Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Suicide car bombers struck twice in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, killing at least five people and wounding 35 in attacks the U.S. military blamed on al-Qaeda.
The first bombing yesterday targeted an Iraqi patrol in the city, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, killing five local people and injuring 10, the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement. The second struck 20 minutes later, wounding at least 25 people near the site of the first blast, it said.
Also yesterday, the Iraqi government pledged to protect Christians living in Mosul after 12 were killed in attacks blamed on Sunni militants in the past two weeks, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.
Mosul is a stronghold of al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq and is the focus of a campaign by U.S. forces and their Sunni tribesmen allies to clear militants from the north of the country. Attacks have continued in the city even as U.S. and Iraqi forces say they have routed al-Qaeda in other areas.
About 1,000 Iraqi police personnel have been deployed in Mosul after sectarian attacks forced hundreds of Christian families to flee, the BBC reported, citing the local governor.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who leads a Shiite- dominated government, said in a statement after talks with Christian Iraqi officials that his administration ``will take immediate action to resolve the problems and difficulties faced by Christians in Mosul,'' the BBC reported.
800,000 Christians
About a third of the estimated 800,000 Christians who lived in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 have fled abroad, the report said.
Elsewhere, five Iraqis were killed and 12 wounded in a blast in southern Baghdad yesterday, the coalition said. It didn't provide further details of the attack.
The al-Qaeda in Iraq group carried out almost 300 bombings in 2007, killing more than 1,500 civilians and injuring more than twice that number, the U.S. military said in August. In the first half of 2008, 125 civilians were killed in 28 attacks, it said.
The drop in violence has been attributed to the U.S. troop buildup President George W. Bush ordered last year and the improved capability of the Iraqi security forces.
The U.S. has cut its presence to about 146,000 soldiers in Iraq from a peak of more than 160,000 late last year when reinforcements were sent to quell violence between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunnis.
While civilian deaths between June and August were down 77 percent on the same period the year before, Iraq faces unresolved issues that may trigger fresh violence, including the status of the oil city of Kirkuk and the integration of Sunni tribesmen into the security forces, the Pentagon said in a report last month.
October 13, 2008 -- The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London.
BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.
Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces.
Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.
Al-Shahristani is expected to reveal some kind of "risk service agreements" that could run for up to 20 years, with formal offers to be submitted by next spring and agreements signed in the summer.
Gregg Muttitt, from the UK-based social and ecological justice group Platform, says he is alarmed that the government is pushing ahead with its plans without the support of many in Iraq.
"Most of the terms of what is being offered have not been disclosed. There are security, political and reputational risks here for oil companies but none of them will want to see one of their competitors gain an advantage," he said.
Heinrich Matthee, a senior Middle East analyst at the specialist risk consultant Control Risks Group, also believes there are many pitfalls for those considering whether to make an offer.
"Currently it is unclear which party in Iraq is authorised to award a contract and at the same time to deliver its side of the bargain," he said. "Any contract with an independent oil company will be subjected to opposition and possible revision after pressure by resource nationalists."
Oil companies will find their reputations at risk from the actions of their Iraqi counterparties, such as joint venture partners, suppliers and agents. They will also have to contend with oil smuggling and the possibility that the ruling alliance could collapse, Matthee said.
He said that if the conspiracy theory that western oil companies egged on US and British governments to invade Iraq were true, the plan could backfire on them and benefit rivals in Asia instead. "It is possible the American army has provided the economic stability that will encourage Malaysian, Chinese and other Asian companies to become involved," he said.
There is no precedent for proven oil reserves of this magnitude being offered up for sale, said Muttitt. "The nearest thing would be the post-Soviet sale of the Kashagan field [in the Caspian Sea], which had 7bn or 8bn barrels."
China's state-owned oil group, CNPC, has already agreed a $3bn (£1.78bn) oil services contract with the government of Iraq to pump oil from the Ahdab oil field.
The deal is the first major oil contract with a foreign firm since the US-led war and was followed up by an agreement with Shell, potentially worth $4bn, to develop a joint venture with the South Gas Company in Basra.
This deal has also triggered controversy. Issam al-Chalabi, Iraq's oil minister between 1987 and 1990, questioned why there had been no competitive tendering for the gas-gathering contract and claimed it had gone to Shell as the spoils of war.
"Why choose Shell when you could have chosen ExxonMobil, Chevron, BG or Gazprom?" he asked. "Shell appears to be paying $4bn to get hold of assets that in 20 years could be worth $40bn. Iraq is giving away half its gas wealth and yet this work could have been done by Iraq itself."
The Baghdad government says it aims to increase crude oil production from 2.5m barrels a day to 4.5m by 2013, but faces internal opposition from regional governors and political opponents.
