Iraq news of the day.....
Hundreds escape after Iraq prison attacks | |
Security forces try to recapture al-Qaeda members after deadly overnight assault on Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons.
Last Modified: 22 Jul 2013 13:40
     | |
A manhunt is under way for hundreds of inmates, including four high-ranking al-Qaeda members, who escaped two Iraqi prisons following deadly attacks.
Fifty-six people were killed in Sunday's attacks on Taji prison, north of Baghdad, and the Abu Ghraib facility, west of the Iraqi capital.
The dead include 26 members of the security forces and 20 inmates. Ten of the attackers also died.
Gunmen fired mortar rounds at the prisons.
Four car bombs were also detonated near the entrances to the jails, while three suicide bombers attacked Taji prison, a police colonel said. Several roadside bombs also exploded near the prison in Taji.
Fighting continued throughout the night as the military deployed aircraft and sent in reinforcements around the two facilities.
"The number of escaped inmates has reached 500, most of them were convicted senior members of al-Qaeda and had received death sentences," Hakim al-Zamili, a senior member of the security and defence committee in parliament, told Reuters.
Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said that this was the most serious challenge from al-Qaeda the government has faced in years.
"This is a group they thought they had dismantled," our correspondent said.
"There has been surprisingly little public reaction from the government, one would think they would try to reassure their citizens."
'Pursuing terrorists'
The situation was eventually brought under control on Monday morning, according to the colonel.
"The security forces in the Baghdad Operations Command, with the assistance of military aircraft, managed to foil an armed attack launched by unknown gunmen against the... two prisons of Taji and Abu Ghraib," the interior ministry said in a statement late on Sunday night.
"The security forces forced the attackers to flee, and these forces are still pursuing the terrorist forces and exerting full control over the two regions," it said.
The attacks on the prisons came a year after al-Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate announced it would target the justice system.
"The first priority in this is releasing Muslim prisoners everywhere, and chasing and eliminating judges and investigators and their guards," said an audio message attributed to the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in July last year.
Prisons in Iraq are periodically hit by escape attempts, uprisings and other unrest.
Abu Ghraib became notorious after photographs showing Iraqi detainees being humiliated and abused by their US guards were published in 2004. It also served as a torture centre under Saddam Hussein's ousted regime.
Deadly violence also hit security forces in northern Iraq on Monday. A suicide car bomber attacked an army patrol in the city of Mosul, killing 12 people and wounding 16, while a roadside bomb wounded a soldier and a civilian near the city.
Depleted uranium used by US forces blamed for birth defects and cancer in Iraq
The US military’s use of depleted uranium in Iraq has led to a sharp increase in Leukemia and birth defects in the city of Najaf – and panicked residents are fearing for their health. Cancer is now more common than the flu, a local doctor told RT.
The city of Najaf saw one of the most severe military actions during the 2003 invasion. RT traveled to the area, quickly learning that every residential street in several neighborhoods has seen multiple cases of families whose children are ill, as well as families who have lost children, and families who have many relatives suffering from cancer.
Speaking on the rooftop of her house instead of her laboratory, Dr. Sundus Nsaif says the city has seen a “dramatic rise” in cancer and birth defects since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Nsaif said the alternative location was chosen because there is an active push by the government not to talk about the issue, perhaps in an effort not to embarrass coalition forces. “After the start of the Iraq war, rates of cancer, leukemia and birth defects rose dramatically in Najaf. The areas affected by American attacks saw the biggest increases. We believe it’s because of the' illegal' weapons like depleted uranium that were used by the Americans. When you visit the hospital here you see that cancer is more common than the flu," Nsaif told RT's Lucy Kafanov. “The war isn’t over. Yes, the Americans are gone, but we are still suffering from the Consequences," said Leila Jabar, whose three children died because they were born with congenital deformities. She blames radioactive ammunition used by American forces during the war for the health problems of her children. Her only surviving 8-months-old son Ahmed has a nervous system disorder and doctors don't expect him to survive his first birthday.
