist militants attacked the house of the tribe leader with a rocket propelled grenade (RPG-7), before a fierce clash erupted between the attackers and the villagers.
• The attack resulted in the killing of the wife and the daughter of the tribal leader, and the wounding of the tribe leader himself and four of his family members.

Iraq Saturday July 6, 2019:

• Three roadside bombs hit a convoy of a foreign logistics company near a border town in Iraq's southern city of Basra.
• The incident took place about two km away from the town of Safwan, when three roadside bombs, planted with 100 meters from each other, detonated near the convey of a logistics company transporting food for diplomatic missions.
• A non-Iraqi Arab driver of a truck was slightly wounded, while some other vehicles were also slightly damaged in the blasts.

Iraq Sunday July 7, 2019:

• A U.S.-led coalition airstrike killed three Islamic State (IS) militants in the northern province of Kirkuk while a civilian was killed and two others wounded in attacks in the eastern province of Diyala.
• The airstrike resulted in the destruction of the hideout, the statement added.
• Separately in Diyala Province, a civilian was killed when IS militants opened fire on the residents of the village of Mkheisa, some 95 km northeast of Baghdad.
• Also in the province, two civilians were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion on the edges of the city of Jalawla, some 135 km northeast of Baghdad; the roadside bomb was apparently planted by IS militants.

Iraq Wednesday July 17, 2019:

• Two explosions rocked Jalawla town in the Diyala province, injuring seven people. Two of the wounded persons are Iraqi soldiers.
• The blasts targeted the Tajnid neighbourhood and were soon followed by a mortar shell attack.

Iraq Sunday July 21, 2019:

• Seven Islamic State (IS) militants have been killed in a security operation and airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition in the northern province of Nineveh.
• A joint force from the Iraqi army and paramilitary tribal fighters conducted a search operation in the south of the provincial capital Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, killing four IS militants and destroying four of their hideouts and two explosive vests.
• In another operation west of Mosul near the border with Syria, the U.S.-led coalition aircraft carried out airstrikes against IS positions in al-Baaj area, killing three IS militants and destroying 19 hideouts, while the troops on the ground seized a vehicle and two motorcycles used by IS militants.

Iraq Friday July 26, 2019:

• Three civilians were killed and 10 others wounded in two separate bombings in the provinces of Kirkuk and Salahudin.
• In the northern province of Kirkuk, a civilian vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing while cruising on a highway in an area some 25 km south of Krikuk city. Two civilians were killed in the explosion while seven others wounded.
• Separately in the central province of Salahudin, a civilian was killed and three others wounded when an explosive device went off in an amusement park in Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad. The explosion was caused by a bomb left in the war to dislodge the extremist IS militants from the areas they occupied.

Iraq Thursday August 1, 2019:

• At least seven members of Iraq’s security forces were killed and 16 wounded overnight in two separate attacks by Islamic State militants.
• Three members of the paramilitary Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) and two policemen were killed in an attack in the Sayed Gharib area north of Salahuddin province’s Dujail district, 50 km north of Baghdad, late on Wednesday.
• Separately, a mortar attack against Kurdish forces in Kola Jawi village of Sulaimaniya province’s Kalar district at midnight killed two members of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government’s Asayish internal security forces and wounded 14.

Iraq Monday August 5, 2019:

• Iraq’s intelligence directorate said they had “dismantled” an alleged terrorist cell in Anbar province that was plotting attacks on the upcoming Eid al-Adha holidays in the same area.
• The directorate, which is part of the defence ministry, said in a collaborative effort between different security forces detachments, they “penetrated and dismantled a terrorist cell and arrested the five masterminds in the Jazeera area of ​​Ramadi in Anbar.”
• The group was “planning to carry out terrorist operations in the province on the occasion of Eid al-Adha.”
• All cell members were wanted individuals in accordance with the provisions of article 4 of Iraq’s anti-terrorism law.

Iraq Tuesday August 6, 2019:

• Two Iraqi security members were killed and five others wounded in two incidents in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and the eastern Diyala province.
• A roadside bomb detonated on an Iraqi army's patrol while patrolling a highway in al-Radwaniyah area in southwestern Baghdad. The explosion destroyed a military vehicle, killing army officer and wounding four soldiers aboard.
• In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi member was killed and another wounded when a roadside bomb, apparently planted by Islamic State (IS) militants, detonated near their vehicle near the town of Khanaqin, some 160 km northeast of Baghdad. ---

Iraq Saturday August 10, 2019:

• A U.S. service member has died during a combat mission with Iraqi security forces. The service member died in the northern Nineveh province.
• The service member was advising and accompanying the Iraqi Security Forces on a planned operation. Iraqi forces have recently launched new operations in the country's north to weed out remnants of Islamic State group.

Iraq Monday August 12, 2019:

• A large explosion at an ammunition depot southwest of the capital, Baghdad, has injured 13 people, most lightly
• It was not immediately clear what caused the blast at the al-Saqr military base.

Iraq Wednesday August 14, 2019:

• At least one person was killed and 29 others wounded in a blast at a military base in Iraq's capital Baghdad.
• The blast took place close to a neighbourhood where families had gathered to celebrate the Eid al-Adha festival.
• A gas pipeline exploded near Basra and halted supplies to a local power station, but did not affect gas or oil output.
• A technical fault due to scorching summer temperatures appeared to have caused the blast in al-Haritha 10 km north of Basra.
• Gas running to the station was cut off while local emergency services put out the ensuing fire. Iraq's electricity suffers longer cuts than usual during its hot summers because of increased strain on its grid.
• Most oil exports from Iraq, OPEC's second-largest producer, come from Basra. Iraq currently produces well below its output capacity of nearly 5 million barrels per day.

Iraq Friday August 16, 2019:

• Two Islamic State (IS) militants were killed by an airstrike and two of the extremist group's financiers were captured in the eastern Diyala province.
• An Iraqi aircraft carried out an airstrike on an IS hideout near Mteibijah area near Diyala's provincial border with Salahudin province.
• Previously, the Iraqi security forces tried to retake control of Mteibijah, but the vast rugged land and mountains have made it difficult for them to dislodge the extremist militants from the region.
• Also in the province, security forces acted on intelligence reports and conducted an operation in Himreen Mountain range which stretches in the northern part of Diyala province and arrested two of IS groups financiers.

Iraq Saturday August 17, 2019:

• Two Islamic State (IS) militants were killed by an airstrike and two of the extremist group''s financiers were captured in the eastern Diyala province.
• Previously, the Iraqi security forces tried to retake control of Mteibijah, but the vast rugged land and mountains have made it difficult for them to dislodge the extremist militants from the region.
• Also in the province, security forces acted on intelligence reports and conducted an operation in Himreen Mountain range which stretches in the northern part of Diyala province and arrested two of IS groups financiers.
• Despite repeated military operations in Diyala, IS remnants were still hiding in rugged areas near the border with Iran, as well as the sprawling areas extending from the western part of Diyala to Himreen mountainous area.

Iraq Tuesday August 20, 2019:

• A “materiel stockpile” belonging to an Iran-linked militia exploded at a northern Iraqi air base. The explosion occurred at a Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Units) headquarters adjacent to Iraq’s Balad Air Base in Salahuddin province.
• The incident was the fourth similar explosion at facilities belonging to Iran-backed militias in Iraq in the past two months.
• Explosions shook southern Baghdad last week when a Hashd al-Shaabi munitions depot detonated inside Camp Falcon (Saqr), an Iraqi Federal Police facility, leading Iraqi lawmakers to demand that munitions stockpiles be removed from urban areas. The warehouse stored short-range and Katyusha rockets.
• Iraqi officials initially blamed poor ordnance storage techniques and soaring temperatures in the capital for the detonation, which killed one person and wounded 29 others.
• Several blasts hit a position held by Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitaries next to Balad air base north of Baghdad.
• It was one of a series of explosions in recent weeks at weapons depots, bases or positions belonging to factions within the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), Iraq’s umbrella of mostly Shi’ite Muslim paramilitary groups.
• Balad base hosts U.S. forces and contractors and is located about 80 kilometres north of Baghdad. A PMF group backed by Iran is stationed nearby.
• The intended target of the blasts was the group’s position near the base. The paramilitary source said his group’s weapons depot was specifically targeted by an aerial bombardment.

Iraq Thursday August 22, 2019:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted of possible Israeli involvement in attacks against Iranian-linked targets in Iraq.
• A series of blasts in the past few weeks have hit weapon depots and bases belonging to paramilitary groups in Iraq, many of them backed by Israel’s regional foe Iran. The groups blamed the United States and Israel for the blasts on Wednesday.
• Netanyahu was asked whether Israel would operate against Iranian targets in Iraq if needed, he said: “We are operating - not just if needed, we are operating in many areas against a state that wants to annihilate us. Of course I gave the security forces a free hand and instructed them to do anything necessary to thwart Iran’s plans.”

Iraq Friday August 23, 2019:

• A bombing at a market in the province of Babil caused almost 40 casualties. The deadly explosion came from the detonation of a bomb-laden motorcycle in a popular marketplace in the town of al-Musayib, located in northern Babil province, about 60 kilometers south of the capital city of Baghdad.
• A health official said the government had mobilized the province’s hospitals to be able to effectively deal with the large number of incoming wounded. Security forces “cordoned off the scene and transported those injured to a nearby hospital. A video showed extensive damage to shops and restaurants.
• A motorcycle rigged with explosives went off near a Shiite mosque south of the capital Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 34.
• The blast occurred on a commercial street in the village of Mussayyib.
• The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted “gatherings of Shiites” near a Shiite mosque.

Iraq Saturday August 24, 2019:

• Islamic State militants have fired mortar rounds at a soccer field near a Shiite shrine, killing six civilians and wounding nine others.
• The attack occurred in the village of Daquq, in the northern Kirkuk province, as people were exercising.
• The area of the attack, southeast of the city of Kirkuk, is controlled by Iran-supported militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces.
• ISIS, which once ruled a self-styled Islamic caliphate sprawling across Iraq and Syria, no longer controls territory in either country but has continued to stage sporadic attacks.

Iraq Sunday August 25, 2019:

• One member of a pro-Iranian Iraqi militia was killed in an airstrike by an unidentified drone along the Iraq-Syria border, in a raid later blamed on Israel.
• The strike  in the al-Qaim region of Iraq, an area that is home to a number of pro-Iranian militia groups, was carried out by Israel.
• At least two fighters belonging to Iraq's paramilitary groups have been killed in strikes near the border with Syria.
• One struck the headquarters of a local paramilitary brigade and the other a convoy of cars leaving the building.
• The attack targeted vehicles belonging to the Hezbollah Brigades faction, also known as Brigade 45. One of the dead, Abu Ali Al Dabi, was a member of the unit's rocket squad. He fought in Syria and was previously detained by the Americans.
• The vehicles were understood to be used to transport weapons.

