Islamic State Ramadi stronghold retaken by Iraqi forces

It has been reported that Iraqi forces have retaken Islamic State Ramadi stronghold - a former government compound.

The government has been trying to retake Ramadi for weeks. The military spokesman, Sabah al-Numani, told Reuters: "The complex is under our complete control, there is no presence whatsoever of [IS] fighters in the complex.

It may be added that Ramadi, mainly Sunni Arab city, about 55 miles (90km) west of Baghdad, fell to IS in May, and was seen as an embarrassing defeat for the army.

Read more about it at: BBC
If you like Imposing Headlines, please follow us on Facebook

Read more »

ISIS suicide bomber car blown twice - watch video

The second explosion that explodes the suicide-bomber's vehicle mid air

In the film You Only Live Twice, James Bond survives - but not a suicide bomber who was blown twice and perished.

Watch the video below

This is not a movie but seen from an actual incident in which a would-be suicide bomber's car was blown up into the air when it encountered a road side bom near Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Reportedly the suicide bomber was to launch an attack on Kurdish Peshmerga forces - but was blown up short of the target. The car went up almost 100 feet in air and then exploded as can be seen in the video b elow:

Read and see more photos at Daily Mail

If you like Imposing Headlines, please follow us on Facebook

Read more »

Blackwater guards jailed for death of 14 Iraqi civilians

The sentenced Blackwater guards: Dustin Heard, Evan Liberty, Nicholas Slatten and Paul Slough

A court in Washington DC, USA has jailed four Blackwater guards over the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

One of the guards has been sentenced for life while three others have been sentenced for 30 years each.

It may be added that Nicholas Slatten and three others were convicted last year for the killings in Baghdad's crowded Nisoor Square. A further 17 Iraqis were injured as the private contractors opened fire to clear the way for a US convoy.

Read more at BBC

If you like Imposing Headlines, please follow us on Facebook

Read more »

ISIS extremists sledgehammer civilization

Screenshot from video capturing ISIS destruction of civilization

In a bizarre show of extremism, the ISIS extremists barged into the museum in Mosul, Iraq and destroyed relics of art over three thousand years old.

Scroll down for video

One of the vandals was later heard saying that items being destroyed promoted idolatry. 

The used sledgehammers and power drills to smash ancient artwork as they rampaged through a museum in the northern city of Mosul. One of the items, depicting a winged-bull Assyrian protective deity, dates back to the 9th century B.C.

Watch the video below:

Read more about it at: Daily Mail

If you like Imposing Headlines, please follow us on Facebook

Read more »

Pentagon's link to Iraqi torture centres revealed

It has been revealed  reports Guardian, that the Pentagon sent a US veteran of the "dirty wars" in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in Iraq that set up secret detention and torture centres to get information from insurgents. 

These units conducted some of the worst acts of torture during the US occupation and accelerated the country's descent into full-scale civil war.

Colonel James Steele was a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran when he was nominated by Donald Rumsfeld to help organise the paramilitaries in an attempt to quell a Sunni insurgency, an investigation by the Guardian and BBC Arabic shows.

There is no evidence that Steele or Coffman tortured prisoners themselves, only that they were sometimes present in the detention centres where torture took place and were involved in the processing of thousands of detainees.

The Guardian/BBC Arabic investigation was sparked by the release of classified US military logs on WikiLeaks that detailed hundreds of incidents where US soldiers came across tortured detainees in a network of detention centres run by the police commandos across Iraq. Private Bradley Manning, 25, is facing a prison sentence of up to 20 years after he pleaded guilty to leaking the documents.

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. "I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library's columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten."

Read more about it at: The Guardian

Follow us on Facebook

Read more »

Group of 180 Iraqis to accuse the UK of torture and sexual abuse over five years

A group of 180 Iraqis will accuse Britain next week for breaching international law by torturing and killing prisoners during the occupation of Iraq over five years.

Lawyers representing the group - who claim they are victims of abuse or their family members were unlawfully killed - will accuse the UK of a 'systemic' policy of abuse committed between 2003 and 2008.

Lawyers acting for the group will place a file of statements before two judges which details alleged use of 'stress positions' and  hooding as well as beating, sexual abuse and religious abuse of illegally detained prisoners.

-->

Some of the claims made in the statements are incredibly shocking with sexual depravity and insults to Islam featuring strongly.

In one case, a soldier is alleged to have masturbated over a prisoner while another is alleged to have committed sodomy with his finger. The High Court will also be told how female interrogators stripped and feigned seduction in exchange for information from prisoners.

Read more about it at: Mail Online
Follow us on Facebook

Read more »

Haditha case: The tale of brutality that ends with no one jailed

The Marines charged with killing of 24 innocent Iraqi children in 2005 attack on a house in city of Haditha, Iraq have apparently been given no jail sentence as their action was covered under the military's rules of engagement. 

"The Americans killed children who were hiding inside the cupboards or under the beds," said Rafid Abdul Majeed Hadithi, 43, a teacher in the city of Haditha who says he witnessed the 2005 assault by U.S. Marines that took the lives of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. "Was this Marine charged with dereliction of duty because he didn't kill more? Is Iraqi blood so cheap?", says a report published in the LA Times.

In the United States, the brutal saga of Haditha — among the dead were seven children, including a toddler, three women, and a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair — may have concluded Monday with Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich's guilty plea to negligent dereliction of duty. A military judge said Tuesday that Wuterich will serve no time in the brig under the terms of his plea bargain.

