A powerful explosion occurred before midday when a women detonated an explosive belt at a checkpoint at the entrance of the Bab al-Qeblah gate of Kadhim shrine in the Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyah, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The woman apparently targeted the Iranian group of pilgrims and killed 16 of them and wounded 32 others, the source said.

Earlier, the source put the toll at 37 killed and 53 others injured.

Hundreds of Shiite pilgrims gather outside the shrine, three days ahead of the climax of Ashura, the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar, which is the day of mourning for the martyrdom of Hussein Ibn Ali, the grandson of Muslims’ prophet Muhammad at the Battle of Karbala.

Female suicide bomber kills 40 people outside Baghdad Shiite shrine_English_Xinhua

Basra International Airport had been used as a UK military base during the conflict but the Iraqis have now resumed full control.

It came as the UN mandate for US and UK troops – put into place after the invasion in March 2003 – expired.

Iraq will now take greater control of its own security, but US and UK forces will remain under a new deal.

The transfer of the airport at Basra, the country’s second biggest city, was one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s remaining key tasks in southern Iraq.

The transfer of control, marked with a handover ceremony in the airport’s VIP lounge, followed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by British military commanders and Iraqi transport officials in Baghdad.

Military and civilian aircraft will continue to operate side-by-side at the airport but Iraqi civilians are now in control.

Major General Andy Salmon, general officer commanding of British troops in Iraq, said: “The Iraqis have been operating their own airport in Basra with minimal involvement from the UK for several months,” he said.

“From today they will gain further autonomy, taking over the running of the air traffic control tower.

“It is clear Basra International Airport is now an international airport with good potential for future growth.”

In December, Mr Brown said British troops would leave Iraq by the end of July 2009.

Military operations are due to end by 31 May and the remaining 4,100 UK service personnel will leave within two months.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK troops hand back Basra Airport

The blast, which occurred around midday on Saturday, was so powerful it could be heard several kilometres away.

Qassim Attam, an army spokesman, said the explosion was in a car park used by commuters near a bus terminal in Kadhimiyah, northwest Baghdad, where people also gather at a Shia shrine on Saturdays.

It was not clear if the blast was a suicide attack and whether it was caused by a car bomb or a mortar round.

On Thursday, one person was killed and 14 others injured in another bomb attack in Kadhimiyah.

Kadhimiyah has suffered routine attacks and some of the deadliest incidents in the capital since the US-led invasion in 2003.

In a second attack on Saturday, three people were killed in Jurf al-Sakhar, on
Baghdad’s southern outskirts, as Iraqi soldiers and police were trying to defuse a roadside bomb.

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Deadly blast hits Baghdad station

Opposition parties believe Mr Brown may allow the long-delayed inquiry to begin next summer but that it will not report until after the next general election, which could be as late as June 2010. Mr Brown will make a statement on Iraq to Parliament today.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) told The Independent that the cost of British operations in Iraq since the 2003 invasion has been £7.836bn – the equivalent of £3.7m a day.

Critics say that would be enough to fund 25,200 teachers for 10 years and to build 107 new hospitals. The final bill will increase before the pullout of the remaining 4,100 troops.

Some defence experts also say the Government’s figure understates the true cost of the Iraq operation. The MoD admits that it does not include payments to the families of the 178 servicemen killed or the cost of treating the injured. Some experts claim the official figure does not cover the wear and tear on military equipment, but the MoD insists that has been taken into account.

Day-to-day costs such as servicemen’s pay is met from the MoD’s £34bn annual budget. Extra operational costs, including top-up payments for troops, are met from a special reserve fund at the Treasury, to which the MoD submits a bill twice a year. MPs claim the Iraq budget has been shrouded in secrecy. Initially, the Government declined to give separate figures for the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some figures emerged only through freedom of information requests. MPs have demanded more openness, citing the greater scrutiny by the US Congress of America’s spending on Iraq, which dwarfs Britain’s and is estimated at £400bn by the end of last year.

Mr Brown, who visited Baghdad and Basra yesterday, announced that the British mission in Iraq would end no later than 31 May, and that the troops would come home within two months. Between 200 and 300 military advisers are expected to remain to help the Iraqi government.

The Prime Minister said: “We have made a huge contribution and, of course, given people an economic stake in the future of Iraq. We leave Iraq a better place. I am proud of the contribution British forces have made.”

