5th July: Rumour spreads that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi is killed in airstrikes near the Syrian border and has been taken to Syria for medical treatment. Daash disputes this and releases a video of Baghdadi addressing Friday worshippers in Mosul. The government in Baghdad calls the video a fake.
5th July: Two civilians are killed and six injured when two car bombs go off in Basra, Southern Iraq. The number killed is later reported to be eight.
5th July: Two senior army figures Ali Ghaydan (commander of Land Forces) and Mohsin al-Kaabi (Commander of federal Forces) are to be retired.
6th July: Hussein Firas al-Mashhadani, the Amir of Al Qaida in Iraq is killed by security forces in Iraq.
6th July: The police chief of Thi Qar, in the south of Iraq, has sent reinforcements to the west and north of Iraq. Hassan al Zaydi, the police chief, has stated that this in response to the call made by Sistani.
6th July: Twenty rebels are killed by security personnel when they attempted to bomb a government building of Salahuddin province in Tikrit.
6th July: In possibly a first, an official within Daash and two of his security detail are killed when a car they are travelling in is hit by an IED in north east Baqouba, Diyala.
6th July: A parliament session of Iraqi Kurdistan will be held on Monday to discuss the acute shortage of fuel and petroleum products being faced in Kurdish cities.
6th July: Masoud Barzani has told a German newspaper that according to him the partition of Iraq is inevitable. He stated that people in the region have an ethnic or religious identity but no national identity. He blamed Maliki and his ignoring of important issues that has led to this impasse. He also referred to the improving of relations between Turkey and Kurdistan over the last 10 years and stated that Turkey is now a “good neighbour” of Kurdistan.”
6th July: The Iraqi Defence Ministry has sent a tank battalion to help government forces fight rebels in Jurf al-Sakher, north of Babel.
6th July: The National Coalition, the largest parliamentary block and a coalition of a Shi’a parties, is to hold a meeting today to decide on their Prime Ministerial candidate. The Kurdish and Sunni block have withheld the name of the President and Speaker until such time as the candidate for Prime Minister is announced.
6th July: Sameera al Mousavi of the State of Law coalition calls on the National Alliance to seek Sistani’s guidance in forming the next government.
6th July: Former Prime Minister of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, has met Turkish officials in Istanbul and has called on Iraq neighbours to work towards Iraqi unity. He has also asked Maliki to step down and withdraw from the post of Prime Minister.
6th June: Qatar based Muslim Britherhood/regime cleric, Al-Qaradawi, has called the declaration of caliphate by Baghdadi of The DI of Daash as invalid and detrimental to the Islamic cause.
6th July: Indian press is reporting that the Indian government took the help of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar and their line to Daash in Syria to secure the release of the trapped nurses in Iraq.
6th July: DI of Daash issues passports guaranteeing protection to its citizens. Abu Bakr Baghdadi is seen wearing a Rolex watch during his Friday Sermon.
6th July: Nickolay Mladenov, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General discusses the situation in Iraq with Ammar Al-Hakim of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council and confirms UN support for Iraq
6th July: Three civilians are killed by mortar shells in North eastern Baqouba. The shells were allegedly fired by Daash.
6th July: Atta’s/Government claims for the day:
Government carries out air strikes against rebel targets in Tal Afar, Northern Iraq, and reports killing a number of fighters
The government has attacked and destroyed eight vehicles belonging to rebels outside of Baiji refinery and killing the occupants as well
The government’s 2nd Brigade has seized explosives, grenades and a mine in the Rashidiya area of Baghdad
The government has attacked a rebel convoy in Fallujah destroying five vehicles and killing their occupants
Related news:
6th July: The al Nusra stronghold of Shuheli in Eastern Syria falls to Daash on Thursday. It expels 60000 residents from Shuheli and neighbouring towns.
Further Reading:
Comparing General Soliemani to Soze and Karla with very little facts and a lot of fiction:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/02/iran-s-top-spy-is-the-modern-day-karla-john-le-carr-s-villainous-mastermind.html
Dear mindfriedo,
Thank you for your valuable posts.
Not Iraq/Syria but still Middle East:
A BBC Middle East correspondent has made the astonishing claim that the killing of three Israeli youths in the West Bank last month is somehow more appalling than “the other waves of violence that we report on across the Middle East.”
Kevin Connolly’s remarks, which seem to place the murders of three Israeli youths above the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel during decades of illegal occupation, and above the slaughter in Syria and Iraq, were made during a live exchange on Radio 4’s Today program on Tuesday.
BBC: killing of 3 Israelis worse than “waves of violence” in Middle East – Electronic Intifada
B.
Murder is not murder when it affects adverseries to “US-interests”:
In response to a Freedom of Information Request filed by the ACLU, the Department of Justice this week released the memo providing legal analysis in support of justification for the 2011 assassination of Anwar al Awlaki, a US national living in Yemen.
[…]
The forty-one DOJ memo, authored by David Barron, is a compelling study in government double speak. Large chunks of the memo were redacted before its release, with approximately ¼ removed from public purview.
What was made available to the public delves into the legal inhibitions which might come into play with a targeted government murder of a US citizen. Title 18 Section 1119 of the US Code is referenced repeatedly, and the prohibitions against murder contained in this section resolved essentially due to the invocation of “public authority.”
Memo Justifying al Awlaki Assassination Does End-Run Around the US Constitution – NEO
B.
Wayne Madson on the potential independence of Iraqi Kurdistan:
The leadership of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, which has all the trappings of an independent state even though a leader of one of its two major clans is nominally president of the Republic of Iraq, has set out on the risky road to full independence. KRG leaders in the capital city of Erbil are gambling on the fact that the West is so alarmed by the rapid seizure of territory by the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, in northern and western Iraq, as well as eastern Syria, they would welcome a strong anti-Islamist Kurdistan exercising sovereign control over territory also claimed by the Islamic State. In fact, well-trained Kurdish Peshmerga paramilitary forces have successfully prevented the Islamic State forces led by self-proclaimed Islamic State Caliph Ibrabim ibn Awwad – real name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – from sweeping north from Kirkuk and seizing Kurdish territory.
Iraqi Kurds Get Serious about Independence in a Region Committed to status quo – Strategic Culture
B.
Mindfriedo
Thanks for sitrep.
http://nsnbc.me/2014/07/05/u-s-military-advisers-in-iraq-spies-for-isis-and-kurdish-militants-analyst/
on the paradox of 300 ‘advisers’ at the US embassy in Baghdad working for Kurdish secession.
Their colleagues in Ankara are 8reportedly) coordinating ISIS.
some oil background on Iraq and Syria (where major battle underway)
http://nsnbc.me/2014/07/06/major-battles-for-control-over-syrian-oil-fields-underway/
@Bakunin
BBC may be obediently placing jewish lives above arab lives – as it would above british lives too -; anyway it may be jews killing jews all along;
http://www.globalresearch.ca/were-the-three-settler-kidnappings-an-israeli-false-flag-operation/5389791
yet again, things don’t quite add up; perhaps israeli gov reckoned israeli people need dumbing down some more and pallies need some more smacking