The sale today comes as oil prices have plummeted after stockmarket turmoil on Friday. The price of crude fell by more than $4 at one point to $75 a barrel - the lowest point since September last year and a sharp drop from its peak of $147 in July. Opec, the oil producers' cartel, has called an emergency meeting to agree a cut in output to bolster prices in spite of protestations from politicians including Gordon Brown. Brown said on Friday: "We've had some success in getting the price of oil down: the price this morning is roughly $80, about half what it was a few months ago. I want these price cuts passed on to the consumer as quickly as possible.
"I'm concerned when I hear that the Opec countries are meeting, or are about to meet, to discuss cutting production - in other words, making the price potentially higher than it should be.
"I'm making it clear to Opec it would be wrong for the world economy and wrong for British people who are paying high petrol prices and high fuel prices to cut production and therefore keep prices high."
A government source said: "The one chink of light has been the fall in the price of oil. The last thing we want is to head into a difficult period with a return to high oil prices. People need to act responsibly."
BAGHDAD, October 14, 2008 -- An American soldier was killed Tuesday by gunfire in western Baghdad, the U.S. military said, the first U.S. combat death in the capital in two weeks.
Five Sunni insurgent organizations, meanwhile, have issued statements disavowing attacks on Iraqi Christians in Mosul, a monitoring service reported Tuesday. The attacks, widely blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq, have prompted thousands of Christians to flee the northern city.
A U.S. statement said the soldier, whose name was not released, was wounded when gunmen opened fire on a U.S. patrol late Tuesday afternoon. The soldier was rushed to a hospital by helicopter but died of the wounds, the statement said.
It was the first combat death suffered by American forces in the capital since September 30, when the military said a soldier was killed by small arms fire in northern Baghdad.
Seven U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month, all but two of them in combat.
Those figures are well below monthly levels of last year, reflecting the sharp decline in violence and the increasing role of Iraqi forces in security operations.
The trend toward a bigger role for Iraqis would accelerate under a security agreement which the U.S. and Iraq have been negotiating for months. The agreement would hand over control of Baghdad and other cities to the Iraqis by the end of June, with American forces out of the country by Dec. 31, 2011 unless the Baghdad government asks them to stay, Iraqi officials say.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to talk about secret negotiations. The agreement would replace the U.N. mandate that expires at the end of the year.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki briefed the national president and the two vice presidents on the draft agreement Tuesday, a government statement said. The statement did not say whether the draft resolved the contentious issue of legal immunity for U.S. troops, the last major obstacle standing in the way of a final agreement.
As talks with the Americans approached an end, neighboring Turkey reached out to Iraq's top Kurdish leader, urging him to crack down on the Kurdish guerrillas launching cross-border attacks from their Iraqi mountain sanctuaries.
A Turkish delegation met Massoud Barzani, president of the three-province semiautonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, in Baghdad. It was the first direct talks in four years between Turkey and Barzani, whose self-ruled administration controls security in the border area with Turkey.
Turkey has been pressing the Iraqi Kurdish administration to cut supply lines in its territory used by the guerillas of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey, and to arrest and hand over its leaders who live across the border in Iraq.
Turkish pressure has increased since PKK rebels killed 17 Turkish soldiers on the Turkey-Iraq border earlier this month. Iraqi Kurdish authorities condemned the October 3 attack but the Turks are demanding more.
The Tuesday meeting took place in the U.S.-protected Green Zone and lasted about two hours, Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency reported. No substantive details were available.
The PKK, branded a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union, has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984. Tens of thousands of people have been killed.
The statements disavowing attacks on Christians were issued separately this week by five insurgent groups and reported Tuesday by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi Web sites.
The five were Jihad and Change Front, Hamas-Iraq, JAMI, the Mustafa Army, and the Islamic Army in Iraq, SITE said. They blamed the attacks on "the occupier," meaning the U.S., for seeking to discredit the insurgency.
An estimated 4,400 Christians have sought refuge in Christian villages after 10 Christians were slain in Mosul this month, according to local officials.
Many Christians believe the violence has been carried out against them by Islamic zealots of al-Qaida, although some Iraqi police officials suspect criminal gangs seeking ransoms.
One Christian family said it fled to the Christian town of Bartola after receiving a written demand for "tribute to the mujahedeen." The letter was signed by the "Islamic State," an al-Qaida front group.
Family members spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared for their lives.
Local officials in the Mosul area appealed Tuesday to international organizations to help the Christians.
About 50 families, or 300 people, were sheltering Tuesday in the Sayada monastery outside Mosul, priests said. Associated Press Television News video showed the Iraqi Red Crescent, the Muslim version of the Red Cross, delivering food and water to Christians there.
Baghdad, October 15, 2008 (dpa) _ Five Iraqis were killed and 12 injured when two bombs exploded near an electric power station in Baghdad on Wednesday, eyewitnesses said.
The blasts targeted the power station near several primary schools, including one that serves both Christian and Muslim students, witnesses told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
During the past few weeks, several Christians have been murdered in the northern city of Mosul and thousands have fled the city after recent threats that forced them to leave their homes and jobs.
