Friday, January 06, 2012

Iraq: On Ground Updates - Friday, January 06, 2012

File photo by Army Sgt. Andrew Jacob, Special Operations Task Force-Central
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- ABC News brings us the following report this early Friday afternoon and it starts off like this… An Iranian-backed Shiite militia that carried out deadly attacks on U.S. troops has agreed to lay down its arms and join the political process, the Iraqi official in charge of reconciling with the country's armed groups said Friday… Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's adviser for reconciliation, Amer al-Khuzaie, said the group, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, has not yet turned in its arms but has agreed not to use them anymore. He welcomed the group's decision to play a constructive role in Iraqi politics and said the group plans to run in the next parliamentary elections under a new name…
Read the rest at link below…
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- The Sydney Morning Herald has this take on the latest news out of Iraq… It was one of the deadliest insurgent groups in Iraq in recent years, an Iranian-backed militia that bombed US military convoys and bases, assassinated dozens of Iraqi officials and tried to kidnap Americans even as the last soldiers withdrew… But now the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is welcoming the militant group into Iraq's political system, a move that could tilt the nation's centre of gravity closer to Iran
Read this report in full at link below…
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- AFP brings us this troubling report… Rockets were fired against Baghdad's Green Zone as Iraq's military marked its anniversary with a parade Friday, a day after the country suffered its worst attacks since August and weeks after US troops left… Further violence against Shiite pilgrims, who were the targets of Thursday's bombings, killed two people, the latest in a spike in attacks against the majority community amid a political crisis that has stoked sectarian tensions… Meanwhile, top officials in Nasiriyah, worst hit by Thursday's bloodshed, held a funeral for two Sunni soldiers who, officers said, tried to prevent a suicide attack that killed 47 people in the southern city…
Read the rest at link below…
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- The Boston Globe reports…
An apparently coordinated wave of bombings targeting Shi’ite Muslims killed at least 78 people in Iraq yesterday, the second large-scale assault by militants since US forces pulled out last month… The attacks, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgents, come ahead of a Shi’ite holy day that draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from across Iraq, raising fears of a deepening of sectarian bloodshed. Rifts along the Sunni-Shi’ite fault line just a few years ago pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war… The bombings in Baghdad and outside the southern city of Nasiriyah appeared to be the deadliest in Iraq in more than a year…
Read the full report at link below…

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POST UPDATE:
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
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- The Washington Post gets us up-to-date with the following report and it starts off like this… Three schoolboys were among at least 10 people killed in Iraq on Tuesday, extending a wave of bloody attacks that have rocked the country since American troops pulled out… Several of the Tuesday attacks struck predominantly Sunni areas north of Baghdad, though an evening blast in the capital appeared to target Shiite pilgrims commemorating a holy period known as Arbaeen… The violence followed deadly car bomb blasts the evening before, and pushed to more than 100 the number of Iraqis killed in less than a week…
Read the full report at link below
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What a MESS!
AubreyJ………
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