Tag: baghdad
Islamic State Bombs Kill 80 In Deadliest Baghdad Attacks This Year

Islamic State Bombs Kill 80 In Deadliest Baghdad Attacks This Year

Three suicide bombings claimed by Islamic State across Baghdad killed at least 80 people on Wednesday, Iraqi police and hospital sources said, in the deadliest attacks in the Iraqi capital this year.

Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but violence against security forces and Shi’ite Muslim civilians is still frequent. Large blasts sometimes set off reprisal attacks against the minority Sunni community.

The fight against Islamic State, which seized about a third of Iraq’s territory in 2014, has exacerbated a long-running sectarian conflict in Iraq mostly between Sunnis and the Shi’ite majority that came to power after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Such violence threatens to undermine U.S.-backed efforts to defeat the militant group.

Wednesday’s bombings could also intensify pressure on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to resolve a political crisis that has crippled the government for more than a month.

The first attack, a suicide car bomb at a bustling market in the Shi’ite Muslim area of Sadr City, killed 55 people during morning rush hour and wounded 68.

Two more blasts struck at the end of the working day. A suicide bomber stormed a security checkpoint leading into Kadhimiya, a northwestern area housing one of the holiest sites in Shi’ite Islam, killing 17 and wounding more than 30.

Another bomb went off at a checkpoint on a commercial thoroughfare in a predominantly Sunni district of western Baghdad, killing eight and wounding 20.

 

BRIDES AND GROOMS

A pickup truck packed with explosives in Sadr City went off near a beauty salon in a bustling market. Many of the victims were women including several brides who appeared to be getting ready for their weddings, the sources said.

The bodies of two men said to be grooms were found in an adjacent barber shop. Wigs, shoes and children’s toys were scattered on the ground outside. At least two cars were destroyed in the explosion, their parts scattered far from the blast site.

Rescue workers stepped through puddles of blood to put out fires and remove victims. Smoke was still rising from several shops hours after the explosion as a bulldozer cleared the burnt-out chassis of the vehicle used in the blast.

Islamic State said in statements circulated online by supporters that a car bomb had aimed at Shi’ite militia fighters gathered in the area and two fighters wearing explosive vests targeted security forces in the later attacks.

Since 2014, Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led air strikes have driven the group back in the western province of Anbar and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul. A spokesman said on Wednesday Islamic State had lost two-thirds of the territory seized by the militants in 2014.

Yet the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control. The ultra-hardline Sunni jihadist group, which considers Shi’ites apostates, has claimed recent attacks across the country as well as a twin suicide bombing in Sadr City in February that killed 70 people.

 

Additional reporting by Saif Hameed in Baghdad and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Dominic Evans

Photo: People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad’s mainly Shi’ite district of Sadr City, Iraq, May 11, 2016. REUTERS/Wissm al-Okili

Defeating Islamic State Leaves Big Bill Iraq’s Struggling To Pay

Defeating Islamic State Leaves Big Bill Iraq’s Struggling To Pay

By Aziz Alwan and Zaid Sabah, Bloomberg News (TNS)

BAGHDAD — Ahmed al-Jabouri had hoped the worst was over after Iraqi forces drove Islamic State from his town near Baghdad. Instead, he returned six weeks ago to find bombed out homes, looted shops, and a growing list of grievances.

Only a few buildings in Dhuluiya survived heavy fighting unscathed, the shopkeeper said after he became one of thousands of Iraqis to pick up the pieces of their lives in areas liberated from militant control. “The power is out, the school is destroyed and our mobile phones don’t work,” al-Jabouri said. “The government is doing nothing for us.”

The anger building in Sunni communities is the next challenge for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s Shiite-dominated government as the cost of battling militants bites into revenues already hit by an oil price slump. The $430 million it has pledged for reconstruction is a fraction of what officials says is needed, raising the risk that sectarian discord will again boil over in pacified parts of OPEC’s second-biggest producer.

The government has “a moral and legal obligation to Iraqis to rebuild their cities, provide local services, and secure their areas,” Saad al-Hadithi, a government spokesman, said in an interview.

Authorities, however, need to find “billions of dollars for the reconstruction work and to compensate families,” he said. “This won’t happen in one or two months, it will take a few years.”

Iraq’s fiscal deficit has widened to $25 billion, almost a quarter of its 2015 budget, according to Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari. While oil exports rose in March to a three-decade high, a plunge in the price of crude over the last year has contributed to the spending gap.

The scenes in Dhuluiya in Salahuddin province are repeated across the shifting frontlines of central and northern Iraq. Aid groups say about a million Iraqis have been displaced since Islamic State seized swaths of the country last year after the Iraqi military collapsed. The militant group drew support from Sunni communities during its lightning advance.

Iraqi government forces and their Shiite militia allies — some backed by neighbor Iran — have regrouped and regained some territory with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes. The Pentagon said in April that the area under Islamic State control had shrunk by nearly a third from its peak.

“Abadi faces a dilemma. He must respond to Sunni needs in newly liberated areas. At the same he needs to create a bigger geographical distance from these areas to the front line,” said Reidar Visser, an Iraq historian. “Large numbers of Iraqis hate Islamic State and would be prepared to work with the government if more support is forthcoming.”