Iraq Tuesday August 27, 2019:

• Iraq's counter-terrorism service announced the death of three so-called Islamic State top leaders. The men were killed in anti-IS coalition airstrikes in the Anbar province during an operation near the western deserts of Anbar carried out by fighter jets on 13 August.
• In the attack, 10 members of the extremist group were killed and security forces arrested other five people allegedly linked to terrorism in the region.
• The Iraqi counter-terrorism service identified three individuals among the 10 who were killed as leadership ranking Islamic State members in the province.

Iraq Wednesday August 28, 2019:

• Four paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members were killed and another wounded in an attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in the western province of Anbar.
• The attack took place when the extremist IS militants attacked a Hashd Shaabi convoy of military vehicles while patrolling a village outside the town of al-Kheirat near the provincial capital Ramadi, which is located some 110 km west of Baghdad, the mayor of al-Kheirat town. The attackers destroyed one of the convoy's vehicles during the attack before they fled the scene.
• A joint force from the Iraqi army and Hashd Shaabi fighters were dispatched to the area and conducted a search operation looking for the attackers.
• The attack occurred a day after the Iraqi forces backed by Iraqi and international coalition aircraft concluded the fourth phase of a major offensive dubbed "Victory Will" to hunt down remnants of IS militants in western Iraq.

Iraq Thursday August 29, 2019:

• Four members of a pro-government militia were killed and one wounded in a Daesh attack on a patrol carrying them east of Anbar province.
• The men “were ambushed by Daesh operatives while passing through a street in Al-Dabatiya area, north of Karmah, 53 kilometres east of Ramadi.”
• Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi force killed a prominent leader of Islamic State (IS) militant group and arrested six of his bodyguards in Iraq's western Anbar province.
• A force from the 18th brigade conducted an operation in the desert area of Wadi Hauran in western Anbar province and killed Abdul-Salam Hamad, nicknamed Abu Nour, believed to be the IS leader for the capital Baghdad.
• The force also captured Hamad's six bodyguards and wounded his aide, who blew up his explosive belt before being captured.
• IS militants are known for exploiting the gorges of Wadi Hauran to set up hideouts and arms depots and use the area as a launching pad for attacks on civilians and security forces.
• A third U.S. service member has died in Iraq in less than two weeks, bringing the total number of troops killed there this year to 15, the most in five years.
• The soldier, who was a member of the Army Special Forces, has not been identified. He was killed Zabul Province after disembarking a helicopter at the beginning of a joint mission with Afghan forces.
• Two Green Berets identified as 31-year-old Master Sgt. Luis DeLeon-Figueroa from Chicopee, Massachusetts, and Master Sgt. Jose Gonzalez, 35, of La Puente, California, were recently killed by gunfire during combat in the Faryab Province.
• Their deaths marked the deadliest year for combat troops in Afghanistan since December 2014 when the combat mission to the country, Operation Enduring Freedom, formally ended.
• In 2018, 13 service members were killed. In 2017, 11 were killed, which followed nine in 2016 and 10 in 2015. About 40 service members were killed in 2014 while the combat mission was still underway.
• There are roughly 14,000 U.S. military personnel remaining in Afghanistan, many of whom are working to provide support to Afghan troops still fighting the Taliban.

Iraq Friday August 30, 2010:

• A motorcycle rigged with explosives went off near a Shiite mosque south of the capital Baghdad, killing three people and wounding 34.
• The blast occurred on a commercial street in the village of Mussayyib.
• ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted "gatherings of Shiites" near a Shiite mosque.
• Iraq's military announced it started a new operation early Saturday targeting ISIS hideouts and sleeper cells in the western Anbar province.

Iraq Saturday September 7, 2019:

• At least three members of Iraq’s security forces and one civilian were killed on Saturday in three separate attacks by militants.
• An army officer and a soldier were killed when an explosive went off inside a house they were de-mining in the Sinjar district west of Mosul, and another soldier was injured.
• In Diyala province a sniper shot dead an intelligence official in an area northeast of provincial capital Baquba, and a civilian was killed when a bomb went off inside his car in an area west of the city of Samara in Salahuddin province.

Iraq Tuesday September 10, 2019:

• The US carpet-bombed an island which it said was “infested” by Daesh fighters. The small island of Qanus, in the Salahdin province was hit by nearly 40 tonnes of bombs in quick succession.
• The strikes aimed to destroy a “major transit hub” used by Daesh to get into the country’s northern capital, Mosul. Iraqi ground forces raided the area after the air strikes were comepleted.

Iraq Friday September 20, 2019:

• The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack near the Iraqi city of Karbala.
• 12 people were killed and five wounded when a bus was bombed near the city, which is holy to Shia Muslims, 100 kilometres southwest of Baghdad.
• An explosive device planted on the bus detonated at a northern entrance to the city, setting fire to the vehicle.
• The bombing was one of the worst attacks targeting civilians since the armed group was declared defeated inside Iraq in 2017. However, the group continues to claim sporadic attacks in parts of the country.

Iraq Sunday September 22, 2019:

• An unknown aircraft carried out an airstrike on a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi base near the city of Fallujah in the western province of Anbar. The bombardment caused damage to the targeted positions in the base, while no human casualty occurred.
• Saraya al-Salam, or Peace Companies, is a militia affiliated with Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and part of Hashd Shaabi.
• Earlier in the day, an unknown aircraft bombarded al-Murassanat Camp where the Hashd Shaabi forces were stationed in a desert area near the border with neighboring Syria. The heavy bombardment caused huge explosions; there were no immediate reports about casualties.

Iraq Monday September 23, 2019:

• Two rockets were fired at central Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and government buildings, but there were no casualties or damage caused.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts. One rocket exploded inside the Green Zone and another landed in the Tigris river.

Iraq Thursday September 26, 2019:

• Nearly a dozen notorious ISIL terrorist commanders were killed in military operations by the Iraqi forces in a raid on their meeting in Salahuddin province.
• The security forces of al-Jazeera operations, backed by Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi (Iraq’ Popular Mobilization Forces) and the Syrian Air Force in a preemptive move attacked a command centre of the ISIL in al-Matajat region in Salahuddin province where the terrorist commanders had convened.
• All 11 ISIL commanders attending the meeting, including ISIL’s governor in Salahuddin province were killed.
• The command headquarters of al-Jazeera military operations backed by al-Hashd forces and the Syrian Air Force have kicked off the mop-up operations to cleanse the ISIL remnants in the Northern parts of Raveh town in al-Anbar province to the South of Salahuddin province.

Iraq Friday September 27, 2019:

• Drones Strike Iran-backed Militia Base on Syria-Iraq Border. This is the fourth time in two weeks that sites run by Shi'ite militias were targeted in the border region.
• An unmanned aerial vehicle struck the targets within a Iran-backed militia base on the Iraqi-Syrian border. The bases belong to the Popular Mobilization Forces, Shi'ite militias operating in Iraq, in the Al-Bukamal area.

Iraq Saturday September 28, 2019:

• Four Iraqis were killed in two separate attacks in the eastern Diyala province. 
• Unidentified gunmen broke into a house in northern Diyala and killed three people inside.  Another civilian was found dead with gunshot wounds in the same province. 

Iraq Tuesday October 1, 2019:

• Iraqi security forces clashed with anti-government protesters in Baghdad and other provinces, killing two people and injuring more than 200.
• The confrontations were some of the worst in the Iraqi capital in more than a year and signalled that the war-weary country could be facing a new round of political instability.
• The rally in Baghdad, which was organised on social media, began peacefully with more than 1,000 people marching into the central Tahrir Square.
• As some tried to cross the bridge to reach the fortified Green Zone – home to government offices and foreign embassies – police started throwing stun grenades and firing rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them. Some fell to the ground as they ran away, wiping their eyes.

Iraq Saturday October 12, 2019:

• Four Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in airstrikes on their hideouts in the eastern province of Diyala.
• Iraqi warplanes conducted airstrikes on three IS hideouts near Himreen Lake in north of the provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad. The airstrikes destroyed the three hideouts and killed four IS militants inside.
• Despite repeated military operations in Diyala province, remnants of IS militants are still hiding in some rugged areas near the border with Iran, and in the sprawling areas extending from the western part of the province to the Himreen mountain range in north of Baquba. ---

Iraq Wednesday October 30, 2019:

• Rockets slammed into the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone and killed a member of the security forces.
• Witnesses reported seeing projectiles flying towards the Green Zone, which houses Iraq's government buildings and foreign embassies, and blasts were heard coming from the area.
• One of the Katyusha rockets landed about 100 metres away from the perimeter of the United States embassy, triggering alert sirens.
• Earlier this week, three rockets struck a large military base north of Baghdad that houses US and Iraqi forces. No casualties were reported from that attack.
• Today’s attack came amid six consecutive days of anti-government protests that have rocked the Iraqi capital and several key cities across the southern provinces.

Iraq Monday November4, 2019:

• Three protesters were shot dead overnight during a demonstration outside the Iranian consulate in Iraq's holy city of Karbala.
• Security forces in Karbala fired live ammunition to disperse protesters trying to scale the walls of the consulate in the southern city and torch it.
• Protesters were left motionless after suffering gunshot wounds, and the forensic medicine department later confirmed three people died.

Iraq Sunday November 10, 2019:

• A roadside blast wounded five Italian Special Forces soldiers in northern Iraq as they were on a training mission to assist Iraqi troops.
• Three of the wounded were in “grave condition” in the explosion. The bomb exploded next to their vehicle as they were traveling just outside Kirkuk, wounding six Italian soldiers.
• The discrepancy in the number of wounded wasn’t immediately explained. The wounded were evacuated by U.S. military helicopters to hospital in Baghdad.
• One Italian soldier lost a leg to amputation due to injuries from the bomb and another suffered serious internal injuries.
• The soldiers are part of a special forces team who were carrying out the “mentoring and training” of Iraqi armed forces involved in the fight against Islamic State group.

Iraq Friday November 22, 2019:

• Members of the Daesh/ISIS terror group killed two police officers in the Kirkuk province in an armed attack. The incident took place at a security checkpoint in Rasheed village.
• The assailants managed to escape. One other police officer was injured.
• In mid-2014, Daesh/ISIS overran roughly one-third of Iraq, including the northern city of Mosul. By late 2017, the Iraqi army -with the help of the U.S.-led military coalition- recovered most if not all the territories lost to the terrorist group. Although officials in Baghdad say Daesh/ISIS’ presence in the country has been largely eradicated, the terrorist group has continued to stage sporadic attacks in Iraq's Nineveh, Kirkuk, Diyala, Saladin and Anbar provinces.

