:: information from occupied iraq

In Gaza… The sea, people and the siege: Witnesses of ongoing violations against humans and the environment
Adnan Abu Hassna, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
…In Gaza you are always poor even if you possess all the money in the world. The sea is polluted for both the poor and the rich. The air, heavy with emissions of cooking oils used as car fuel because of the obstruction of diesel and gasoline supplies to Gaza Strip, is being breathed by camp inhabitants as well as those living in high-class downtown neighbourhoods. It is a collective motion towards collapse within a large prison named Gaza. In an area of merely 360 squared kilometers surrounded by the sea, barbwires and poverty, one can see a strange alliance of despair, nature and politics, pushing local residents and specifically the refugees to the brink of collapse…The scenes of poverty and despair continue elsewhere. ‘Disaster’ doesn’t begin to explain what is taking place in Gaza Strip. It is much more than a disaster,” he stresses…Dr. Yousef Abu Safiyeh, an expert in environmental issues, predicts a serious health and environmental disaster for the Gaza Strip population owing to the recent use of cooking oil as fuel by a large number of drivers..

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Israeli officials: We will invade Gaza before truce deal takes effect
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News
Israeli army officials told the Jerusalem Post news paper that the Israeli government will conduct a medium range ground offensive targeting Gaza before any truce deal with the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza takes effect. The officials said that it’s likely the operation will be approved this coming Tuesday during the meeting between the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense Minister Ehud Barak…

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Iraq to sign deals with foreign oil firms this month: MEES
Indiatimes
Iraq intends to sign Technical Support Agreements (TSAs) with foreign oil majors by the end of June to add an eventual 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) in output capacity, a specialist newsletter quoted the oil minister as saying. Five consortia are in talks with the Iraqi government for the two-year contracts, the Middle East Economic Survey said in its edition to appear on Monday. The agreements cover Kirkuk field (Shell), Rumaila (BP), Al-Zubair (ExxonMobil), West Qurna Phase I (Chevron and Total), Missan province development (Shell and BHP Billiton) and the Subba and Luhais fields (Anadarko, Vitol and the UAE’s Dome), MEES said…

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Uri Avnery’s 1948: A Critique
MERC (MID EAST REALITY CHECK)
If you want to sort the political sheep from the goats in the Palestine/Israel fold, just look at the positions taken by pundits on the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948-1949, Uri Avnery is a case in point. Avnery is the 84 year-old veteran leader of Israel’s peace movement, Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc), and an often perceptive and insightful commentator on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Yet his recent essay, 1948* (10/5/08, www.gush-shalom.org), reveals a major blind spot. In fact, at many points, I thought I was reading Benny Morris..

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Sunday, 8 June 2008.
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice.
…In a dispatch posted at 8:15pm Baghdad time Sunday evening, the Yaqen News Agency reported that Iraqi regime Emergency Police in Tikrit, 180km north of Baghdad, arrested a total of 450 people in raids and arrests last week in the city of Tikrit and the al-Jazirah desert areas to the west. Yaqen reported a source in the regime’s security forces, who asked not to be identified, as saying that all the prisoners were handed over to the US occupation forces. Relatives of prisoners confirmed the reports and said that the women among the prisoners were being tortured by the Emergency Police in Tikrit before being transferred to the American…

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WORDS OF CONFUSION
Malcom Lagauche
…Laura Bush, wife and Alcoholics Anonymous advisor to George Bush, visited Afghanistan yesterday to bolster the American University in Afghanistan. After meeting the stooge Afghan president, she announced that Washington will spend $80 million over five years to support the American University in Afghanistan and the National Literacy Center. What’s wrong with this? Isn’t the American University a benevolent institution that just wants to help the poor people of Afghanistan to learn to read and write? Of course not. The American University in Afghanistan is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Any USAID facility is a hotbed of U.S. spies. If you have a strong stomach, go to the organization’s webpage and read many fairy tales..

