Iraq - Page 7

Michael Gove became trapped in a lift shortly after praising Iraq War architect Tony Blair as an “outstanding” man deserving of a knighthood.

A viral petition to strip former Labour prime minister and Iraq War architect Tony Blair of his knighthood is closing in on one million signatures, and shows no signs of slowing down. 

The Lithuanian government has paid 98 illegal migrants €1,000 to board a flight to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

“Students” belonging to a paramilitary wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, published a letter this weekend lamenting that Iran had not issued a “proportionate” response to the elimination of top terrorist Qasem Soleimani two years ago.

Several residents of Al-Hamdaniya, an Iraqi Christian town, dressed up as Santa Claus to stage an uplifting Christmas parade for local children on Sunday roughly seven years after the community was invaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Monday.

Jihadi bride Tareena Shakil, free after serving less than half of her short jail sentence, says she “regrets” joining the Islamic State.

President Joe Biden awarded three soldiers the Medal of Honor during a ceremony at the White House on Thursday.

EU foreign ministers are expected Monday to decide to expand sanctions against Belarus to include airlines, travel agents and individuals.

The Iraqi Embassy in Minsk announced on Thursday it will organize an evacuation flight for Iraqi citizens “wishing to return” home from Belarus amid a migration crisis.

Belarus is training and arming Afghan and Iraqi fighters to launch “terrorist” attacks against Europe, a one-time senior Belarussian politician now living in exile has claimed.

Pope Francis sent a telegram to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi Tuesday to assure him of his prayers after Sunday’s assassination attempt.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi survived an assassination attempt on Sunday during which an unidentified party targeted his Baghdad residence with an “explosive-laden drone,” Rudaw reported.

Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako has condemned Sunday’s drone attack on Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, saying the attempt sought to “destabilize” the country.

BAGHDAD — Troops deployed around Baghdad on Sunday following the failed assassination attempt with armed drones that targeted the residence of Iraq’s prime minister. The attack significantly ramped up tensions sparked by the refusal of Iran-backed militias to accept last month’s parliamentary election results.

Israel has started launching a giant new balloon equipped with advanced aerial surveillance aimed at detecting missiles in the north of the country, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

BERLIN — A German convert to Islam was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday on charges that, as a member of the extremist Islamic State group in Iraq, she allowed a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the hot sun.

Iraq held its parliamentary elections on Sunday, several months ahead of schedule. Turnout was disappointingly low, and despite heavy billing as an opportunity for the disgruntled Iraqi public to make big changes, there were no seismic shifts in power.

Nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan died in a Pakistani military hospital on Sunday at the age of 85, apparently a victim of the Wuhan coronavirus or one of its comorbidities. He was celebrated by Prime Minister Imran Khan as a “national hero” for turning Pakistan into a “nuclear weapon state.” Left unmentioned in the PM’s eulogy was AQ Khan’s role as a dangerous proliferator who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya.

Iraqi security forces recently captured a top member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who was second-in-command to its slain leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi confirmed Monday.

President Joe Biden and the European Union have agreed to try to reduce global methane emmissions by 2030 mainly by targeting fossil fuels.

An Iraqi asylum seeker has received a short sentence for raping a woman in Swansea, Wales, and will have to serve two-thirds of it in custody before being released on licence and deported — maybe.

Troops from the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq stationed at the airport in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), were attacked on Saturday by drones packed with explosives. One of the drones was able to penetrate the airport’s security perimeter before exploding, but no significant damage or casualties were reported.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the theocracy-controlled wing of the Iranian military and a designated terrorist organization, launched rocket and drone attacks across the border into Iraq on Thursday, targeting Kurdish militant groups Iran claims are a threat to its security.

Iraqi Shiite militia leader Hadi al-Amiri on Tuesday urged all foreign troops to leave Iraq by the end of the year, the Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported.

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, a study shows the cost of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places in both dollars and lost lives.

(AFP) – French president Emmanuel Macron was to pay a visit Sunday to the Islamic State group’s former Iraqi stronghold Mosul, a day after vowing to keep troops in the country.

Poland has deployed hundreds of troops and is laying barbed wire along its border with Belarus to stop the arrival of migrants.

Belarus is allegedly sending migrants to Lithuania as part of a “hybrid warfare” campaign to destabilize the EU member state.

An MP has told Breitbart News that her Lithuania will protect the “border of democracy” from a weaponised flow of African and Middle Eastern migrants from Belarus.

A spokesman for a member militia of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a formal wing of the Iraqi military, warned on Sunday the U.S. would face “appropriate consequences” if it did not fully withdraw from the country in the near future.

The authorities in Lithuania — a country of 2.8 million people where migration is virtually unprecedented — are being overwhelmed by African and Middle Eastern migrants entering via Belarus.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said the party must be “proud” of Tony Blair’s “record in government”, and no longer keep the Iraq War architect’s legacy at “arm’s length”.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Belarus’s border protection agency said Friday that it tightened control along its border with Lithuania to prevent Lithuanian authorities from sending migrants back to Belarus. Lithuania, a member of the European Union, has faced an influx

 Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite has ordered border guards to repel, with force if needed, illegal migrants as the European Union border agency has claimed Belarus is helping illegals cross.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres submitted a report to the Security Council (UNSC) on Tuesday that warned the Islamic State (ISIS) has regained an “alarming” amount of its strength by taking advantage of “the disruption, grievances, and development setbacks” caused by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

Yazidi representatives criticized Baghdad on Monday for failing to help facilitate the return of thousands of Yazidis to their homeland despite repeated pledges to do so since ISIS forced the ethnoreligious group to flee the northwestern Iraqi district of Sinjar seven years ago.