News From Iraq - Translated from Arabic Media In Iraq.

Here's a round up of what Iraqis are hearing and reading tonight. The 2 big stories are: The Baghdad curfew The Iranian offer to treat Sadr city bombing victims. Baghdad Curfew Starting 6a.m. tomorrow the curfew will be lifted for pedestrians only at present it is planned to lift the curfew fully on Monday morning. Iran's Hospitalisation Offer Here's part of the health ministry statement: "The Iranian ambassador in Baghdad has contacted the Department of Health in the Ministry of Health and expressed his country's readiness to treat the Sadr City wounded in hospital in Tehran." ……… "the process of transporting the wounded will begin tomorrow, Sunday." [This is a very big deal indeed. They'll be treated free. At present there's no free treatment in Iraq for anyone. - markfromireland] Mosul: The body of a young man was found in the Karama neighbourhood (East Mosul.) A young woman was shot in the afternoon. wounding a woman in Mosul. Source - Brigadier Abdul Karim Khalaf al-Jabouri to Voices of Iraq An army officer - Jassim Ahmed Saleh, was shot by a sniper in west Mosul. His condition is said to be serious. A police checkpoint came under mortar fire - no casualties reported. Salah al-Din: A soldier was shot in Ad Duluiyah (near Tikrit). a police officer holding the rank of major was kidnapped together with three civilians north of Samarra. Basra A barrage of six 60-mm mortar shells was fired last night in Abu al-Khasib (20 kilometers south of Basra) to four landed in the main square which injured five civilians. The British installation near Basra governorate building was mortared . Some civilian I haven't been able to get figures. That installation is attacked with monotonous regularity. I'm surprisedit's even being reported. Babil (Babylon) bomb explosion north of Hilla (about 50km). Two Iraqi soldiers wounded. The bombing was the signal for a gunfire attack. Aziziyah (Kut) Wasit Clashes occurred five p.m. Baghdad time today in the town of Aziziyah (90 km north of Kut) between Iraqi security forces and a group of unidentified gunmen. No details of casualties yet. The report says that the police in Aziziyah weren't contactable. Al-Anbar - Fallujah A Marines sniper deployed on the rooves of buildings in hand Amiriyat al-Fallujah (about 20 km south of the city) shot an elderly man who died of his wounds. There is no indication that he was anything other than an innocent civilian. A suicide car bomber attacked an American patrol, east of Fallujah today Saturday 25/11/2006 killing four civilians and wounding eight others, including children. He was targeting an American patrol that had just finished a raid on houses in east Fallujah. Al-Anbar - Hit Eyewitnesses reported to Aswataliraq that armed men attacked before noon today, a military bridge at the town of Hit in Anbar province. The confrontation lasted about 15 minutes. no reports of casualties. Interestingly they were armed with precision rifles as well as machine guns. There've been a lot of "incidents in Hit lately - mfi. Baghdad: - abduction Armed men kidnapped 12 Iraqi citizens living in Western Baghdad yesterday evening. They demanded a US$40,000 ransom for their release. [That's a big jump until a few weeks ago the standard ransom was US$30,000 - markfromireland ] According to witnesses some of whom were relatives of the hostages the kidnappers were traveling in government cars and wearing the uniform of the Iraqi National Guard. [Surprise surprise - markfromireland ] Najaf - kidnap gang According to Aswataliraq the gang that's been operating in Al-Ansar, Najaf, kidnapping women for sale in "neighbouring countries" suffered a major setback. Police stormed a house and arrested several of them - all the accused are from Al-Azhar. The accused include Hassan Jawad Kadhim Algelaui and his wife. Kirkuk: failed bombing Two men were killed as they tried to plant a bomb according to Colonel Yadkar Muhammad of the police in Kirkuk. [Their colleagues who blew themselves to smithereens in Kirkuk on Monday trying the same thing still haven't been identified chiefly because the pieces were so small. - mfi] Sources: Al Sabah al Jadid newspaper - Baghdad Al Taakhi newspaper - Baghdad Hawlati newspaper - Al Sulaimaniyah Al Mannarah newspaper - Basrah Radio Annas - Baghdad Translated by: markfromireland Reports from western media: Reuters AlertNet - Turkey and Jordan warn against Iraq's partition: AMMAN, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Iraq's neighbours, Turkey and Jordan, warned on Saturday that the partition of the country would take the sectarian bloodshed to new levels and plunge the whole region into chaos. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Jordanian counterpart Marouf Bakheet told reporters at the end of talks in Amman that the partition of Iraq was unacceptable. "We cannot accept the partition of Iraq and the partition of Iraq into three parts will increase the intensity of the civil war..." Erdogan said. Ankara fears that the sectarian violence could rip Iraq apart and is anxious about the advent of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq which could fan separatism among its own Kurds. Erdogan said he would discuss the situation in Iraq with U.S. President George W. Bush at the NATO summit in Riga next week, adding that Bush's crisis talks later in the week in Amman with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki may help contain the violence. "We attach a lot of importance on the talks in Amman," he said. Sectarian violence has surged since the February bombing of a major Shi'ite shrine. Maliki's six-month old government has struggled to contain the bloodshed despite a major crackdown in the capital and a series of national reconciliation initiatives. Jordan's Bakheet warned the partition of Iraq would have far-reaching consequences on the region's stability. "The partition of Iraq means a slide to the abyss. Its flames will reach everyone, not just Iraqis and it will have a dangerous impact on the stability of the region and especially Iraq's neighbours," he said. Reuters AlertNet - Iraqi cleric avoids demands of Shi'ite rival: Iraqi cleric avoids demands of Shi'ite rival 25 Nov 2006 13:50:52 GMT Source: Reuters CAIRO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Iraqi Sunni Muslim cleric Harith al-Dari sidestepped on Saturday an invitation to give his followers specific orders not to kill Shi'ite Muslims. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said on Friday that Dari and other Sunni leaders must issue religious rulings, or fatwas, to fellow minority Sunnis forbidding the killing of Shi'ites or membership of the al Qaeda group. If Dari meets that and other conditions, Sadr said he would oppose the arrest warrant which the Iraqi government issued against Dari last week on suspicion of links to violence. But Dari, who arrived in Cairo from Syria this week, said he refused to make a distinction between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Speaking at a news conference in Cairo, he said: "We have condemned from the first months the killing of Iraqis ... whether they were Arabs or Kurds, Muslims or non-Muslims, without going into details." He gave a list of occasions when his organisation, the Muslim Clerics Association, has issued specific condemnations of killings and resolutions it had voted for. Dari blamed both the United States and successive Iraqi governments for the collapse of law and order in Iraq after the U.S. invasion of 2003. "The occupation administration is a failed administration, a stupid administration which can be summed up by saying that it has destroyed Iraq, state, people, institutions and resources. "Its political operations have brought it today to a dead end.. It has brought Iraq to the edge of the abyss. The political process, under its various titles, took it from bad to worse, from failure to greater failure," he added. Dari appealed to Arab governments to withdraw their recognition from the Iraqi government. "I call on the Arab states and Egypt to stand up to this biased government, this sectarian government...this government which exploits sectarianism". Reuters AlertNet - Gunmen massacre Shi'ite family in Iraq village: BAQUBA, Iraq, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Iraqi police found the bodies of 21 men and boys from an extended Shi'ite family on Saturday hours after they were abducted from a mainly Sunni Arab village northeast of Baghdad, security sources said. The victims in Shamafiya, a village just outside the town of Balad Ruz, 70 km (45 miles) northeast of the capital in violent Diyala province, ranged in age from 12 upward. Residents and a security source said the apparently sectarian attack involved gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms who took the al-Saadi family late on Friday before killing them and dumping their bodies nearby. The bodies were found blindfolded, each corpse with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. The attack on the family may have had a sectarian motive as the religiously-mixed province of Diyala is rife with sectarian killings between Shi'ites and Sunnis. But sometimes tribal feuds and gangsters driven by profit also account for some violence. Reuters AlertNet - FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Nov 25: FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Nov 2 Reuters AlertNet - REFILE-CHRONOLOGY-The deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq: The deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq 25 Nov 2006 12:35:48 GMT Source: Reuters Nov 25 (Reuters) - Fearful Iraqis spent sleepless nights guarding their homes and asking who would be next after gunmen burned mosques and houses in a Sunni enclave following the worst bomb attack since the U.S. invasion. Here is a list of some of the deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003: Aug 19, 2003 - A truck bomb wrecks U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello. Aug 29, 2003 - A car bomb kills at least 83 people, including top Shi'ite Muslim leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf. Feb 1, 2004 - 117 people are killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Arbil at the offices of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq. Feb 10, 2004 - Suicide car bomb rips through a police station in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, killing 53. Feb 11, 2004 - Suicide car bomb explodes at an Iraqi army recruitment centre in Baghdad, killing 47. March 2, 2004 - 171 people are killed in twin attacks in Baghdad and Kerbala. Dec 19, 2004 - A suicide car bomb blast in Najaf, 300 yards (metres) from the Imam Ali shrine, kills 52 and wounds 140. Feb 28, 2005 - A suicide car bomb attack in Hilla, south of Baghdad, kills 125 people and wounds 130. It was postwar Iraq's worst single blast. July 16, 2005 - A suicide bomber in a fuel truck near a Shi'ite mosque in the town of Mussayib, near Kerbala, kills 98. Sept 14, 2005 - A suicide bomber kills 114 people and wounds 156 in a Shi'ite district of Baghdad. Sept 29, 2005 - 98 people are killed in three coordinated car bomb attacks in the mixed Shi'ite and Sunni town of Balad. Nov 18, 2005 - At least 74 people are killed and 150 wounded when suicide bombers blew themselves up inside two Shi'ite mosques in Khanaqin. Jan 5, 2006 - Two suicide bombers kill over 120 people and wound more than 200 in the cities of Kerbala and Ramadi. Fifty-three were killed and 148 wounded in Kerbala and 70 killed and 65 wounded in Ramadi. July 1, 2006 - A car bomb attack at a crowded market in Sadr city, a Shi'ite district of eastern Baghdad, kills 62 and wounds 114. The Supporters of the Sunni People, a previously unknown Iraqi Sunni Muslim group claim responsibility. July 18, 2006 - Fifty-nine people are killed by a suicide bomb in Kufa, near Najaf in an attack claimed by al Qaeda. Aug 10, 2006 - Thirty-five people are killed and 90 injured by bomb blasts near the Imam Ali shrine in southern city of Najaf. The Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions) group claim responsibility. Nov 23, 2006 - Six car bombs in different parts of the Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad kill 202 people. A further 250 people are wounded.