Category: Iraq

Iraq will deploy its air force to retake the Fallujah dam after it was captured by armed groups who cut off water supplies to several parts of the country, an MP said Wednesday. "Security forces might launch an operation – tonight or within the next few days – to reopen the Fallujah dam, seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) group, which cut off [water] supplies to much of the southern and central provinces," Hassan al-Sanid, head of parliament’s security committee, told Anadolu Agency. "The operation will employ aircraft to conduct limited strikes on ISIL hideouts," he added. "The ISIL hopes to flood Fallujah with water during the [annual] inundation of the Euphrates River… and cut off water to the southern and central provinces," al-Sanid asserted. Iraqi government troops have been pursuing ISIL militants – who the government says […]

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Shootings and bombings in Iraq killed at least 15 people Thursday, officials said, as the country struggles with rampant violence ahead of parliamentary elections at the end of the month. The country is suffering from a protracted surge in bloodshed that has killed more than 2,500 people this year and sparked fears Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian fighting of 2006-2007. The unrest has been driven principally by complaints among the Sunni Arab minority of mistreatment by the Shiite-led government and security forces, and by the civil war in neighbouring Syria. In Thursday’s deadliest single incident, gunmen opened fire on a group of young Shiite men in Khales, north of Baghdad, and killed five of them, a police colonel and a doctor said. Fundamentalist Sunni militants frequently target members of Iraq’s Shiite majority, whom they consider apostates. In a […]

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Militants whose bombs have shut Iraq’s main northern oil export pipeline for 40 days are preventing repairs, threatening to extend an outage that is already the longest since the days of sanctions in the 1990s. Targeting the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline where it crosses a stretch of desert known as Ain al-Jahash, or Donkey Springs, the saboteurs – described as Islamists by Iraqi officials – have set several more bombs since a first blast halted oil on March 2. Significantly for an Iraqi government hoping for a big rise in exports this year – and long used to brief halts on the route to the Mediterranean – gunmen have also massacred repair crews, prompting oil executives in Mosul to question optimism in Baghdad that the pipeline should be back in action next week. “We have decided to stop all repair operations in Ain al-Jahash until we are sure our crews won’t […]

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Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem Luaibi said on Wednesday his country hoped to complete construction of a 200 km (124 miles)oil pipeline to raise exports to Turkey to more than 1 million barrels per day (bpd) this year. “We are building a pipeline in Iraq,” Luaibi was speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference in the Turkish capital Ankara. “I believe the daily oil flow will exceed one million barrels a day when that line is completed. I hope it happens this year.” RIGZONE

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The Iraqi capital, Baghdad, experienced a series of violent attacks on Wednesday when eight car bombs and two mortar shells killed as many as 25 people in episodes around the city, according to security personnel. Most of the attacks appeared to target Shiite areas of the capital, such as Kadhimiya, Shaab, Shamaiya and Sadr City. Another bomb placed in a car parked near a school in southern Iraq, in Kut, killed five civilians and wounded 18 others, according to a security official. The attacks come on the 11th anniversary of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, an event which many Iraqis regard as the fall of Baghdad, and just weeks before the first parliamentary elections since the United States withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. The vote is scheduled for the end of the month.

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Key oil revenue disputes are too much to overcome now that campaigning for April 30 national elections has begun. Iraq will not pass its 2014 federal budget before national elections on April 30, according to several members of Parliament – a setback that threatens to complicate the formation of a new government and hamper the country’s ability to execute badly needed investment projects."The issue of the budget is over now," said Kassim Mohammed Kassim, a Kurdish MP. "The current MPs who are standing as candidates will be busy with their electoral campaign, and the other MPs who aren’t standing as… 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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The fortress prison is located between Sulaimani and Dukan, and was built in the 1980s by the former Iraqi regime as a military base. In 2004, US forces renovated the facility and used it to house important prisoners from the rest of Iraq. Photo: defense.gov ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Iraqi government is transferring a number of hardcore prisoners from Baghdad to the Fort Suse prison in the autonomous Kurdistan Region because of a worsening security situation in the capital, a Kurdish official told Rudaw . He said the inmates, from jails in Baghdad and nearby Abu Ghraib, were being transferred as a precautionary measure against the al-Qaeda splinter, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has freed hundreds of hardened militants in a series of daring prison breakouts. “Swapping prisons was according to a decision by the Iraqi government. The prisoners who will be transferred to […]

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Wire reports attested that anonymous gunmen near Baghdad six men on April 6, while another 11 people were killed across the country. In what were routine assassinations, police investigators stumbled on the bodies, all with gunshot wounds to the head. No one claimed responsibility for these slayings, or for most of the others that have plagued Iraq for years. Few could decipher any motives for killings that have, regrettably, become part of Iraqi society. Even worse, while such executions , a new wave of violence that may have sectarian connotations, has seen the toll rise in recent months. According to the United Nations Mission to Iraq, 733 individuals were , while the toll reached 703 people in February. These figures showed a rising wave of militant attacks, which journalists labelled "a surge of violence that began 10 months ago", when the government launched a systematic crackdown that chiefly targeted […]

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Shell announced today that the Majnoon oilfield it operates in partnership with South Oil Company (SOC), Petronas and Missan Oil in Southern Iraq has successfully exported its first shipment of crude oil to Shell trading, a significant milestone for the oilfield. The achievement comes as production at the Majnoon oilfield has reached a current average of 210,000 barrels of oil per day, well in excess of the 175,000 barrels per day (bpd) First Commercial Production target which initiates the commencement of cost recovery and was achieved after extensive rehabilitation works at the oilfield. “This is a historic event for Iraq’s energy industry. The lifting of Shell’s first oil shipment from Majnoon has great significance to us and our partners in the Government as it is a testimony to our shared progress and signals the start of Majnoon’s long-term journey toward generating further revenue for Iraq’s economy, and as an […]

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Attacks in Iraq left 19 people dead Tuesday while security forces said they killed 25 militants near Baghdad amid worries insurgents are encroaching on the capital weeks ahead of elections. The latest violence is part of a protracted surge in nationwide bloodshed that has left more than 2,400 people dead since the start of the year and sparked fears Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian fighting that plagued it in 2006 and 2007. The unrest has been driven principally by anger in the Sunni Arab community over alleged mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government and security forces, as well as spillover from the civil war in neighbouring Syria. In Tuesday’s bloodiest incident, soldiers killed 25 militants in an ambush southwest of Baghdad, the capital’s security spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said. Maan said the fighters were part […]

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