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Devout Shiite pilgrims were left covered in blood as they struck themselves with swords and chains during the mourning procession to mark the day of Ashura in the holy city of Najaf. Ashura, on the 10th day of the mourning month of Muharram, commemorates the killing of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD - the defining moment of Islam's confessional schism. Typically, millions of Shiites from around the world flock to the golden-domed shrine where Hussein's remains are buried, to pray and cry, shoulder-to-shoulder. But with coronavirus numbers spiking across the globe, this...

Anti-government protesters in Iraq burned down an IranianConsulate Wednesday, as unrest continues to grow against Iraqi lawmakers and Tehran's growing influence in Iraqi affairs. The consulate building in Najaf was torched and the Iranian flag was removed and replaced with an Iraqi one. Staffers inside were not harmed and escaped through a back door. One protester was killed and 35 were wounded when police opened fire to prevent them from entering the facility. Protesters previously attacked an Iranian consulate in Karbala earlier this month. No one was harmed in that attack.

Iraqis scaled the wall around the Iranian consulate in Karbala and raised an Iraqi flag over it. They said only the Iraqi flag should fly high in the sky and that Iranians should be ejected. Other protesters tried to burn the wall around the compound. This is the second time the consulate has been attacked in a week; it was previously targeted on October 26. Protests in Iraq have reached their crescendo after a month in which 250 demonstrators have been killed. The Iraqi Prime Minister has been pressured to resign. Protesters have targeted the political party offices of Iranian-linked...

Gunfights between protesters and security forces broke out in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya on Wednesday, with elite counter-terrorism troops deploying after police “lost control” of the situation, police sources told Reuters.

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Donald Trump’s favorability rating is sky-high here, where citizens are paying surprisingly close attention to the U.S. election and see the developer and political novice as the clear choice for the White House. In dozens of interviews FoxNews.com conducted in various cities across the country this month – with Iraqis from different religions and walks of life – the overwhelming majority support Trump over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Many believe Trump would be tough on terror, and blame Clinton – at least in part – for policies that have destabilized much of the Middle East. "America should...

the split began during a power struggle of who would lead Islam after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD. A conflict developed between those who wanted the growing religion headed by qualified leaders and those who believed authority belonged to the direct heirs of Mohammed. The Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, ruled as caliph for five years before being assassinated. His sons, Hassan and Hussein, were excluded from the succession and both were later killed. Their adherents evolved into the Shia, whose name derives from the term shi’atu Ali, Arabic for “partisans of Ali,”... Shia devotees would see the...

Baghdad (AFP) - The Islamic State group has carried out a fresh wave of mass killings, officials said Sunday, executing more than 200 members of an Iraqi tribe which took up arms against the jihadists. Women and children were said to be among scores of Albu Nimr tribespeople executed over the past 10 days in western Iraq's Anbar province. Reports of the killings came with the country on edge as hundreds of thousands of Shiites prepare to travel to shrine city Karbala this week for a major annual pilgrimage. IS, a Sunni extremist group that has seized large parts of...

SOUTH OF KARBALA, Iraq — Four soldiers from the 2nd brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, with red sores on their faces and hands, were sent by ambulance to a rear MASH unit Tuesday. They were told they would be examined for possible contact with nerve or blistering agents. Once at the 30th medical brigade's mobile hospital at the 101st's headquarters south of Karbala, the soldiers were isolated from other troops and photographed. A doctor at the MASH, Maj. David Wolken, interviewed each soldier and measured his pulse and heart rate in a tent with a dirt floor. One soldier...

Imam Hussein was killed by armies of the Yazid near Karbala in 680 AD. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan have day as national holiday. Blood-covered young men swarm into the streets as part of a religious procession in Pakistan. Children also take part in the gory ritual self-flagellation which is held ahead of Ashura on the ninth day of Muharram in Peshawar. Shi'a Muslims all over the world pay their respects with the flowing of their blood as they mourn the slaying and martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad.

A fresh wave of bombs has killed at least 21 people across Iraq - mostly targeting Shia areas - officials say. The deadliest was in the city of Hilla, south of the capital Baghdad, where two car bombs at a market killed at least nine civilians. Other bombs hit Baghdad itself as well as Basra, Nasiriya and Karbala in the south of the country. Sectarian violence has surged across Iraq in recent months, reaching its highest level since 2008. More than 5,000 people have been killed so far this year in Iraq, 800 of them in August alone, according to...

