Thursday, April 12, 2007
INM daily summary – 12 April 2007
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- A suicide bomber driving a truck has blown himself up on the on al-Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and injuring 26 others according to hospital officials.
- The Pentagon has said that US soldiers will serve up to 15 months in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of one year, showing more signs of the strain the wars have taken on the military.
- Iranian state television has shown officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross examining an Iranian diplomat who has accused the CIA of torturing him while he was detained in Iraq.
- Fighting in the southern city of Diwaniya has forced hundreds of families to flee their homes.
- In parts of Baghdad the Islamic State of Iraq has imposed extremist laws on citizens.
- British forces have hit back at Iraqi insurgents who killed six colleagues last week, by launching an operation in which they shot dead more than 20 gunmen of Basra's rogue militias.
- Experts specialised in the oil sector and academics confirmed, at a symposium held in the city of Amarah in Southern Iraq, that the bill of oil and gas which is currently being discussed by the Parliament for approval “needs a review and adjustments” that are considered “essential”.
- Chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell Company said on Thursday that the oil company will invest in Iraq only if they are fully confident of the legal framework that governs the oil and gas projects.
- The Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Shahrastani invited Korean and Japanese companies to engage in a dialogue with the South Oil Company to develop the currently discovered fields in the southern region within the ministry's plan to develop and increase production rates in these fields.
- The Iraqi Accord Front may withdraw from the political process.
- A bomb rocked a cafeteria inside Iraq's parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing a Sunni and a Shia lawmaker and wounding many people, a parliament official said.
- A spokesman for the Iraq Islamic Army said in an interview with al-Jazeera television Wednesday that his group was willing to negotiate with the United States if the power withdraws from the country.
- Nearly two months into a Baghdad security plan intended to calm the Iraqi capital by protecting residents from sectarian violence; Shiite Muslim militia members are still driving Sunni Muslims from religiously mixed neighborhoods.