Iraq Tuesday November 26, 2019:

• At least six people were killed and 15 wounded in Baghdad in three separate explosions.
• Three people were killed and five wounded in the city's northern Shaab district when a motorcycle exploded.
• A second motorcycle exploded in the southwestern Bayaa district, killing two and wounding six.
• And an improvised explosive device went off in the eastern Baladiyat district, killing one person and wounding four.
• Thousands of Iraqis have been protesting since early October, demanding an overthrow of the political class seen as sectarian, corrupt and serving the foreign powers. Meanwhile, in Iraq's mainly Shia south, protesters continued to block the main roads and bridges in Basra and Nasiriya towns, a day after six protesters were killed and scores of others wounded following violent clashes with the security forces.
• At least 330 people have been killed since the start of the mass unrest in Baghdad and southern Iraq in early October, the largest demonstrations since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Iraq Tuesday December 3, 2019:

• Several rockets landed outside the Iraqi al-Asad airbase, which houses American troops. No facilities were hit and there were no injuries. Five rockets landed on the sprawling airbase.
• Iraqi police arrested a key deputy of deceased Daesh/ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Kirkuk province. Abu Khaldoun was the terrorist group's military commander for Salah al-Din province. He was arrested in the town of Hawija and was carrying a fake ID card.
• Under Baghdadi, Daesh spread over wide segments of Iraq and Syria beginning in 2013, eventually claiming the formation of a "caliphate" in the region as it plotted and carried out gruesome attacks that reached far beyond its main territorial bastion.

Iraq Friday December 6, 2019:

• Gunmen killed at least 20 people in Baghdad. The unknown attackers raided key protest sites in the capital sending demonstrators fleeing into the streets.
• The unrest in Iraq began in October, fuelled by anger over corruption, unemployment, poor public services and the influence of Iran. More than 400 people have been killed since the protests started.
• Armed men on pick-up trucks are said to have driven through areas that have formed the centre of the protests in Baghdad, forcing demonstrators to flee from bullets. It is not clear who is responsible.
• Earlier this week several people were stabbed in Baghdad after supporters of an Iranian-backed militia swarmed into a square occupied by protesters.

Iraq Monday December 9, 2019:

• An army basecamp near the Baghdad International Airport was struck with a barrage of rockets amid a surge in similar attacks on US-linked installations in Iraq.
• Six fighters were wounded, two of them critically, after four rockets landed on the base. The wounded belonged to an elite anti-terrorism unit, trained by the US.

Iraq Thursday December 12, 2019:

• Four paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members were killed in a suicide attack in the city of Samarra in the central province of Salahudin, the second on Thursday.
• The attack took place in the evening when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive-laden car near the Hashd Shaabi's force 313 Brigade in the west of Samarra, some 120 km north of the capital Baghdad, killing four of them.
• The attack is the second; earlier a suicide bomber attacked the same force in Samarra, killing seven members and injuring three others.
• The first attack was carried out by a suicide car bomber and targeted the brigade on a main road in the south of Samarra.

Iraq Friday December 13, 2019:

• The death toll from four separate attacks in the Saladin and Diyala provinces has risen to 15. A total of 11 members of the Hashd al-Shaabi militia were killed in two truck bomb explosions near its military checkpoint in Samarra city in Saladin.
• Three children died in Al-Shirqat city in Saladin when a bomb exploded on a road leading to a primary school.
• In addition, one person was killed and two others wounded in Diyala province when a bomb planted on a motorcycle detonated.
• Meanwhile, scores of protestors were referred to hospitals in the capital Baghdad and Karbala province due to injuries from tear gas.

Iraq Sunday December 15, 2019:

• An Iraqi civil society activist was shot dead and another was wounded by unknown gunmen in central Iraq. Gunmen on motorcycles opened fire from their pistols with silencers on civil society activist Haqi Ismael and killed him when he was driving in Baghdad's northeastern neighborhood of al-Shaab.
• Separately, another civil society activist Thaer Karim al-Tayb was wounded when a sticky bomb attached to his car detonated in the city of Diwaniyah, some 180 km south of Baghdad.
• In Iraq, assassinations and kidnappings have increased recently, especially among civil society activists who are participating in the anti-government demonstrations that started more than two months ago.
• Six Iraqi soldiers were killed and four others injured in an overnight attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in the eastern province of Diyala.
• The attack took place when IS militants carried out an attack on army bases at a rural area near the town of al-Maqdadiyah, some 100 km northeast of Baghdad, sparking a fierce clash between the two sides. The clash continued for several hours and only stopped after a reinforcement troops arrived at the scene. ---

Iraq Tuesday December 17, 2019:

• Three people were killed in separate attacks in the provinces of Diyala and Nineveh.
• In the eastern province of Diyala, a civilian was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the town of Abu Saida, some 90 km northeast of Baghdad.
• Also in the province, a retired teacher was also killed by unidentified gunmen in the town of Mandily, some 160 km northeast of Baghdad.
• In the northern province of Nineveh, gunmen attacked the administrative chief of a village near the town of al-Shoura, some 40 km south of the provincial capital Mosul.
• The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after the Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017, but sporadic attacks occurred in the war-ravaged country.

Iraq Friday December 20, 2019:

• Unidentified gunmen assassinated a civil society activist in the city of Nasiriyah southeast of the capital Baghdad.
• The attack took place when two masked gunmen in a car opened fire on Ali al-Usaimi and killed him before they fled the scene.

Iraq Saturday December 21, 2019:

• Four policemen and a militant of Islamic State (IS) group were killed in an attack by the extremist IS militants in the central province of Salahudin. A police officer was also wounded during the clash.
• The attack took place when IS militants attacked a police outpost guarding oil pipelines in north of the oil-refinery town of Baiji, some 200 km north of Baghdad.
• IS attack sparked a fierce clash with the police force continued until a reinforcement police force arrived to the scene, forcing IS attackers to withdrew to the nearby desert.
• The security situation in Iraq has been improved since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017. However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.
• It is two years since the Islamic State (IS) group lost the last of the territory it held in Iraq, but intelligence sources said it is re-organising there. A top Kurdish counter-terrorism official said militants were using better tactics and had more money, making it "more difficult to flush them out". They are now "like al-Qaeda on steroids".
• IS no longer wants to control any land, so it can avoid being a target.

Iraq Wednesday December 25, 2019:

• Three security members were killed and four others wounded in an attack by Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's central province of Salahudin.
• The attack took place when IS militants with machine guns and assault rifles attacked outposts of Iraqi army and paramilitary Hashd Shaabi fighters in north of the town of Duloiya, some 90 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
• The attack sparked a fierce clash between the two sides and resulted in the killing of a soldier and two Hashd Shaabi fighters and the wounding of four of the security members, while no immediate report was available about casualties among the attackers who fled the scene as reinforcement troops were dispatched to the area.
• A civilian was killed and four others wounded in a bomb attack near a soccer field in east Iraqi capital Baghdad.
• The attack occurred when a booby-trapped motorcycle detonated near a local soccer field in Sadr City neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, leaving a civilian killed and four others wounded.
• Iraqi security force sealed off the scene and launched investigation into the incident. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.
• The security situation in Iraq was dramatically improved after the Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017, but sporadic attacks occurred in the war-ravaged country.

Iraq Friday December 27, 2019:

• A US civilian contractor was killed in a rocket attack on a base near Kirkuk where US service members and civilian contractors were located.
• K1 military base, which houses US troops in Kirkuk province in northern Baghdad, was attacked by several katyusha rockets.
• Several US and Iraqi military members were wounded in the attack. Less than a handful of Americans were wounded, and it's believed some have already returned to duty. The Iraqi military said only one Iraqi security officer was injured in the attack.

Iraq Saturday December 28, 2019:

• The US has conducted strikes against militia bases in Iraq and Syria following the death of a US contractor.
• The US confirmed the strikes targeted weapon storage facilities along with command and control locations belonging to Kataib Hezbollah. It is considered a terrorist organisation by the US.
• One contractor was killed, several US troops and Iraqi personnel were wounded in a rocket attack on a base in Kirkuk on 27 December.
• Sunday's strikes in Iraq were close to the western Qaim district, close to the border with Syria. t least 18 militia fighters were killed and more than 50 wounded following three strikes in the country.

Iraq Thursday January 2. 2020:

• A US drone strike - ordered by President Donald Trump - has killed the head of Quds Force, the elite branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. General Qasem Soleimani, a heroic national figure in his homeland, died while being driven at Baghdad Airport in neighbouring Iraq.
• The Pentagon, which blames Gen Soleimani for approving this week's attack by protesters on the US embassy in Baghdad, says the strike was "aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans". The US would take "all necessary action to protect our people and our interests" around the world, it added.
• In the short term, it might have the opposite effect, having "raised US-Iranian tensions to a new and dangerous level". Iran's Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, called the move "extremely dangerous and a foolish escalation". He tweeted: "The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism." Following the attack, President Trump tweeted a graphic of the US flag.

Iraq Friday January 3, 2020:

• The US embassy in Baghdad has called on all American citizens to leave Iraq immediately. It comes just as top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike in the capital, causing a prominent Iraqi cleric to call an anti-US army to arms.
• Soleimani’s assassination was ordered by President Donald Trump. In a statement, the embassy said today: ‘Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region, the US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 Travel Advisory and depart Iraq immediately. ‘US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land.’
• The American airstrike that killed a powerful Iranian general in Iraq also killed an Iraqi militia leader who was one of Iran’s top lieutenants in Iraq and a veteran of battles against the United States and the Islamic State.
• The death of the militia leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, alone would have sent shock waves through Iraq, even if Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the intelligence chief who led Iran’s Quds Force, had not died with him.
• As the deputy commander of a loose coalition of militias, Mr. al-Muhandis oversaw a disparate military force that arose to help Iraq defeat the Islamic State but has since become a power unto itself, its members operating with significant independence, often at the behest of Iran. Mr. al-Muhandis was also a founder of the individual militia that was attacked by American airstrikes on Sunday and that led the assault on the American Embassy in Baghdad this week.
• A U.S. military spokesman has denied that America is responsible for a new air strike that targeted a convoy of pro-Iran militiamen on Taji road north of Baghdad.'The Coalition did NOT conduct airstrikes near Camp Taji (north of Baghdad) in recent days’.  
• It followed initial reports pinning responsibility for the strike on the U.S., and contradictory accounts from Pentagon sources. It remains unclear whether the convoy was attacked by ground-based rockets after all, or another military with air capabilities in the area.
• The strike targeted Iran-backed Shiite militia leaders near camp Taji north of Baghdad, killing six people and critically wounding three. The pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces claimed that the convoy was composed of medical vans, and only medics were killed.

Iraq Saturday January 4, 2020:

• Two rockets hit Iraq's Al-Balad air base, where US troops are stationed, while two mortars hit Baghdad's Green Zone, a high-security enclave housing the US embassy.
• The Al-Balad base, north of Baghdad, was hit by Katyusha rockets.

