Free Republic

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's Kurdish president backed his Shiite allies Wednesday by openly supporting a militia that Sunni Arab leaders have accused of killing members of their minority. Clashes in Baghdad and other attacks around Iraq killed at least eight people as the Sunni-dominated insurgency pressed on with its campaign against the Shiite-led government. The bloody wave of violence that broke out after the April 28 announcement of Iraq's new Shiite and Kurdish dominated government has killed more than 874 people. During the spree, more than 10 Sunni and Shiite clerics have been killed in apparent tit-for-tat slayings that raised...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen killed a senior official in Iraq's largest Shiite political party Monday in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, a party aide said. Shahir Faisal Shahir was shot while traveling to his office, said Haitham al-Hissaini, a top party adviser for the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Shahir carried the rank of major general in the party's militia, which is known as the Badr Brigade. The militia fought the former regime of Saddam Hussein. The Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is the country's biggest Shiite party and maintains close ties to Iran....

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Guerrillas overwhelmed an Iraqi police station west of Baghdad on Saturday, meeting little resistance as they went room to room shooting police in a bold, well-organized assault that killed 23 people and freed dozens of prisoners, officials said. The fierce, well-coordinated daylight attack — unprecedented in its scale — raised questions whether Iraqi police and defense forces are ready to battle insurgents as the U.S. military pulls back from the fight in advance of the November U.S. presidential election. It also underscored the tenacity of a resistance that continues despite the Dec. 13 arrest of Saddam Hussein....

23 Killed, Prisoners Freed in Iraqi Raid Feb 14, 2:55 PM (ET) By MARIAM FAM FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) - Guerrillas overwhelmed an Iraqi police station west of Baghdad on Saturday, meeting little resistance as they went room to room shooting police in a bold, well-organized assault that killed 23 people and freed dozens of prisoners, officials said. The fierce daylight attack in Fallujah raised questions whether Iraqi police and defense forces are ready to battle insurgents as the U.S. military pulls back from the fight in advance of the November U.S. presidential election. Police in the Fallujah station complained they...

<p>BAGHDAD &#8212; A former Ba'ath Party official has confessed to planning the massive car bombing that killed the senior Shi'ite cleric Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and more than 80 others last month, a top Shi'ite security official said.</p> <p>Ayatollah al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was killed in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Aug. 29. The incident has threatened to further divide Iraqi Shi'ites oppressed by former President Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, which was primarily Sunni.</p>

<p>Militiamen carrying assault rifles and wearing arm bands of a once-outlawed Islamic group patrolled in the holy city of Najaf on Saturday, a week after a key Shiite cleric was killed in a bombing followers blamed on the failure of U.S. security efforts.</p>

NAJAF, Iraq (AP) - A senior Shiite cleric called Friday for peaceful resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq and warned his followers were running out of patience. In Baghdad, gunmen attacked worshippers after prayers at a Sunni mosque, wounding three people. Imam Sadreddine al-Qobanji spoke to more than 15,000 people who jammed the Imam Ali mosque, Iraq's holiest Shiite Muslim shrine. He said last week's bombing outside the mosque - which killed Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and dozens of other people - was aimed at sowing discord in Iraq. "Once we find that this road (peaceful resistance) has come...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A car bomb at the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf killed at least 17 people, including the Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, the Shiite leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, according to a Shiite spokesman.</p>

Iran is recruiting top Iraqi weapons scientists to join a dangerous brain drain from Baghdad as international concern grows about Teheran's clandestine arms programme. The pro-Iranian Badr Brigade, an Iraqi Islamic militia, is helping scientists to travel through tribal areas north east of Baghdad and across the border for meetings with senior military and regime figures in Teheran, The Telegraph has learnt. The Iranian regime is particularly seeking Iraqi specialists in solid missile propellants, a technology in which Baghdad was strong but Teheran weak. Iran wants to switch from liquid to solid fuels to improve the performance of its long-range...

ASHINGTON, April 22 — Iranian-trained agents have crossed into southern Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein and are working in the cities of Najaf, Karbala and Basra to promote friendly Shiite clerics and advance Iranian interests, according to defense and other United States government officials. The officials cited intelligence reports that said the agents include members of the military wing of an Iraqi exile group that operates from Iran with that government's training and support. Known as the Badr Brigade, the militia is the armed force of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite group...