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said last night: “The Government is trying to end this war as they began it by trying to hide the true cost and deceiving the public. But Gordon Brown cannot be allowed to sidestep the massive part he played in signing the cheques for the biggest foreign policy disaster in half a century. There must be a fully independent public inquiry which must include the true financial cost of this catastrophic war and its aftermath.”

Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, said the true cost of the war in Iraq was being “camouflaged”. “Any figure cannot reflect the human cost of what was a colossal error of thinking, based on our slavish devotion to the special relationship with a fading US superpower,” he said.

He added that British forces were trying to maintain a role in the world they were no longer capable of, and which the public would not support if they were told the real financial cost.

Liam Fox, the shadow Defence Secretary, said: “Now that we know our troops are being withdrawn there is no excuse not to have the inquiry into the Iraq war that we have demanded. We need to learn the lessons from Iraq so that we do no repeat the mistakes in places such as Afghanistan.”

The Stop the War Coalition said: “The British people will continue paying for this war long after it is over. Injured and maimed soldiers will have to be cared for; reconstruction in Iraq will have to take place and Britain may be sued by Iraq for reparations for this illegal war.”

Mr Brown has promised that there will be an Iraq inquiry “when the time is right”, but has not said whether it would be held in public or who would head it. Downing Street said there had already been four investigations into aspects of the war. But critics say their remit was tightly drawn and there has been no over-arching inquiry.
Six years in Iraq

2003

21 March: 45,000 British troops enter southern Iraq alongside 250,000 American soldiers, who quickly topple Saddam Hussein’s regime.

24 March: British forces take Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, and consolidate control of Iraq’s three southern, Shia-dominated provinces.

9 April: Baghdad falls to US forces and President George Bush declares end of “major operations” on 1 May. British troop numbers reduced to 18,000.

13 December: Saddam captured near Tikrit.

2004

Jan–Feb: Low-level insurgencies intensify in Baghdad and Sunni western provinces. Basra and the south are relatively calm.

May: Revelations of abuse of PoW’s by British troops leads to escalating clashes between UK forces and militants loyal to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

28 June: US hands sovereignty to interim Iraqi government.

2005

30 January: Iraq votes and power shifts towards Shias.

May: UK troop numbers fall to 8,500 and Tony Blair hints at possible withdrawal.

September: Tensions in Basra ignite as riots spread across the south following a series of anti-British protests.

2006

22 February: The Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, left, one of Shia Islam’s most important sites, is blown up; tens of thousands of Iraqis are killed.

6 May: British Lynx helicopter is shot down, killing five, including the first British servicewoman to die in action in Iraq.

13 July: British and Australian forces hand Muthanna to the Iraqi authorities.

30 December: Saddam Hussein is hanged.

2007

January: President Bush orders a troop surge into Baghdad and western provinces.

March: Iraqi forces initiate a crackdown on Shia militants in the south. US criticise UK’s role.

September: Remaining 5,000 UK troops in the south withdraw to Basra

The Independent

In a separate incident on Saturday, three people died and 13 others were injured when a car bomb went off in central Baghdad.

The car bomb exploded in al Tayaran Square, which is much used as a meeting point for Iraqi workers.

Serious condition

A UN official said several of the injured in the rocket attack on the organisation’s compound are in serious condition and that the death toll might rise.

Their nationalities of the victims have not been released.

The incident took place in the heavily guarded Green Zone in the centre of Baghdad where the Iraqi parliament and a number of government buildings and foreign embassies are located.

Al Jazeera English

The attack came as the hardline Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared three days of mourning to protest at parliament’s approval on Thursday of the accord, which will govern the presence of some 150,000 US troops across the country.

The blast ripped through the main mosque in the town of Musaib after the attacker, strapped with explosives, mingled with the some 300 worshippers inside, police Lieutenant Kadhim al-Shammari said.

One of those killed was an old woman begging for alms at the entrance to the mosque, he added. Another 15 people were wounded in the attack, which destroyed the building’s windows and doors and filled it with smoke.

Most of the wounded were taken to the general hospital in Musaib, 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Baghdad, but three seriously wounded people were taken for treatment in the nearby town of Hilla.

In July 2005 more than 70 people were killed at the same mosque when a suicide bomber detonated a truck loaded with explosives and cooking gas near the building.

It was unclear whether the attack was linked to the approval of the military pact or Sadr’s declaration of mourning, but the congregation of the mosque was considered loyal to the reclusive cleric, who is believed to be in Iran.

Sadr had called on his supporters to “put up black flags, organise mourning ceremonies across the country and hold peaceful demonstrations,” in a statement issued by his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, south of Baghdad.

