Category: Iraq

FILE – In this Sunday, April 19, 2015, file photo, a woman displaced from Ramadi settles in a mosque with children, in the al-Shurta neighborhood in west Baghdad, Iraq. A Norwegian humanitarian group report says a record 38 million people have been internally displaced in their countries worldwide, with 2.2 million Iraqis alone fleeing in 2014 after the Islamic State group seized their areas. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim, File) The Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — Conflicts and violence worldwide displaced a record 38 million people in 2014, with 2.2 million Iraqis alone forced to flee the Islamic State group, a Norwegian humanitarian group report released Wednesday revealed. The findings of the study carried out by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center are endorsed by the United Nations refugee agency. In a joint statement, they said 11 million were newly displaced last year — mostly because of conflicts in […]

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Shia militiamen brandish their weapons in the town of Tuz Khurmatu on Aug. 31, 2014. (STRINGER/Reuters) Recommend 115 people recommend this. Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. Shia militiamen clashed with a detachment of Iraqi President Fuad Masum’s bodyguards Thursday in Salahaddin province, denying them passage and confiscating their weapons and vehicles.The conflict threatens to further aggravate long-standing tensions between Shia militias and Kurdish security forces in the disputed territories of northern Iraq, which are subject to competing claims by Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen, and others. Armed Kurdish protesters have subsequently blocked roads and scuffled wit…

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Pro-government forces take part in an operation to secure the Baiji oil refinery on April 15, 2015. (MOHAMMED SAWAF/AFP/Getty Images) Recommend Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. Pro-government forces have gotten some backup in their battle for the Baiji refinery, after suffering heavy losses during a late-April offensive by the so-called Islamic State (IS) militant group.IS fighters still control about half of the 36-square-kilometer refinery campus, according to several security officials in the area.Security forces had been stranded with limited ammunition and supplies, and reinforcements were unable to help: IS fighters had rigged the roads leading to the ref… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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Norwegian energy company DNO International set it was setting capacity records in the Kurdish north of Iraq, though a weakened market left it short on cash. File Photo by UPI/Maryam Rahmanian. OSLO, Norway, May 6 (UPI) — Though it reached its capacity target at an oil field in the Kurdish north of Iraq, Norwegian energy company DNO said Wednesday it suffered heavy losses. DNO said it hit a daily production record at the Tawke field of just over 150,000 barrels of oil, adding it had the installed capacity to hit the 200,000 bpd mark. "Discussions are underway with the [Kurdish] Ministry of Natural Resources to set out future production levels, including the split between export deliveries and local sales," it said in a statement. DNO said its production for the first quarter of 2014 was 45,744 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which includes oil from the Tawke field […]

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ENLARGE Smoke rises above the Beiji area in Iraq on April 16. Control of the Beiji oil refinery has been bitterly contested between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, U.S. military officials said. Photo: mohammed sawaf/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Pentagon officials said they are worried that a key Iraqi oil refinery that is held by Iraqi commandos could fall to Islamic State control in the coming days. For weeks, U.S. military officials have said that control of the Beiji oil refinery has been bitterly contested between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants, who have long held nearby towns. But Islamic State fighters have made inroads in recent days, reinforcing their positions around the refinery following their loss of Tikrit to an Iraqi force backed by U.S. airstrikes, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. “It is not looking good,” said a U.S. defense official. U.S. warplanes conducted four strikes near Beiji […]

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U.S. President Barack Obama drops by Vice President Joe Biden’s meeting with KRG President Masoud Barzani in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on May 5, 2015. (PETE SOUZA/White House) Recommend 3 people recommend this. Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has received a payment of 543 billion Iraqi dinars ($445 million) from Baghdad for the month of April, as the two sides continue their attempts to implement a tenuous oil export and revenue sharing deal.Ahmed Abdulrahman, the spokesman for the KRG Ministry of Finance, said the money will be used to pay the overdue March salaries of government employees.The payment is the largest made by the federal government to Kurdistan in 2015. The K… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up […]

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DUBAI (Reuters) – Iraq has requested financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and agreement may be reached within weeks on a loan of about $800 million (529 million pounds), a senior IMF official said. Iraqi finances have been hit hard by the plunge of oil prices since last year as well as by the Islamic State insurgency. The government has projected a budget deficit of about $25 billion this year, in a budget of some $100 billion. Aid from the IMF could ease the pressure and by increasing investor confidence, help Iraq raise money from other sources. Baghdad has said it plans to issue $5 billion of debt in its first international bond sale for nine years. "Teams will work on the issue in coming weeks. We hope we can reach a conclusion relatively soon," Masood Ahmed, Director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, […]

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Tugboats position a single point mooring (SPM) buoy in the Basra Gulf in January 2012 as Iraq expands its export capacity. (ALI ABU IRAQ/Iraq Oil Report) Recommend Sign Up to see what your friends recommend. Iraq’s oil exports are hitting record highs, as the country addresses some of the crude quality problems and political disputes that had recently constrained oil sales.Exports rose to 3.077 million barrels per day (bpd) in April, according to an Oil Ministry statement – a 3 percent increase over March – setting another high-water mark for the post-Saddam Hussein era.Iraq could have exported even more oil from its main outlets in the Basra Gulf, but two of the three operational single… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may purchase a subscription or sign up for a free trial .

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BEIRUT (AP) — A Norwegian humanitarian group says a record 38 million people have been internally displaced in their countries worldwide, with 2.2 million Iraqis alone forced to flee from their homes in 2014 after the Islamic State group overrun their areas. The study by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center was released Wednesday. It says 11 million were newly displaced last year – mostly because of conflicts in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, accounting for 60 percent of the new displacement. The group says at least 1.1 million Syrians also fled their homes last year. Syria has the highest number of internally displaced, with 7.6 million dislodged because of the conflict, now in its fifth year. That’s at least 35 percent of the population.

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A shop damaged by a bomb blast in Baghdad’s Karrada area on Saturday night. ENLARGE Photo: ahmad al-rubaye/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images BAGHDAD—A surge in car bombings renewed security concerns in the Iraqi capital on Sunday, after Islamic State claimed seven attacks in the past week. The bombers struck locations across Baghdad, including an open-air market Saturday night in the commercial district of Karrada, where some people had gathered to distribute sweets for a Shiite holy celebration. At least 20 people were killed and 79 were injured in the string of bombings, according to a security official. Eleven died in Saturday night’s attack alone. Car-bombings, which were a hallmark of life in Baghdad nearly a decade ago when Islamic State’s predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, was ascendant, had become more sporadic in recent years, even as Islamic State took power in parts of the country. Intensified fighting last week in Ramadi, […]

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