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British military: 3 soldiers killed in Afghanistan
AMIR SHAH, AP
Three British soldiers were killed in a suicide attack and a local reporter for the BBC was found dead Sunday as first lady Laura Bush visited Afghanistan hoping to highlight signs of progress despite a recent surge of violence. The soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing while on foot patrol less than a mile from their base in Afghanistan’s Upper Sangin Valley, the British military said. A fourth soldier was wounded. The deaths brought the British military’s death toll in Afghanistan to 100 since the 2001 invasion by the U.S. and its allies…

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Velnai: IOF military onslaught on Gaza is nearing
Palestinian Information Center
Mitan Velnai, the Israeli deputy war minister, has disclosed on Sunday that the Israeli military invasion of Gaza Strip was a matter of time only, and that it was drawing closer. Velnai’s remarks came as he paid a visit to family of an Israeli settler killed in the retaliation attack of the Palestinian resistance factions on the Israeli settlement of Ashkol, in western Negev, Saturday which many described as a dose to tranquilize the Israeli settlers. The IOF killed hundreds of Palestinian people, and wounded hundreds others since the start of this year by aerial strikes and tank shelling, in addition to 185 sick Palestinian citizens who died after Israel denied them exit permit to receive medical treatment outside the besieged Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian records…

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U.S. Military’s Middle East Crusade for Christ
Robert Weitzel
Last August the watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, foiled a Pentagon plan that would have allowed the shipment of “freedom packages” to soldiers and Marines in Iraq. The parcels were put together by the fundamentalist Christian ministry, Straight Up, and contained Bibles, proselytizing tracts in English and Arabic, and the apocalyptic “Left Behind” computer game, in which Christian Tribulation forces convert or kill infidels—nonbelievers, Muslims and Jews. On May 1 the Senate approved the promotion of Brigadier General Robert L. Caslen Jr. to Major General. Currently the commandant of cadets at West Point, he will become the commander of the 25th Infantry Division. He is also president of the stridently fundamentalist Officer’s Christian Fellowship, whose vision is a “spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit”…

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Iraq to Iran: Help build our army
Press TV
Iraqi Defense Minister Mohamed Abdel-Qadir al-Jassem says Baghdad seeks Tehran’s assistance in building a strong and self-reliant army. In a meeting with Iranian Defense Minister Major General Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, the Iraqi minister said Baghdad now strives to restore the country’s sovereignty and create a self-sufficient army. “Iraq’s ambition to build a strong military calls for further cooperation with Tehran and for Baghdad to draw on its neighbor’s defense potential,” said the Iraqi official…

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U.S. Consulate employee dies of heart attack at Israeli checkpoint
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News
Mohammed Mousa, 63, who has worked for forty years at the US Consulate in Jerusalem and is an American citizen, died of a heart attack when Israeli soldiers refused to allow him to pass through the checkpoint to work this week. The incident took place on Tuesday, and the IMEMC has confirmed that the heart attack was directly correlated to the stress of being held at the checkpoint…

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News from “Kurdistan.”
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
My relative N. finally got a post as a geologist in “Kurdistan.” He left his family, wife, kids, behind – here…as he lost his home in Baghdad to the sectarian Shias (and I would really like to meet any Shia who is not a sectarian, in vain…). He comes to see his family once every two months or so. He visited us today and this is what he had to tell me , word for word. – In Erbil’s airport and in the streets of this city, I frequently came face to face with Israelis. Kippa, curls and all…There is a direct line from Erbil to Israel but it is all kept secret. The Israelis are everywhere in this city…

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Silence of the media
Dr.Mohammed, Last of Iraqis
All of us; including all the Iraqis are witnessing a terrible secrecy and silence of the media of what is happening in Iraq now…I must say that some aspects have improved and I must say that the militia’s grip had loosened a bit but the real situation on the ground is far from what is said, I don’t want to put it in a form of a conspiracy theory, but at the beginning we lost the credibility and the honesty of the western media then we lost the credibility of the Arab media and now we are losing the Iraqi media’s credibility…there might be thousands of reasons behind this and I tend to believe that targeting journalists are one of the main reasons followed by the pressure of the governments on the media. For an example, yesterday we heard five loud explosions that shook the ground and I started calling different friends in different areas and all of them said that they think it’s so close to their house because it’s so loud…but nothing was mentioned!! And that happens so often…there are still unidentified dead bodies found in Baghdad but most of the well-known channels don’t mention it…it has a range of about 5 dead bodies daily…and if anyone wants to be sure all he have to do is to pass by the forensic medicine building and he would see the shocking number of coffins and people crying their beloved ones…