Iraq Monday January 6, 2020:

US denies Iraq pullout plan

• "There has been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq," the US defence secretary has said. Mark Esper made the statement after one of his country's generals wrote a letter saying the military would be "repositioning forces in the coming days and weeks".
• The confusion over the Trump administration's position follows threats to US forces in the wake of the killing of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in an air strike in Baghdad last week.
• So what is happening? The memo from Brig Gen William H Seely appears genuine but "misleading and badly phrased". It means the US is moving forces from the Green Zone to provide more protection elsewhere in Iraq, he adds.
• Meanwhile, thousands of mourners have turned out in Soleimani's home town of Kerman to pay their respects ahead of his burial.

Iraq Tuesday January 7, 2020:

• Iran has carried out a ballistic missile attack on air bases housing US forces in Iraq, in retaliation for the US killing of General Qasem Soleimani. More than a dozen missiles (22 in fact) launched from Iran struck two air bases in Irbil and Al Asad, west of Baghdad. It came just hours after the burial of Soleimani, who controlled Iran's proxy forces across the Middle East.
• The initial response from Washington has been muted. President Trump tweeted that all was well and said casualties and damage were being assessed.
• Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said the attack was "a slap in the face" for the US and called for an end to the US presence in the Middle East.
• 
  Iraq Sunday January 12, 2020:
• At least four Iraqi soldiers have been wounded when several rockets slammed into an Iraqi airbase north of Baghdad which has housed troops from the United States. The Iraqi military media centre said on Sunday the al-Balad airbase, located some 80km away from the capital, was hit by eight Katyusha rockets.
• Some projectiles fell on a restaurant inside the airbase, while others hit the runway and the gate. So far there has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, which caused no US casualties
• The US-led coalition said there were no US soldiers present at the base during the attack, which has hosted US trainers, advisers and a company that provides maintenance services for F-16 aircraft.

Iraq Tuesday January 14, 2020:

• A US base which also houses 200 British personnel was targeted in a missile strike.
• No coalition troops were injured in the Soviet-made Katyusha rocket attack on Camp Taji north of Baghdad. 
• No group has claimed responsibility for the strike but the same rockets were used in attack on Sunday night at another US base.

Iraq Friday January 17, 2020:

• 11 service members have been treated for "concussion symptoms" following Iran's recent attack on two Iraqi bases where U.S. troops were stationed.
• Iran's ballistic missile attack was launched in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force.
• While no U.S. service members were killed in the January 8 Iranian attack on Al Asad Air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed.
• Eight service members are receiving additional screening at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, while three have been sent to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq.
• U.S. President Donald Trump had said after Iran's attack in Iraq that no U.S. forces were injured. Immediate injury reports to the Pentagon "are for incidents threatening of life, limb or eyesight," so concussion symptoms do not "rise to that threshold."
• In the days following the attack, however, the 11 service members who had continued to show concussion-like symptoms were transferred out of Iraq to areas where MRI equipment is available "out of an abundance of caution.
• At least two protesters have been killed and dozens injured in central Baghdad when Iraq's security forces launched tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrators trying to breach the capital's Sinak bridge.
• Riot police hurled sound bombs and fired tear gas after protesters attempted to breach cement barriers previously erected by security forces.

Iraq Monday January 20, 2020:

• Two Iraqi police officers were killed and dozens of protesters were wounded in Baghdad and other cities in clashes with security forces as anti-government unrest resumed after a lull of several weeks.
• In Baghdad's Tayaran Square overnight, protesters threw petrol bombs and stones at police who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.
• Elsewhere in southern Iraq, hundreds of protesters burned tyres and blocked main roads in several cities, including Nassiriya, Kerbala and Amara. They say Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has not fulfilled promises including naming a new government acceptable to Iraqis.
• In the Iraqi oil city of Basra, two policemen were struck and killed by a civilian car during the protest. The driver was trying to avoid the scene of clashes between protesters and security forces when he drove into the two officers.

Iraq Tuesday January 21, 2020:

• Three rockets have fallen inside Baghdad’s Green Zone close to the US embassy.
• Alarms were sounding in the US embassy complex and speakers were telling those inside to take shelter.

Iraq Friday January 24, 2020:

• The Pentagon has said that 34 US troops were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) following an Iranian attack on their base in Iraq. Seventeen troops are still under medical observation.
• President Donald Trump had said no Americans were injured in the 8 January strike, which came in retaliation for the US killing of an Iranian general. Mr Trump had cited the supposed lack of injuries in his decision not to strike back against Iran. But last week, the Pentagon said 11 service members had been treated for concussion symptoms from the attack.
• Asked about the apparent discrepancy this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Trump said: "I heard that they had headaches, and a couple of other things, but I would say, and I can report, it's not very serious."
• Four aid workers from a French Christian charity have gone missing in Iraq and an investigation is underway to locate them.
• French non-governmental organization, SOS Chrétiens d'Orient (Christians of the Middle East), confirmed three French and one Iraqi national went missing in Baghdad on Monday. The charity workers were conducting "administrative tasks," including a visit to a new school opening.
• The charity said there have been no ransom demands so far, and that French and Iraqi authorities are currently coordinating an investigation to find them. "They disappeared between two meetings. They were on a mission authorized by the French Embassy.
• According to the agency, the employees were expected to drive to an appointment on Monday afternoon. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the aid workers on Tuesday, SOS Chrétiens d'Orient alerted the French authorities on Wednesday.

Iraq Sunday January 26, 2020:

• Three rockets have hit the US embassy in Iraq’s capital, wounding at least one person, in the first direct strike reported after months of close calls. The attack in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone marked a dangerous escalation in a series of rocket attacks in recent months that have targeted the embassy or Iraqi military bases where American troops are deployed.
• None of the attacks has been claimed but Washington has repeatedly blamed Iran-backed military factions in Iraq. On Sunday one rocket hit an embassy cafeteria at dinner time while two others landed nearby.
• One person was wounded, but it was not immediately clear how serious the injuries were and whether the person was an American national or an Iraqi staff member. Three people had been wounded. At least five katyusha rockets landed inside the Green Zone.  The US State Department called on Iraq to “fulfil its obligations to protect our diplomatic facilities”.

Iraq Tuesday January 28, 2020:

• The US has confirmed 50 of its service members suffered traumatic brain injuries after Iran's missile strike on its Iraqi air base.
• The airstrike was launched in retaliation to the US drone strike which killed Iran's most powerful general Qassem Soleimani.

Iraq Friday January 31, 2020:

• Five shells struck  a military base housing U.S. forces in the northern province of Nineveh. The attack took place in the night when the shells landed on al-Qayyara air base in south of the provincial capital city of Mosul. The were no human or material casualties by the attack.
• The Katyusha rockets landed at the perimeter of al-Qayyara air base without causing casualties.
• The attack came a week after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Baghdad upon the request of the Iraqi prominent Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, in which he called for a scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq through peaceful means.
• The Iraqi parliament passed a resolution requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq on Jan. 5, two days after a U.S. drone strike killed Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

Iraq Saturday 8 February 2020:

• An Iraqi soldier and two Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in a clash in the central province of Salahudin.
• The deadly clash erupted when IS militants attacked an army outpost in Mteibijah, a rugged area in the eastern part of the province.
• A reinforcement force was dispatched to the area for security as the extremist militants withdrew to their hideouts in Mteibijah. ---

Iraq Monday February 10, 2020:

• The number of US troops suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) after an Iranian attack on a US base in Iraq in January has risen to 109. The figure is a significant increase from the 64 injured service members previously reported by the Pentagon. President Donald Trump initially said no Americans were injured in the raid.
• The attack on 8 January came amid tensions over the US killing of an Iranian general. Nearly 70% of the injured service members have returned to their duty.
• Militants targeted a convoy carrying food supplies south of Baghdad using an explosive device leading to only material losses, reports Reuters.
• The explosion targeted a convoy carrying military equipment to a base hosting US forces south of the capital. There was damage to one vehicle but no casualties.
• The report comes amid heightened tension between Iran-backed paramilitary groups and the United States in Iraq. Washington killed top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike last month and Tehran fired missiles at two bases hosting US forces in retaliation days later.

Iraq Thursday February 13, 2020:

• A rocket attack has slammed into an Iraqi base in the remote province of Kirkuk where US troops are stationed.
• There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Iraq Saturday February 15, 2020:

• Four people were killed in two separate attacks in eastern Iraq.
• Daesh/ISIS militants attacked a police checkpoint in Buhriz, south of Diyala province, killing two policemen. A husband and his wife were also found dead inside their home in the same area.
• By late 2017, the Iraqi army -with the help of the U.S.-led military coalition- recovered most if not all the territories lost to the terrorist group. Although officials in Baghdad say Daesh/ISIS presence in the country has been largely eradicated, the terrorist group has continued to stage sporadic attacks in Iraq's Diyala, Nineveh, Kirkuk, Saladin and Anbar provinces.

Iraq Sunday February 16, 2020:

• Multiple rockets hit near the US embassy in Iraq’s capital, the latest in a flurry of attacks against US assets in the country.
• The assault sent warning sirens blaring across the diplomatic compound but it was unclear what was hit and how many rockets made impact. There were no casualties and only minor damage
• It was the 19th attack since October to target either the embassy or the roughly 5,200 US troops stationed alongside local forces across Iraq. The attacks are never claimed but the US has pointed the finger at Iran-backed groups within the Hashed al-Shaabi, a military network officially incorporated into Iraq’s state security forces. 

Iraq Wednesday February 19,2020:

• Four civilians were killed and several others were wounded in an attack by gunmen affiliated with Daesh in the Iraqi governorate of Kirkuk. Daesh militants have attacked with machine guns the village of Jaghmagha near the Dibis district, south of Kirkuk governorate, and killed four civilians.
• Al-Ubaidi explained that the militants fled the scene to an unknown destination after the attack.
• For its part, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the Iraqi Parliament announced that seven Kurds were killed and wounded in the attack in Kirkuk and called for a review of the number of security forces present in “fragile areas”, holding the federal government responsible for the incident.
• Iraq’s anti-government demonstrations have seen 528 protesters killed and 24,000 more injured since they began on October 1.
• Over the course of the nationwide protests, 2,800 people have been detained, 38 of whom remain in detention. It further revealed that 79 people have been kidnapped since protests began; 22 have been released. According to the figures, 17 security force members have been killed.

Iraq Sunday February 23, 2020:

• Two Islamic State (IS) militants and a civilian were killed in separate attacks in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala.
• A force affiliated with the intelligence service raided an IS hideout in Buhruz area, some 25 km south of the provincial capital Baquba, and killed two IS militants wearing explosive belts.
• In a separate incident, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a civilian and killed him before they fled the scene in Juba area in east of Baquba.
• Also in the province, two people were wounded by a roadside bomb planted by IS militants in a rural area near the town of Jalawlaa.