The attacks coincided with major demonstrations by Christian groups protesting the removal of Article 50 from the provincial elections law, which was approved by the Presidential Council last week. The article had guaranteed Christians certain rights of representation in local assemblies.
Another civilian was killed and a woman injured in two random shootings by Iraqi police personnel in Mosul city, capital of the northern Nineveh province.
A source told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency that the woman was inside her house when fragments of shattered glass hit her.
Also in Mosul, two young boys were injured by a roadside bomb in Nineveh province on Wednesday, a police source said.
The bomb was hidden in a cartoon box and went off against the six-year-old boys who were playing in al-Tahrir district, east Mosul, VOI reported.
Mosul, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, is home to a Sunni majority as well as Christian, Shiite and Kurdish populations. It is viewed by US and Iraqi authorities as one of the last remaining al-Qaida strongholds in Iraq.
BAGHDAD, October 15, 2008 -- Iraqi leaders are pouring over a new draft of a proposed military pact with Washington that would set the terms of a US troop presence beyond this year, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's spokesman said on Wednesday.
"We are talking about the draft today and yesterday and we will talk about it tomorrow. Then it will go to the Political Council for National Security before going to parliament," Yasin Majeed said, adding that he expected the discussions to continue into the first half of next week.
Last week, Maliki said that Washington had made "huge concessions" on the planned Status of Forces Agreement but that the issue of immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law for US troops remained a bone of contention.
The prime minister's spokesman said that further changes were likely to the latest text. "We cannot say it is a final draft," Majeed said.
Iraqi officials have said that the two sides have agreed that the pact will set a June 2009 deadline for a US pullout from Iraqi cities and a June 2011 date for a full withdrawal from the country.
But the two sides have disagreed on the precise powers of US troops in Iraq after the expiry of the UN mandate at the end of the year, particularly their authority to detain Iraqis and the command structure of military operations.
October 16, 2008 -- The Turkish military clashed with Kurdish rebels near the Iraqi border in battles it said killed four soldiers and five rebels, while rebels claimed Thursday to have shot down a Turkish helicopter.
Another soldier was killed and 15 security personnel were slightly injured in the helicopter crash, the military said Thursday in a Web site statement.
The four soldiers were killed late Wednesday when rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party opened fire on the soldiers in the province of Hakkari following an explosion, the statement reported. Hakkari is where the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Iran meet.
The military also said five PKK rebels were killed in two separate clashes in Hakkari and in the neighbouring province of Sirnak, which also borders Iraq.
The military said the helicopter crashed due to a technical fault while trying to block the rebels' escape in the Hakkari clash. In Iraq however, the PKK said its fighters had shot down the helicopter.
"The helicopter was brought down by an ambush planned by PKK fighters," PKK spokesman Ahmed Deniz said.
The PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union, has been fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey since 1984. Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict since then.
Turkey has launched several cross-border airstrikes against the PKK in northern Iraq since a rebel attack October 3 killed 17 soldiers.
Kurdish rebels have stepped up attacks since then, killing four policemen and a civilian in an ambush in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern city of Diyarbakir last week. Turkish police also captured a potential Kurdish female suicide bomber who was posing as a pregnant woman in downtown Istanbul.
Baghdad, October 16, 2008 -- About 500 confirmed cholera cases have been registered in Iraq since the latest outbreak of the disease on 20 August. Eight people have died, a government spokesman said on 14 October.
“So far there have been 479 cases in 12 provinces: Babil 230 cases, Baghdad 73, Diwaniyah 61, Basra 50, Karbala 39, Najaf nine, Anbar eight, Maysan three, Arbil two, Samawa two, Kut one and Diyala one," said Ihsan Jaafar, director-general of the public health directorate and a spokesman for the ministry's cholera control unit.
Jaafar told IRIN cholera-related deaths had reached eight, with two new death cases in Qadissiyah and Babil provinces south of Baghdad.
Those who have died of the disease are a 10-year-old girl, a 61-year-old man, a child over five in Babil Province, two children under five in Qadissiyah Province; a three-year-old boy in Maysan; and an adult and a child in Baghdad.
There is evidence of the disease spreading north: two cases were confirmed in Arbil, a city some 350km north of Baghdad. The disease was previously confined to central and southern Iraq.
"We are continuing to intensify our measures in all fields such as raising awareness among residents, and monitoring restaurants and food and drinks-related factories and stores; we have already closed a number of them and destroyed tonnes of material," Jaafar said.
According to Richard Finkelstein, co-author of Medical Microbiology, cholera occurs primarily during the summer months, possibly reflecting the increased presence of the organism in rivers and lakes during these months, as well as the enhanced opportunity for it to multiply in unrefrigerated foods.
The Iraqi Health Ministry and the World Health Organization have blamed the country's rundown water and sanitation infrastructure for the outbreak.
Cholera is a gastro-intestinal disease typically spread by contaminated water. It can cause severe diarrhoea, which in extreme cases can lead to fatal dehydration. Treating drinking water with chlorine and improving hygiene conditions can prevent the disease.
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