Another Dhuluiya resident, 56-year-old Sheikh Moulod Awad al-Jabouri, said central and local government officials were nowhere to be seen. The Jabouri clan is a prominent Sunni tribe.

“Neither of the town’s bridges has been fixed yet,” he said, leaving a fleet of rickety boats to connect the town to the main road on the opposite bank of the Tigris river. Al-Jabouri said locals were pooling their remaining resources to rebuild homes that were the most badly damaged in the fighting. “Each month, we are able to collect about $20,000 to rebuild a house, one by one,” he said.

As areas are freed and before thoughts turn to reconstruction, towns and cities have to be scoured for unexploded ordnance and booby-trapped houses.

“We need an engineering effort to clear the buildings and that will take a lot of time,” said al-Hadithi, the government spokesman in Baghdad.

Yet patience among the mostly Sunni returnees is limited. Many say they are wary of trusting a government that they feel has neglected them since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion saw the country’s mostly Sunni regime under Saddam Hussein replaced by a Shiite-led one.

In Dhuluiya, the town’s main street is lined with gutted shops and bomb craters. Shiite militias patrol the neighborhood and regularly search homes, say residents including Ahmed al-Jabouri.

“It still feels like the town is in a state of emergency,” he said.

The government says it has to monitor returnees.

Tikrit, freed last month from Islamic State rule, remains sealed off over concerns that militants will sneak back in, Khalid al-Khazraji, a provincial council member, said by phone.

Pockets of resistance remain in the city, he added. Many of Tikrit’s residents are living in camps outside Baghdad or staying with family members in the city. Al-Khazraji said they would be allowed to return once the government had finished compiling a database of residents and screening them.

The continuing violence in towns like Tikrit weeks after their capture was announced is affecting the government’s ability to raise reconstruction funds, according to Jabbar al-Abadi, a member of parliament’s finance committee.

“We are seeking more funds but donor countries are hesitating to give money to the government until areas are 100 percent secured,” he said. The government is seeking $860 million but has received no donor money yet, he said.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have also been approached about a possible loan to pay for infrastructure in reclaimed areas, the prime minister’s economic adviser Mudher Saleh said by phone.

The IMF said it is working with the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Iraq to reach an agreement, according to an emailed statement.

The U.S. spent about $60 billion on rebuilding Iraq between 2003 and 2012, according to the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

Those who are able to return home aren’t receiving the help they need, according to Adnan al-Tamimi, city council chairman of al-Miqdadiya, another recently liberated city.

“The services in the city are not meeting the demands of the citizens,” he said. “The people are suffering as a result of the government and it’s stoking resentment.”

Photo: Omar Chatriwala via Flickr

Jury Convicts Blackwater Guards In Iraq Killing, But Appeals Expected

Jury Convicts Blackwater Guards In Iraq Killing, But Appeals Expected

By Timothy M. Phelps and Matt Hansen, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — A federal jury Wednesday convicted four former Blackwater security guards who had been charged with killing 14 Iraqis in Baghdad seven years ago in a shooting that became a symbol of U.S. treatment of Iraqi civilians.

After nearly 30 days of deliberation, the jury in found Nicholas Slatten guilty of first-degree murder, while three other guards — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — were found guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

Prosecutors flew dozens of Iraqi witnesses to Washington to testify about scenes of graphic violence, including the father of a 9-year-old boy who said he watched his son’s brains fall out at his feet.

Prosecutors said the shootings, in which 37 people were killed or injured, were unprovoked, the result of trigger-happy civilian security guards nervous about intelligence reports that a white Kia carrying a car bomb was circulating in the city looking for a target.

The defense, which put on only four witnesses, said the killings were a tragic mistake that started when unknown Iraqis opened fire on a Blackwater convoy.

The verdict comes at a delicate time for the Obama administration, just as the U.S. is helping the new Iraqi government fight Islamic State militants. It was the insistence by the previous Iraqi government that Americans accused of crimes within the country be tried in Iraqi courts that led Obama to pull U.S. troops out in 2011.

“This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war,” U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, whose office led the prosecution, said in a statement.

Jurors reached guilty verdicts on nearly all of the combined 33 counts. Judge Royce C. Lamberth declared a mistrial on three remaining charges of manslaughter and attempted manslaughter for Heard.

Slatten could face life imprisonment, while the remaining three defendants face 30-year mandatory minimum sentences, according to prosecutors.

The four men remained impassive and motionless as the verdicts were read. Lamberth asked them to remain seated during the lengthy recitation.

Defense attorneys vowed to appeal the verdicts, saying they believed the government had erred in trying the men under the auspices of the Department of Defense, because they were not contractors with that department while working in Iraq. As Blackwater contractors, they provided security to State Department officials in the country.

“This was a long and complicated trial that raised a lot of issues with the jury that will be raised in a motion for a new trial,” David Schertler, the attorney who represented Heard, said.

The men will remain in custody despite defense attorneys’ objections that they posed no flight risk. In some cases, the defendants had even returned from trips overseas to attend the trial, attorneys noted.

Some lawmakers praised the verdict, saying it demonstrated that the federal government needed to do a better job of holding its contractors accountable.

“It should not have taken this long for justice to be served,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said in a statement.

Leahy has proposed legislation that would allow U.S. contractors to be more easily prosecuted for crimes they commit overseas.

AFP Photo/Ahmad al-Rubaye

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