Iraq Monday February 24, 2020:

• Three Islamic State (IS) militants were killed and seven others captured in an operation by the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Services (CTS) in Iraq's northern province of Kirkuk.
• Based on intelligence reports, commandos of the CTS, backed by international coalition aircraft, carried out an airdrop operation on IS positions in a rural area in Kirkuk province. The operation resulted in the killing of three IS militants and the capturing of seven others.
• The security situation in Iraq has been improved since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the extremist IS militants across the country late in 2017. However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

Iraq Friday  February 28, 2020:

• Sheikh Abdul Saheb Sa’doun, chief of the Al-Hamaid tribe, and his wife were stabbed to death by unknown armed men in the Iraqi governorate of Dhi Qar, in the south of the country. A police officer from Dhi Qar police told Anadolu Agency that unknown armed men broke into the house of Sa’doun and stabbed him and his wife to death.
• The armed men fled and the security forces closed the area and opened an investigation into the incident.

Iraq Monday February 2, 2020:

• Two rockets have landed inside the Green Zone in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in the early hours.
• One of the rockets has landed close to the United States Embassy. No casualties were reported. The Katyusha rockets fell inside the heavily fortified compound where government buildings and embassies are located.
• This is the 20th such attack targetted against US assets since October. In December, a rocket had hit a military base in northern Iraq, killing a US civilian contractor. None of the attacks have been claimed but the US has blamed Iran-backed groups within Hashed al-Shaabi frequently in the past.

Iraq Sunday March 8, 2020:

• Two US service members were killed by enemy forces. The soldiers were killed while "advising and accompanying Iraqi Security Forces during a mission to eliminate an ISIS terrorist stronghold" in the country.
• Earlier this year, the Iraqi Parliament voted to end the presence of all foreign troops in Iraq. The vote represented a rebuke of the US over its targeted airstrike on Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian commander who was killed in January.
• There were roughly 5,000 US troops stationed in Iraq. The Trump administration has said it does not intend to pull troops out of the country.

Iraq Wednesday March 11, 2020:

• A member of the Royal Army Medical Corps has been killed in a rocket attack on a base in Iraq. An American soldier and contractor also died in the attack on the Taji military camp, north of Baghdad. At least 12 people were injured.
• No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack. "We will continue to liaise with our international partners to fully understand the details of this abhorrent attack," says Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Iraq Thursday March 12, 2020:

• The Pentagon has confirmed that US forces carried out airstrikes in Iraq against what it described as five weapons storage sites run by an Iranian-back militia, in retaliation for a rocket attack which killed two American and one British soldier near Baghdad.
• The tit-for-tat attacks come just two months after a similar escalation brought the US and Iran to the brink of direct conflict. This time the two sides are facing off in Iraq while struggling to contain coronavirus outbreaks at home.
• The head of US Central Command, marine general Frank McKenzie, said that the US had struck arms caches run by Kata’ib Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with strong ties with Tehran, which the US blames for Wednesday’s rocket attack.
• The United States has launched a series of air raids in Iraq against several locations of an Iran-backed militia that it blamed for an earlier rocket attack that killed and wounded US and British troops.
• Among the facilities attacked was an airport under construction in the holy city of Karbala.

Iraq Saturday March 14, 2020:

• Three service personnel from the US-led coalition in Iraq and two Iraqis have been injured in a rocket attack on a military base north of Baghdad. The Iraqi military said more than 30 rockets were fired at Camp Taji base.
• This is the second attack this week on the base. On Wednesday, rockets killed two American troops and one British soldier there. The US responded with air strikes targeting an Iranian-backed militia.

Iraq Tuesday March 17, 2020:

• At least three rockets struck Baghdad's fortified Green Zone near the United States Embassy, the fourth such attack in the span of a week.
• It came a day after an attack on a training base south of the capital, where US-led coalition troops and NATO trainers were present.
• At least three rockets struck the Green Zone, the seat of Iraq's government and home to several foreign embassies.

Iraq Wednesday March 18, 2020:

•  Two rockets hit the Besmaya base 60 kilometres south of the capital Baghdad, where the US-led coalition and NATO have forces stationed. The two missiles were launched from a nearby agricultural land in the Nahrawan area. It made no mention of any casualties. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
• Longstanding antagonism between the United States and Iran has played in Iraq in recent months. Iranian-backed paramilitary groups have regularly targeted Iraqi bases that host US troops and the area around the US Embassy in Baghdad. The United States has, in turn, conducted several strikes inside Iraq, killing top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Kataeb Hezbollah founder Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in January.

Iraq Saturday March 21, 2020:

• Two Iraqi soldiers were killed in a double bomb attack in the western Anbar province. Four other soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place in the town of Rutba, west of Anbar.
• Although no group has yet claimed responsibility, Iraqi officials often blame such attacks on the Daesh terrorist group. In 2017, the Iraqi army – with the help of a US-led military coalition – recovered most if not all the territories lost to Daesh in 2014.
• Although officials in Baghdad say Daesh presence in the country has been largely eradicated, the terrorist group has continued to stage sporadic attacks in Iraq’s Nineveh, Kirkuk, Diyala, Saladin and Anbar provinces.

Iraq Thursday March 26, 2020:

• Two rockets slammed into the Iraqi capital's Green Zone, the high-security enclave home to government buildings and foreign embassies.
• The intended target appeared to be the US embassy, a sprawling compound a few hundred meters south of where the rockets hit.
• It is the 26th such attack targeting installations where foreign troops or diplomats are based across Iraq since late October.

Iraq Sunday March 29, 2020:

• The United States-led coalition forces in Iraq withdrew from a military base in the country's north that nearly launched Washington into an open war with neighbouring Iran.]
• The K1 airbase is the third site coalition forces have left this month, in line with the US plans to consolidate its troops in two locations in Iraq.

Iraq Thursday April 2, 2020:

• Iraqi forces announced targeting Daesh-dwelled areas in the country’s northern governate of the Saladin.
• Iraqi F-16 fighter jets managed to destroy Daesh targets in the Saladin governorate, leaving a number deads. The army had also killed three Daesh fighters in the Therthar Lake area, near Al-Anbar province.
• The Iraqi army’s fifth division announced that it had found five Daesh hideouts in the country’s northwestern governate of Diyala; the troops were able to destroy them.
• The Iraqi operation comes as part of a military operation launched by the army three weeks ago, in an effort to chase the remaining remnants of Daesh. The Iraqi forces had targeted several Daesh reservoirs near the Qaraqosh mountain area, located in the Nineveh governorate.
• Although nearly three years have passed since Iraq announced its defeat over Daesh, restoring most of the lands it seized in 2014, the terrorist organisation still maintains a number of hidden cells scattered throughout Iraq. It was reported to have resorted to its old tactic of launching lightning attacks targeting military areas, which prompted the Iraqi authorities to retaliate.

Iraq Saturday April 4, 2020:

• Three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bomb attack carried out by the Daesh/ISIS terror group in Kirkuk, north of Iraq’s capital Baghdad. Two other soldiers were injured when a roadside bomb targeted a patrol vehicle belonging to the Iraqi army near the town of Sergaran in the Dibis district of northwestern Kirkuk.
• Security forces have launched an operation against the terrorists in the region following the attack.
• In 2017, the Iraqi army -with the help of a U.S.-led military coalition- recovered most if not all the territories lost to Daesh/ISIS in 2014. Although officials in Baghdad say Daesh/ISIS presence in the country has been largely eradicated, the terrorist group has continued to stage sporadic attacks in Iraq's Nineveh, Kirkuk, Diyala, Saladin and Anbar provinces.

Iraq Monday April 6, 2020:

• At least three rockets have hit near the site of an American oilfield service company in southern Iraq without causing any damage or casualties.
• The rockets targeted the site of Halliburton in the Burjesia area in oil-rich Basra province.
• The attack did not affect production and export operations. A rocket launcher and some unused rockets were found in a nearby farmland area. Almost all foreign staff have left the country due to the global coronavirus pandemic and so the accommodation was largely empty.
• The attacks came as US forces withdrew from Al Taqaddum airbase and handed over operations to Iraqi forces at the weekend. The transfer of Taqaddum (Habbaniya) airbase is another step forward in the ongoing partnership between Iraqi Security Forces and the anti-ISIS international military Coalition.
• Over the last month, the coalition transferred four bases to the Iraqi security forces as it consolidates it resources into a smaller number of key locations. This wouldn’t be possible without the Iraqi security forces’ proven capability to bring the fight to ISIS.  The withdrawal came "after months of planning".

Iraq Tuesday April 7, 2020:

• The Coalition forces have so far withdrawn from six military bases across Iraq over the past few weeks. On Tuesday morning  it withdrew from its military base in Abu Gharib area. The Coalition forces handed over the base to the Iraqi army.
• In recent weeks, some military bases hosting the coalition forces in Iraq have come under attacks by Iraqi groups. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The attacks increased after the assassination of Iranian top general Qasim Soleimani in Iraq on January 3.
• However, the U.S. officials say that the withdrawal from the military bases in Iraq is in response to outbreak of coronavirus in the country and to redeploy the International troops to protect them from possible attacks by Iranian-affiliated groups in Iraq.

Iraq Friday April 10, 2020:

• Gunmen ambushed a group of Hashd al-Shaabi fighters in the district of Tuz Khurmatu in the northern Saladin province, leaving three dead. The Daesh/ISIS attack, which targeted a Hashd al-Shaabi position near a military airport in the northwest of Tuz Khurmatu district, left five Hashd al-Shaabi fighters injured.
• Security forces have launched an operation against the terrorists in the region following the attack.
• A predominantly Shia fighting force, Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi was drawn up in 2014 with the purpose of fighting Daesh/ISIS. In 2017, it was formally incorporated into the Iraqi army.
• In late 2017, officials in Baghdad declared that military presence of Daesh/ISIS in Iraq had been all but destroyed. But Daesh/ISIS terrorists still have presence in the rural areas of Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Saladin, and Mosul. The Iraqi army continues to carry out frequent operations against the group’s lingering presence in these parts of the country.

Iraq Monday April 13, 2020:

• A police officer was killed in terrorist attack. The attack took place near Mansuriyah al-Jabal village.
• Recently, the number of attacks on security forces in Kirkuk, Mosul, Anbar, Salahuddin and Diyala provinces have increased considerably.

Iraq Wednesday April 15, 2020:

• Turkish airstrikes targeting members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group struck a refugee camp in northern Iraq and killed two refugee women. The strikes, which took place were a violation of Iraq's sovereignty.
• The strikes on the Makhmour refugee camp were carried out by a Turkish military drone that was detected by Iraq's air defense. It expressed "condemnation in the strongest possible terms over these Turkish attacks" and said they also "constituted a serious violation of international humanitarian law."

