Iraq

06 Feb 2022; MEMO: A roadside bomb targeted a military convoy carrying logistics for the US-led coalition against the Daesh in southern Iraq, according to a local security official on Sunday, Anadolu Agency reported.

No injuries were reported in the attack that occurred on a highway in the southern al-Diwaniya province, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

A military vehicle sustained limited damage in the blast.

JALAWLA, Iraq, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Yousif Ibrahim no longer travels by night along the roads around his hometown of Jalawla in northeastern Iraq. He fears getting caught up in attacks by Islamic State.

"The police and army don't come into our area much anymore. If they do, they get shot at by militants," said the 25-year-old, who sells fish for a living in a nearby market.

BAGHDAD, Jan 30 (NNN-NINA) – Six militants of the extremist Daesh group were killed yesterday, including a local leader, in an airstrike, in Iraq’s eastern province of Diyala, a security source said.

Based on intelligence reports, Iraqi warplanes carried out an airstrike on a Daesh position in the Udheim area, in the northern part of Diyala province, Colonel Ehab Mohammed, from the Iraqi army, said.

The airstrike killed six Daesh militants, including a local leader, Mohammed said.

28 Jan 2022; MEMO: A leading Turkmen politician, on Friday, urged representation for his ethnic group in Iraq's top government structures, Anadolu News Agency reports.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Aiden Maarouf, Minister for Component Affairs in northern Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), said that the Turkmen hope to have a share in the upcoming Iraqi government.

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — In a classroom in northern Iraq, Zhiwei Hu presides over his students as a conductor would an orchestra. He cues with a question, and the response from his students resounds in perfect, fluent Chinese.

The 52-year-old has been teaching the cohort of 14 Iraqi Kurdish students at the behest of the Chinese consulate in the northern city of Irbil.

26 Jan 2022; MEMO: The Iraqi government yesterday decided to build a concrete security wall along the border with Syria, Anadolu reported.

"The government agreed to allocate money to the Interior Ministry to start building a concrete wall along the border with Syria," government spokesman, Hassan Nadhem, told reporters.

The government has made several decisions on maintaining security on the Iraq-Syria border, and will continue persecuting terrorist groups, he added.

25 Jan 2022; MEMO: The eponymous leader of Iraq's Sadrist movement, Muqtada Al-Sadr, has rejected a mediation offer by the Commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Esmail Qaani, and Mohammad Hussein Kawtharani, the representative of Hezbollah in Baghdad, in the efforts to form a consensus government.

"Kawtharani has left Najaf without meeting Al-Sadr," said an official in the Sadrist movement who asked not to be named. "However, there were meetings with representatives of the movement."

BAGHDAD (AP) — More than 100 militants from the Islamic State group carried out a complex attack on Syria’s largest prison holding suspected extremists, officials said Friday, as members of the group in Iraq stormed an army barracks, killing 11 soldiers as they slept.

The prison break in Syria is believed to be the largest since the militants lost the final sliver of territory they held nearly three years ago. In recent months, IS sleeper cells have become more active in both countries, claiming attacks that killed scores of Iraqis and Syrians.

15 Jan 2022; MEMO: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Iraqi Shia cleric whose party gained the majority in the latest elections, could rule out pro-Iran Shia parties from the government, according to analysts, which could have catastrophic results.

BAGHDAD, Jan 14 (NNN-NINA) – Several rockets yesterday hit the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses the U.S. embassy in central Baghdad, wounding a woman and a child, the Iraqi military said.

“The innocent people in the Green Zone were attacked by several rockets, fired from the Doura neighbourhood in southern Baghdad, targeting headquarters of diplomatic missions, which are protected by the Iraqi forces,” the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said, in a statement.