A close aide to the cleric, Aws al-Khafaji, told a press conference that the Sadr movement would “keep up its rejection of this humiliating accord and resist through all means.”

As the Iraqi parliament passed the accord on Thursday, several Sadrist MPs pounded tables in a bid to hinder the vote, chanting “Yes, yes to Iraq… No, no, to the occupation,” but the 30-member bloc failed to defeat the agreement.

The agreement will see US troops withdraw from all Iraqi cities and towns by the end of June and from the rest of the country by 2011, eight years after the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and plunged the nation into chaos.

Iraq has seen dramatic improvements in security over the past year but certain regions still suffer from near-daily bombings and attacks.

Friday’s blast bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has carried out scores of massive bombings targeting Shiite civilians since the 2003 invasion.

US and Iraqi forces allied with local Sunni militias have largely succeeded in flushing Al-Qaeda fighters out of their former strongholds, but the group retains the ability to regularly carry out smaller attacks.

The security pact with Washington was approved with the support of the country’s main Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs, and will be sent to the presidential council for formal ratification next week.

The council has 10 days from Sunday to give its blessing to the deal, but in the unlikely case it rejects the pact, it will have to return to parliament.

Channelnewsasia.com

Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, told The Associated Press the “premeditated” attack occurred in a courtyard as the soldiers waited for their two lieutenants to finish a meeting with an Iraqi army company commander.

Hertling, who said he had spoken with some of the wounded troops, disputed Iraqi accounts that the shooting followed a heated argument between the Iraqi soldier and the Americans.

Hertling said the attacker strolled into the courtyard carrying a Kalashnikov rifle and a drum of ammunition, walked to a corner, turned and opened fire.

“One shot was aimed and the rest was literally a spray,” he said. “There was no argument, no spitting, no slapping, none of that occurred.”

The six wounded American soldiers were expected to recover, Hertling said.

He said senior Iraqi army and police commanders in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, had expressed regret over the shooting and promised a joint investigation.

In Baghdad, Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari said the shooting followed a quarrel at an Iraqi base in a volatile Sunni Arab neighborhood in central Mosul. The Iraqi soldier was identified as Barzan al-Hadidi.

It was the second such shooting in Mosul in a year, raising questions about the professionalism and preparedness of Iraqi security forces and their relations with their American partners.

Last December, an Iraqi soldier allegedly shot and killed a U.S. captain and a sergeant during a joint operation in Mosul, where al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgent groups still operate.

Tensions are running high in Mosul, where U.S. and Iraqi troops have been trying since last spring to rout insurgents from Iraq’s third largest city. The military campaign has also raised friction between the Arab population and Kurdish soldiers of the Iraqi army sent there to help restore order.

Also in Mosul, two Christian sisters were killed and their mother was wounded in an attack on their home Wednesday, police said. The attackers rigged the house with boobytraps and one Iraqi policeman was injured when he came to investigate the slayings, Hertling said.

As violence raged in Mosul, a string of bombings rocked Baghdad for the third consecutive day, killing 23 people and wounding about 90, police said. The Iraqi army acknowledged the rise in attacks and said it was taking measures to curb “the increasing number of terrorist attacks” in the city.

Military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi said the measures would include stepped up intelligence gathering and pre-emptive strikes on suspected extremists.

The first car bomb blew up in a bustling mostly Shiite section of downtown Baghdad during the Wednesday morning rush hour, killing four people and injuring 15.

A second car bomb exploded near a school in the Shiite-dominated neighborhood of Shaab in north Baghdad. Iraqi police said five people were killed and 12 wounded. A roadside bomb wounded seven people in another part of Shaab, police said.

Two bombs blew up within moments of each other in the evening in the mostly Shiite district of New Baghdad, with the second explosion occurring just after police arrived to investigate the first.

It was not immediately clear how many were killed in each explosion, but police and hospital officials gave an initial toll of 14 dead, including three children and two women.

Hassan Rahim, a 42-year-old barber who lives in the neighborhood, heard the blasts as he fixed his rooftop satellite dish.

“I do not know why Iraqi officials keep talking about the improving security in Baghdad everyday. We are fed up with such lies and we will hope that the security file in the capital will not be handed over to Iraqi government,” he said.

Wednesday’s attacks follow two days of rush hour blasts in Baghdad that have killed more than 30 people and wounded some 70 others. The violence underscores the challenge facing the Iraqi security forces as they take a leading role in providing security and the U.S. military pulls back.

The recent uptick in bombings was a setback to security gains that led to violence dropping sharply in recent months in the capital.

