The Jim Bakker Show

Mosul residents fear cold and hunger of winter siege

People fleeing Islamic State stronghold in Mosul

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – No food or fuel has reached Mosul in nearly a week and the onset of rain and cold weather threatens a tough winter for more than a million people still in Islamic State-held areas of the city, residents said on Saturday.

Iraqi troops waging a six-week-old offensive against the militants controlling Mosul have advanced into eastern city districts, while other forces have sealed Mosul’s southern and northern approaches and 10 days ago blocked the road west.

But their advance has been hampered by waves of counter-attacks from the ultra-hardline Islamists who have controlled the city since mid-2014 and built a network of tunnels in preparation for their defense of north Iraq’s largest city.

The slow progress means the campaign is likely to drag on throughout the winter, and has prompted warnings from aid groups that civilians face a near complete siege in the coming months.

A trader in Mosul, speaking by telephone, said no new food or fuel supplies had reached the city since Sunday.

Despite attempts by the militants to keep prices stable, and the arrest last week of dozens of shopkeepers accused of hiking prices, the trader said food had become more expensive and fuel prices had tripled.

“We’ve been living under a real state of siege for a week,” said one resident of west Mosul, several miles (km) from the frontline neighborhoods on the east bank of the Tigris river.

“Two days ago the electricity generator supplying the neighborhood stopped working because of lack of fuel. Water is cut and food prices have risen and it’s terribly cold. We fear the days ahead will be much worse”.

A pipeline supplying water to around 650,000 people in Mosul was hit during fighting this week between the army and Islamic State. A local official said it could not be fixed because the damage was in an area still being fought over.

Winter conditions will also hit the nearly 80,000 people registered by the United Nations as displaced since the start of the Mosul campaign. That number excludes many thousands more who were forcibly moved by Islamic State, or fled from the fighting deeper into territory under its control.

MILITANTS COUNTER ATTACK

Islamic State authorities, trying to portray a sense of normality, released pictures which they said showed a Mosul market on Friday. It showed a crowd of people and a stall selling vegetable oil and canned food but no fresh produce.

They also said they carried out several counter attacks in the last 24 hours against Iraqi troops in eastern Mosul and the mainly Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation forces who have taken territory to the west of the city.

Amaq news agency, which is close to Islamic State, said they retook half of the Shaimaa district in southeast of the city on Friday, destroyed four army bases in the eastern al-Qadisiya al-Thaniya neighborhood and seized ammunition from fleeing soldiers in al-Bakr district, also in the east.

A source in the Counter Terrorism Services, which are spearheading the army offensive, said Islamic State exploited the bad weather and cloud cover, which prevented air support from a U.S.-led international coalition.

He said the militants had taken back some ground, but predicted their gains would be short-lived.

“This is not the first time it happens. We withdraw to avoid civilian losses and then regain control. They can’t hold territory for long,” the source said.

Amaq also said Islamic State fighters waged attacks on Saturday against the Popular Mobilisation paramilitary units near the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, showing footage of two damaged vehicles, one with interior ministry markings on it.

A spokesman for the militias said those attacks had been repelled. “Daesh attacked at dawn to try to control the village Tal Zalat,” said Karim Nouri. “Clashes continued for two hours, until Daesh withdrew, leaving bodies (of dead fighters) behind.”

In Baghdad, a car bomb blew up in a crowded market in the center of the city on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding 15, police and medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State fighters have stepped up attacks in the Iraqi capital and other cities since the start of the Mosul operations.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi launched the Mosul offensive on Oct. 17, aiming to crush Islamic State in the largest city it controls in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

The campaign pits a 100,000-strong U.S.-backed coalition of army troops, special forces, federal police, Kurdish fighters and the Popular Mobilisation forces against a few thousand militants in the city.

Defeat would deal a heavy blow to Islamic State’s self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria, announced by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from a Mosul mosque two years ago.

(Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Clelia Oziel)

Exclusive: Islamic State crushes rebellion plot in Mosul as army closes in

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State has crushed a rebellion plot in Mosul, led by one of the group’s commanders who aimed to switch sides and help deliver the caliphate’s Iraqi capital to government forces, residents and Iraqi security officials said.

Islamic State (IS) executed 58 people suspected of taking part in the plot after it was uncovered last week. Residents, who spoke to Reuters from some of the few locations in the city that have phone service, said the plotters were killed by drowning and their bodies were buried in a mass grave in a wasteland on the outskirts of the city.

Among them was a local aide of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led the plotters, according to matching accounts given by five residents, by Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on IS affairs that advises the government in Baghdad and by colonel Ahmed al-Taie, from Mosul’s Nineveh province Operation Command’s military intelligence.

Reuters is not publishing the name of the plot leader to avoid increasing the safety risk for his family, nor the identities of those inside the city who spoke about the plot.

The aim of the plotters was to undermine Islamic State’s defense of Mosul in the upcoming fight, expected to be the biggest battle in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Mosul is the last major stronghold of Islamic State in Iraq. With a pre-war population of around 2 million, it is at least five times the size of any other city Islamic State has controlled. Iraqi officials say a massive ground assault could begin this month, backed by U.S. air power, Kurdish security forces and Shi’ite and Sunni irregular units.

A successful offensive would effectively destroy the Iraqi half of the caliphate that the group declared when it swept through northern Iraq in 2014. But the United Nations says it could also create the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, in a worst case scenario uprooting 1 million people.

Islamic State fighters are dug in to defend the city, and have a history of using civilians as human shields when defending territory.

CAUGHT

According to Hashimi, the dissidents were arrested after one of them was caught with a message on his phone mentioning a transfer of weapons. He confessed during interrogation that weapons were being hidden in three locations, to be used in a rebellion to support the Iraqi army when it closes in on Mosul.

IS raided the three houses used to hide the weapons on Oct. 4, Hashimi said.

“Those were Daesh members who turned against the group in Mosul,” said Iraqi Counter-terrorism Service spokesman Sabah al-Numani in Baghdad, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. “This is a clear sign that the terrorist organization has started to lose support not only from the population, but even from its own members.”

A spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition which conducts air strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq was unable to confirm or deny the accounts of the thwarted plot.

Signs of cracks inside the “caliphate” appeared this year as the ultra-hardline Sunni group was forced out of half the territory it overran two years ago in northern and western Iraq.

Some people in Mosul have been expressing their refusal of IS’s harsh rules by spray-painting the letter M, for the Arabic word that means resistance, on city walls, or “wanted” on houses of its militants. Such activity is punished by death.

Numani said his service has succeeded in the past two months in opening contact channels with “operatives” who began communicating intelligence that helped conduct air strikes on the insurgents’ command centers and locations in Mosul.

A list with the names of the 58 executed plotters was given to a hospital to inform their families but their bodies were not returned, the residents said.

“Some of the executed relatives sent old women to ask about the bodies. Daesh rebuked them and told them no bodies, no graves, those traitors are apostates and it is forbidden to bury them in Muslim cemeteries,” said one resident whose relative was among those executed.

“After the failed coup, Daesh withdrew the special identity cards it issued for its local commanders, to prevent them from fleeing Mosul with their families,” Colonel al-Taie said.

A Mosul resident said Islamic State had appointed a new official, Muhsin Abdul Kareem Oghlu, a leader of a sniper unit with a reputation as a die-hard, to assist its governor of Mosul, Ahmed Khalaf Agab al-Jabouri, in keeping control.

Islamic State militants have placed booby traps across the city of Mosul, dug tunnels and recruited children as spies in anticipation of the offensive.

(Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Peter Graff)

Iraq requests U.N. emergency meeting on Turkish troops in north

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan makes a speech during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, August 24, 2016.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq has requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the presence of Turkish troops on its territory as a dispute with Ankara escalates.

Turkey’s parliament voted last week to extend the deployment of an estimated 2,000 troops across northern Iraq by a year to combat “terrorist organizations” – a likely reference to Kurdish rebels as well as Islamic State.

Iraq condemned the vote, and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi warned Turkey risked triggering a regional war. On Wednesday, Ankara and Baghdad each summoned the other’s ambassador in protest at remarks from the other camp.

“The Iraqi foreign ministry has presented a request for an emergency meeting of the Security Council to discuss the Turkish violation of Iraq’s territory and interference in its internal affairs,” said a statement on the ministry’s website.

Turkey says its military is in Iraq at the invitation of Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government, with which Ankara maintains solid ties. Baghdad says no such invitation was ever issued.

Most of the Turkish troops are at a base in Bashiqa, north of Mosul and close to Turkey’s border, where they are helping to train Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga and Sunni fighters.

Tensions between Baghdad and Ankara have risen with expectations of an offensive by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces to retake Mosul, the last major Iraqi city under Islamic State control, captured by the militants two years ago.

Turkey has said the campaign will send a wave of refugees over its border, and potentially on to Europe.

Ankara also worries that Baghdad’s Shi’ite Muslim-led forces will destabilize Mosul’s largely Sunni population and worsen ethnic strife across the region, where there are also populations of Turkmens, ethnic kin of the Turks.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim echoed this worry again on Thursday, saying the presence of Ankara’s troops in Bashiqa will continue to ensure that the demographics of the region will not change. Iraq’s hostile reaction is “incomprehensible”, he added.

However, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu sought to play down the spat over Bashiqa in comments later on Thursday.

“We do not see a serious problem there and we think this problem will be overcome,” he told a news conference with his Italian counterpart in Ankara. “Iraq must leave the rhetoric aside so we can assess how to resolve this subject.”

He said around 3,000 local fighters, Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen, were being trained against Islamic State at the camp and they had so far “neutralized” around 750 of the group’s militants in the area.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad, Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Daren Butler in Istanbul; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Car bomb kills nine north of Baghdad, say sources

residents at car bombing site in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – At least nine people were killed and 32 wounded on Tuesday when a car packed with explosives was detonated in a district just north of Baghdad, security and medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast in Rashidiya, but Islamic State regularly carries out such bombings in the capital and other parts of Iraq, where it seized large swathes of territory in 2014.

Baghdad is on high alert for attacks after a blast in the central Karrada district on July 3 killed at least 292 people, making it one of the deadliest bombings in Iraq since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein 13 years ago.

Islamic State has turned increasingly to ad hoc attacks, which U.S. and Iraqi officials have touted as proof that battlefield setbacks are weakening the jihadists. But critics say a global uptick in suicide attacks attributed to the group suggests it may adapt and survive.

(Reporting by Kareem Raheem; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Iraqi forces take Falluja government building from Islamic State: state TV

By Thaier al-Sudani

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraqi forces recaptured the municipal building in Falluja from Islamic State militants, the military said on Friday, nearly four weeks after the start of a U.S.-backed offensive to retake the city an hour’s drive west of Baghdad.

The ultra-hardline militants still control a significant portion of Falluja, where the conflict has forced the evacuation of most residents and many streets and houses remain mined with explosives.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition backing Baghdad’s quest to recover large swathes of western and northern Iraq from Islamic State told Reuters that government forces were “close (to the building) but don’t have control yet”.

A military statement said the federal police had raised the Iraqi state flag above the government building and were continuing to pursue insurgents.

A Reuters photographer in a southern district of Falluja said clashes involving aerial bombardment, artillery and machine gun fire were continuing. Clouds of smoke could be seen rising up from areas closer to the city center.

Heavily armed Interior Ministry police units were advancing along Baghdad Street, the main east-west road running through the city, and commandos from the counter-terrorism service (CTS) had surrounded Falluja hospital, the statement said.

Sabah al-Numani, a CTS spokesman, said on state television that snipers holed up inside the hospital, considered a nest of militants, were resisting but the facility was expected to be retaken within hours.

Government forces, with air support from the U.S.-led coalition, launched a major operation on May 23 to retake Falluja, an historic bastion of the Sunni Muslim insurgency against U.S. forces that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, and the Shi’ite-led governments that followed.

The city is seen as a launchpad for recent Islamic State (IS) bombings in the capital, making the offensive a crucial part of the government’s campaign to improve security.

U.S. allies would prefer to concentrate on Islamic State-held Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city that is located in the far north of the country.

Enemies of Islamic State have uncorked major offensives against the jihadists on other fronts, including a thrust by U.S.-backed forces against the city of Manbij in northern Syria.

The offensives amount to the most sustained pressure on IS since it proclaimed a caliphate in 2014.

MASS DISPLACEMENT

Islamic State has begun allowing thousands of civilians trapped in central Falluja to escape and the sudden exodus has overwhelmed displacement camps already filled beyond capacity.

More than 6,000 families left on Thursday alone, according to Falluja Mayor Issa al-Issawi, who fled the IS seizure of Falluja two years ago. He told Reuters on Friday: “We don’t know how to deal with this large number of civilians.”

The number of displaced people as of Thursday surpassed 68,000, according to the United Nations, which recently estimated Falluja’s total population at 90,000, only about a third of the total in 2010.

Witnesses said Islamic State had announced via loudspeakers that residents could leave if they wanted, but it was unclear why the group changed tact after clamping down on civilian movement only a few days ago.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has been providing aid to displaced people, said escapees reported a sudden retreat of IS fighters at key checkpoints inside Falluja that had allowed civilians to leave.

Humanitarian needs were expected to increase dramatically in the coming hours, swamping the resources of foreign aid groups and the government as they struggle with funding shortfalls.

“Aid services in the camps were already overstretched and this development will push us all to the limit,” said NRC country director Nasr Muflahi.

Islamic State, which by U.S. estimates has been ousted from almost half of the territory it seized when Iraqi forces partially collapsed in 2014, has used residents as human shields to slow the military’s advance and help avoid air strikes.

Defence Ministry spokesman Naseer Nuri said the surge in displaced people was “proof that (Islamic State) has lost control over the city and its residents”.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Stephen Kalin in Baghdad; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Iraq makes arrests over reports of Sunni executed in Falluja

A military vehicle of the Iraqi security forces is seen next to an Iraqi flag in Falluja

By Isabel Coles and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq said on Monday it had made arrests as it investigates allegations that Shi’ite militiamen helping the army retake Falluja had executed dozens of Sunni Muslim men fleeing the city held by Islamic State.

Iraqi authorities “are following up on the violations and a number of arrests have been made,” government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said after a regional governor said 49 Sunni men had been executed after surrendering to a Shi’ite faction.

Sohaib al-Rawi, governor of Anbar province where Falluja is located, said on Sunday that 643 men had gone missing between June 3 and June 5, and “all the surviving detainees were subjected to severe and collective torture by various means.”

The participation of militias in the battle of Falluja, just west of Baghdad, alongside the Iraqi army had already raised fears of sectarian killings.

Iraq’s Defense Minister Khalid al-Obeidi said four military personnel were arrested after video footage showed them abusing people displaced from Falluja. He pledged on Twitter to prosecute any serviceman involved in such acts.

“Harassment of IDPs (internally displaced persons) is a betrayal of the sacrifices of our brave forces’ liberation operations to expel Daesh (Islamic State) from Iraq,” he said.

Falluja is a historic bastion of the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces that toppled Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, in 2003, and the Shi’ite-led governments that followed.

In the north of the country, troops fought with Islamic State militants in the village of Haj Ali for the second day in a row, an Iraqi officer taking part said.

Haj Ali is near the Qayyara, a town under Islamic State control which has an airfield that Baghdad’s forces seek to use as a staging ground for a future offensive on Mosul, about 60 km (40 miles) north.

STRICT ORDERS

“Strict orders were issued to protect the civilians,” government spokesman Hadithi said, adding that these instructions were also given to the Hashid Shaabi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces, the coalition of mostly Shi’ite militias backed by Iran which are involved in the fighting.

The United Nations said last week it knew of “extremely distressing, credible reports” of men and boys being abused by armed groups working with security forces after fleeing Falluja.

Iraqi authorities routinely separate males aged over 15 from their families when they manage to escape Falluja, to screen them to ensure they do not pose a security risk and check if they may have been involved in war crimes.

U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said screening was legitimate but should not be done by paramilitary groups.

“The country must avoid further divisions or violence along sectarian lines, lest it implode completely,” he said on Monday.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State said the Baghdad government was aware of the abuses.

“We know that the prime minister has come out and said that he believes that these abuses have happened and that he … has demanded accountability of any perpetrators,” Colonel Chris Garver said. “We think that is the right course of action.”

The Iraqi army launched the offensive on Falluja on May 23, with air support from the U.S.-led coalition. The United Nations has said up to 90,000 people are trapped in the city with little food or water.

Repeated phone calls to three spokesmen of the Popular Mobilisation Forces were not answered. Last week, one of them, Kareem Nuri, said past accusations of human rights violations were “politically motivated and baseless”.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Iraq forces keep up shelling Falluja, U.N. concern mounts for civilians

Members of the Iraqi security forces load a machine gun near Falluja, Iraq, May 23, 2016.

By Ahmed Rasheed and Stephen Kalin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces shelled Islamic State targets in Falluja on Tuesday, the second day of an assault to retake the militant stronghold just west of Baghdad, as international concern mounted for the security of civilians.

Residents in the city, 50 km (30 miles) from the capital, reported sporadic shelling around the city centre, but said it was less intense than on Monday.

“No one can leave. It’s dangerous. There are snipers everywhere along the exit routes,” one resident told Reuters by internet.

About 100,000 civilians are estimated to be in Falluja which, in January 2014, became the first Iraqi city to be captured by Islamic State, six months before the group declared its caliphate. The population was three times bigger before the war.

The Iraqi military said it had dislodged the militants from Garma, a village to the east, overnight. No casualties were reported by the army or the city’s main hospital. On Monday, eight civilians and three militants were killed, and 25 people wounded, 20 of them civilians, according to the hospital.

CIVILIANS

The U.S.-led coalition “is providing air power to support the Iraqi government forces in Falluja,” its spokesman, U.S. Army Col. Steve Warren, told Reuters by phone.

The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross issued statements on Monday evening appealing for the warring parties to protect civilians, who have limited access to food, water and healthcare and who now risk being used as human shields.

Resourceful residents have begun appropriating solar panels affixed to street lights to generate power in their homes.

Even the militants have had to scrounge and conserve supplies, collecting plastic objects to turn into makeshift fuel and conducting patrols on bicycle, residents told Reuters.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the armed forces had been “instructed to preserve the lives of citizens in Falluja and protect public and private property.”

“Those who cannot take the exit routes, they can stay at home and not move,” he added in comments aired by state Iraqi TV while on visit to the field command center near Falluja.

The Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq, a hardline political organisation formed in 2003 to represent minority Sunnis, on Monday condemned the campaign as “an unjust aggression, a reflection of the vengeful spirit that the forces of evil harbour against this city”.

It said in a statement nearly 10,000 residents had been killed or wounded by government shelling over the past two years, which Reuters could not verify, and warned any victory would be “illusory”.

The military campaign could take “many weeks, if not longer”, predicted Ranj Alaaldin, an Iraq expert at the London School of Economics, due to lingering support for Islamic State among many residents who may still prefer the militants to a Baghdad government long perceived as sectarian and repressive.

In a nod to local sensitivities, Iraqi officials say Shi’ite militias, grouped under a loose government umbrella to help boost the army and police following partial collapses since 2014, would be restricted to operating outside the city limits.

Abadi ordered the offensive despite concerns that it could divert resources from a push later this year to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq.

“You do not need Falluja in order to get Mosul,” Warren, the anti-IS coalition spokesman, said in a phone interview at the weekend.

A series of bombings that killed more than 150 people in one week in Baghdad, the highest death toll so far this year. cranked up the pressure on Abadi to do something about the city seen by many Shi’ite politicians as an irredeemable bulwark of Sunni Muslim militancy.

“The intelligence indicates that this recent IS resurgence in Baghdad through some sleeper cells originated from Falluja,” said senior lawmaker and former national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie. “Falluja is too close to Baghdad.”

Reuters could not independently verify that claim and the authorities have not publicly made such statements.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Three bombings in Baghdad kill over 70 in worst violence so far

People gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City, Iraq, May 17, 2016.

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – At least 72 people were killed and more than 140 wounded by three bombings in Baghdad on Tuesday, police and medical sources said, extending the deadliest spate of attacks in the Iraqi capital so far this year.

Islamic State claimed one suicide bombing which killed 38 people and wounded over 70 in a marketplace in the northern, mainly Shi’ite Muslim district of al-Shaab.

A car bomb in nearby Shi’ite Sadr City killed at least 28 dead and 57 wounded, and another car blew up in the mixed Shi’ite-Sunni neighborhood of al-Rasheed, south of the capital, killing six and wounding 21, the sources said.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the arrest of the security official in charge of al-Shaab’s security after the attack, Abadi’s office said in a statement, without giving a reason for the detention.

Attacks claimed by IS in and around the city last week killed more than 100 people, the highest death toll in so few days so far this year, sparking anger and street protests over the government’s failure to ensure security.

Security had improved in Baghdad in recent years as sectarian tensions waned and the city’s perimeter was fortified. Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni militants who control parts of north and west Iraq, have not tried to take the capital but carry out increasingly regular suicide bombings there, hitting Shi’ite areas and government targets.

With the latest death tolls, fears are growing that Baghdad could relapse into the bloodletting of a decade ago when sectarian-motivated suicide bombings killed scores of people every week.

This has cranked up pressure on Abadi who is struggling to solve a political crisis or risk losing control of parts of Baghdad to Islamic State militants. Away from the capital, Iraq’s military is waging a counter offensive against the group.

Abadi has said the crisis, sparked by his attempt to reshuffle the cabinet in an anti-corruption bid, is hampering the fight against Islamic State and creating space for more insurgent attacks on the civilian population.

A spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command told state television the attacker in al-Shaab had detonated an explosives-filled vest along with a planted bomb. Initial investigations revealed that the bomber was a woman, he said.

Islamic State said in a statement distributed online by supporters that one of its fighters had targeted Shi’ite militiamen with hand grenade and a suicide vest. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the other two bombings.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Car Bomb Baghdad’s Sadr City kills 52

People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car bomb claimed by Islamic State in a Shi’ite Muslim district of Baghdad killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78 others on Wednesday, Iraqi police and hospital sources said, the largest attack inside the city for months.

Security has gradually improved in the Iraqi capital, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but violence directed against the security forces and Shi’ite 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 emerged after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Such violence threatens to undermine U.S.-backed efforts to dislodge the militant group

Wednesday’s attack in Sadr City 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.

A pickup truck packed with explosives went off at rush hour 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 a statement circulated online by supporters that it had targeted Shi’ite militia fighters gathered in the area.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a nearly two-year-old U.S.-led campaign have driven the group back in the western province of Anbar and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul. But 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 and Ali Abdelaty in CAIRO; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Bombs in Baghdad kill 14, including some Shi’ite pilgrims

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Three bombs went off in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people, including Shi’ite Muslim worshippers conducting an annual pilgrimage inside the capital, police and medical sources said.

The largest blast, which Islamic State said it was behind, came from a parked car bomb in the Saydiya district of southern Baghdad that killed 11 and wounded 30, the sources said.

At least a few of the casualties were pilgrims passing through the area on their way to the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim, a great-grandson of Prophet Mohammad who died in the 8th century.

Explosives planted on the ground in Tarmiya, 25 km (15 miles) north of Baghdad, killed two and wounded six, while a roadside bomb in Khalisa, a town 30 km (20 miles) south of the city, left one dead and two wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the smaller attacks.

Islamic State militants fighting Iraqi forces in the north and west regularly target security personnel and Shi’ite civilians whom they consider apostates.

The group said in an online statement distributed by supporters that a suicide bomber had targeted pilgrims in the Dora neighborhood adjacent to Saydiya. It said the attack was part of an offensive launched recently in apparent revenge for the killing of a senior leader.

Islamic State’s al Qaeda predecessor was blamed in the past for such attacks on Shi’ite pilgrims, including blasts in 2012 that left 70 people dead nationwide.

Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but there has been a string of blasts in recent days, including a suicide attack on Saturday that killed at least 19 people.

Monday’s blasts come as Iraq struggles to emerge from a political crisis over reforming its governing system which saw protesters hold an unprecedented sit-in over the weekend in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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