Free Republic

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Angry Shiites marched Wednesday and set fire to the offices of a secular politician after a Sunni Arab guest criticized Iraq's Shiite religious leaders during an Al-Jazeera talk show. Al-Rubaei made his comments during the "Opposite Direction" program shown Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon on Al-Jazeera. Hours later, thousands of people chanted anti-Al-Jazeera slogans in the streets of the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City and Karradah, and in the southern cities of Najaf and Karbala. The demonstrations, which turned into political rallies, threatened to further polarize Thursday's parliamentary elections after angry Shiites in the southern city of...

A major explosion shook central Baghdad Friday morning near an interior ministry building where U.S. troops found detainees showing signs of torture, witnesses said. There was no immediate information about casualties. The blast in the Jadiriyah neighborhood reverberated through the city center, sent a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into the air and was followed by the sounds of sporadic small arms fire. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Earlier this week U.S. troops found up to 173 malnourished detainees, some showing signs of torture, in the building. Most were believed to be Sunni Arabs, the main...

Armed men entered Baghdad's municipal building during a blinding dust storm on Monday, deposed the city's mayor and installed a member of Iraq's most powerful Shiite militia. The deposed mayor, Alaa al-Tamimi, who was not in his offices at the time, recounted the events in a telephone interview on Tuesday and called the move a municipal coup d'état. He added that he had gone into hiding for fear of his life. "This is the new Iraq," said Mr. Tamimi, a secular engineer with no party affiliation. "They use force to achieve their goal." The group that ousted him insisted that...