Read full story for more details at: LA Times

Read more »

Iraq rocks in explosions

[ via BBC Middle East ] 5 Jan

At least 68 people are reported to have been killed in bomb attacks in southern Iraq and in the capital Baghdad.

Officials said 44 people died in a suicide attack targeting Shia pilgrims in the city of Nasiriya. Earlier, at least 24 people were killed in a number of blasts in Shia areas of Baghdad.

Sectarian tensions have risen after the last US combat troops left in December and an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi.

Read more: BBC Middle East
Please join us on Facebook

Read more »

Iraqi interpreters for U.S. military in dangerous limbo

[ via LA Times ] 27 Dec

Interpreter or Traitor?

The U.S. government promised thousands of other former interpreters that they would be first in line for special visas to the United States. But with the pace of visa approvals having slowed to a crawl, that promise rings hollow for many interpreters, who stays locked in his parents' home, working the phones and the Internet to track their application.

"I served the Americans very well, but now they've left me on my own, with no security," says Tariq, one of the many dejected interpreters, in nearly flawless English. "They've expelled us all from the only places in Iraq that were safe for us — U.S. bases."

A U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad, speaking on condition he not be identified, acknowledged "unfortunate delays" in issuing special visas, the result of enhanced security clearance procedures, some instituted after the Kentucky arrests. But he said recent changes would speed the process.

Read more »

Iraq PM warns Sunnis could be shut from power

[ via Yahoo News ] 22 Dec

Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority rejected a call for all-party talks on Wednesday, ignoring U.S. pressure for dialogue to resolve a sectarian crisis that has erupted since American forces left the country this week.

With fears mounting that the nation of 30 million might one day fragment in chaos in the absence of the U.S. troops who toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned Saddam's fellow Sunnis they faced exclusion from power if they walked out on his ruling coalition.

The main Sunni-backed party, furious at terrorism charges leveled by the Shi'ite-run authorities against Iraq's Sunni vice president on the day Americans left, rejected Maliki's call for all-party talks in the coming days and vowed to try and unseat the prime minister in parliament, a move unlikely to succeed.

Iraq sits astride a Sunni-Shi'ite faultline running through the Middle East, fuelling mutual accusations of foreign influence, whether from Shi'ite Iran to the north or from the Sunni-ruled Arab states to the south.

Read more: Yahoo News

Read more »

Baghdad blasts kill 63

[ via Reuters ] 22 Dec

As expected just days after the U.S. troop withdrawal a series of bombings hit Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 63 people in the first big assault attack on Iraq's capital since a sectarian crisis erupted within its government.

At least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office in Baghdad's Karrada district, sending up a dust cloud and scattering car parts into a kindergarten, according to police and health officials.

The tensins are increasing as the Iraq's Sunni minority is feeling being marginalized since the rise of the Shi'ite majority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Many Sunnis feel they have been shunted aside in the power-sharing agreement that Washington touts as a young democracy.

Read more: Reuters

Read more »

Iraqi PM asks Kurds to hand over Vice-President Hashemi

[ via BBC News / Middle East ] 21 Dec

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has urged the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to hand over fugitive Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi.

An arrest warrant was issued for Iraq's most senior Sunni Arab politician on Monday on terrorism charges. Mr Hashemi denies the charges and his entire political bloc is boycotting parliament and the cabinet.

Tensions between Sunnis and the Shia Arab majority appear to be coming to a head, a BBC correspondent says.

Mr Hashemi is currently in Irbil, under the protection of the Kurdistan regional government. The warrant was issued a day after US troops pulled out of Iraq.

Read more at: BBC News / Middle East

Read more »

Tensions rise as Iraq seeks Sunni VP arrest

[ via Reuters ] 19 Dec

Iraqi authorities issued an arrest warrant for Sunni Muslim Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi on Monday for suspected ties to assassinations and bombings, a decision likely to fuel sectarian tensions after the U.S. troop withdrawal.

The move risks unraveling Iraq's fragile power-sharing deal among Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs who have struggled to overcome tensions just a few years after sectarian slaughter drove the country to the edge of a civil war.

The political struggle between Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Sunni rivals in the country's delicate power-sharing deal has intensified during the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops nearly nine years after the invasion.

Read more at Reuters

Read more »

Last U.S. troops leave Iraq - ending war?

[ via Reuters ] 18 Dec

Last of US Troops leave Iraq who fought a war that devastated once a thriving Iraq to rubble - Photo Reuters

The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country still grappling with political uncertainty. 

The war launched in March 2003 with missiles striking Baghdad to oust dictator Saddam Hussein closes with a fragile democracy still facing insurgents, sectarian tensions and the challenge of defining its place in the Arab region.

For Iraqis, the U.S. departure brings a sense of sovereignty but feeds nagging fears their country may slide once again into the kind of sectarian violence that killed thousands of people at its peak in 2006-2007.

Read more »

US ends mission in Iraq: An unpopular conflict comes to an uncertain end

[ via The Times of India ] 15 Dec

The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power.

In a fortified concrete courtyard at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta thanked more than one million American service members who have served in Iraq for "the remarkable progress" made over the past nine years but acknowledged the severe challenges that face the struggling democracy.

The muted ceremony stood in contrast to the start of the war in 2003 when an America both frightened and emboldened by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sent columns of tanks north from Kuwait to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The tenor of the 45-minute farewell ceremony, officially called "Casing the Colors," was likely to sound an uncertain trumpet for a war that was started to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it did not have. It now ends without the sizable, enduring American military presence for which many military officers had hoped.

Read more about the end game in full story here.

[ Join us on Facebook if you liked Imposing Headlines ]

Read more »