Iraq - Page 6

IRAQ – For President Joe Biden, a renewed Middle East crisis lurks just as the Afghan withdrawal debacle enters the rearview mirror and record-high gas prices continue to retreat.

Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court ruled Wednesday that it lacks the legal authority to dissolve Parliament, as demanded by Shiite nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The much-anticipated ruling sets the stage for a showdown between Sadr’s followers and other factions, as Iraq approaches one full year without a functional government.

There is an elevated threat of terror attacks on French soil by Islamic extremists, France’s national anti-terrorism prosecutor warned Friday.

Shiite militias in Basra, Iraq, opened fire on each other early Thursday morning in what the Kurdish news outlet Rudaw described as “heavy confrontations,” just days after Shiite followers of anti-Iranian cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed the capital, Baghdad, prompting riots that left at least 30 people dead.

Influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his supporters to stop violent riots in Baghdad on Tuesday after 24 hours that left at least 30 dead and hundreds wounded in the Iraqi capital’s “Green Zone.”

Powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced his “final withdrawal” from politics on Monday, citing his frustration with the paralyzed Iraqi system.

Hundreds of protesters swarmed through the protected “Green Zone” in Baghdad on Wednesday and occupied the Iraqi Parliament building for much of the day.

America celebrates its independence on the Fourth of July, while captive people around the world hope they might one day celebrate their own.

Former Labour prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair has been formally invested as a member of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, England’s oldest and most prestigious order of knights, despite well over a million people signing a petition asking for the honour to be rescinded. 

The verdict handed down to retired geologist Jim Fitton, shocked the court in Baghdad, including his defence attorney. He and his family have argued that Fitton, 66, had no criminal intent.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday threatened to launch another military incursion into Syria, without warning, if he deems it necessary to neutralize Kurdish militia groups classified by Turkey as terrorists.

An Iraqi national, accused of plotting to assassinate former President George W. Bush, sought asylum from President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) while overstaying and violating the terms of his visitor visa, the Department of Justice (DOJ) confirms.

Iraq’s Ministry of Health announced Saturday that the country was experiencing “a dangerous rise in viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) cases,” with the ministry recording 90 infections and 18 deaths from the disease in recent days, India’s Zee News reported on Sunday.

A massive sandstorm blew through Iraq on Monday, forcing daily life to shut down in Baghdad and causing breathing difficulties in at least 4,000 people who sought medical treatment in hospitals nationwide, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Twenty years after the United States invested blood and treasure in liberating Iraq from the rule of Saddam Hussein, China is attempting to lock up control of Iraq’s oilfields. The Western intervention in Iraq was denounced by critics as a “war for oil,” but in the end, the great authoritarian menace of the 21st Century is close to taking control of Iraq’s energy resources.

U.S. military forces stationed at Al-Harir Air Base in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region “mistakenly” fired on at least 11 civilian homes and one civilian car on Monday night in the nearby town of Shaqlawa, the Kurdish news website Rudaw reported.

Turkish forces operating in Syria reportedly shelled two villages on Sunday, coming perilously close to positions held by Russian troops. Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is currently in a state of highly elevated tensions with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

British school kids should be taught the benefits of the British Empire, the UK’s Iraqi-born Education Minister has argued.

The Iraqi government has completed a wall “a dozen kilometers long and 3.5 meters high” along the Syrian border in Nineveh province to keep Islamic State jihadis at bay. Iraq plans to expand the wall to cover more of its 600-kilometer border with Syria.

BEIRUT (AP) – Layal Aswad was already exhausted by Lebanon’s devastating two-year economic collapse. Now, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends food and energy prices soaring even further, she finds herself struggling to put food on the table for her family of four.

(AP) — British lawmaker Sir David Amess was “assassinated” while meeting constituents last year by a “fanatical, radicalised Islamist terrorist,” a court heard Monday as the accused killer went on trial.

Boris Johnson has railed against Putin following his rally celebrating 8 years of Russian occupation of Crimea.

The cargo ship Al Salmi 6 sank in the Persian Gulf Thursday, and according to reports one of the thirty crew members remains unaccounted for.

Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that she hoped the “compassion and generosity” that Ukrainians were offered translated to policy changes to accommodate other refugees from places, including Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Russia-backed Ukrainian separatist “Donetsk People’s Republic,” warned supporters of Kurdish independence not to rely on support from America or the West because “they won’t respect their promises,” unlike, he claimed, Russia.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran on Sunday formally took responsibility for the missile attack on Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. The IRGC is the theocratically-controlled wing of the Iranian military and has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Following Iran claiming responsibility for a missile barrage that struck early Sunday near a sprawling U.S. consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, Republicans called for an end to nuclear talks with the Islamic Republic.

A dozen missiles were fired Sunday at the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraqi security officials said. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has now claimed responsibility for the attack which it said targeted “secret Israeli bases” in the northern Iraqi city.

All the foes of Iran should tremble on the battlefield because the Islamic Republic has the upper hand against all its enemies, Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), warned Friday.

BAGHDAD — As many as 12 missiles struck near a sprawling U.S. consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil on Sunday, in what a U.S. defense official and an Iraqi official said was a strike launched from neighboring Iran.

Former prime minister Tony Blair has said in an interview that he thought his invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were the “right thing” to do at the time.

According to admissions made by its CEO, telecommunications giant Ericsson may have made payments to ISIS and other terror organizations in order to access certain transport routes in Iraq. CEO Borje Ekholm admitted that “unusual expenses” included “transport routes have been purchased through areas that have been controlled by terrorist organizations, including ISIS.”

A program created by former President George W. Bush with the help of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) helped blow open the door for widespread fraud among Iraqi nationals in the United States refugee system. 

A group of migrants are to fly back to their native countries after accepting €1,000 (£842/$1,141) from the Lithuanian govt to go home. 

Six rockets hit Baghdad International Airport on Friday in an assault that damaged runways and one civilian plane. The U.S. blamed hostile Iran-linked terrorist militias for the attack.

Several suspects in murder cases in a Swedish county have fled to Iraq to avoid arrest and possible prosecution.