Tag: Iraq

Iraq PM appears in lead after first post-IS election

by Sarah Benhaida © Agence France-Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister’s political grouping appeared in the lead Sunday following the country’s first election since defeating the Islamic State group, after a vote hit by record abstentions. Preliminary results given to AFP by several senior political figures showed Abadi’s Victory Alliance scooping some 60 of the 329 parliament seats up for grabs. The result from Saturday’s nationwide poll would make Abadi frontrunner in the horse-trading […]

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Iraq holds first nationwide election since IS defeat

  by Salam Faraj with Mohammad Salim in Mosul © Agence France-Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq headed to the polls Saturday for its first parliamentary election since declaring victory over the Islamic State group, with the country hoping to shore up a fragile peace and rebuild. Some 24.5 million voters began casting their ballots under tight security, as the jihadists still pose a major security threat despite a sharp fall in violence. The poll comes […]

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Oil-rich Iraq, ravaged by war

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq, which on May 12 holds its first parliamentary election since declaring victory over the Islamic State group, is oil-rich but has been ravaged by a series of wars since the 1980s. Cradle of civilization  During ancient times the lands now comprising Iraq were known as Mesopotamia (“Land Between the Rivers”), a region located between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Its extensive alluvial plains gave rise to some of the world’s […]

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In Iraq, death-row jihadists ‘confess’ on prime-time TV

by Sammy Ketz Agence France-Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Every Friday in Iraq, a gripping show on state television beams the alleged confessions of death-row jihadists into homes around the country. At peak viewing time, it broadcasts gruesome images of their purported crimes before interviewing the convicts, who appear clad in orange or yellow jumpsuits. Baghdad declared victory against the Islamic State group in December, after years of fighting to regain vast stretches of territory […]

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Now defeated, Iraq’s most feared jihadists await their fate

by Ammar Karim Agence France-Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Their names spread terror across the Islamic State group’s cross-border “caliphate,” but senior jihadists now languish in Iraqi prisons, subjects of mockery for the populace they ruled. Once boasting nicknames like the Black Box and the Butcher of Mosul, the defeated IS commanders now draw vitriol on social media while news outlets have published selfies taken by Iraqi soldiers of them being captured or marched handcuffed […]

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World powers meet to pressure Syria on chemical attacks

by Valérie Leroux Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) – Diplomats from 29 countries including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meet in Paris on Tuesday pushing for sanctions and criminal charges against the perpetrators of chemical attacks in Syria. Tillerson and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian will also co-host a meeting of ministers ahead of a new round of peace talks in Vienna later this week and again in Sochi in Russia the week after. The […]

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Iraq PM heads for May elections after defeating IS

by Ali Choukeir Agence France Presse BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sunday he would stand for re-election in May at the head of a new coalition, buoyed by victory over the Islamic State group. Abadi’s newly created “Victory Alliance” will face the “State of Law” bloc of Nuri al-Maliki, his predecessor, key rival and Shiite Dawa party co-member who now holds the post of vice president. The 65-year-old Abadi was […]

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Surrender or be shot in the face, senior US soldier tells IS

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US troops and their allies will shoot Islamic State jihadists in the face, beat them to death with shovels or drop bombs on them if they don’t surrender, the US military’s most senior enlisted member has said. In an eyebrow-raising set of postings on social media Tuesday, Command Sergeant Major John Troxell warned that IS members who refuse to quit will be dispatched with “extreme prejudice,” including via a small […]

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Iraqi Kurdistan protests turn deadly

by Shwan Mohamad Agence France-Presse (SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq) – Five people were killed and dozens wounded in Iraqi Kurdistan on Tuesday as security forces opened fire during clashes with protesters amid growing anger over a failed push for independence. Demonstrators in the autonomous Kurdish area in the north of the country torched the offices of a mayor and political parties as protests broke out for a second day over the disastrous fallout from a September referendum. The vote delivered […]

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Islamic State: What happened to all the foreign fighters?

by Michel Moutot © Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — An estimated 40,000 people traveled from around the world to take up arms for the Islamic State group as it occupied territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014. A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as IS struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Western-backed Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies. But what happened to the […]

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Iraq hangs 38 members of IS, Qaeda for ‘terrorism’

NASIRIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq hanged 38 jihadists belonging to the Islamic State group or Al-Qaeda for terrorism offences on Thursday in the southern city of Nasiriyah, provincial authorities said. It was the largest number of executions in Iraq on a single day since September 25 when 42 people were put to death in the same prison. “The prison administration executed on Thursday in the presence of Justice Minister Haidar al-Zameli, in Nasiriyah prison, 38 […]

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Quake hits Iran-Iraq border region

TEHRAN , Iran (AFP) — A tremor shook Kermanshah province in western Iran near Iraq’s border Monday, causing panic a month after a major quake killed hundreds of people there, state media and officials said. Two hours after the tremor the state broadcaster, quoting the head of the crisis management cell in Kermanshah province, said there were no reports of damage or deaths. The University of Tehran’s seismology center said a 6.0-magnitude quake shook the […]

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