Iraq Monday April 20, 2020:

• An Iraqi soldier was killed and four others were wounded in an Daesh attack southwest of Baquba, in Diyala province. The terrorist group attacked a military post in the vicinity of Mahbubiyah near Bani Saad district, south-west of Baquba, wounding three soldiers.
• An explosive device had detonated while a military force was traveling to the area killing one soldier and wounding an officer.

Iraq Tuesday April 21, 2020:

• At least five people were killed in two bomb attacks in Iraq’s Salahuddin province, north of the capital Baghdad. An improvised explosive device went off at a patrol of Hashd al-Shaabi in the west coast of al-Shirqat district.
• Three Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary fighters were killed and as many were injured in the blast.
• Another improvised bomb went off in al-Sura village in al-Shirqat district, resulted in killing of a civilian man and his son.
• Recently, the number of attacks on security forces in Kirkuk, Nineveh, Anbar, Salahuddin and Diyala provinces have increased considerably.
• In late 2017, officials in Baghdad declared that the military presence of Daesh/ISIS in Iraq had been all but destroyed.

Iraq Saturday April 25, 2020:

• The British government announced that it had carried out its first air raid against the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh) terrorist organization in Iraq since last September. The RAF forces carried out a successful air raid using two Typhoon fighters on April 10 against anti-ISIS forces in an area Tuz Khurmato.
• The operation “led to the death of a number of ISIS fighters from the battlefield and the further deterioration of the organization.
• The RAF had targeted terrorists who were in fortified buildings in an isolated area west of Tuz Khurmato, “known to be the focus of their active concentration in the area. (---)

Iraq Friday May 1,2020:

• Islamic State militants have killed at least 10 Iraqi militia members in a coordinated overnight assault near the central city of Samarra, adding to concerns that the group, which once controlled large areas of the country, is staging a comeback.
• The Iraqi military and the Popular Mobilisation Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shia militias allied with the government, confirmed the attack in separate statements. It was the deadliest in a series of attacks in recent weeks that come as the country’s economic crisis deepens and the authorities try to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
• The PMF said six of its fighters had been killed by direct fire in the village of Mekeeshfa, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Another three fighters were killed by a roadside bomb as reinforcements were called in. A tenth was shot dead in the nearby village of Tal al-Dahab.

Iraq Saturday May 2, 2020:

• Six policemen were killed in two attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants in Salahudin province in the north of Iraqi capital Baghdad.
• Early in the morning, IS militants opened fire on a police outpost in Tal al-Dhahab village, some 75 km north of Baghdad, leaving three policemen killed, Mohammed al-Bazi told Xinhua.
• Another attack occurred in the early morning on the rugged area of Mteibijah in the eastern part of the province, when IS militants attacked a police outpost, killing three policemen and wounding another.
• Earlier in the day, 11 paramilitary tribal fighters were reportedly killed when IS militants attacked an outpost of manned by the Sunni tribal fighters, who are part of the government-backed Hashd Shaabi brigades, in Dijlah area, some 150 km north of Baghdad.
• Despite repeated military operations against the IS remnants, IS militants are still hiding in deserts, rugged areas as well as in Himreen mountain range which extends in the provinces of Diyala, Salahudin and Kirkuk. They are capable of carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.
• A total of 135 IS militants have been killed in Iraq during the period from January 1 to April 15, in 1,060 anti-IS operations by the Iraqi security forces. Up to 88 security members and 82 civilians were also killed by the IS militants during the same period.
• At least 10 members of the Hashd al-Shaabi forces have been killed in a coordinated attack carried out by the ISIL (ISIS) group in Iraq's Salahaddin province.
• Clashes erupted between the paramilitary unit, also known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, and ISIL on several fronts in the town of Mekeeshfa and the city of Balad.
• The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq destroyed caves sheltering Islamic State militants in a series of airstrikes this week, as Iraqi security forces ended April with nearly 100 operations against the group.
• On Wednesday, the raid took out 10 caves in northern Iraq’s Hamrin Mountains, killing an estimated five to 10 ISIS fighters.
• Initial estimates of the death toll were expected to be revised later, based on a ground search still being conducted by Iraq’s 14th Army Division and security forces.
• Police has arrested two teenage boys last night for allegedly sexually assaulting and killing a seven-year-old boy in Mosul.
• The young boy was found dead in a toilet corridor at a mosque in the Zummar district of Nineveh province where the horrific crime is believed to have been taken place.
• The police found the body of Shahin Wisam who had gone missing on Friday.
• The teens admitted luring the child to a mosque toilet where they raped him and then killed him with a rock. Police identified the perpetrators as Ahmed Nassir Al-Jubouri and Omar Shakir Al-Mamari.

Iraq Sunday May 3, 2020:

• Islamic State militants have killed at least 10 Iraqi militiamen in a coordinated assault overnight near the central city of Samarra. The attack added to concerns the extremist group that once controlled large areas of the country is staging a comeback.
• The military and the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shi'Ite militias allied with the government, confirmed the attack. It was the deadliest of a series of attacks in recent weeks that come as authorities are grappling with a worsening economic crisis and trying to contain a coronavirus outbreak.
• Four Islamic State (IS) militants and two security members were killed in separate attacks.
• Acting on intelligence reports, the army's helicopter gunships chased a vehicle of IS militants and bombed it after spotting it in the mountainous area of Himreen in the northern part of Salahudin province, Khalil al-Bazi from Salahudin provincial police told Xinhua. The bombardment resulted in the destruction of the vehicle and the killing of four IS militants aboard.
• In the eastern province of Diyala, one paramilitary tribal fighter, affiliated with Hashd Shaabi brigades, was killed and four others wounded in an attack by IS militants on a checkpoint manned by the Sunni tribal fighters in Edheim area in the northern part of Diyala.
• In a separate attack, a soldier was gunned down when IS militants opened fire on a military base near the town of Qara-Tappa, some 175 km northeast the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
• Despite repeated military operations against the IS remnants, IS militants are still hiding in deserts, rugged areas as well as in Himreen mountain range which extends in the provinces of Diyala, Salahudin and Kirkuk. They are capable of carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

Iraq Tuesday May 5, 2020:

• The RAF has carried out airstrikes on caves in Iraq where Islamic State (IS) terrorists were hiding out.
• Six cave entrances were bombed on 28 April by a pair of RAF Typhoons and other coalition aircraft northeast of Bayji in northern Iraq. Intelligence had confirmed a group of IS fighters with weapons were operating out of the caves.

Iraq Saturday May 9, 2020:

• Two ISIS/Daesh terrorists were killed in the village of Tarfavi near the Himrin mountains in Kirkuk. 
• In a separate statement, Hashd al-Shaabi said artilleries struck Daesh affiliates in Salahadin province, leading to losses for the terror group.
• Daesh terrorists gained full control in Mosul, Salahadin and Anbar provinces and seized territories in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces in 2014. But Iraqi security forces managed to regain control in subsequent years.  

Iraq Friday May 15, 2020:

• At least three people were killed by Daesh terrorists in the northern Saladin province.
• A village headman and his two brothers were killed in the armed attack. The terrorists also set fire to the village headman's home. Security forces have launched an operation.
• Daesh terrorists gained full control of Mosul, Saladin and Anbar provinces and seized territories in Diyala and Kirkuk provinces in 2014. But Iraqi security forces managed to regain control in subsequent years.

Iraq Saturday May 16, 2020:

• Two soldiers were killed in a Daesh/ISIS terror group attack in Iraq's Saladin province. Terrorists attacked a control point in Dujail district; the attackers quickly fled but an operation has begun to apprehend them.
• The terror group captured Mosul, Saladin, Anbar provinces and certain portions of Diyala and Kirkuk in June 2014, which were gradually taken back by Iraq.
• Officials in Baghdad declared Daesh/ISIS presence in Iraq all but eradicated in late 2017. But the terrorists still have a presence in rural areas of Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Saladin and Mosul.
• The army continues to carry out frequent operations against the group in parts of the country.

Iraq Sunday May 17, 2020:

• Two Islamic State (IS) militants and a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi member were killed in attacks in the province of Salahudin. A force from the provincial police clashed with IS militants group in a desert area in the western part of the province, leaving two IS militants killed and five policemen wounded.
• The clash occurred as the force was participating in a major offensive launched to hunt down IS remnants in the desert and rugged areas in the provinces of Anbar, Salahudin and Nineveh as well as the border areas with Syria.
• In a separate incident, one paramilitary Hashd Shaabi member was killed and three others were wounded, when a roadside bomb planted by IS militants detonated near the town of Tuz-Khrmato, some 90 km east of Salahudin's provincial capital Tikrit.
• The blast took place when the Hashd Shaabi members were on their way to help secure and put out fires in wheat farms that were ignited by extremists earlier in the day.
• The attacks came as the extremist IS militants have intensified their attacks on the security forces, including Hashd Shaabi forces, and civilians in the formerly IS-controlled Sunni provinces since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, resulting in the killing and wounding of dozens
• The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017. However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

Iraq Tuesday May 19, 2020:

• A rocket has hit an empty house in the Iraqi capital's heavily fortified Green Zone.
• The rocket was launched from an eastern district of Baghdad and was the first to land in the high-security zone in weeks. There were no reports of casualties in the attack.

Iraq Wednesday May 20, 2020:

• Iraq has arrested one of the former candidates to succeed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the slain leader of the ISIL (ISIS) group.
• The intelligence agency said: "Today, the terrorist named Nasser al-Qirdash, the candidate to succeed the criminal (Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, has been arrested."

Iraq Tuesday May 26, 2020:

• A senior ISIS leader in Iraq was killed in an American-led coalition raid on the militant group in eastern Syria. Moataz Al Jubouri, known as the “governor of Iraq and head of ISIS’s foreign operations”, was killed in an air strike in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province. Al Jubouri was also known as Hajji Tayseer.
• The attack was carried out with the assistance of Iraq’s intelligence and counter-terrorism services.

