Iraq

A powerful mix of insecurity and traditional prejudice against more liberal female politicians put Awatef Rasheed off running for parliament when she returned to Iraq in 2014 after years abroad.Nada al-Jubori, a candidate in Iraq’s upcoming parliamentary elections, speaks to her supporters in Baghdad, Iraq September 9, 2021. Seven years …

Iraqi investors and industrialists want to establish integrated industrial complexes with their Egyptian counterparts, taking a first step to enhance trade relations between the two countries. During a meeting with a delegation of the Federation of Iraqi Industries headed by its vice president Alaa Al-Agaili, Egyptian Trade and Industry Minister Nevin Gamea said both countries are working on strengthening trade …

Explosives-laden drones targeted Irbil international airport in northern Iraq late Saturday where US-led coalition troops are stationed with no reports of casualties, according to security forces and officials in Kurdish-run region. Kurdistan’s Counter-Terrorism Service said at least two drones carrying explosives targeted the airport in a statement. It said the …

Gunmen opened fire at a federal police checkpoint in rural northern Iraq, sparking clashes that killed 13 police, a security official said Sunday.  He blamed the attack on Daesh and said the clashes with the militants lasted for nearly an hour. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he …

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhhimi held talks with Saudi Minister of Interior Prince Abdul Aziz bin Saud bin Naif on Saturday. During the meeting, they discussed security cooperation between Baghdad and Riyadh, and ways of developing it in various security fields, especially combating terrorism. The Saudi minister conveyed greetings of …

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday visited the Daesh group’s former Iraqi stronghold Mosul, a day after vowing to keep troops in the country. Macron made the commitment during a regional summit in Baghdad largely devoted to the fight against terrorism and the impact of the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan as the …

Iraqi populist Shi’ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Friday that he and his supporters would take part in an October general election, reversing a decision last month to stay out. Sadr’s bloc is part of a coalition that holds the most seats in parliament now, and is likely to …

Lebanon’s energy ministry said it had picked Dubai’s ENOC in a tender to swap 84,000 tonnes of Iraqi high sulphur fuel oil with 30,000 tonnes of Grade B fuel oil and 33,000 tonnes of gasoil. ENOC won the tender, part of a deal between the two countries that allows the …

Iraq has invited Iran and Tehran’s Gulf Arab foes to a summit in Baghdad with the aim of calming tensions which have brought them close to open conflict in recent years. Officials say the meeting, which will also discuss the war in Yemen, Lebanon’s collapse and a regional water crisis, …

The death toll in a Turkish air raid on a clinic in Iraq’s Sinjar province has risen to eight, local officials said Wednesday, a day after the attack. Turkey regularly targets northwest Iraq in operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist organization. The Kurdish separatists …

Facebook is introducing tools and policies that aim to provide increased transparency and controls on electoral and political ads in Iraq ahead of parliamentary elections on Oct. 10. The move is part of the company’s “ongoing commitment to raise the bar for transparency and accountability on our platform, and to …

Iran International news channel launched an Afghan-version of its station on Sunday in the midst of the US withdrawal from the country. The channel’s launch comes at a time when the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has been all but completed, and its media industry is set to be heavily affected. …

Iraq’s electricity ministry said on Tuesday that Iranian gas supplied to the central region was reduced from 30 million to 20 million cubic meters per day, while that supplied to the southern region was reduced from 17 million to 5 million cubic meters per day. The ministry added, in a …

A senior Iranian security official urged Iraq on Tuesday to expel Iranian rebels from Iraqi Kurdistan, or expect Tehran to take “preventative measures” against the armed groups, Iranian state media reported. Iran has in the past shelled armed Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq, mostly in areas controlled by …

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met Iraqi Defense Minister Juma Inad Saadoun and discussed issues of common interest with him. The official spokesman for the presidency said the minister conveyed a message from Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and that the message included appreciation for Egyptian efforts in support of …

Iraq restarted talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after previously halting efforts to secure aid, the country’s finance minister Ali Allawi told reporters on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Talks between both parties began last year amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as demand shock sent oil prices tumbling, but were …

The United States is returning more than 17,000 ancient artifacts looted and smuggled out of Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, including a 3,500-year-old clay tablet bearing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iraq said on Tuesday. Tens of thousands of antiquities disappeared from Iraq after the 2003 invasion …

Two rockets were fired early Thursday against Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone which houses the US embassy, without causing any casualties or damage, an Iraqi security source told AFP. The dawn attack came as Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi was flying home from Washington after White House talks in which President Joe …

Several powerful pro-Iran groups in Iraq on Tuesday welcomed an announcement by Washington that US combat operations in the country will end this year, an outcome they have long demanded. US President Joe Biden declared on Monday that “we’re not going to be, at the end of the year, in …

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said on Monday he wants another American company to replace Exxon Mobil Corp when it exits Iraq. Exxon, which in 2019 had looked poised to move ahead with a $53 billion project to boost Iraq’s oil output, has been seeking to sell its 32.7% stake in one …

The US will end its combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year but counterterrorism cooperation with Baghdad will continue, President Joe Biden said on Monday. In White House talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, Biden said the US role in Iraq would shift to advising and …

The US and other Western coalition members should increase their ground forces in Iraqi Kurdistan in order to head off the threat of a resurgent terror campaign in the region, one of the main fighters against Daesh and Iran-backed militias told Arab News. General Sirwan Barzani, who commands a key …

