Baghdad - Page 4

U.S.-led coalition officials involved in the operation to eradicate the Islamic State from Mosul say they have succeeded in curbing the number of vehicle-based suicide bomb attacks on Iraqi troops on the ground by “cratering” the city’s roads and knocking down its bridges.

MOSUL, Iraq — Elite Iraqi forces were engaged in “intense” fighting with jihadists in eastern Mosul on Saturday, an officer said, as civilians gathered on the city’s outskirts to flee.

The Islamic State has taken hundreds of hostages as it falls back into its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, bolstering its inventory of civilian human shields with 295 Iraqi Security Forces troops kidnapped last week.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters on Thursday that Islamic State “Caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had fled Mosul shortly following the release of an audio message in which al-Baghdadi demanded his jihadi fighters not flee their largest stronghold in Iraq.

The government of Turkey has warned that it is prepared for a ground invasion of northern Iraq if the Marxist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) does not vacate its camps in Sinjar. Turkey, present in Iraq against the wishes of Baghdad, has been training Kurdish Peshmerga militia units near Erbil, south of Sinjar.

Secular Iraqis woke up feeling hungover on Sunday, after a surprise parliament vote they claim is unconstitutional and shows that dominant religious parties have their priorities wrong.

They burst into the house in the early hours of the morning and pointed a gun at Abu Mohammed’s head: “We are the Islamic State — give us your car!”

The news of an impending military initiative to liberate Mosul, Iraq from the Islamic State reportedly led a high-ranking jihadist commander to attempt a mutiny against the terrorist organization, one that failed and left dozens of jihadists dead.

Wednesday found the governments of Turkey and Iraq summoning each others’ ambassadors for acrimonious exchanges over Turkish troops stationed near Mosul, as the battle to liberate that city from ISIS approaches.

Nadia Al Sultani, in answering questions about her book Baghdad Stories: An Iraqi-American Memoir, told Breitbart News that President Barack Obama’s decision to completely withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 “did have an important impact on the outcomes that Iraq is reeling from currently.”

JAFFA, Israel – Iraq’s Foreign Ministry has summoned their ambassador in Portugal to return to Baghdad in light of a recent diplomatic crisis that threatens relations between the two countries.

TEL AVIV – The U.S. used a neoteric gas that melts humans and steel in the 9/11 attacks and during the 2003 Iraq War, an article published in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour claims.

The Islamic State’s propaganda apparatus has suffered a setback in recent weeks, loyalists in Gaza told Breitbart Jerusalem, admitting that the decline in the organization’s online presence came as it experienced a series of defeats on the battlefield.

The Iraqi parliament in Baghdad is expected to convene for the first time in three months amid deadly attacks that continue to plague the Iraqi capital.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım has reportedly indicated that there are “not many reasons” for Turkey to fight against any of the countries in its region, suggesting that his country will stop combating the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

Iraqi forces recaptured a northern air base from the Islamic State group on Saturday, a victory hailed by the prime minister as a key step ahead of the long-awaited operation to retake the northern city of Mosul.

Militant Sunni Muslims of the Islamic State bombarded a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad with mortar shells late Thursday night, as two suicide bombers in military uniforms blew themselves up inside, killing at least 35 people, according to Iraqi security forces.

TEL AVIV – Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Wednesday blamed the U.S., UK and Israel for the spate of Islamic State bombings that took place over the month of Ramadan.

The world nods in brief acknowledgment and goes on. After all, most people have become accustomed to hearing about terrorist attacks in Iraq that have been ongoing for over ten years now. Iraqis die barely making headlines.

The Iraqi government has declared three days of national mourning after a huge bomb in Baghdad killed 165 people and injured 225 others.

Contents: Iraq declares 3 days of national mourning after massive Baghdad bombing; Iraq orders police to stop using bogus ‘bomb detectors’; Former ambassador Jim Moriarty describes the dancing people of Bangladesh

UPDATE: The BBC reports the death toll is now more than 120 dead. BAGHDAD (AP) — At least 91 people were killed Sunday in two bombings in the Iraqi capital, including a large-scale attack claimed by the Islamic State group

Sunni politicians in Iraq have accused pro-Government Shiite militias of torturing local Sunni men as they close in on Islamic State (IS) fighters in Fallujah.

JAFFA, Israel – The intense campaign to liberate the Iraqi city of Fallujah from the grip of the Islamic State organization has led to a sectarian war on social media, including among Sunni and Shiite opinion makers.

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists are using “several hundred families” in Fallujah as “human shields” as they engage in bloody battles with Iraqi troops, backed by the United States and Iran-allied Shiite militias, for control over the strategic city, reports the United Nations Refugee Agency.

The Rudaw news service reports that provincial authorities in Erbil expect up to 900,000 refugees to flee the war zones of Fallujah and Mosul into Iraqi Kurdistan, but the central government in Baghdad has been slow to coordinate with the Kurds.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for one of three bombings that hit Baghdad on Tuesday, which killed at least 69 people and wounded over 100 more, according to the Associated Press.

Iraqi Major General Najm Abdullah al-Jubbouri says ISIS is bombing soft civilian targets in Baghdad because they’ve become weak on the battlefield.

CNN reports: ISIS has claimed responsibility for an assault on a Baghdad gas plant Sunday, the latest in a series of deadly attacks committed by the Sunni terror group that have claimed more than 100 lives in recent days. Baghdad

Three suicide bombings claimed by Islamic State across Baghdad killed at least 80 people on Wednesday, Iraqi police and hospital sources said, in the deadliest attacks in the Iraqi capital this year. Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was

Contents: Reader question on Iran and Iraq’s Muqtada al-Sadr; European Commission expected to recommend visa-free travel for citizens of Turkey

Protesters overran Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, home to the Iraqi Parliament and other government buildings, on Saturday, taking photos in the legislature’s chambers and vowing to return after a 24-hour occupation.

Contents: Iraq government faces climatic Awakening era political crisis; Muqtada al-Sadr and Iraq’s Awakening era

According to reports from the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as related by the UK Daily Mail, the Islamic State went on a killing spree against its own commanders over the past three weeks, executing 21 of them for failure in Syria.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces fighting alongside the Iraqi military on the mission to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State warn that the Iraqi army is “too weak” to fight ISIS, even with its advanced weaponry, while the peshmerga is better trained but ill-equipped to fight alone.

The Obama administration is contemplating providing an emergency aid package to the cash-strapped Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq because it has been unable to pay its Peshmerga force, which has received military assistance from Russia.