Friday, April 06, 2007
INM daily summary – 6 April 2007
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- A truck bomb exploded in the volatile Iraqi city of Ramadi on Friday, killing at least 15 people and releasing chlorine gas into the air, police and security sources said.
- Iraqi and U.S. troops on Friday moved into the southern city of Diwaniya, a stronghold of Shi'ite militia loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in an operation to curb the militia's increasing influence.
- The next Iraq Compact meeting will be held in early May according to Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.
- Nearly 20 Iraqi, British, and U.S. soldiers were killed in attacks across Iraq in the past 24 hours.
- Muslim Scholars Association Secretary-General Sheikh Harith al-Dari on April 3, criticized the Baghdad security plan, saying it unfairly targets Iraqi civilians.
- The Basra police commander on Friday said the roadside bomb used in an attack that killed four British soldiers was likely an Iranian-designed explosively formed projectile (EFP).
- Muqtada al-Sadr has asked the prime minister to suspend two Cabinet ministers from his bloc because they backed a plan that likely will turn the oil-rich city of Kirkuk over to Kurdish control.
- The U.S. military issued a statement Friday clarifying that there were no Iranians in an International Committee of the Red Cross team who had visited five Iranians in American detention after they were arrested three months ago in Irbil.
- Robert Gates, the United States defence secretary, has said that the US has no plans to release five Iranians who were captured in Iraq and accused of supporting anti-government fighters there.
- The government is burying en mass hundreds of bodies of victims of violence which have been lying in Baghdad morgue for several months.
- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accepted the resignation of Justice Minister Hashim al-Shibli and assigned Minister of State for National Assembly Safa al-Din al-Safi to take over his tasks.
- About 200 prominent Iraqi Sunni scholars ended a two-day annual meeting in Amman by backing 'resistance' as one of the legitimate means that should be adopted for ending the US-led occupation of Iraq.
- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has ordered that senior officers of Saddam Hussein military receive pensions and requested that lower-ranking soldiers be allowed to serve again.
- VoEx International signs $200 million joint venture contract with Kalimat Telecom for Iraq's first national CDMA WLL network.