Violence has been on the rise across Iraq since a deadly crackdown by government forces on a Sunni protest camp in April, and attacks against civilians and security forces notably spiked during Ramadan. The surge of attacks has sparked fears that the country could spiral into a new round of widespread sectarian bloodshed similar to that which brought the country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007. In the holy Shiite city of Karbala, police said four people were killed in a car bomb attack near a cafe at night. Karbala is 80 kilometres (50 miles) south...

TEHRAN, Iran — Five Iranian officials who were held in Iraq for more than two years by U.S. forces on suspicion of aiding local Shiite militants returned to Iran Sunday, where the Iranian foreign minister hailed their return as a victory for Iran. The five diplomats flew to Tehran from Iraq on Sunday and were met at the airport by a cheering crowd of onlookers who carried the men on their shoulders and put garlands of flowers around their necks. Iran's Foreign Minster Manouchehr Mottaki in a news conference with the men that was carried by Iran's Press-TV minutes after...

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

One of the most widely photographed acts of President Obama's first year in office was his symbolic pre-dawn salute to the caskets of U.S. soldiers returning to Dover Air Force Base. In the case of a terrorist named Ali Musa Daqduq, who was released yesterday from U.S. custody in Iraq, the President is letting down those fallen soldiers and their families. Daqduq is a Lebanese national and top Hezbollah operative who in January 2007 masterminded the ambush, kidnapping and murder of five American soldiers in the Iraqi city of Karbala. Arrested by U.S. forces in Basra two months later, Daqduq...

The British hostage Peter Moore was dramatically set free yesterday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen. Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was freed by League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) — an extremist Shia group allied to Iran — after 31 months and spent his first night of freedom at the British Embassy in Baghdad. He is expected to fly home today.

The US military has released a senior member of a deadly terror group backed by Iran that has been directly implicated in the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers in Karbala in during a complex operating in early 2007. Laith al Qazali was freed last weekend "as part of a reconciliation effort" as well as an attempt to secure the release of captive British hostages, according to a report in The New York Times. Laith is the brother of Qais Qazali, the commander of the Qazali network which better known as the Asaib al Haq or the League of...

At approximately 5 p.m., a convoy consisting of at least five sport utility vehicles entered the Karbala compound. The armed militants wore American-looking uniforms and carried U.S.-type weapons convincing Iraqi checkpoints to allow their passage. Once inside the compound, an estimated nine to 12 armed militants engaged the American troops with rifle fire and hand grenades. While defending the command post, one Soldier was killed and three others were wounded by a hand grenade thrown into the center's main office which contains the provincial police chief's office on an upper floor. During the attack in the main building, Soldiers defending...

Terror Linked Iranian in 'Kidnap' Puzzle March 05, 2007 New York Post Oran Dan JERUSALEM -- A retired Iranian general linked to the killing of five American soldiers in Baghdad vanished mysteriously in Istanbul last month, Israeli media reported yesterday. Arab newspapers are hinting the CIA and/or the Israeli spy agency Mossad are behind the disappearance of Gen. Ali Reza Askari, the reports said. Askari, a former deputy defense minister, arrived in Istanbul on a flight from Damascus on Feb. 7, left his luggage in his hotel room - and vanished. The missing general was in charge of Iranian undercover...

Iraqi police have captured three Iranian-backed Special Groups operatives behind the kidnapping and murder of five US soldiers at the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center in January 2007. Meanwhile, US troops captured another Special Groups leader in the Al Kut region, The Iraqi police captured the three "key criminals" behind the 2007 Karbala attack in Musayyib, just south of Baghdad, on June 5. The three Special Groups operatives are "suspected of trafficking and emplacing explosively formed projectiles." Explosively formed projectiles are the signature weapon of Shia terrorists with links to Iran. The US military immediately suspected Iran's Qods Force, the...

Karbala, May 8, (VOI) - Security forces on Thursday arrested leader of Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi army’s special brigades and two of his aides during a security raid in central Karbala, a security official in Karbala said. Security forces detained the leader of al-Mahdi army’s special brigades, based on intelligence tips pointing to his presence inside a house in central Karbala,” Maj. General Raed Shakir Jawdat, Karbala police and operations chief, told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).“The forces cordoned off the region and arrested two of his aides, including a policeman who provides the armed group’s...