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Puppet Maliki & Iran.
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
Maliki – the American/Iranian ,puppet, stooge, “prime minister” of Iraq is in Iran, busy signing reconstruction deals….So do you think that Al-Maliki will give guarantees and vows to Iran if he had not cleared it first with the Americans ? Of course not. And do you think that Al-Maliki will pledge security and safety to Iran had he not cleared it with the Israelis via the Kurdish “president” of Iraq, Talabani ? Of course, not…So basically, things are going as planned – An Iranian Shiastan in the Center and the South of the country and a Kurdish Zionistan in the North, all under American “protection”. I still can’t believe what has happened and is happening to Iraq. I truly, honest to God, can’t believe it. I always think this is just a bad dream I will wake up from very soon. And it turns out to be one hell of a long nightmare…

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Iraq’s Maliki says wants stronger ties with Iran
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Saturday that Iraq wanted to strengthen ties with Iran, a news agency reported. Maliki arrived in Tehran on Saturday evening for a three-day visit. Iran is accused by the United States of supporting Shi’ite militias in Iraq. “All groups … in Iraq emphasise strengthening ties with Iran in all fields,” state broadcaster’s Web site IRIB quoted Maliki as saying after a meeting with Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. “We will not allow Iraq to become a place (used) for harming Iran’s … security.” Maliki is scheduled to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday, according to Iranian media, and he last travelled to the Islamic state in August…

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Separatism and Empire Building in the 21st Century
James Petras
…By the 1970’s, the CIA made a turn from promoting the dubious virtues of capitalism and democracy, to linking up with, financing and directing, religious, ethnic and regional elites against national regimes, independent or hostile to US world empire building. The key to US military empire building follows two principles: direct military invasions and fomenting separatist movements, which can lead to military confrontation… Washington’s success in co-opting so-called progressive liberals in support of separatist movements soon to be new imperial clients in recent decades is long and the consequences for human rights are ugly. Most European and US progressives supported the following: 1. US-backed Bosnian fundamentalists, Croatian neo-fascists and Kosova-Albanian terrorists, leading to ethnic cleansing and the conversion of their once sovereign states into US military bases, client regimes and economic basket cases – totally destroying the multinational Yugoslavian welfare state. 2. The US funded and armed overseas Afghan Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed a secular, reformist, gender-equal Afghan regime…3. The US invasion destroyed Iraq’s modern, secular, nationalist state and advanced socio-economic system. During the occupation, US backing of rival religious, tribal, clan and ethnic separatist movements and regimes led to the expulsion of over 90% of its modern scientific and professional class and the killing of over 1 million Iraqis…all in the name of ousting a repr! essive r egime and above all in destroying a state opposed to Israeli oppression of Palestinians…

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Mofaz criticised over Iran threat
BBC
A key defence official has accused one of Israel’s deputy prime ministers of threatening to attack Iran in order to boost his own political standing. On Friday Shaul Mofaz said military strikes to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons looked “unavoidable”. Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said Mr Mofaz was using the issue to position himself to challenge Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s leadership. The broadcaster quoted another senior defence official as saying Mr Mofaz’s interview “did not reflect policy”…

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U.S. soldier killed, 17 wounded in suicide bombing in Kirkuk
Voices of Iraq
U.S. army and Iraqi police said a U.S. service member was killed and 17 more wounded as well as seven Iraqis on Sunday afternoon, when a suicide bomber detonated a car crammed with explosives inside a residential compound near Kirkuk, northern Iraq. “A U.S. soldier was killed and 17 more were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives near their patrol in al-Rashad district, southwest of Kirkuk,” U.S. media adviser Abdellatif Rayan told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI)…

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GAZA IS ABOUT TO BE WIPED OFF THE MAP…….
Desertpeace
…. and not a word about the situation on any major news site today. Has AIPAC got all of them tied up in their pocket? Has it officially come to a point where it is treason to criticise Israel and their genocidal policies? Perhaps Israel timed this precisely to a time when the press is busy elsewhere… the U.S. Presidential election has captured the attention of the world, allowing the criminals to do their dirty deeds unnoticed. Even AlJazeera, the most despised news agency in Israel, has not a word about this impending crisis on their Website.---

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Two patients die due to the Israeli siege on Gaza
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News
The spokesman of the Popular Committee Against the Israeli Siege on Gaza, Rami Abedah, said that two Palestinian patients have died on Saturday due to the ongoing Israeli siege. Abedah identified the two as Lotfi Al Buhiyssi, 57, who had a heart disease and Faten Al Maqwasi, 48 who was suffering from kidney failure. Both had applied to leave Gaza for medical care but the Israeli army rejected their requests. The Israeli army has placed the Palestinian coastal region under total siege in June 2007….