In the first nine days of November, there were at least 19 bombings in Baghdad, compared with 28 for all of October and 22 in September, according to an Associated Press tally.

The rise in attacks also comes as U.S. and Iraqi officials try to hammer out a final agreement on a security deal that would keep U.S. troops in Iraq until the end of 2011. Parliament must approve the deal by the end of the year when the U.N. mandate authorizing the U.S. presence expires.

But the proposed agreement has drawn sharp criticism, especially within the majority Shiite community. Without an agreement or a new mandate, the U.S. military would have to cease operations in Iraq.

Iraq’s two neighbors Syria and Iran have also spoken out against the agreement. The U.S. accuses both countries of supporting or harboring Iraqi extremists opposed to the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Moreover, an Internet monitoring service reported Tuesday that 10 Iraqi insurgent groups have agreed to escalate attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces to derail the proposed deal, which they branded “the agreement of disgrace.”

The Associated Press:

The attackers detonated a car bomb in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, then minutes later a suicide bomber ran into the resulting melee and blew up, according to defence and interior ministry officials.

A third explosion caused by a roadside bomb around 30 metres (yards) from the first two blasts tore through the market moments later, according to an Iraqi police officer who was on the street when the attack took place.

An interior ministry official said at least 68 people were wounded in the rush-hour Baghdad attack, which wreaked the heaviest toll in Baghdad since June 17 when 51 people were killed and 75 wounded in a car bombing.

Monday’s attack took place on Kassra street, a road lined with restaurants and tea shops popular for breakfast with Iraqi security forces, as a bus carrying young school girls drove past, according to witnesses.

“There was a huge explosion and before I went out to look another bomb went off,” said Fadel Hussein, a waiter at a teahouse near the scene.

“Heavy smoke was everywhere. There were so many bloody victims on the ground, we helped to evacuate those people to ambulances,” Hussein told AFP.

The US and Iraqi military cordoned off the area, which was littered with glass, mangled metal and scorched cars as sobbing parents desperately searched for their children.

One woman in her 40s and wearing a black abaya, the traditional black Arab dress, sat on the ground crying uncontrollably.

“I’m waiting for my husband who is inside the area looking for my son. I hope he is still alive,” she sobbed.

Witnesses told an AFP photographer that some schoolgirls in the bus had died in the blast.

Seats in the wrecked interior of the minibus were heavily stained with blood, while its exterior was riddled with fist-sized shrapnel holes. Girls’ shoes lay strewn on the blood-stained street.

Among those killed were three policemen, three women and five children, police said.

The Medical City hospital received 37 wounded people, including several women and children and two Iraqi soldiers, a medic said.

However, the US military put the toll at four killed and 34 wounded.

Meanwhile in Baquba, a restive city north of Baghdad, a female suicide bomber killed four Sunni guards belonging to Awakening councils and wounded at least 15 civilians at a checkpoint.

A doctor who examined the remains of the attacker said she was likely a 13-year-old girl.

The United Nations envoy to Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, condemned the attacks that “aimed at re-instilling fear, distrust and division among the public just as Iraq prepares itself to assume political normalcy with the upcoming provincial elections.”

On Sunday, Baghdad set January 31 as the date for long-awaited provincial elections seen by Washington as a key benchmark towards national reconciliation but also capable of stoking further conflict among Iraq’s divided communities.

The bombings also came as Sunni militias which have played a key role in driving Al-Qaeda fighters from Baghdad began receiving pay cheques from a Shiite-led government that has long eyed them with suspicion.

Up to 60 stations opened throughout the Iraqi capital to pay some 50,000 members of the US-allied Awakening Councils or Sahwas which used to receive their monthly salaries from the American military.

Despite the dramatic improvement in security in large swathes of Iraq, militants continue to launch near daily attacks , most of them targeting US and Iraqi security forces.

Baghdad has been hit by a string of bombings in the last week, most of them small roadside bombs that claimed only a handful of victims.

The US military says the capital has become much safer since the launch last year of a joint Iraqi-US security plan. Attacks average four a day, 83 percent less than in 2007.

AFP:

It was the deadliest attack in the capital city in almost four months.

First, a bomb inside a parked car exploded in a marketplace in the Kasrah section of the Adhamiya neighborhood, a ministry official said.

Soon after, a second car bomb went off. When a crowd gathered around the exploded cars, a bomber wearing an explosives-laden vest detonated in their midst, the official said.

The attacks occurred about 8 a.m. local time.

