Iraq

Some 50 prisoners in Iraq face possible execution on Monday following conviction on terrorism-related crimes in unfair trials, United Nations human rights experts said on Friday. The independent experts urged the Baghdad government to immediately halt all mass executions, noting that 21 prisoners had been executed in October, followed by …

Iraq and Saudi Arabia opened the Arar border crossing for trade for the first time in three decades, the Iraqi border ports commission said on Wednesday. Arar has been closed since 1990 after the two countries cut ties following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Iraqi and Saudi officials including the …

A former ISIS prisoner and Nobel prize winner has called on world leaders to condemn the language used by the founder of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) who referred to “devil worshippers” when talking about the Yazidi faith. Dr Hany El Banna, who is also chairman of the UK’s Muslim Charities …

Four Katyusha rockets landed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone and security officials said the attack targeted the U.S. embassy, Iraqi police and security sources said on Tuesday. Sirens blared from the embassy inside the zone, which houses government buildings and foreign missions. One security source said at least four …

Iraqi security forces killed at least one anti-government protester using live gunfire and wounded at least 40 others in the southern city of Basra on Friday, security sources and a rights official said. It was the first killing of a protester by security forces in Basra since Prime Minister Mustafa …

Young volunteers have been clearing dust and debris from St. Thomas church in Mosul, as the Iraqi city occupied by Islamic State militants seeks to sweep away the horrors of a brutal three-year rule and welcome back members of minority faiths. The Syriac Catholic church, dating from the mid-1800s, was …

At least three people were killed and more than 50 injured in a gas pipeline explosion in southern Iraq, police sources said on Saturday. The military said in a statement that the cause of the blast was not known. It said nine Shi’ite militia fighters were among the wounded and …

Regardless of the outcome of the Nov. 3 presidential election, US President Donald Trump does not have to worry about one thing: being accused of leaving the Middle East in a worse condition than he inherited it. Judging by the Arab News/YouGov pan-Arab survey’s findings, that dubious honor goes to …

Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq said on Monday they had foiled a plan to attack foreign diplomats in their autonomous regional capital of Erbil, more than a year after the killing of a Turkish consular official there. In a statement, the Kurdistan regional government’s top security agency said the attack …

Iraqi security forces clashed with anti-government demonstrators in Baghdad on Sunday with at least 39 people, most of them police officers, injured by projectiles unleashed from each side, security officials said. Police sources said tear gas canisters being fired by security forces had injured at least seven people. A separate …

Saad Hussein, a 42-year-old Yazidi Iraqi, is one of the last in the northern region of Nineveh producing the anise-flavoured spirit, arak, from local dates. Forced to flee his home town of Bashiqa, close to Mosul, when it fell to Islamic State in 2014, he returned after the defeat and …

Hasanain Alminshid had received death threats for his human rights activism for years, but ignored most of them. After his mentor was gunned down outside a police station, he finally made the difficult choice to flee Iraq. “It’s too dangerous now. There have been killings in the open in front …

An array of Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups have agreed to suspend rocket attacks on U.S. forces on condition that Iraq’s government presents a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, one of the groups said on Sunday. “The factions have presented a conditional ceasefire,” said Mohammed Mohi, spokesman for the …

Iran-backed militias launched rockets targeting U.S. troops that landed near Erbil airport in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, a Kurdish security agency said on Wednesday, hours after Iraq’s premier pledged to protect foreign missions. Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism service blamed the attack on the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella …

Washington has made preparations to withdraw diplomats from Iraq after warning Baghdad it could shut its embassy, two Iraqi officials and two Western diplomats said, a step Iraqis fear could turn their country into a battle zone. Any move by the United States to scale down its diplomatic presence in …

The United States said on Thursday it had renewed a waiver for Iraq to import Iranian electricity, this time for 60 days to enable Baghdad to take “meaningful actions” to reduce its energy dependence on neighbouring Tehran. The waiver will continue to exempt Iraq from U.S. sanctions reimposed on Iran, …

Two Turkish soldiers were killed and another was wounded after Kurdish militants fired rockets at a military base in northern Iraq, Turkey’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday. Turkey has regularly attacked Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, both in its mainly Kurdish southeast and in northern Iraq, where …

The British embassy in Baghdad said that a British diplomatic vehicle was hit buy an IED on Tuesday morning on the airport road in Baghdad, but caused no injuries. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Separately, at 1 a.m. on Tuesday, two Katyusha rockets landed inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified …

A trove of Saddam-era files secretly returned to Iraq has pried open the country’s painful past, prompting hopes some may learn the fate of long-lost relatives along with fears of new bloodshed. The 5 million pages of internal Baath Party documents were found in 2003, just months after the US-led …

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that U.S. troop numbers in Iraq would be down to about 2,000 in a very short period of time. At a White House news conference, Trump went further than a U.S. official speaking last month, who said the United States would go down …

President Donald Trump will announce a further drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq on Wednesday, a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. That announcement will be followed by another one in the coming days on a further reduction in U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the official said. The decision comes …

Iraq is seeking an exemption from an OPEC+ deal curbing oil production during the first quarter of 2021 but will adhere to the cuts over the next three months, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said on Wednesday. Abdul Jabbar has spoken about the exemption to OPEC oil ministers in three …

United States-led international coalition troops withdrew from Iraq’s Taji military base on Sunday and handed it over to Iraqi security forces, Reuters witnesses and the coalition said. The base, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, had been the site of frequent rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias targeting U.S.-led troops …

