Baghdad - Page 3

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday paid an unscheduled visit to Baghdad and the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region in northern Iraq as part of his Middle East tour of several nations that began in Jordan this week.

The Iraqi government is refusing to comply with a second round of United States economic sanctions targeting Iran’s crucial energy, shipping and banking sectors.

Iraqi model and Instagram starlet Tara Fares has been shot dead at the wheel of her Porsche convertible in central Baghdad, sending ripples through social media circles.

Residents in Kirkuk, Iraq, are protesting that they have run “out of water,” joining a chorus of protests in cities like Basra over Baghdad’s inability to provide basic government services, the Kurdish outlet Rudaw reported on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq thanked Japan on Wednesday for helping the Kurdistan region solve a major problem it had with electricity shortages by signing a ten-year, nearly $120 million contract.

Turkey’s defense minister reportedly claimed Tuesday that Iran supports a new phase in Ankara’s operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) that would see Turkish troops combat the Kurds in their northern Iraq-based stronghold.

Iraq’s parliament, on Wednesday, passed a law mandating a manual recount of votes cast in the May 12 parliamentary elections.

The cost of rebuilding Iraq after nearly three years of the U.S.-backed war waged by local troops against Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists is expected to exceed $88 billion, Iraqi officials reportedly told international donors.

The damage inflicted on Iraq by the rise and fall of the Islamic State (ISIS) is horrendous, with cities like the former ISIS stronghold of Mosul virtually leveled. Baghdad puts the damage at roughly $100 billion, which is an impressive level of vandalism from a group President Barack Obama famously dismissed as the “junior varsity team” of terrorism. Unfortunately for Iraq, donor nations are not lining up to finance the reconstruction.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, have agreed on the need for northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Shiite-led Baghdad to resolve their Kurdish independence efforts-linked differences through dialogue, according to the White House.

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) jihadists killed at least 17 people and injured 28 others in Baghdad, a testament to the ongoing threat it poses to Iraq despite the dramatic losses it has suffered at the hands of the U.S.-led coalition and its local allies.

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader has praised his country’s contribution to the fight against the Islamic State group, saying it had helped destroy a “tumor” created by the United States and its allies.

The Trump administration’s opposition to the independence referendum approved by northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has prompted the Kurds to consider “revising” its mutually beneficial relationship with the United States, according to the region’s former president.

The distressed sister of decorated veteran Nick Slatten has denounced U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) efforts to convince a federal court to reconsider its decision to vacate her brother’s first-degree murder conviction as a “vindictive assault on justice.”

Christians living in the Nineveh Plains, who only just returned home after the defeat of the Islamic State, are once again on the move, forced to flee as Kurdish fighters clash with Iraqi government forces north of Mosul.

Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters on Monday that the U.S. military could potentially reconsider supporting the Iraqi military if attacks on Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) territory continued, emphasizing that he would not “speculate” on any future actions at the moment.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi appeared to extend an olive branch to the breakaway Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in remarks in Paris on Thursday, urging Kurdish Peshmerga military forces to “work together” with Baghdad’s army.

Shiite-led Arab lawmakers in Baghdad, Iraq, are punishing their Kurdish counterparts for voting in the independence referendum held by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq last week, banning them from participating in parliament and urging the country’s judicial branch to take punitive measures against them.

Following the overwhelmingly successful turnout in last week’s Kurdistan Independence Referendum, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), who has long been an advocate of the Kurdish people, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives supporting an independent Kurdish state.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan dismissed the possibility of Kurdistan becoming an independent state on Thursday following their independence referendum this week, claiming the process will only end in “disappointment.”

The United Nations, echoing the United States and Iran, has come out against Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence referendum, scheduled to pass this month.

Russia and Iraq restored scheduled commercial airline services on Sunday for the first time since 2004, in what officials hailed as a sign of stability returning to the war-torn country.

Iraqi forces have driven the Islamic State from central Tal Afar and its historic citadel, they said Saturday, placing them on the verge of fully recapturing one of the last IS strongholds in the country.

Shiite-led Baghdad is growing closer to the Iran-Russia coalition in the Middle East that also includes Syria as the collapse of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in the region appears imminent.

A German teenager who left home to join the Islamic State (ISIS) said that she regrets what she did and wants to go home to be with her family.

The autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan has announced an independence referendum to take place this September, in a move likely to anger officials in Iraq.

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) launched a car bomb attack in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and injuring 32 others at an ice cream shop packed with families who were breaking their fast during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Concerns are growing amongst Iraqi Kurdish officials over the presence of Shiite-majority Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitaries in Northern Iraq where many territories remain controlled by the Islamic State.

There are reportedly “growing concerns” over the arrest of two Middle Eastern brothers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, this month. The men reportedly had what was described as an arsenal of bombing-making materials, replete with guns, ammunition, and bomb-making materials in their car.

The International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed a chemical weapons attack targeting women and children in Mosul, Iraq, this week — likely an Islamic State operation intended to slow the liberation of its regional capital.

The U.S. military is not in Iraq “to seize anybody’s oil”, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said, before arriving on an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Monday.

Contents: Iraq: Supporters of al-Sadr and al-Maliki turn again to violence in Baghdad; Iraq’s army poised to begin Battle of Mosul in the west

Iraqi military officials uncovered a trove of over one hundred artifacts that experts have traced back to the Nimrud archaeological site at the former home of an Islamic State terrorist leader in eastern Mosul.

The United States is expected to build its biggest consulate building in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq that has been pushing for independence.

A suicide bomber blew up a car at the entrance of Baghdad’s main vegetable market on Sunday, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens, security officials and medics said.

As a show of support for Iraq’s beleaguered Christians, a Muslim Iraqi businessman erected a giant, 85-foot-tall Christmas tree in Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad.