Iraq

BAGHDAD, Dec 15 (NNN-NINA) – Three Iraqi soldiers and a civilian were killed, while several others were wounded, in two roadside bomb attacks by Daesh militants, in central and northern Iraq yesterday, security sources said.

A roadside bomb detonated near the army patrol, in a village of the Tarmiyah area, some 30 km north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing a regiment commander and two soldiers of the Iraqi ground forces, said the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command.

08 Dec 2022; MEMO: The Iraqi central government has started receiving applications for the new Border Guards Force to be established in the region between Turkiye and Iran, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Applications are submitted electronically, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

BAGHDAD, Dec 8 (NNN-NINA) – Six Daesh militants were killed yesterday, in an airstrike, in a mountainous area, in Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, the Iraqi military said.

Acting on intelligence reports, a force from the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), surrounded, at dawn, a tunnel used by the militants as a hideout, in the Himreen mountain range, in the northern part of Diyala Province, a CTS statement said.

Later on, Iraqi fighter jets were called in for an airstrike that destroyed the hideout and killed six militants inside, the statement added.

ERBIL, Iraq, Dec 5 (Reuters) - The marriage of convenience between Iraqi Kurdistan's political dynasties is on the rocks.

While the dominant Barzani and Talabani clans have long been at loggerheads over power and resources in a region rich in oil and gas, power-sharing governments have largely kept a lid on mistrust since the two sides fought a civil war in the 1990s.

BAGHDAD, Dec 4 (NNN-NINA) – The Iraqi parliament approved the nomination of two more ministers yesterday, completing Prime Minister, Mohammed Shi’a al-Sudani’s 23-member cabinet, a month after the approval of his government.

A statement by the parliament media office said, the lawmakers approved by an absolute majority the nomination of Bangen Rekani as Minister of Construction, Housing, Municipalities and Public Works, and Nizar Mohammed Saeed Amidi as Minister of Environment.

After the approval, the two were sworn in before the parliament, according to the statement.

30 Nov 2022; MEMO: Marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Iraqi President, Abdel Latif Rashid, stressed the Palestinians' "legitimate right to establish the Palestinian State, with Jerusalem as its capital", and called for "joint action to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people."

Rashid's remarks came in a tweet posted on his official account on Twitter yesterday.

BAGHDAD (AP) — The niece of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is calling on people to pressure their governments to cut ties with Tehran over it’s violent suppression of anti-government protests.

In a video posted online by her France-based brother, Farideh Moradkhani, urged “conscientious people of the world” to support Iranian protesters. The video was shared online this week after Moradkhani’s reported arrest on Nov. 23, according to U.S.-based rights monitor HRANA.

24 Nov 2022; MEMO: An excavation at a Neanderthal site in northern Iraq has led to the discovery of the oldest food remains discovered, so far.

Archaeologists have unearthed what is believed to be the burnt remains of a 70,000 year-old flatbread from the Shanidar Cave, 500 miles north of Baghdad in the Zagros Mountains of the Kurdistan region. The find challenges the long-held belief that Neanderthals survived on a primitive diet of raw meat or uncooked plants but were, in fact, foodies.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Islamic State group militants attacked an Iraqi army position in the northwestern governorate of Kirkuk early Saturday killing four soldiers, security sources and a local government official said.

IS fighters in the district of Dibis took the soldiers’ weapons and communications gear and left the scene, security sources said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give statements to the media.

BAGHDAD, Nov 11 (NNN-NINA) – Iraqi rescue workers, yesterday, recovered three bodies from the rubble of a building, engulfed in a massive fire on Sunday, in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The Iraqi Civil Defence said in a statement that, rescue workers were still searching for eight other missing people, believed to have been buried under the rubble of a three-story building, that collapsed after a fire, on Sunday, in the al-Waziriyah industrial area.