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has described Turkish attacks on Iraqi soil as “unacceptable” and urged the US to resolve the dispute in a meeting with US President Donald Trump. Ankara and Baghdad have been negotiating since mid-June to solve the dispute over Turkish offensives in Kurdistan and other disputed …

Protesters in the southern Iraqi city of Basra set fire to parliament’s local office on Friday as security forces fired live rounds in the air to disperse them, a Reuters witness and security sources said. The protesters had gathered to demand that Iraq’s parliament sack the provincial governor after two …

Five U.S. firms including Chevron Corp (CVX.N) signed agreements on Wednesday with the Iraqi government aimed at boosting Iraq’s energy independence from Iran as the Iraqi prime minister prepared to make his first visit to the White House on Thursday. The U.S. Department of Energy in a statement said that …

Iraq cancelled on Tuesday the Turkish defence minister’s visit to the country which was scheduled for Thursday, Iraq’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The ministry also summoned the Turkish ambassador to hand him “a strong protest note and inform him of Iraq’s confirmed rejection of his country’s attacks and …

Kuwait and Iraq separately denied an attack took place against a convoy carrying equipment for American forces. An explosion near the Jraischan border crossing between Iraq and Kuwaiti on Monday evening targeted a convoy carrying equipment for US forces, three Iraqi security forces told Reuters. It was not immediately clear …

Washington has identified a critical financial facilitator for Daesh based in Turkey in a move to unsettle the remaining global financial networks of the terrorist group. In a statement on Tuesday, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said that the Daesh facilitator, Adnan Muhammad …

Clashes between Iraqi protesters and security forces in central Baghdad killed at least two demonstrators overnight, security and medical sources said on Monday. It was the first such deadly incident in months at Tahrir Square, which became a symbol of anti-government protests during months-long mass unrest last year. The protesters …

A weapons depot belonging to Iraq’s federal police force exploded on Sunday in Baghdad’s southern suburbs because of high summer temperatures and poor storage, the military said in a statement. Multiple explosions could be heard in Baghdad on Sunday evening. Security sources said the depot, which is part of a …

Turkey is taking its decades-old conflict with Kurdish militants deep into northern Iraq, establishing military bases and deploying armed military drones against the fighters in their mountain strongholds. The cross-border campaign has attracted less attention than Turkey’s incursions into neighbouring Syria – partly because Turkish troops have long been in …

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi will travel to Saudi Arabia and Iran back-to-back next week, carefully balancing ties to regional rivals in his first foreign trip as premier, officials said Saturday. On Sunday, Al-Kadhimi will host Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in Baghdad, before traveling with Iraq’s ministers of oil, electricity, …

Two former managers of Monaco-based energy consultancy Unaoil have been convicted in Britain of bribing Iraqi officials to clinch lucrative oil projects as the war-ravaged country tried to boost exports after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. A London jury found British-Lebanese Ziad Akle, Unaoil’s former Iraq territory manager, …

Gunmen in Baghdad shot dead a well-known former government advisor and political analyst near his home on Monday in a rare high-profile killing in the Iraqi capital, government officials, police sources and medics said. The government officials described the killing of Hisham al-Hashemi, who had written about politics, Islamic State …

Iraqi security forces raided a headquarters belonging to a powerful Iran-backed militia in southern Baghdad late on Thursday and detained more than a dozen members of the group, government officials and paramilitary sources said. The raid was the most brazen action by Iraqi forces against a major Iran-backed militia group …

Turkish warplanes struck Kurdish militant targets in various regions of northern Iraq on Sunday night in response to an increase in militant attacks on Turkish army bases, the Defence Ministry said. “The Claw-Eagle Operation has started. Our planes are bringing the caves down on the terrorists’ heads,” the Turkish Defence …

President Vladimir Putin discussed Russia’s cooperation with Iraq over an OPEC+ deal to reduce oil supply in a telephone conversation with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, the Kremlin said on Monday. The two men noted the importance of continuing their countries’ joint efforts in the oil markets, the Kremlin said. …

Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed on Saturday to continue working to re-balance markets and stressed their commitment to output cuts agreed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other allies, Saudi state news agency SPA said. The comments came after Iraq’s Finance Minister Ali Allawi, who is …

US prosecutors are seeking to confiscate a rare ancient tablet from a Christian museum co-founded by the president of retailer Hobby Lobby. The 3,500-year-old artefact, from what is now Iraq, bears text from the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s oldest works of literature. Prosecutors allege that an auction …

By Oula Kadhum | Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Birmingham, teaching fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she specializes in diaspora and Middle Eastern politics The Iraq protests are not a flash in the pan. Rather, they represent a historical turning point for …

The United Kingdom said on Friday that an Iranian satellite launch earlier this week was of significant concern and inconsistent with a United Nations Security Council resolution. “Reports that Iran has carried out a satellite launch – using ballistic missile technology – are of significant concern and inconsistent with UN …

Eleven vessels from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) came dangerously close to U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships in the Gulf, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, calling the moves “dangerous and provocative.” While such interactions had occurred occasionally a few years ago, they had stopped, and this …

The United States on Friday offered up to $10 million for information on Sheikh Mohammad al-Kawtharani, a senior military commander of the Islamist group Hezbollah in Iraq who was an associate of the late Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Announcing the reward, the U.S. State Department said Kawtharani had “taken over …