Iraqi police find 18 men shot in head and seven decapitated

Police discovered the bodies of 18 men who had been abducted and shot in the head near Baghdad on Friday, and the decapitated corpses of seven men killed in a separate attack in northern Iraq.

The 18 bodies were found together in an orchard in Meshahda, a predominantly Sunni Muslim area around 30 km (20 miles) north of Baghdad. A senior police source blamed al Qaeda.

Such killings are on the rise in Iraq, alongside a growing insurgent campaign of bomb and gun attacks on security forces and civilians.

The victims in Meshahda were taken from their homes early on Friday by men wearing military uniforms and driving six SUVs, police sources said.

Among them were a police officer, an army official, the headmaster of a school, a Sunni tribal sheikh and his son.

"It is definitely al Qaeda because this is the area where they are operating," a senior official in Iraq's federal police said, declining to be named.

The victims may have been chosen because they were seen as supporting Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, the source added.

Abductors dressed as soldiers have often carried out such killings in the area.

AL QAEDA TARGETS

Although al Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq mainly carry out attacks on Shi'ites, they also target fellow Sunnis through kidnappings, killings and extortion.

Security officials, government employees from both sects and government-backed Sunni Sahwa militia members are all seen as prime targets for the Islamist group.

The goal of such attacks "is to weaken the relationship between the people and the security forces", Ali al-Haidari, an Iraqi security expert, told Reuters.

In the attack further north, police found the beheaded corpses of seven male laborers, two police sources said.

They had been dumped in a yard in a northern neighborhood of Tikrit, a city 150 km (90 miles) north of Baghdad. The victims, believed to be Sunnis, were all under 30 and had been working on the construction site of a stadium.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the violence, but security officials have described the area as being another stronghold of al Qaeda.

This year has been Iraq's most violent since 2006-7, when tens of thousands of people died at the height of sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

On Wednesday, police found the bodies of 13 people around Baghdad, the apparent victims of execution-style shootings.

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/29/us-iraq-violence-idUSBRE9AS07020131129

31 dead as car bombs rock Iraq

The bloodshed, in which more than 6,000 people have been killed this year, is the worst prolonged stretch of unrest since 2008 and comes just months before a general election, forcing Baghdad to appeal for international help in battling militants.

Attacks in Iraq killed 31 people on Thursday as 11 car bombs struck nationwide, the latest in a surge of violence that has sparked fears Iraq is slipping back into all-out sectarian war.

The bloodshed, in which more than 6,000 people have been killed this year, is the worst prolonged stretch of unrest since 2008 and comes just months before a general election, forcing Baghdad to appeal for international help in battling militants.

Although there have been no claims of responsibility for much of the unrest, officials see the hand of a resurgent Al-Qaeda emboldened by the civil war raging in neighbouring Syria.

Attacks struck across the country, from the northern hub of Mosul to Kut in the south. They cut down civilians as well as security forces in a wide variety of incidents targeting markets, bus stations, a funeral tent and the convoy of a top police official, security and medical sources said.

Babil province, south of Baghdad, suffered the lion's share of the car bombs, as a half-dozen struck provincial capital Hilla and nearby towns, killing six people and wounding dozens more.

Another vehicle rigged with explosives targeted Salaheddin provincial police chief Major General Juma al-Dulaimi. It killed three civilians and wounded two others.

Dulaimi himself escaped unharmed from the blast in the provincial capital of Tikrit, hometown of now executed dictator Saddam Hussein.

A suicide car bombing at a police checkpoint near Samarra, also in Salaheddin, killed three police and wounded three more.

Two more car bombs in predominantly-Sunni Salaheddin and two others in Wasit, a mostly Shiite province south of Baghdad, killed three people and wounded 15.

Also in Salaheddin, militants who set up a fake checkpoint gunned down six people -- a senior official in Iraq's identity card department and his wife, two policemen and two other civilians.

Meanwhile in Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting a patrol of Sahwa anti-Al-Qaeda-militiamen killed two people, one of them a Sahwa fighter, and two other bombs elsewhere in the capital killed four more.

From late 2006 onwards, Sunni tribal militias known as the Sahwa turned against their co-religionists in Al-Qaeda and sided with the US military, helping to turn the tide of Iraq's insurgency.

Sunni militants view them as traitors and frequently target them. Also today, shootings in the northern city of Mosul killed four people, including two members of the Yazidi religious sect.

More: http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-31-dead-as-car-bombs-rock-iraq-1926528

Attacks in Iraq kill 33; 13 corpses found

Attacks across Iraq including a suicide bombing at a Sunni funeral killed at least 33 on Wednesday, authorities said, while police found 13 bodies at two different locations with gunshot wounds to their heads.