Iraq Wednesday May 27, 2020:

• Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) said that they have arrested Daesh’s media official in the Saladin province. A force from the 43rd Brigade carried out a tight ambush on a known ISIS media official in the Salaheddine Governorate.” The PMF identified the Daesh suspect as Ayoub Uday Al-Ani, adding that “the said terrorist participated in criminal operations against the security forces and civilians, especially in Salaheddine Governorate.”
• According to Al-Masdar, the Iraqi Military Intelligence Directorate also announced the arrest of a Daesh member following his return to Iraq from Syria. The detachments of the Military Intelligence Division, in conjunction with the 30th Infantry Brigade, arrested a terrorist in the Albu Ubaid area, in the Al-Rummana district of Al-Qaim district in Anbar Province.”
• Yesterday Iraq’s Couter-Terrorism Services (CTS) also confirmed that Daesh’s so-called governor of Iraq or “Wali”, Mutaz Al-Jabouri was killed in an airstrike carried out by the international coalition in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ez-Zor.
• After the information provided by [CTS] agency, which led to the death of terrorist Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and arrest of the terrorist Abdul Nasser Qardash, today we announce to the Iraqi people the killing of the terrorist Mutaz Noman Abdul-Naif al-Jabouri, nicknamed Hajji Taysir.”
• Although Qardash’s arrest was confirmed by Iraqi intelligence last week, it later emerged he had in fact been detained last year in Syria by Kurdish and US forces before being transferred to Iraqi authorities.

Iraq Friday May 29, 2020:

• Three Iranian border guards were killed in a clash with "armed insurgents" near the Iraqi border in the northwestern province of West Azerba.
• The border guards faced armed insurgents in a clash during their patrol, with some of the insurgents killed and three of the guards martyred. The clash broke out near the town of Sardasht.
• For much of the past 40 years, Iran has been battling Kurdish militants who use bases in neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan to mount cross-border attacks against Iranian government targets.

Iraq Monday June 1, 2020:

• Two soldiers and two Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in an airstrike and a bomb attack in the Iraqi provinces of Nineveh and Diyala.
• In one of the attacks, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded on their vehicle during an operation to hunt down IS militants near a mountain outside the town of Makhmour, some 100 km southeast of Nineveh's provincial capital Mosul.
• In Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, Iraqi helicopter gunships bombed IS positions in Udheim area, some 60 km north of the provincial capital Baquba, Alaa al-Saadi from the provincial police told Xinhua.
• Also in the province, a security force carried out an operation on an IS bomb-making site near Baquba, some 65 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which resulted in arresting three of the extremist IS militants.
• The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017. However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

Iraq Monday June 8 2020:

• A C-130H deployed to Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait, overran the runway at Camp Taji and struck a wall, injuring four service members.
• The service members’ injuries were not life-threatening, and they are being treated at the base’s medical facility.
• There were seven crew members and 26 passengers aboard the flight. Among the injured were two pilots.
• The task force, which is in charge of anti-Islamic State operations in the Middle East, said enemy action is not suspected, and that the accident is under investigation.
• The C-130 is now deployed to the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing at Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait.

Iraq Saturday June 13, 2020:

• Two Katyusha rockets fell in Iraq’s Taji base that hosts U.S.-led coalition troops, with no casualties reported.
• No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iraq Tuesday June 16, 2020:

• At least three people were killed in a terror attack by the Daesh/ISIS terror group in northern Iraq. The attack was carried out in the Palkana region of Saladin province.
• The attack targeted a rapid reaction force, killing three people and injuring two others.
• In late 2017, officials in Baghdad declared that the military presence of Daesh/ISIS in Iraq had been all but destroyed. But the terrorists still have a presence in the rural areas of Anbar, Diyala, Kirkuk, Saladin and Mosul. The Iraqi army continues to carry out frequent operations against the group in these parts of the country.

Iraq Friday June 19, 2020:

• The PKK terror group in Iraq attacked a martyr’s cemetery of Turkmen people in Kirkuk, north of the country’s capital Baghdad. PKK terrorist group elements attacked the Turkmen Martyrs Cemetery in Kirkuk’s city center, Muhammad Saman, a spokesman for the Iraqi Turkmen Front said. They removed the plaque of the cemetery and harmed some of the tombstones.
• The group also hanged its rags on some bridges in several Turkmen districts. After the incident, youth branch of the ITF took the rags down and handed them to police. The security forces launched an investigation into the incident, Saman added.
• Noting that PKK terrorists try to show their presence in Kirkuk amid the Turkish Armed Forces’ recently launched anti-terror Operation Claw-Eagle in northern Iraq, he expressed concern over the Turkmen political party buildings becoming target of the terror group.
• Turkey's Operations Claw-Eagle and Claw-Tiger were launched earlier this week to ensure the safety of the Turkish people and borders by neutralizing the threat of the PKK and other terrorist groups.

Iraq Monday June 22, 2020:

• One katyusha rocket landed in the vicinity of Baghdad airport without causing any casualties. It was the most recent in a spate of rocket attacks targeting the American presence in the country since the U.S. launched talks with Iraq earlier this month.
• The rocket was launched from a village west of the capital near the Abu Ghraib district. There were no casualties or significant damages.
• The U.S. led coalition maintains a presence in an army base adjacent to the airport. The rocket fell far from the base.
• It is the fourth attack to target the U.S. presence in Iraq since Washington and Baghdad embarked on strategic talks on June 11. The attacks are proving to be a key challenge for Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, whose government has promised to take action against militia groups suspected of orchestrating them. The U.S. has blamed Iran-backed militia groups.
• The U.S. assassinated Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a drone strike outside of Baghdad airport in January. The incident sparked soaring tensions and soured Iraq-U.S. tensions, prompting mostly Shiite Iraqi lawmakers to pass a non-binding resolution to oust U.S. troops from the country
• The continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is at the forefront of the strategic talks.

Iraq Thursday June 25, 2020:

• Iraqi forces raided an Iranian-backed militia suspected of carrying out a spate of rocket attacks against American forces, making good on the new prime minister’s promise to crack down on armed groups that have strained relations with the United States.
• The raid overnight on a brigade headquarters of the militia, Khataib Hezbollah, was intended to “to send a message that there is no red line and no one is above the law and everyone must be subject to it.
• There have been at least four attacks on Iraqi military bases and on Baghdad’s Green Zone in the past two weeks. The attacks were thought to be aimed at American forces on the bases and the American Embassy, which is in the fortified Green Zone.
• The United States blamed the militia for a rocket attack in December that killed an American civilian contractor, and one in March that killed three service members, including two Americans and a Briton.

Iraq Sunday July 5, 2020:

• Two rocket attacks targeted American diplomatic and military installations overnight, a little over a week since unprecedented arrests prevented a similar incident.
• In the first move of its kind, elite Iraqi troops in late June arrested more than a dozen Tehran-backed fighters who were allegedly planning a new attack on Baghdad's Green Zone, home to the US and other foreign embassies.
• One rocket fired at the Green Zone landed near a home, wounding a child. At the same time, our forces were able to thwart another attack and seize a Katyusha rocket and launcher that were targeting the Taji base north of Baghdad," where US-led coalition troops are based.
• The attempts came just hours after the US embassy tested a new rocket defence system known as a C-RAM. The C-RAM, set up earlier this year at the embassy, scans for incoming projectiles and explodes them in the air by targeting them with several thousand bullets per minute.
• A series of muted blasts could be heard across Baghdad on Saturday as the system was apparently tested, leaving passersby confused and Iraq's Parliament outraged.

Iraq Monday July 6, 2020:

• A close adviser to Iraq’s president and prime minister was shot dead outside his home in Baghdad, the most prominent critic of rogue Iran-backed militias yet to be assassinated in Iraq.
• The murder comes less than two weeks after Iraqi security forces raided the country’s most dangerous Tehran-linked Shia militia, heralded at the time as an unprecedented challenge to the powerful group. Targeted assassinations have become a rare occurrence in Baghdad and no group has claimed responsibility for Monday’s killing.
• The attack on Hisham al-Hashemi could “be seen as a retaliation for that raid. Hisham is the victim here. This is an attack on [the president and prime minister] and all those people who were working with Hisham.
• Hashemi was informally advising both the president, Barham Salih, and new prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi on counter terrorism. “They are targeting us [associates of the prime minister and president] now directly, and very obvious[ly].
• As Iraq’s best-known security analyst, Hashemi’s killing by unidentified gunmen has sent shockwaves through the country.
• The expert’s vast network, from Islamist militia leaders to generals, made him the go-to source on terrorism for Iraqi officials, western diplomats and journalists. As Hashemi’s profile rose, he became a regular television guest, built a huge social media following, and authored several books about jihadism.
• Although Hashemi gained recognition for his research on Isis, his focus had recently shifted to the Shia militia groups who gained power in their fight against the Sunni jihadis from 2014. ---

Iraq Saturday July 11, 2020:

• Unknown militants attacked a convoy of trucks carrying U.S. logistical equipment in southern Iraq. The attack took place when gunmen riding pickups forced the convoy to stop between the cities of Samawah and Diwaniyah and set fire to the trucks, which was carrying U.S. army's furniture and military vehicles.
• The trucks were traveling from neighboring Kuwait to a U.S. base in Taji Camp in the north of Baghdad when the gunmen attacked the convoy and forced the drivers to get off the trucks before they set them on fire and fled the scene.
• A police force from Diwaniyah arrived at the scene and took the drivers for interrogation as they launched an investigation into the incident.

Iraq Saturday July 25, 2020:

• Five people were killed in an attack by Daesh/ISIS terrorists in the northern Saladin province.
• Terrorists attacked the home of the mayor of Semum village, north of Saladin, killing him and four other people, including his two sons. The attackers fled the scene unscathed.
• In recent months, suspected Daesh/ISIS terrorists have stepped up attacks, particularly in the area between Kirkuk, Saladin (north), and Diyala (east), known as the "Triangle of Death".

Iraq Sunday July 26, 2020:

• Two explosions hit a military base in Baghdad where Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces) and police forces are based. Iraq’s Security Media Cell said that two different explosions took place at the Al-Saqr military base on the Baghdad-Hillah road.
• Intense security measures were taken around the military base in the capital.
• The same source later said in another statement that the explosion was caused by “hot air and mis-storage of ammunition. The explosion occurred at an ammunition depot of police.
• At least two protesters have been killed in Baghdad during renewed overnight demonstrations against corruption, unemployment and poor public services. The deaths were the first during anti-government rallies since Iraq's new Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi was sworn into office in May.
• Dozens of people were also wounded after "plain-clothed officials" opened fire using live ammunition towards the demonstrators who were gathered in Tahrir Square. The square has been the epicentre of a protest movement that erupted in October last year but had died down in recent months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Iraq Wednesday August 5, 2020:

• The extremist group Daesh killed or abducted more than 7,600 Yazidis in its brutal attack in the summer of 2014.
• Today marks the sixth anniversary of the genocide of the Yazidis in the Sinjar district and the Nineveh Plain regions at the hands of the criminal gangs of the Islamic State which killed 1,200 of them, and displaced more than 360,000 others. The events left more than 83 mass graves and more than 6,400 Yazidis were abducted.
• The IHCH has urged the Iraqi parliament to compensate Yazidi families for their losses. The commission also called on the international community to help Yazidis who were abducted to be able to return to their families.
• The Yazidis are a religious group who live in the city of Sinjar, 130 kilometres west of Mosul. The city is near the Iraq-Syria border and is home to people of Kurdish, Arab, and Yazidi ethnicity. Some also live in Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia, and Georgia.
• In June 2016, the UN declared that Daesh had committed genocide against the Yazidis and wanted to eradicate the religion and its followers.