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Video: Gaza’s children suffering from malnutrition- 8 June 08
AlJazeeraEnglish
Gaza’s hospitals are used to treating victims of rocket attacks and gunfire. But now their waiting rooms are increasingly filled with severely malnourished children. Since Israel imposed a blockade on the strip following the Hamas takeover a year ago, families have been struggling to feed their children. Al Jazeera’s Owen Fay reports from Gaza…

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Health ministry of Gaza warns of a health crisis
Rami Almeghari, IMEMC
The Hamas-run ministry warned on Sunday of a health crisis in Gaza due to the continued fuel shortage in the coastal region, a ministry’s statement read. The statement, delivered to press, also read that the ongoing Israeli siege on Gaza has caused widespread complications among many thousands of patients, especially those with chronic diseases. “the Israeli occupation authorities have been preventing shipments of fuel into the Gaza Strip since January of this year”, the statement pointed out….

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Maliki Discusses Reconstruction Plans with Iranian Officials
Fars News
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has arrived in Iran to seek Tehran’s assistance in restoring peace and stability in the country…The Iraqi premier, heading a high ranking delegation, arrived at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran Saturday evening, and was scheduled to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and discuss the latest developments in Iraq, including an agreement between Iraq and the United States to be finalized next month. The Iraqi leader is also expected to reiterate the Iraqi government’s wish for resumption of Iran-US talks over Iraq’s security, which both sides have halted. Tehran has said it would not hold further talks with the current US administration. Al-Maliki will also meet with other Iranian senior officials, including Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Secretary of Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Saeed Jalili to discuss issues of mutual interest, especially security and energy, expansion of all-out ties as well as regional and international issues…

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Report: Abbas informed of Israel’s plan to retake Gaza
Ynet
Al-Quds Al-Arabi quotes Palestinian sources as saying that Abbas called for renewed talks with Hamas in effort to thwart Jerusalem’s plan to launch broad military operation in Strip, gradually transfer control over to Palestinian. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas decided to call for a ‘national and comprehensive dialogue’ with Hamas after being informed of Israel’s plan to launch a wide-scale military operation in Gaza and recapture the coastal enclave, according to a report published Saturday by the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi…

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Israeli military again blocks main access road in South Hebron Hills
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
The Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) stationed in the southern West Bank city of Hebron reported on Friday that the Israeli army blocked the road between At-Tuwani and Yatta, near the city, as a military bulldozer massed a six-foot-high mound spanning the width of the road using concrete slabs, boulders and earth. The CPT reported that this blockade, once again, caused the villagers to be cut off from the main supplies such as water, firewood, and animal feed as this road provides the primary vehicle access to Yatta, which serves as the region’s economic hub, with critical services such as hospitals and secondary schools…

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IRAQ: Demonstration in Jasan Protesting Water Shortage
Gorilla’s Guides
Residents in Jasan an agricultural town in Wasit close to Iran demonstrated to protest the lack of drinking and irrigation water in the district. Most of the residents are considering leaving the district according to one demonstrator. Another demonstrator complained that hundreds of dunums of land were idle and going to waste because they had not been irrigated for a long time…Jasan is about 60 Km east of Kut. It gets water from al-Diboni (50 Km east of Kut) that passes through the farmland and feeds the district’s water installation. Local reports say that the al-Galal river which comes from Iran stopped running through the Iraqi territories, because the Iranians have both dammed and diverted it and that this has exacerbated the water crisis in Jasan. We expect there to be many such reports as the drought in Irak becomes more severe and the resulting humanitarian catasrophe in the south unfolds…