Dr. Chris Busby has researched the effects of depleted uranium (DU) in detail. He says the only source of uranium in Iraq was used by American-led forces.
“We went to Fallujah and we found the levels of cancer. We looked at the parents of children with congenital malformation and we did analysis of their hair to see what was inside their hair that might be genotoxic, that might be the sort of thing that can cause congenital malformation. The only thing that we found was uranium. We found uranium in the mothers of the children with congenital malformations,” he told RT.
From 2009 onwards, credible media reports from the city of Fallujah, the scene of intense urban warfare in 2004, brought reports of high rates of congenital birth defects to the world’s attention. At least two platforms that utilize DU munitions were employed in ‘Phantom Fury,' the most intense operation since the official end of major combat operations in 2003.
At least 440,000kg of DU were used in Iraq, some ending up as DU dust, and some as corroding penetrators - leaving a still unknown number of sites with contaminated vehicles, buildings and soils, according to a Dutch report.
“The exposure risks to civilians from the use of DU in populated areas have been compounded by the US’s persistent refusal to release the data that could have helped facilitate the effective assessment and clearance work, providing that the Iraqi government had the capacity and finances to undertake it. Taken as a whole, these issues cast serious doubts over the legitimacy of the use of DU,” the Dutch report says.
Aside from DU’s potential impact on physical health, it is highly likely that its use and presence in Iraq has led to heightened fear and anxiety, which in turn may have created a measurable psycho-social impact, the authors of the report note.
Another report, funded by the Norwegian government, recently found that depleted uranium was used against civilian targets in populated areas in Iraq in 2003. It emphasizes a lack of transparency by coalition forces over the use of depleted uranium, but also describes one incident in Najaf where a Bradley armored fighting vehicle fired 305 depleted uranium rounds in a single engagement.
“We know that uranium is genotoxic, that it causes these levels of genetic damage, and because of that it also causes cancer. The only source of uranium was the use by the American-led forces of uranium weapons. Not only depleted uranium weapons, but as we later found out slightly enriched uranium weapons, which we believe they were using in order to cover their tracks. So, I think we have more or less proved that these effects are a result of the use during the two wars of uranium, and the particles that the uranium weapons produced,” Dr. Busby explained.
Depleted uranium weapons are known for the ability to penetrate through walls and tanks. One of its most dangerous “side effects” is that when the substance vaporizes, it generates dust inhaled by individuals.
The Pentagon and the UN estimate that US and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of armor-piercing shells made of depleted uranium during attacks in Iraq in March and April, far more than the [officially] estimated 375 tons used in the 1991 Gulf War, according to a report published in Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2003.
In cities like Basra and Fallujah, where American and British forces used heavy munitions at the start of the war, it is estimated that over half of all babies conceived after the start of the war were born with heart defects. According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology between October 1994 and October 1995, the number of birth defects per 1,000 live births in Al Basrah Maternity Hospital was 1.37. In 2003, the number of birth defects in the same hospital was 23 per 1,000 live births. Within less than a decade, the occurrence of congenital birth defects increased 17-fold.
The international community has voiced concerns over the actual effects of the use of such weapons. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Iraq are expected to publish a report on this in the near future, but so far it has been delayed. According to the WHO, the report will not examine the link between the prevalence of birth defects and use of depleted uranium munitions used during the war and occupation in Iraq.
“Since the issue of associating congenital birth defects with exposure to depleted uranium has not been included in the scope of this particular study, establishing a link between the congenital birth defects prevalence and exposure to depleted uranium would require further research,” the WHO said in a statement.
Meanwhile, people in Najaf struggle to provide the necessary medical support for their children suffering from a wide range of disorders. Some couples are scared to have more children after having several born with birth defects.
For more on this, watch Lucy Kafanov’s exclusive report.
