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WASHINGTON, March 18, 2008 – The U.S Embassy in Baghdad and Multinational Force Iraq today condemned the attack in Karbala that targeted civilians on their way to worship yesterday. “We join the Iraqi people in expressing our condolences to the families of the victims in this barbaric attack, which bears all the markings of having been carried out by al Qaeda in Iraq,” a joint statement from the U.S. embassy and Multinational Force Iraq said. Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces are working closely to ensure medical and humanitarian aid for the victims and to apprehend those responsible for the...

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces will turn over security to Iraqi authorities in the southern Shiite province of Karbala on Monday, the American commander for the area said, despite fighting between rival militia factions that has killed dozens. Karbala will become only the eighth of Iraq's 18 provinces to revert to Iraqi control, despite President Bush's prediction in January that the Iraqi government would have responsibility for security in all of the provinces by November.

The World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought (WFPIST) condemned the Fatwas attributed to certain extremist muftis which threaten destruction of Shiite holy shrines in Iraq.The WFPIST statement read, "Such Fatwas are the maniac decrees that have been issued by certain wise looking but insane individuals without taking their grave consequences into consideration."It added that such decrees would have no benefit but serving Iraqi occupiers and providing them a pretext for their continued illegitimate presence in the Islamic land.It warned that desecration of holy sites in Iraq -- as was the case with the holy twin shrines of...

Iranian unit killed our troops in Iraq, says US By David Blair Last Updated: 2:23am BST 03/07/2007 A secret force attached to Iran's Revolutionary Guard carried out a sophisticated attack which killed five American soldiers in Iraq, the US claimed yesterday. For the first time, America laid out evidence allegedly showing an Iranian hand behind a specific assault. In the past, Britain and America have only made general accusations of Iranian support for insurgents. Teheran has vigorously denied the charges. But Gen Kevin Bergner, a US military spokesman, set out in detail what he called Iran's responsibility for an attack...

U.S.: Iran helped in deadly Iraq strike By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD - Iranian forces helped plan one of the most sophisticated militant assaults of the Iraq war — a January raid in which gunmen posed as an American security team and launched an attack that killed five U.S. soldiers, an American general said Monday. U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner also accused Iran of using its Lebanese ally, the Shiite militia Hezbollah, as a "proxy" to arm Shiite militants in Iraq. The claims were an escalation in U.S. accusations that Iran is fueling Iraq's violence,...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A top special operations officer from Lebanon's Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans. Ali Mussa Daqduq, an explosives expert, was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops, U.S. intelligence officials told CNN. Daqduq pretended to be deaf and mute when captured, and his identity was not known for weeks, the officials said. Once uncovered, however, they said he began to talk, and...

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces on a raid in northern Baghdad killed a Shiite militant believed to have masterminded a brazen January attack in Karbala that led to the capture and killing of four U.S. soldiers, the military said Sunday. Troops located Azhar al-Dulaimi on Friday morning and tried to capture him, but he was killed in the ensuing battle, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the spokesman for U.S.-led forces in Iraq, said on CNN's "Late Edition." U.S. troops had been pursuing al-Dulaimi relentlessly since the Jan. 20 attack in the southern city of Karbala, Caldwell said. In that attack, gunmen speaking...

BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded Saturday in the Shiite holy city of Karbala as the streets were packed with people heading for evening prayers, killing at least 58 and wounding scores near some of the country's most sacred shrines. Separately, the U.S. military announced the deaths of nine American troops, including three killed Saturday in a single roadside bombing outside Baghdad. With black smoke clogging the skies above Karbala, angry crowds hurled stones at police and later stormed the provincial governor's house, accusing authorities of failing to protect them from the unrelenting bombings usually blamed on Sunni insurgents. It...

Suicide attack on Iraqi holy city The bus station was very busy at the time of the attack At least 36 people have been killed and more than 160 hurt in a suicide car bomb attack in Iraq's holy city of Karbala, officials say.The attacker detonated explosives at a crowded bus station in the city close to a shrine holy to Shia Muslims, at around 0915 local time (0515 GMT). Many of the casualties were said to be women or children. Meanwhile in Baghdad at least 10 people died in a truck bomb attack on a key bridge in...