Bodies were frequently found dumped during the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, when the country was at the edge of civil war. Although monthly deaths tolls are still significantly lower than they were then, a seven-month spike of violence that shows little sign of abating has raised fears that widespread killing may be rekindled.

Eight of the corpses were found dumped in farmland in the Sunni-dominated Arab Jabour district, a police officer said. All of the dead, men believed to be between the ages of 25 to 35, suffered gunshot to their heads, he said.

Arab Jabour, a former insurgent stronghold, is located about 25 km south of Baghdad.

Authorities found another five corpses in a vacant lot in a residential area of the capital’s predominantly Shia northwestern Shula neighbourhood, the officer said. The slain men, all in their 30s, had their hands and legs tied and suffered gunshots in heads and chests, he said. Officers found no identification on the corpses.

In 2006 and 2007, both Shia and Sunni death squads roamed the streets and raided homes to round up people. Authorities later found the victims’ corpses, often mutilated.

Shortly after sunset, nine 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, said local police and hospital officials.

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 Shia northern Hurriyah neighbourhood Wednesday in northern Baghdad, killing the parents, two sons and a daughter, a police officer said.

Elswhere in Baghdad, a bomb exploded in the southern Dora neighbourhood, killing two civilians, authorities said. Mortar rounds landed in a street in the southwestern Albu Eitha neighbourhood, killing another two. Gunmen fired on a crowd in the southeastern Bayaa neighbourhood, 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 police officer said.

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, a police officer said. The blast killed five police officers, he said.

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, the officer said. That attack killed four officers, while police killed two of the gunmen, he said.

A drive-by shooting also killed two school teachers in the town of Hadra, between the northern city of Mosul and western Anbar province, authorities said.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures from the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release the information to journalists.

More: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/attacks-in-iraq-kill-33-13-corpses-found/article5398003.ece

30 killed, 50 wounded in Iraq violence

As many as 30 people were killed and some 50 wounded in separate incidents of shootings and bomb attacks in Iraq on Thursday, including a deadly minibus bombing, police and an official said.

The deadliest attack occurred before noon in Diyala province when a minibus loaded with over 100 kg of high explosives went off at a busy marketplace in Sa’ diyah city, some 120 km from Baghdad, killing 25 people and wounding 45, reported Xinhua citing a provincial police source.

Omer al-Hemiyari, governor of Diyala, confirmed the toll in a statement, adding that “what happened in the Sa’diyah is an atrocious crime and a security breach that led to the deaths of dozens of innocent people”.

The huge blast in the minibus set fire to eight civilian cars and ten shops and destroyed dozens of stalls, the police source said.

In a separate incident, a soldier was killed and his brother wounded when unidentified gunmen opened fire on their house in Sa’ diyah, a source said.

Meanwhile, two young men were killed and as many injured in a motorcycle bomb explosion in the northeastern part of Baquba, provincial capital city of Diyala, some 65 km from Baghdad, the source said, adding that two more people were wounded in a bomb explosion near a house in the nearby town of Buhruz.

In Baghdad, gunmen using silenced weapons shot dead two brothers at their shop in a commercial street in the Shiite-dominated neighbourhood of Baiyaa in southern capital, a police source said.

More: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/30-killed-50-wounded-in-iraq-violence/article5378885.ece

Kurdish rebels take control in key border area between Syria, Iraq

Kurdish rebels on Saturday took control of a key border crossing between Syria and Iraq, in an effort to prevent al-Qaeda-linked groups from entering the region, a Britain-based watchdog said.

Following three days of fighting with the al-Qaeda-linked fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and al-Nusra Front, the Kurdish rebels seized the al-Yaroubiyeh crossing in al-Hasaka province, north-eastern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

According to the opposition watchdog, fighting is still ongoing inside the village of Tel Kowjar.

Al-Yaroubiyeh is the main crossing point with Iraq. Its capture would give the Kurdish militiamen a direct supply line from Iraq’s northern Kurdish region.

Such battles between rebel groups have become regular in Syria, especially in the north, adding more complexity to the two-and-a-half-year conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people.

Meanwhile, UN envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi is expected in Tehran, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally, to discuss the proposed Geneva II peace talks.

More: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/kurdish-rebels-take-control-in-key-border-area-between-syria-iraq/article5275642.ece

27 including children killed in Iraq suicide blasts

Suicide car bombers attacked an elementary school and a police station in a small northern Iraqi village on Sunday while another on foot detonated his payload among Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad, killing at least 27 people including children, officials said.