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Gaza Strip Report 985:Belal Al-Shurbasi 21 Assassinated in Israeli Missile Attack
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice
After midnight at approximately 00.20am on Sunday, Belal Al-Shurbasi 21, a young member of Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades was killed when the Israelis launched panzer missiles towards a group of people gathering in the eastern Shujayia in Gaza City, the torn body of Belal is transferred to Al-Shefa hospital. A large number of Israeli panzer’s are surrounding the Shujayia neighborhood from the east.At this moment a big explosion can be heard from the area of the eastern parts of Shujayia, one person is reported to be killed, no information about names or nature of casualties is yet revealed…

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Seeking Africa Military Bases, Kosovo Albaninan Criminality, and Capitalist Price Gouging
William Blum
…Del Ponte reveals how the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted hundreds of Serbs in 1999, and took them to Kosovo’s fellow Muslims in Albania where they were killed, their kidneys and other body parts then removed and sold for transplant in other countries. The KLA for years has been engaging in other equally charming activities, such as heavy trafficking in drugs, trafficking in women, various acts of terrorism, and carrying out ethnic cleansing of Serbs who have had the bad fortune to be in Kosovo because it’s long been their home. Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared at times on the State Department terrorism list; at first because of its tactic of targeting innocent Serb civilians in order to provoke retaliation from Serbian troops; later because Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries, including some tied to al Qaeda, were fighting alongside the KLA, as they were in Bosnia with the Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s Yugoslav civil wars. The KLA remained on the terrorist list until the US decided to make them an ally, in some measure due to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel…On February 17 of this year, in a move of highly questionable international legality, the KLA declared the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. The next day the United States recognized this new “nation”, thus affirming the unilateral declaration of independence of a part of another country’s territory. The n! ew count ry has as its prime minister a gentleman named Hashim Thaci, described in Del Ponte’s book as the brain behind the abductions of Serbs and the sale of their organs….

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Prisoners of Marda
Palestine Monitor
“Prisoners,” says Khaled as we drive through the mountains on our way back to Qarawa. “They are prisoners in their own village.” Khaled is a director for the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) in Salfit. He has been kind enough to take me in to his home while I help with the mobile clinics that operate in the area. On this occasion he is asking me about what I saw earlier in the day. That particular day the mobile clinic went to the small village of Marda in the Salfit district. It was my first day of travel in Palestine and I had no idea what to expect. Before I came to Palestine I had read articles about the crimes perpetrated against Palestinians but my opinion was tempered by the spin of the pro-Israel American media. I was dumbfounded by what I saw and the stories I heard…

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Militarizing Your Cyberspace
Tom Engelhardt & William J. Astore
Be depressed. Be very depressed. You thought that cyberspace — a term conjured up long ago by that neuromancer, sci-fi author William Gibson — was the last frontier of freedom. Well, think again. If the U.S. Air Force has anything to say about it, cyber-freedom will, in the not so distant future, be just another word for domination. Air Force officials, despite a year-long air surge in Iraq, undoubtedly worry that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s “next wars” (two, three, many Afghanistans) won’t have much room for air glory. Recently, looking for new realms to bomb, it launched itself into cyberspace. The Air Force has now set up its own Cyber Command, redefined the Internet as just more “air space” fit for “cyber-craft,” and launched its own Bush-style preemptive strike on the other military services for budgetary control of the same. If that’s not enough for you, it’s now proposing a massive $30 billion cyberspace boondoggle, as retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore writes below, that will, theoretically, provide the Air Force with the ability to fry any computer on Earth….

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Obama for Israel!!
Laila El-Haddad
I know I shouldn’t be surprised or anything, but really…did the transition from clinching the Democratic nomination to all out AIPAC prostitution have to be so stark? Maybe since I am not an American citizen and don’t vote, I’m looking at this from a different perspective (as in, a national of that place you think should remain under siege)…

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Mortar kills 3, wounds 7 at entry to Iraqi Defense Ministry building
Voices of Iraq
At least three people were killed and seven more wounded on Sunday when a mortar round fell near the gateway to Iraqi Defense Ministry building in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, a police source said. “A mortar fell onto the Defense Ministry compound inside the Green Zone, today, killing three persons and wounding seven,” the source, who spoke on anonymity condition, told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI)…

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