At least 24 people have been killed in the latest suicide bombings to strike Iraq. In Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, at least 11 Shia pilgrims were killed when a bomb blew up an ambulance in the car park of a religious shrine on Sunday. Ali al-Hamdani, spokesman for the Salahuddin province, said the bomber walked into the crowd of people before detonating the vehicle and blowing himself up. Five female students are believed to be among the…

Every effort must be made to protect civilians from the onslaught of war and potential revenge attacks in Mosul, said Amnesty International today as the operation to recapture the city from the armed group calling itself the Islamic State gets under way. Tomorrow, 18 October 2016, Amnesty International will launch a major new report ‘Punished for Daesh’s crimes’: Displaced Iraqis abused by militias and government forces which documents serious human rights violations - including war crimes committed by Iraqi militias…

An Iraqi Shi'ite militia said on Wednesday it had dispatched more than 1,000 fighters to the frontline in neighboring Syria, escalating foreign involvement in the battle for Aleppo, the biggest prize in five years of relentless civil war. New footage emerged of civilians choking in the aftermath of an apparent attack with poison chlorine gas on an opposition-held district as the battle for Syria's biggest city approaches what could be a decisive phase. Aleppo has been divided for years into…

BAGHDAD — Iraq's Foreign Ministry said the government on Sunday formally requested that the Saudi ambassador in Baghdad be replaced after he claimed that Iranian-backed Shiite militias are plotting to assassinate him. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Jamal told The Associated Press that the government sent a formal request to Saudi Arabia to replace the kingdom's ambassador in Baghdad, Thamer al-Sabhan. Jamal said al-Sabhan's reported comments are untrue and harm relations between the two countries. He said the allegations are considered…

Portugal’s government is considering asking Iraq to remove its diplomatic immunity from the sons of its ambassador after they allegedly attacked a 15-year-old boy. The request will depend on the outcome of a police investigation into the matter. The 17-year-old twin sons, who may have already fled Portugal, are suspected of carrying out a brutal attack following a row in a bar. The teenager who has been named locally as Rubin was air lifted to a hospital in Lisbon where…

Sources have told Al Arabiya.net that Iraqi Shiite militias belonging to Iran planned to target the Saudi ambassador in Iraq Thamer Al Sabhan, through the members of “Mourtadha Abboud Ellami” group at the behest of “Abu Mahdi Al Mouhandis” and the leaders of “Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq” and especially the groups led by Akram al-Kaabi. The sources added that members of Mourtadha Abboud Ellami’s group, reported the plan to the Iraqi foreign minister Ibrahim Al Jaafari, giving him a deadline to…

Iraq said on Sunday it had hanged 36 militants sentenced to death over the mass killing of hundreds of mainly Shi'ite soldiers at a camp north of Baghdad two years ago. It is the highest number of militants executed in one day by the Iraqi government since Islamic State fighters took control of parts of northern and western Iraq in 2014. The executions were carried out at a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, state television quoted the…

As Iraqi political and military attention shifts north in the fight against the Islamic State group, the military victories that have put Iraqi forces on Mosul's doorstep have left behind shattered cities, towns and communities in Iraq's Sunni heartland. Anbar has witnessed the most successful military phase of the ground fight against IS to date. But rather than restore government order, services and security, liberation at the hands of Iraqi forces closely backed by the U.S.-led coalition has merely moved…

BAGHDAD — If there were one safe place in Iraq, it should be a hospital nursery, locked down for the night with dozens of babies nestled inside. But here, not even that is a given. When a fire started late Tuesday night in the maternity wing of one of Baghdad’s main hospitals, it quickly engulfed the babies’ room. And then, in another Iraqi tragedy in a horrifying line of preventable ones, nothing worked. Hospital workers raced to save the infants,…

World Bulletin / News Desk Iraqi Parliament Speaker Salim al-Jabouri resumed his official responsibilities on Wednesday after an Iraqi court dropped corruption charges against him. "Al-Jabouri has resumed his duties as parliament speaker," his spokesman, Imad al-Khafaji said. On Tuesday, citing a lack of evidence, a court dropped graft charges leveled earlier against al-Jabouri by Defense Minister Khaled al-Obeidi. Al-Khafaji said the parliament speaker’s immunity "will be restored once the corruption case is officially closed". Earlier Tuesday, Parliament had voted…