US and Iraq launch joint raid killing 15 Islamic State militants

Seven American troops injured during battle in Anbar desert, says central command

The US military and Iraq launched a joint raid targeting suspected Islamic State group militants in the Iraqi western desert that killed at least 15 people while seven American troops were hurt, officials said on Saturday.

The US military’s central command said the militants were armed with weapons, grenades and explosive belts during the battle on Thursday, which Iraqi forces said happened in the Anbar desert.

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Draft Iraqi law allowing 9-year-olds to marry would ‘legalise child rape’, say activists

Opponents fear proposed bill could allow girls as young as nine to marry, erode women’s rights and give greater powers to clerics

A draft law in Iraq that would allow the marriage of girls as young as nine has provoked protests across the country, with women’s rights activists saying it would “legalise child rape”.

The Shia religious groups that dominate the political system in Iraq have been pushing to erode women’s rights in the country for more than a decade.

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Iraq’s Yazidis gather to remember the dead and missing, 10 years on from Islamic State genocide

A decade after thousands were killed or displaced, many in the remaining community are still living in refugee camps

Saturday marked exactly 10 years since Islamic State (IS) entered Iraq’s Sinjar province, displacing, killing and enslaving hundreds of thousands of Yazidis. On Saturday morning, crowds gathered for a ceremony to remember victims of the genocide at the “grave of the mothers”, where 111 elderly women were shot dead or buried alive after being separated from their family members.

The ceremony at the mass grave near the Yazidi genocide memorial in Solagh began at 10am, when a minute’s silence was observed across the country. Traditional Yazidi songs were sung, and poems and witness testimonies were recited on the stage.

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Gaza conflict could fuel IS and al-Qaida revival, security experts warn

Officials and analysts warn of evidence of increased Islamic State and al-Qaida militant activity across Middle East

Security services across the Middle East fear the conflict in Gaza will allow Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida to rebuild across the region, leading to a wave of terrorist plots in coming months and years.

Officials and analysts say there is already evidence of increased Islamic militant extremism in many places, although multiple factors are combining to cause the surge.

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Widow of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi given death sentence by Iraqi court

Judgement deems one of Baghdadi’s widows complicit in crimes against Yazidi women

An Iraqi court has issued a death sentence against one of the widows of the late Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, alleging that she was complicit in crimes committed against Yazidi women captured by the militant group.

The ruling comes weeks before the 10-year mark since IS launched a series of attacks against the Yazidi religious minority in the northern Iraqi region of Sinjar in early August 2014, killing and capturing thousands – including women and girls who were subjected to human trafficking and sexual abuse. The UN said the campaign against the Yazidis amounted to genocide.

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‘As complicit as Saddam’: people on BA flight held hostage in Kuwait sue UK government

Claimants who were onboard BA149 claim airline and Thatcher’s government knew of risk before they landed in 1990

British Airways (BA) passengers and crew taken hostage in Kuwait and used as human shields during Saddam Hussein’s invasion are suing the airline and the UK government.

The claimants, who were subjected to torture, including mock executions, say they have evidence that BA and the government knew the invasion had taken place hours before the plane landed in Kuwait. They also claim that the flight was used to secretly transport a special ops team for immediate and covert deployment to the battlefield, “regardless of the risk this posed to the civilians onboard”.

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Yazidi survivors of Sinjar massacre alarmed by Iraq’s move to close camps

A decade after tens of thousands of Yazidis escaped an Islamic State attack many fear return to a home in ruins

The Iraqi government has been accused of making the survivors of the Sinjar massacre fear for their future once more, almost a decade after the murderous Islamic State campaign that forced tens of thousands of people to flee from their homes.

In January, the Iraqi council of ministers set a deadline of 30 July to close 23 displacement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan. The camps are home to about 155,000 internally displaced people (IDP), mostly Yazidis, who were slaughtered, kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery in their thousands at the height of the violence in northern Iraq in 2014.

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Middle East crisis: Rafah operation could result in ‘slaughter’, UN official says – as it happened

UN humanitarian office spokesman says hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk and there would be a huge impact on aid operations

Daniel Hurst is Guardian Australia’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent.

The Australian government faces a decision next week on whether to support admitting Palestine as a full member of the UN and is swapping notes with allies including South Korea and Germany.

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Father of girl who died in Channel says family feared being deported to Iraq

Ahmed Alhashimi’s seven-year-old daughter Sara was crushed to death after group of men rushed on to dinghy

The father of a seven-year-old girl crushed to death on a small boat has said they tried to cross the Channel after being informed his young family would be deported to Iraq after spending years in Europe.

Ahmed Alhashimi, 41, lost grasp of his daughter, Sara, on an inflatable dinghy after a large group of men rushed onboard as it was pulling away from the shores of Wimereux, south of Calais.