Iraq has signed an agreement allowing the cash-strapped Lebanese government pay for 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil a year in goods and services, helping Lebanon ease its acute power shortage, the two sides said on Saturday. Lebanon is in the throes of an economic meltdown threatening its stability. …

An entire network that planned and executed a suicide bombing in Sadr City which killed dozens of people on Monday has been arrested, Iraq’s prime minister said on Saturday. A suicide bomber targeted shoppers in a crowded market in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad on the eve of Eid …

An explosion ripped through a busy market in the Iraqi capital Monday killing at least 35 people, according to medical sources, in an apparent suicide bombing ahead of Eid holiday celebrations. In one of the worst attacks in Baghdad in recent years, body parts of victims lay scattered across the …

Iraq and Syria signed an agreement on Saturday to regulate water resources between the two countries, state news agency INA reported.  Iraq’s Minister of Water Resources, Mahdi Rashid Al-Hamdani, and his Syrian counterpart, Tammam Raad, signed a joint agreement to exchange data related to the imports of the Tigris and …

U.S. President Joe Biden will host Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi at the White House on July 26, the White House said on Friday. The visit will highlight the strategic partnership between the two countries and advance bilateral cooperation under a 2008 agreement that governed the withdrawal of U.S. troops …

The death toll from a fire that tore through a coronavirus hospital in southern Iraq rose to 92, health officials said on Tuesday, as authorities faced accusations of negligence from grieving relatives and a doctor who works there. More than 100 people were injured in the blaze on Monday night …

At least 52 people have been killed and and over 60 injured by a fire at an isolation center for people infected with coronavirus in southern Iraq, the second such deadly blaze in three months. The fire erupted at Imam Al-Hussein Hospital in the Dhi Qar governorate, the capital of Nassiriya. …

U.S. forces in eastern Syria took indirect fire on Saturday but initial reports did not indicate any casualties or damage, a U.S. defense official told Reuters. The incident was the latest in a series of attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria in recent days. The official, speaking on …

The Pentagon said on Thursday it was deeply concerned about a series of attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria in recent days. U.S. diplomats and troops in Iraq and Syria were targeted in three rocket and drone attacks on Wednesday alone, including at least 14 rockets hitting an …

Three rockets were fired at the US embassy in Iraq early Thursday, the Iraqi army said, at the end of a day marked by rocket and drone attacks on bases hosting American forces in Iraq and Syria. The embassy itself was not hit, the army said, but three nearby places …

It was March 17, 2017. Troops from the US-led coalition fighting militants in Iraq were advancing on Mosul’s Old City, squeezing out the Daesh militia. But just months before the recapture of the city, where Daesh had declared its caliphate in 2014, a new human toll was added to the …

The U.S. military has told Newsweek that it was aware of reports that a drone attack had hit near Erbil International Airport, but said early information suggested no human or material loss. Meanwhile, a local militia claimed they had killed a number of people in a series of similar attacks. Footage emerged Tuesday via …

The leader of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia has vowed to retaliate against America for the deaths of four of his men in a US airstrike along the Iraq-Syria border last month, saying it will be a military operation everyone will talk about. Abu Alaa Al-Walae, commander of Kataib Sayyid Al-Shuhada, …

The financial adviser to Iraq’s prime minister said that “in the absence of coordination and understandings between OPEC producers, the beginnings of a price war will be formed again,” the Iraqi News Agency (INA) quoted him as saying on Monday. Mazhar Mohammed Saleh added that “the increases in production within …

Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said in a video posted on Saturday on the ministry’s Facebook page that BP was considering withdrawing from Iraq, and that Russia’s Lukoil had sent a formal notification saying it wanted to sell its stake in the West Qurna-2 field to Chinese companies. Abdul …

Iran denied on Saturday US accusations that Tehran supported attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria, and condemned US airstrikes on Iranian-backed militants there, state media reported. On Tuesday, the United States told the UN Security Council that it targeted Iran-backed militia in Syria and Iraq with airstrikes to …

Russia’s U.N. envoy Vassily Nebenzia on Wednesday described as a “non-starter” a bid to reopen a second border crossing into Syria from Iraq for aid deliveries and he is only discussing a possible extension of U.N. approval for a crossing from Turkey. The United Nations has appealed to the U.N. …

The Egyptian-Jordanian-Iraqi electrical interconnection project will enter the implementation phase within 18 months, Sky News Arabia reported. It follows completion of technical studies currently underway to complete the export of electricity from Egypt to Amman and Baghdad, the broadcaster reported, citing Egyptian government sources. Egypt produces an electricity surplus estimated …

American troops came under rocket fire in eastern Syria on Monday, but escaped injury, in apparent retaliation for US airstrikes against Iran-aligned militia in Syria and Iraq. A military spokesman said US forces had responded to the multiple rockets by firing back at the positions in self-defense. “There are no …

The US has carried out air strikes against Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region. Sunday’s strikes hit “operational and weapons storage facilities”, in response to drone attacks on US forces, the Pentagon said in a statement. President Joe Biden would “act to protect US personnel”, it added. The Pentagon …

Lebanese-American Mariam Taha Thompson was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Wednesday after she admitted to turning over classified national defense information to Hezbollah, designated by the US as a terrorist organization based in Southern Lebanon. Thompson, 62, from Rochester, Minn., was a contracted linguist for a US Special …

Iraq is in talks with Masdar to implement solar energy projects targeting an electricity capacity of up to 2 gigawatts, Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar told Asharq Business. There are also discussions with Saudi ACWA Power, to implement renewable energy projects, he added. “It is expected to sign contracts for …