AFP via translation - ALARM - Iraq: 40 died in a car bomb attack in Kerbala KARBALA (Iraq) - At least 40 people were killed and from wounded tens during the explosion Saturday of a booby-trapped car close to the principal mausoleum of the Holy City Shiite of Kerbala (110 km in the south of Baghdad), one learned from medical source.

(AP) A car bomb exploded Saturday in a bus station in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, killing at least 56 people, police and hospital officials said. More than 70 people were also wounded in the attack, according to an official at Al-Hussein Hospital. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. "The explosion was a huge one. It took place in a crowded area," said Khalid al-Daami, head of the city's security committee. Among the dead were several women and children, he said. State television aired footage from the scene, in which...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A man with ties to a radical Shiite cleric is in U.S. custody in connection with an attack that killed five American soldiers in Karbala in January, U.S. officials said."Over the past several days, coalition forces in Basra and Hilla captured Qais Khazali, his brother Laith Khazali and several other members of the Khazali network," the U.S. military said in a statement Thursday.The military said the network is "directly connected" to the killings in Karbala, a Shiite city south of Baghdad.Qais Khazali was known as a spokesman for Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political movement in 2004...

KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - Four members of a Shiite messianic cult which fought a fierce battle with security forces earlier this week were arrested in the central Iraqi shrine city of Karbala. Karbala police chief Major General Mohammed Abu al-Walid said 25 militants were arrested across the city in a series of raids. Four of those detained were from the "Soldiers of Heaven" group, the militant Shiite cult. At least 263 of the cult's fighters were killed and 502 arrested during fierce clashes with Iraqi forces near Najaf on Sunday. The leader of the militia, who claimed to be a...

Several Iraqis have been detained for questioning in the ongoing investigation of at least two senior Iraqi generals suspected of involvement in an insurgent attack that killed five American soldiers on Jan. 20, U.S. officials told FOX News on Thursday. The attack occurred at a provincial government security compound in Karbala where the Americans were meeting with local Iraqi security officers. Gunmen stormed the facility dressed like American soldiers and driving SUVs, military officials in Iraq said.

US warns Iran on Iraq insurgents The US says Iran is providing more lethal bombs to insurgents The US has issued the latest in a series of warnings to Iran, telling Tehran to stop helping Iraqi militants make lethal bombs to attack US troops.Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said US forces had detained several Iranians suspected of providing weapons technology to Shia insurgents. He said Iranian help for insurgents had spread from Basra north to Baghdad, leading to higher UK and US casualties. Tehran has repeatedly denied that it is fuelling the violence in Iraq. Mr Burns told the...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Citing Iranian involvement with Iraqi militias and Tehran's nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration has shifted to offense in its confrontation with Iran - building up the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf and promising more aggressive moves against Iranian operatives in Iraq and Lebanon. The behind-the-scenes struggle between the two nations could explode into open warfare over a single misstep, analysts and U.S. military officials warn. Iraq has become a proxy battleground between Washington and Tehran, which is challenging - at least rhetorically - America's dominance of the Gulf. That has worried even Iraq's U.S.-backed Shiite...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A plan by the Bush administration to release detailed and possibly damning specific evidence linking the Iranian government to efforts to destabilize Iraq have been put on hold, U.S. officials told FOX News. Officials had said a "dossier" against Iran compiled by the U.S. likely would be made public at a press conference this week in Baghdad, and that the evidence would contain specifics including shipping documents, serial numbers, maps and other evidence which officials say would irrefutably link Iran to weapons shipments to Iraq.

IRGC's Qods Force is the prime suspect in the Karbala attack which killed 5 soldiers On Friday, we reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' Qods Force was very likely behind the attack on the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, which resulted in the kidnapping and execution of four U.S. soldiers. Five soldiers total were killed in the operation, and three others wounded. We noted, based on multiple sources in the military and intelligence community, that the attack was far too sophisticated for Shia militias (particularly the Mahdi Army) and al-Qaeda in Iraq was unlikely to have carried out...

BAGHDAD, Jan. 30 — Investigators believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the probe.

AGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Pentagon is investigating whether a recent attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said."People are looking at it seriously," one of the officials said.That official added the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation into the January 20 attack that killed five soldiers.The second official said: "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."