Pakistan.....
http://rt.com/news/drone-strikes-pakistan-civilian-casualties-431/
Leaked internal data produced by Pakistani officials documenting drone strikes on the ground reveal a high civilian death toll, countering US claims that the targeted assassination campaign results in “exceedingly rare” fatalities.
A 12-page report, titled ‘Details of Attacks by NATO Forces/Predators in FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas)’ describes 75 CIA drone attacks between 2006 and 2009, with death tolls compiled by officials in the turbulent border regions for internal use by the government. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism – a UK news website – says it obtained three identical copies of the classified document from various sources in Pakistan.
The numbers show a death toll of 746 people, 147 of whom were confirmed as civilians. Of those civilian deaths, 94 are children. Statistically, it means at least one in five victims of US precision strikes was a civilian, and more than 12 per cent were minors.
“There was no benefit in officials ‘cooking the books’ here, since this document was clearly never intended to be seen outside the civilian administration,” said Rauf Khan Khattak, who recently served as Pakistan’s interim finance minister.
The US President and the CIA do not have to disclose details of what is officially considered a classified program to Senate or to the public, so official American estimates have never been released. CIA Director John Brennan, considered to be the architect of the drone program, has said that “we only authorize a strike if we have a high degree of confidence that innocent civilians will not be injured or killed, except in the rarest of circumstances,” and that collateral deaths themselves are “exceedingly rare.” And an internal incomplete official report leaked earlier this year – covering a later period – showed that the CIA thought that only one out of every 482 people it killed was a civilian.
But the Pakistani numbers tally much closer with those provided by outside sources. The bipartisan New American Foundation estimates that at least 12 per cent of drone strike victims are definitely civilians, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism itself claims the number could be as high as 25 per cent.
Rauf Khan Khattak, a long-time opponent of foreign drone strikes, believes the newest figures could be the most reliable obtained so far.
“What you end up with in these reports is reasonably accurate, because it comes from on-the-ground sources cultivated over many years. And the political agent is only interested in properly understanding what actually happened,” he told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
But others have urged for these documents to be taken into consideration only when compared against other sources. For example, following Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, only three civilian death incidents are recorded through the year up until late October, when the data ends – even though media reports from the same time indicate that civilians and children had died in attacks included in the FATA document.
* * *
Syria ....... Brits ready to cut and run ?
British PM: Syrian Civil War StalematedToo Much Extremism in Rebels to Send Arms
by Jason Ditz, July 21, 2013
British Prime Minister David Cameron reaffirmed his decision not to arm Syria’s rebels today, saying there is “too much extremism” among the rebel leadership to risk sending arms there.
 Cameron went on to describe the civil war as “stalemated,”urging an international solution to end the fighting and resolve the conflict, while lamenting what he called a “depressing” situation in Syria.
Cameron condemned Assad as an “evil man” but warned that the rebels were also committing atrocities and that Britain should have nothing to do with the bulk of them.
The shift is significant because Cameron loudly applauded the rebels in previous months and led the charge to arm them, eventually forcing the EU to drop an arms embargo that covered both sides of the war. In the end, the argument against arming al-Qaeda-linked rebels proved too persuasive, and convinced Cameron that it’s a war best avoided.
Egypt........
Gaza Beach Hotel: Muslim Brotherhood uprising command post
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report Jul 22, 2013, 6:40 PM (IDT)
Six Muslim Brotherhood officials have escaped from Egypt and arrived in the Gaza Strip to lead the movement’s uprising against the military, DEBKAfilediscloses exclusively. Headed by Mahmud Izzat Ibrahim, a Supreme Guide deputy known as the MB’s ‘iron man,” the group has set up a command post at the Gaza Beach Hotel and is working in close conjunction with Hamas and armed Al Qaeda-linked Salafist Bedouin in Sinai. The Egyptian army may be planning to raid the hotel and bring the MB escapees to trial in Cairo.
More> |
No comments:
Post a Comment