Category Archives: Iraq

Islamic State attacks prison in Syria and military base in Iraq

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‘Dozens of IS fighters’ were freed from the jail and the attacks raise fears of the terror group’s resurgence

Islamic State has attacked a Syrian prison housing its suspected members and a military base in Iraq in near-simultaneous deadly operations that have revived fears of the terror group’s resurgence.

IS has yet to comment on the attacks and there is no indication that these were coordinated, but according to analysts they strongly suggest IS is trying to boost its ranks and arsenal in an attempt to reorganise across both countries.

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At least 16 dead after third migrant boat in three days sinks in Greek waters

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People still missing despite major rescue effort as smugglers switch to more perilous route from Turkey

At least 16 people have died after a migrant boat capsized in the Aegean Sea late Friday, bringing to at least 30 the combined death toll from three accidents in as many days involving migrant boats in Greek waters.

The sinkings came as smugglers increasingly favour a perilous route from Turkey to Italy, which avoids Greece’s heavily patrolled eastern Aegean islands that for years were at the forefront of the country’s migration crisis.

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‘Gushing oil and roaring fires’: 30 years on Kuwait is still scarred by catastrophic pollution

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Oilwells set alight by Iraqi forces in 1991 were put out within months, but insidious pollution still mars the desert

For 10 months in Kuwait, everything was upside down. Daytime was full of darkness from the thick smoke, and nights were bright from the distant glow of burning oilwells.

When Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 in an attempt to gain control of the lucrative oil supply of the Middle East and pay off a huge debt accrued from Kuwait, he was fairly quickly forced into retreat by a US coalition which began an intensive bombing campaign.

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Kurdish woman is first victim of Channel tragedy to be named

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Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking

A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.

Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.

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Channel drownings unlikely to slow exodus from Iraqi Kurdistan

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As officials grapple with crisis, even more Kurds are preparing to make dangerous journey to Europe

Were they driven to the freezing shores of Europe by desperation, or did several thousand Kurds instead make the dangerous journey in search of opportunity?

As officials in Iraqi Kurdistan grapple with what is driving a crisis that is thought to have led to scores of citizens drowning in the Channel on Wednesday, and thousands of others to brave precarious migrant routes to Europe, even more are preparing to leave.

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Call to British Airways might have averted 1990 Kuwait hostage crisis

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Ambassador warned Foreign Office an Iraqi invasion was under way but this was not passed on to airline

Hundreds of British passengers might have avoided being taken hostage by Saddam Hussein in 1990 if a call by a British ambassador regarding Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had been relayed to British Airways, the Foreign Office has disclosed.

The revelation of the phone call and the decades long cover-up was made on Tuesday under the 20-year disclosure rule, but was known to ministers and diplomats since 1990. The current foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has apologised for the omission.

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Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

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Tourist visas and flights from Syria – the route to Europe via Belarus

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Travel agents in Middle East and migrants who have reached Poland describe how thousands are making the journey

On a dark forest road last month, Polish police were in pursuit of a speeding car that had skipped a checkpoint. The car’s driver was a people smuggler, and his passengers three Syrians who had paid thousands for him to take them to Germany, the final leg of their journey from the Middle East via Belarus. A truck coming in the opposite direction tried to dodge them but could not. Ferhad Nabo, 33, a married father of two from Kobane, was killed instantly in the crash.

“He left Syria, like many others, to reach Europe,” said his cousin Rashwan Nabo, a Syrian humanitarian worker. Ferhad had boarded a direct flight to Minsk from Erbil, in northern Iraq. “In Raqqa, Damascus and Aleppo, word has been spreading for months that the easiest and fastest way to reach Europe is a direct flight to Belarus,” his cousin said.

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Poland-Belarus crisis volunteers: ‘Border police can be very aggressive’

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Grupa Granica strives to bring supplies to stranded migrants and help them deal with border officers

The call came in at about 1.30pm in the afternoon. A group of 15 people, all Iraqi Kurds, had been found in the woods of Narewka after managing to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. One woman could barely walk. Others had early signs of hypothermia.

The young volunteer who answered the phone – one of about 40 members of Grupa Granica, a Polish network of NGOs monitoring the situation on the border – knew they had to act quickly.

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Drone attack by militants on Iraqi PM ‘marks escalation’ in power struggle

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Officials see strike on premier’s home as assassination attempt by Iran-backed groups trying to overturn election result

Senior figures in Iraq believe a brazen drone attack on the home of Iraq’s prime minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, marks an unprecedented escalation between the country’s leaders and Iran-backed militant groups attempting to overturn last month’s election.

The overnight attack is seen by Iraqi officials as an assassination attempt, and the first of its kind against a prime minister since the US-led invasion to remove Saddam Hussein nearly 19 years ago.

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Exploding drone assassination attempt on Iraqi PM fails

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Mustafa al-Kadhimi was unhurt when drone targeted his residence inside the fortified Green Zone, says government

An exploding drone aimed at the Iraqi prime minister’s house has failed to kill him, the government has said. Mustafa al-Kadhimi was reported by the government to be unharmed.