Adhamiya is a Sunni neighborhood, but the Kasrah district is predominantly populated by Shiites. As such, the area is controlled by Iraqi security forces and not an Awakening Council.

Awakening councils are mainly made up of former Sunni insurgents who turned against al Qaeda and are credited for being one of the main factors that helped reduce violence in the country.

Among the victims of the Monday morning attack were two police officers, four Iraqi soldiers, five women and a number of students, the ministry official said.

Several soldiers and police personnel were also wounded in the blasts.

On June 17, 63 people were killed and 71 others wounded in a truck bombing in the Hurriya district in northwest Baghdad.

A day earlier insurgents bombed an outdoor market in the Iraqi town of Khalis in an attempt to kill the mayor, who was wounded in the attack along with the town’s deputy police chief, officials said.

Two others were killed when the explosive — hidden under a pile of trash — detonated near a health clinic, the official said.

Khalis Mayor Auday al-Khadran and the deputy police chief, Nihad Al-louaibi, were touring the market and were among the 13 wounded, the official said.

Khalis is in Diyala province, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad, where al Qaeda in Iraq has a strong presence.

CNN.com

Syrian officials say U.S. troops and helicopters launched the raid Sunday inside Syrian territory close to the Iraqi border, killing eight people.

The U.S. command in Baghdad would not comment, but a U.S. military official said American special forces targeted the network that smuggles fighters and weapons into Iraq. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the raid was classified.

In a sign of how sensitive such attacks can be for Iraq’s government, Syria summoned the top Iraqi diplomat in Damascus and demanded that Iraq “shoulder its responsibilities” and prevent the use of Iraqi territory “for aggression against Syria.”

That strikes at the heart of Iraqi criticism over the security agreement — that Iraqis cannot take control of their own country so long as big U.S. military forces remain on their soil.

The raid could also encourage Syria and Iran to step up pressure on Iraqi lawmakers to reject the deal. Parliament must approve the measure before the U.N. mandate expires Dec. 31, and Iraqi Shiite lawmakers have expressed doubts the current version would pass.

“It will be used against the agreement and will give the Iranians reason to increase their interference here against the agreement,” Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman predicted.

“Now neighboring countries have a good reason to be concerned about the continued U.S. presence in Iraq,” he said.

The Iraqi government has so far issued no formal statement about the raid, but the chief spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh noted that the reported target was a center of “anti-Iraq terrorist activity.”

But another lawmaker — this one a prominent Shiite who has not taken a public stand on the deal — said the raid would hurt the security agreement’s chances of approval because it sends “a message that Iraq is not in control of its own affairs.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because the issues are sensitive.

The proposed deal would allow American troops to stay in Iraq through 2011 to help build up Iraq’s own forces and fight the remaining al-Qaida militants and Shiite extremists.

But critics inside Iraq believe the agreement would tie Iraq to American political and military policies in the region. That could harm Iraq’s efforts to build good relations with neighbors like Syria and Iran — who aren’t on good terms with Washington.

U.S. officials insist the agreement respects Iraqi sovereignty.

But critics maintain that there is no way that Iraq will be anything but a junior partner. That’s not an image Iraqis relish, even though many privately hope U.S. troops will stay here until Iraq’s own security forces can maintain order.

On the other hand, the security agreement could help curb U.S. actions such as the Sunday raid. The draft agreement rules out the use of Iraqi territory as a base for U.S. aggression against other countries. Iraq insisted on such language to assure Iran that it would not assist any U.S. attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Also, the agreement would require the U.S. to coordinate military operations with a joint U.S.-Iraqi commission, giving Iraq the chance to raise objections before U.S. raids.

Regardless, opponents of the deal are likely to see the U.S. raid on Syria as reinforcing their view that Iraq would be powerless to prevent the United States from military action. For many Iraqis, the feeling they run their own country means more than the deal’s fine print.

Complicating the situation is the complexity of Iraq’s relations with Syria. When Saddam Hussein was in power, the two countries were ruled by rival wings of the Baath party.

Many former Saddam loyalists fled to Syria after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, and U.S. officials believe the country serves as a base for Sunni extremists to smuggle weapons and fighters to Iraq.

But relations between Iraq and Syria have improved somewhat, and earlier this month the Syrians sent an ambassador to Baghdad for the first time since the 1980s.

“We’re trying to contain the fallout from the incident,” a senior Iraqi Foreign Ministry official, Labid Abbawi told The Associated Press. “It is regrettable and we are sorry it happened.”

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