Iraqis face future of fear
Whenever he leaves his home, Mohammed Jabar, a Sunni Muslim, carries his cellphone so his family can find out quickly whether he is safe if a deadly bomb attack hits. Shukria Mahmud, another Sunni, rarely ventures from her house because of the rash of violence that is gripping Iraq. Laith Hashim, a young Shiite Muslim, is considering moving away from…
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Iraqis fear return of Mahdi
A new slogan has appeared in the past week on walls in eastern Baghdad and some southern Iraqi towns. Scrawled in paint, it is a simple and, to many Iraqis, chilling promise: "The Mahdi Army is returning." On the buildings that line the streets and alleyways of neighbourhoods in the Shiite strongholds of north-eastern Baghdad, similarly forebodin…
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Moqtada al-Sadr returns to Iran
The Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr returned to Iran on Friday after spending a couple of weeks testing the political waters back home in Iraq after a long, self-imposed exile, aides said. Mr al Sadr, whose speeches rallied millions of poor Iraqi Shi'ites against US forces after the 2003 invasion and whose militia played a major role in the sectarian…
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Fatwa: end attacks on christians
A group of senior Iraqi clerics have issued a joint Shiite, Sunni and Christian fatwa calling for the end of violence against the Christian minority in Iraq. They had been meeting at a three-day conference between 12-14 January in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, to discuss the increasing spate of attacks against Iraqi Christians.The deadliest was the siege …
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Qa'eda prisoners 'had inside help'
Al Qa'eda prisoners who escaped from a jail in Basra last week had high-level government connections and were helped by insiders from a corrupt Iraqi intelligence unit, investigators believe. The 12 detainees, including leading members of the Islamic State of Iraq, an Al Qa'eda affiliate, walked out of a high security government compound on Friday, …
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Baghdad gets one hour of electricity
Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, home to more than six million people, hardly gets one hour of non-interrupted electricity supplies every 24 hours. The city has plunged into darkness with the country’s national grid still unable to increase supplies despite billions of dollars in investments.Seven years after the 2003-U.S. invasion, power production in the country …
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Shiite alarm over Sadr's return
Even as supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr rejoiced at his return to Iraq, some in the country's Shiite Muslim majority population expressed alarm Sunday about the implications of his homecoming. In Baghdad and the southern provinces of Basra and Maysan, the news gave deep pause to some Shiite Iraqis, mindful of Iraq's history since …
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