In a statement released early on Sunday, the government said the drone tried to hit al-Kadhimi’s home in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses foreign embassies and government offices. Residents of Baghdad heard an explosion followed by gunfire in the area.

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‘The court of God will be waiting for him’: Iraqis react to Colin Powell’s death

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A country still struggling with the aftermath of a disastrous occupation has a mixed opinion of the former general

For many Iraqis, Colin Powell was the face of the US invasion which caused an estimated 200,000 deaths, unleashing nearly two decades of domestic chaos and precipitating turmoil throughout the region.

His death, at the age of 84, was unlamented by many in a country still grappling with the aftermath of a disastrous occupation and an Islamist insurgency that followed the 2003 war – a conflict that Powell himself was later to acknowledge as a stain on his legacy.

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Colin Powell’s UN speech: a decisive moment in undermining US credibility

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Analysis: His security council presentation didn’t directly lead to the Iraq invasion – but it was a turning point in US-UN relations

Colin Powell will be most remembered for the act he most regretted, his 2003 presentation to the UN security council laying out US evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which turned out not to exist.

It did not directly lead to the Iraq invasion because George W Bush was going to invade anyway, and the presentation did not succeed in its goal of persuading the council to pass a second resolution backing military action against Iraq.

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Yazidis visit holiest temple during Autumn Assembly – in pictures

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Autumn Assembly is the highest and most important Yazidi holiday. It takes place in the holy city of Lalish, which is believed to be the place where creation began and where the seat of God descended to rule the earth. It also houses the tombs of Sheikh Adi and other holy figures. The town is considered so sacred that you are not allowed to enter while wearing shoes, especially during the assembly

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Turnout at Iraqi national election as low as 25% as many boycott polls

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Disillusioned youth and middle classes stay home rather than vote for system they believe has failed

Iraqis have turned out in low numbers in a national election, with many boycotting a poll that people feared could reinforce a political system that had failed them.

Nationwide turnout at the sixth ballot since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was thought to be as low as 25%, with the country’s disillusioned youth and middle classes largely staying home.

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‘I think about everyone I save’: the mine clearance hero of Kurdistan

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Hoshyar Ali has cleared more than 750,000 landmines in 104 villages, despite having lost both legs to landmines. Iraqi Kurdistan is one of the most contaminated countries for landmines and explosive remnants of war, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

A dust cloud trails behind a metallic grey Kia Sportage as it meanders along a rocky dirt road toward the last town on this thoroughfare before reaching the Iraq-Iran border.

People walk along the road, waving at independent deminer Hoshyar Ali as he drives by, recognising him by the red flag on his antenna, indicating the vehicle is transporting explosives, and by the stickers of various landmines on his vehicle.

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US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds

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Figures based on reported number of US airstrikes highlight the human cost of the 20-year ‘war on terror’

US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars.

The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it has conducted almost 100,000 airstrikes since 2001, represents an attempt to estimate the number of civilian deaths across the multiple conflicts that have comprised aspects of the “war on terror”.

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Opec member urges oil producers to focus more on renewable energy

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Iraqi minister and International Energy Agency chief urge oil producing countries to move away from fossil fuel dependency

The finance minister of Iraq, one of the founding members of the global oil cartel Opec, has made an unprecedented call to fellow oil producers to move away from fossil fuel dependency and into renewable energy, ahead of a key Opec meeting.

Ali Allawi, the deputy prime minister and finance minister of Iraq, has written in the Guardian to urge oil producers to pursue “an economic renewal focused on environmentally sound policies and technologies” that would include solar power and potentially nuclear reactors, and reduce their dependency on fossil fuel exports.

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Without help for oil-producing countries, net zero by 2050 is a distant dream | Ali Allawi and Fatih Birol

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To meet climate targets and avoid economic collapse, countries such as Iraq need international support in the transition to clean energy

• Ali Allawi is deputy prime minister and finance minister of Iraq. Fatih Birol is executive director of the International Energy Agency

In the Middle East and north Africa, global warming is not a distant threat, but an already painful reality. Rising temperatures are exacerbating water shortages. In Iraq, temperatures are estimated to be rising as much as seven times faster than the global average. Countries in this region are not only uniquely affected by global temperature rises: their centrality to global oil and gas markets makes their economies particularly vulnerable to the transition away from fossil fuels and towards cleaner energy sources. It’s essential the voices of Iraq and similar countries are heard at the Cop26 climate change conference in Glasgow this November.

To stand a chance of limiting the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to fundamentally change the way it produces and consumes energy, burning less coal, oil and natural gas. The International Energy Agency’s recent global roadmap to net zero by 2050 shows the world’s demand for oil will need to decline from more than 90m barrels a day to less than 25m by 2050. This would result in a 75% plunge in net revenues for oil-producing economies, many of which are dominated by a public sector that relies on oil exports and the revenues they produce.

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