Category: Iraq

Fighters from the Islamic State group captured Mosul Dam earlier this month [Still from YouTube video] US aircraft have launched air strikes near Iraq’s largest dam, killing up to 15 fighters from the Islamic State group, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported. Several air strikes hit Iraq’s north on Saturday, including in the besieged Sinjar Mountains, where fresh reports emerged of a "massacre" against residents belonging to the Yazidi religious minority. There were suggestions that the attack near the Mosul Dam was the beginning of a US military operation to retake it from from the self-declared jihadists, who captured it earlier this month and thereby gained control over the water and electricity supply in the north of the country. The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter group, has in the recent months seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate. Its swift push to the borders of Iraq’s autonomous […]

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Fighters from the Islamic State group captured Mosul Dam earlier this month [Still from YouTube video] US aircraft have launched air strikes near Iraq’s largest dam, killing up to 15 fighters from the Islamic State group, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reported. Several air strikes hit Iraq’s north on Saturday, including in the besieged Sinjar Mountains, where fresh reports emerged of a "massacre" against residents belonging to the Yazidi religious minority. There were suggestions that the attack near the Mosul Dam was the beginning of a US military operation to retake it from from the self-declared jihadists, who captured it earlier this month and thereby gained control over the water and electricity supply in the north of the country. The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter group, has in the recent months seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate. Its swift push to the borders of Iraq’s autonomous […]

Click here to view full article at www.aljazeera.com

BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Thursday night that he had agreed to relinquish power, a move that came after days of crisis in which his deployment of extra security forces around the capital had raised worries of a military coup. Mr. Maliki’s decision held out the prospect of a peaceful transition of power, based on democratic elections and without the guiding hand of American military forces, which would be a first in modern Iraq’s troubled history of kings, coups and dictatorships. His decision to step aside came after heavy pressure from the United States, which has deployed warplanes in Iraq to target Sunni Islamist militants and suggested that more military support would be forthcoming if Mr. Maliki was removed from power. Iran also played a decisive role in convincing Mr. Maliki that he could not stay in power. Mr. Maliki, 64, agreed to end his legal […]

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Oil producers in Iraqi Kurdistan are an attractive investment after falling at least 25 percent since early July on fears that violence in the region would disrupt operations, analysts said. It’s unlikely that the northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region will be overtaken by Islamic State fighters, and that risk has been reduced as the U.S. and France moved to arm Kurdish forces, analysts from Swedbank AB, Pareto Securities AS, and RBC Capital Markets said. Swedbank today raised its recommendation on Oslo-based DNO ASA (DNO) to buy from neutral, and the shares rose 8.3 percent in Oslo trading. Genel Energy Plc began a share buyback, repurchasing 155,000 ordinary shares and sending its stock rallying 7.6 percent. “It’s worth betting on,” Swedbank analyst Teodor Sveen Nilsen said in a phone interview, referring to DNO. “The discount is big, and the values we’re basing it on already take into account that it’s not […]

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EDGARTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Crediting U.S. airstrikes and humanitarian aid, the Obama administration said Wednesday many trapped Iraqis have fled a mountain where they had sought refuge from militants, making it less likely the military would have to carry out a potentially dangerous rescue mission. The assessment came after U.S. troops secretly scouted Sinjar Mountain Wednesday, revealing far fewer people than originally thought. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said six days of U.S. airstrikes against militant targets in the region gave many people an opportunity to get off the mountain. He also said the food and water supplies the U.S. airdropped to the refugees helped to sustain them during the ordeal. U.S. officials said only several thousand refugees remained on the mountain, far lower than the tens of thousands that had been reported earlier. As a result, a rescue mission is "far less likely now," Hagel said Wednesday night, adding […]

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BAGHDAD/ABU DHABI (Reuters) – After seizing five oil fields and Iraq’s biggest dam, Sunni militants bent on creating an Islamic empire in the Middle East now control yet another powerful economic weapon – wheat supplies. Fighters from the Islamic State have overrun large areas in five of Iraq’s most fertile provinces, where the United Nations food agency says around 40 percent of its wheat is grown. Now they’re helping themselves to grain stored in government silos, milling it and distributing the flour on the local market, an Iraqi official told Reuters. The Islamic State has even tried to sell smuggled wheat back to the government to finance a war effort marked by extreme violence and brutality. International officials are drawing uneasy comparisons with the days of hardship under dictator Saddam Hussein, when Western sanctions led to serious shortages in the 1990s. "Now is the worst time for food insecurity […]

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WASHINGTON — Defense officials said late Wednesday that United States airstrikes and Kurdish fighters had broken the siege on Mount Sinjar, allowing thousands of Yazidis trapped there to escape. An initial report from about a dozen Marines and Special Operations forces who spent the last 24 hours on the mountain said that “the situation is much more manageable,” a senior defense official said in an interview. “A rescue effort now is much more unlikely,” the official said. Defense officials could not say how many Yazidis remained on the mountain, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was expected to make an statement later Wednesday night. The announcement came after American military advisers landed on Mount Sinjar early Wednesday to begin assessing how to organize the evacuation. The United States had said it would consider using American ground troops to assist in the rescue if recommended by the military team.

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BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Wednesday that he would press ahead in the Iraqi courts with his increasingly unlikely bid to retain power, and would not turn to the army. With so many political forces now aligned against Mr. Maliki, including the United States and Iran, and with his retreat from veiled threats to use force, the political crisis that has gripped Baghdad in recent days diminished in intensity, though it has not been completely resolved. In his weekly speech, Mr. Maliki said he was refusing to step aside because “we are defending the right of those who have voted” in the country’s election in April, in which his Shiite-led bloc won the most seats, though not a majority, in Parliament. “They voted in difficult conditions, because they are aware that Iraq cannot be built unless the right people come to office,” Mr. Maliki said, referring […]

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Outside the zone of American air strikes, Kurdish forces are reeling as insurgents advance in Jalawla, extending their control into a key pocket of land between Kirkuk, Sulaimaniya, Baghdad and Iran. The forgotten front Kurdish Peshmerga pray at an outpost in Jalawla on July 9, 2014, one month into the fight against ISIS. (FERIQ FEREC/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Peshmerga forces are continuing to lose ground to extremist militants in northeastern Iraq, highlighting critical vulnerabilities of Kurdish defenses outside the limited zone of U.S. air strikes.The five-day American bombing campaign has blunted the momentum of insurgents on the western half of Kurdistan’s 1,000-kilometer border with the so-called Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS).But to the east, near the border with Iran and along a strategic route… This content is for registered users. Please login to continue. If you are not a registered user, you may […]

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