Iraq Saturday August 8, 2020:

• A roadside bomb struck a convoy of trucks carrying logistical equipment belonging to the U.S.-led coalition forces in southern Iraq. The attack took place on the international road in Dhi Qar Province, causing minor damage to one of the vehicles.
• No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, but unidentified militant groups have frequently targeted U.S.-led coalition convoys, which usually travel from neighboring Kuwait to the coalition bases in central and northern Iraq.
• The attacks came as the Iraqi-U.S. relations have witnessed a tension since Jan. 3 when a U.S. drone struck a convoy at Baghdad airport, which killed Qassem Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.
• More than 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the Iraqi forces in the battles against the Islamic State militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces.
• The troops were part of the U.S.-led coalition that has also been conducting air raids against IS targets in both Iraq and Syria.

Iraq Wednesday August 12, 2020:

• Iraq cancelled a ministerial visit and summoned Turkey's ambassador as it blamed Ankara for a drone attack that killed two high-ranking Iraqi military officers.
• Iraqi officials called the attack a "blatant Turkish drone attack" in the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, where Turkey's military has for weeks raided positions of fighters it considers "terrorists".
• Two border guard battalion commanders and the driver of their vehicle were killed on Tuesday, the army said, marking the first Iraqi troop deaths since Turkey launched the cross-border operation in mid-June against Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels.
• Iraq's foreign ministry - which already summoned the Turkish envoy twice over the military action on its soil - said the ambassador would this time be given "a letter of protest with strong words" rejecting the offensive. The ministry also confirmed the Turkish defence minister would no longer be welcomed for a planned visit on Thursday.
• At least two explosions have hit convoys supplying US-led coalition forces in Iraq in the last 24 hours; the first on Monday evening near the southern border with Kuwait and the second on Tuesday north of Baghdad.
• The explosions, which caused no casualties but did some material damage, are the latest in a string of such incidents in recent weeks. An attack in southern Iraq on Sunday hit a convoy carrying supplies to coalition forces.
• Several thousand US forces are still based in Iraq, leading a coalition whose mission is to fight Islamic State extremists. Those forces are also a target for Iran-backed Shia militias, which the United States blames for regular rocket attacks on bases hosting the coalition, and on other US targets such as Washington’s embassy in Baghdad.

Iraq Thursday August 13, 2020:

• Three Katyusha rockets have fallen into Iraq’s Balad air base, 80 km north of the capital Baghdad, which houses U.S. forces but caused no casualties or losses.
• A number of rocket and mortar attacks have hit bases hosting coalition forces and landed near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad in recent months. The United States blames Iran-backed militia groups.

Iraq Sunday August 16, 2020:

• One person was killed and two others were injured in a bomb explosion in Iraq’s northern Kirkuk province. The blast took place in al-Riyadh, a town west of Kirkuk city.

Iraq Monday August 17, 2020:

• The Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) said it had shot down a Turkish helicopter in Iraqi Kurdistan in retaliation for the death of one of its commanders last week. Last Tuesday’s Turkish drone strike had also killed two high-ranking Iraqi officers, sparking renewed tensions with Baghdad.
• The PKK said its forces in the mountainous Zagros region had “been able to score a direct hit and shoot down a Turkish helicopter. Ten minutes after the shooting-down of the first helicopter, they hit another one ... forcing it to flee.
• The PKK dedicated Monday’s operation to its “martyr” Akid Karzan and the two Iraqi officers killed “by the Turkish occupation army.
• Turkey, which has had a military presence in Iraq’s autonomous region for a quarter of a century, launched a cross-border ground and air operation against the PKK in the mountainous region in mid-June. Last Tuesday’s strike had prompted Iraq to summon the Turkish ambassador in Baghdad for the third time in two months. Then on Friday Turkish bombardment killed three Kurdish fighters in the region.
• 10 Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in an operation by the Iraqi security forces in northern Iraq.
• A force from the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), backed by the Iraqi and international coalition aircraft, conducted an operation in Qara-Chokh Mountain near the town of Makhmour, some 60 km southeast of Nineveh's provincial capital Mosul.
• The operation resulted in the killing of 10 IS militants and the destruction of nine caves used by the extremist militants.
• The operation came as the IS militants have intensified their attacks on the security forces and civilians in the formerly IS-controlled Sunni provinces.
• The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017.

Iraq Wednesday August 19, 2020:

• A female activist has been killed in the southern Iraqi city of Basra by unidentified gunmen who opened fire on the car she was in. Reham Yacoub, a doctor and activist in the local protest movement since 2018, was shot by an assault rifle-brandishing gunman on the back of a motorcycle. Three women in the car at the time were wounded, one died later.
• Known for organising women's marches, Yacoub had previously received threats against her life when she participated in training courses supervised by the US consulate in Basra in 2017 and 2018.
• Yacoub's killing marks the third incident this week in which gunmen targeted anti-government political activists after one was killed and a separate attack saw assailants open fire on a car carrying at least two others.

Iraq Thursday August 20, 2020:

• The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on Thursday strongly condemned the killing of two civil society activists in Iraq's southern province of Basra. The killing of Dr. Reham Yaqoub last night and Tahseen Oussama a week ago presents a serious threat to security and stability in Basra.
• The citizens of Basra should not live in such an atmosphere of terror and threat, and greater action by the authorities is urgently required to hold the perpetrators accountable, and to put an end to this cycle of violence.
• On Wednesday, unknown gunmen opened fire on a sport utility vehicle (SUV) carrying four women on a street in the city of Basra, some 550 km south of Baghdad. The attack resulted in the killing of Yaqoub, a female doctor who works in Basra Hospital and also a civil society activist who supports the anti-government protests in Iraq which demanded comprehensive reform, fight against corruption, better public services, and more job opportunities. The attack also resulted in the killing of another woman and the wounding of the two others in the vehicle.
• Two days ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi sacked the police chief of Basra province, as well as the head of the National Security Service, due to repeated security violations and assassinations in the province recently.

Iraq Wednesday August 26, 2020:

• The United Nations said one of its convoys was hit by an explosion in northern Iraq; there were few other details. Two UN employees were reported injured.
• Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, who heads the UN’s Iraq mission, told the UN Security Council via videoconference that an improvised explosive device had detonated near the convoy. Conditions for humanitarian actors are also hazardous in certain areas as was starkly highlighted Wednesday by the IED explosion that impacted a World Food Program convoy in Ninevah.
• Ninevah province is in northern Iraq and includes the city of Mosul. The Islamic State (IS) took the area in 2014. Ninevah has a large amount of religious and ethnic diversity and parts of it are disputed between the federal and Kurdistan Region governments. The Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Units control much of the province post-IS.

Iraq Friday August 28, 2020:

• Three rockets landed just after midnight local time in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, which houses government buildings and foreign missions.
• The rockets were launched from Bajia neighborhood, west of the capital, but fell in an empty area and caused no significant damage.
• Separately, on Thursday a rocket landed in Jadriya neighborhood, which is close to the Green Zone, but caused no significant damage.
• There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Iraq Monday September 14, 2020:

The Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) conducted an airdrop operation in the western province of Anbar, capturing an Islamic State (IS) local leader and killing an associate.

The CTS troops, backed by U.S.-led coalition aircraft, carried out the airdrop operation in the town of al-Rutba, some 300 km west the provincial capital Ramadi.

The operation resulted in the capturing of a prominent local leader and the killing of an associate who was the main funder for IS bases in the al-Rutba area.

Earlier in the day, an officer from Anbar provincial police command, anonymously told Xinhua that the U.S.-led international coalition forces carried out an airdrop operation on a house in the al-Rutba area. The troops captured Hatem al-Kurdi and killed his brother Dhiyaa al-Kurdi.

IS militants are still active in the vast Anbar desert which stretches to the border with neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as small groups or individuals of IS militants frequently infiltrated into Iraq from neighboring Syria through the roughly 600 km long border with Iraq in an attempt to regroup in Iraq again.

The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces declared full liberation of Iraq from IS militants late in 2017, and the Iraqi forces repeatedly carrying out operations to control the whole border areas with Syria and nearby desert in western Iraq.

Iraq Tuesday September 15, 2020:

• An improvised explosive device has targeted British diplomatic vehicles in Iraq's capital Baghdad.
• The blast targeted an embassy convoy on the airport road, close to the Umm al Tabool Mosque.  There were no injuries but an armoured vehicle was badly damaged.
• An Iraqi pharmacist and her family were killed after an intruder broke into their home. Sheelan Dara, who came from an affluent Kurdish family, took part in anti-government protests during the uprising in last October. Unidentified gunmen stormed a house in Al Mansour district, west of Baghdad, and slaughtered the pharmacist Sheelan Dara, and her parents.
• The intruders stole valuables from the house as they fled. Preliminary data indicated that it was "motivated by theft” he said, without further details. Medical reports found that Ms Dara was strangled while her parents were brutally stabbed.
• “The purpose of the attack was to kill Sheelan who had been active in supporting popular protests against the ruling political class; this has happened with a dozen others. Sheelan was one of the well-known young faces in Tahrir Square.
• In recent months the country has witnessed an increase in attacks against civil and human rights activists, including Riham Yaqoob, a doctor from Basra. Ms Yaqoob was a doctor and female activist in Iraq who became the face of many local anti-government and anti-corruption protests She died after being shot in her car while in the city of Basra. Her killing was the third of a series of attacks on activists in a week.
• Tahseen Osama was killed one week before Ms Yaqoob. His death pushed protesters to take to the streets to demand the authorities uncover those responsible. Many human rights activists are becoming concerned over the growing number of these attacks.

Iraq Thursday September 17, 2020:

• Four paramilitary Hashd Shaabi members were killed in two attacks by Islamic State (IS) militants in the provinces of Kirkuk and Diyala .
• In the northern province of Kirkuk, IS militants attacked in the morning a Hashd Shaabi base in al-Bashir area, south of the provincial capital city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad. Fierce clashes erupted between the two sides resulting in the killing of three Hashd Shaabi members; one of the attackers was also killed and two others were wounded.
• In the eastern province of Diyala, IS militants attacked late on Wednesday night Hashd Shaabi checkpoints in Udhaim area in the north of the provincial capital Baquba, some 65 km northeast of Baghdad, sparking clashes which resulted in the killing of a Hashd Shaabi member and the wounding of three others.
• The attacks came as the IS militants have intensified their attacks on the security forces, including Hashd Shaabi forces, and civilians in the formerly IS-controlled Sunni provinces, resulting in the killing and wounding of dozens.