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Human rights groups and diplomats condemn Iraq’s anti-LGBTQ+ law

US state department says law could drive away foreign investment and David Cameron calls it ‘dangerous and worrying’

Human rights groups and diplomats have criticised a law passed by the Iraqi parliament over the weekend that would impose heavy prison sentences on gay and transgender people.

The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said in a statement that the law passed on Saturday “threatens those most at risk in Iraqi society” and “can be used to hamper free speech and expression”. He warned the legislation could drive away foreign investment.

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Iraq makes same-sex relations punishable by up to 15 years in jail

Amendments to anti-prostitution law also enable courts to sentence trans people to three years in prison

Iraq’s parliament has passed a bill making same-sex relations punishable by up to 15 years in prison, in a move condemned as an “attack on human rights”.

Transgender people will also be sentenced to three years in jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 out of 329 lawmakers on Saturday.

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Iraqi TikTok star Om Fahad shot dead outside Baghdad home

Officials say unidentified man killed influencer who had previously been imprisoned over dancing videos

A man on a motorbike has shot dead a social media influencer known as Om Fahad outside her Baghdad home, Iraqi security officials have said.

The unidentified attacker shot Om Fahad in her car in the Zayouna district on Friday, a security official said, requesting anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to the media.

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Middle East crisis: More than 200 bodies recovered from temporary mass graves in Nasser hospital, local authorities say – as it happened

Residents return to site in search of bodies of loved ones following withdrawal of Israeli forces last month. This live blog is closed

Haaretz reports that Israeli security forces have arrested two people suspected of carrying out a car ramming in Jerusalem. Three people are reported to have been injured.

Aharon Haliva, who was the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has resigned over the failure of Israel’s military to prevent the attack inside southern Israel by Hamas that day, according to Israeli media reports.

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Explosion hits base of Iranian-aligned Iraqi army unit

Officials report casualties with some citing air strike on former anti-Isis unit known as Hashed al-Shaabi, which is now part of Iraq’s regular military

An explosion has hit an Iraqi military base housing pro-Iranian paramilitaries, according to security sources.

The explosion on Friday night was at the Calso base, where former pro-Iranian paramilitary group Hashed al-Shaabi – now integrated into the regular army – is stationed, an interior ministry source and a military official told Agence France-Presse.

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‘Correct a black mark in US history’: former prisoners of Abu Ghraib get day in court

Jury trial against military contractor CACI over ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton abuses’ comes 20 years after scandal broke

The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US “war on terror”.

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Baghdad mourners gather for funeral of Iraqi militant killed in US drone strike

US claims responsibility for killing, saying Kataib Hezbollah commander was behind attack that killed three US soldiers

A large crowd gathered in eastern Baghdad on Thursday for the funeral of Abu Bakr al-Saadi, who was killed the night before in a drone strike in a residential street in Baghdad.

Al-Saadi was a senior military commander with the Kataib Hezbollah, a prominent faction of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq with close political, religious and military ties to Iran.

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Middle East crisis: Israel bombs overcrowded Rafah as UN warns of ‘humanitarian nightmare’ – as it happened

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A journalist and his son have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the central Gaza Strip, reports Al Jazeera.

Nafez Abdel Jawad, who worked for Palestine TV, was killed in a bombing of a residential building in the al-Salam neighbourhood in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip last night, says Al Jazeera. The news organisation said that his only son also died in the airstrike and other injuries had also been reported.

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Iraq labels US ‘factor of instability’ after three killed in drone attack

Military says ‘blatant assassination’ of three members of Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia in Baghdad risks widening conflict

The US military presence in Iraq has become a “factor for instability” and must be ended, the Iraqi military has said, as it responded angrily to a US drone strike on a car in Baghdad that killed three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia.

Yehia Rasool, the spokesperson for the commander of the military forces, accused the US of conducting “a blatant assassination through an airstrike in the heart of a residential neighbourhood in the capital, Baghdad, showing no regard for civilian lives or international laws.

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Middle East crisis: IDF reportedly believes more than a fifth of remaining Israeli hostages are dead

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At least 27,585 Palestinians have been killed and 66,978 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday.

127 Palestinians were killed and 143 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.

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Yazidi woman held by IS for 10 years freed by Kurdish fighters in Syria

Iraqi, 24, rescued with her children from al-Hawl camp after being abducted then raped and forced into marriage

US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria have liberated a Yazidi woman who had been held for a decade by Islamic State (IS), where she was raped and forced to marry extremists.

The 24-year-old woman was rescued with her son and daughter during a security operation by Kurdish fighters in Syria’s al-Hawl camp, which houses tens of thousands of people, mostly the wives and children of Islamic State fighters, the Syrian Democratic Forces said on Monday.

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