The attacks are the latest in a relentless wave of killing that has made for Iraq's deadliest outburst of violence since 2008. The mounting death tolls are raising fears that the country is falling back into the spiral of violence that brought it to the edge of civil war in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Sunday's blasts began around 9:30 a.m. in the Shiite Turkomen village of Qabak, just outside the town of Tal Afar. The area around the stricken village has long been a hotbed for hard-to-rout Sunni insurgents and a corridor for extremist fighters arriving from nearby Syria.

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, Tal Afar mayor Abdul Aal al-Obeidi said.

The dead included 12 children, the school principal and two policemen. Another 90 people were wounded, he said.

The village is home to only about 200 residents, and part of the single-story school collapsed as a result of the blast, he said. Tal Afar is 420 kilometers (260 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

"We and Iraq are plagued by al-Qaida," al-Obeidi said. "It's a tragedy. These innocent children were here to study. What sins did these children commit?"

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, according to police and hospital officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to brief reporters.

It was the second time in less than 24 hours that a suicide bomber managed to thwart security checkpoints and target Shiite pilgrims making their way to a golden-domed shrine in northern Baghdad where two revered Shiite saints are buried.

A suicide bombing in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, not far from the site of Sunday's attack, late Saturday killed 51, authorities said as they revised the death toll upward. That and other attacks Saturday left a total of 75 dead.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suicide bombers and car bombs are frequently used by al-Qaida's Iraq branch. It often targets Shiite civilians in an effort to undermine the Shiite-led government. Its extremist ideology considers Shiites heretics.

United Nations figures released this week showed that at least 979 people, most of them civilians, were killed last month alone. At least 135 have died violently since the start of October, according to an Associated Press count.

Credits: indianexpress

Iraq violence kills 73 including pilgrims, journalists

Violence including an attack on Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad killed at least 73 people across Iraq on Saturday, among them two journalists gunned down in the north, officials said.

Violence is at a level unseen since 2008, and there are persistent fears that Iraq will relapse into the kind of intense Sunni-Shiite bloodshed that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed tens of thousands of people.

Accounts differed as to whether the attack on the pilgrims in the Adhamiyah area of north Baghdad, which killed at least 49 people and wounded at least 75, was a bomb followed by a suicide bombing, or a suicide attack alone.

It came as pilgrims walked to a shrine to commemorate the death ofImam Mohammed al-Jawad, the ninth Shiite imam.

Iraq is home to some of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, and millions of pilgrims visit them each year.

But crowds of pilgrims are frequently targeted by Sunni militants including those linked to Al-Qaeda, who consider Shiites to be apostates.

Earlier on Saturday, gunmen killed two Iraqi journalists in the northern city of Mosul.

The Sharqiya television channel said two of its journalists -- correspondent Mohammed Karim al-Badrani and cameraman Mohammed Ghanem -- were "assassinated" in Mosul.

Police and a doctor confirmed the two journalists had been shot dead.

Their reports on security forces and officials in Mosul had brought death threats from militant groups opposed to the government, a Sharqiya journalist told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Iraq has come in for repeated criticism over shortcomings in media freedoms.

"Many Iraqi journalists are routinely exposed to threats, murder attempts, attacks, difficulties obtaining permission, denial of access, confiscation of equipment and so on," media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said this year.

Journalists, even with government authorisation, are routinely barred from approaching the sites of attacks and prevented from otherwise freely reporting in Baghdad.

Photographic and video equipment is also often viewed with suspicion by security forces.

In the town of Balad, north of the capital, a suicide bomber struck a cafe, killing 12 people and wounding 35, police and a doctor said.

The same cafe was attacked by a suicide bomber in August, killing 16 people.

Militants have launched numerous attacks on cafes in recent months and have also targeted other places where crowds gather, including mosques, football fields, funerals and markets.

In Muqdadiyah, a town northeast of Baghdad that is the site of frequent bombings and shootings, a roadside bomb exploded near a car, killing one person and wounding three.

Another bombing in the Bayaa area of Baghdad itself killed two people and wounded at least 10.

And the Iraqi defence ministry said that security forces killed five militants in clashes south of the town of Baiji, and two more in the northern province of Nineveh.

Security forces have carried out wide-ranging operations against militants for more than two months, but have yet to succeed in curbing the wave of attacks plaguing Iraq.

The latest violence takes this month's death toll to more than 130, and more than 4,800 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

Credits: timesofindia