Suicide bomber kills 12 at Sunni funeral in Iraq

September 23, 2013

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Baghdad, Sep 23: A suicide bomber struck a Sunni funeral in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 12 people, Iraqi officials said, a day after blasts targeting Shia mourners killed more than 70.

Major attacks have alternatively hit Sunnis, Shias, and then Sunnis again over the past three days.

Iraq was ravaged by bloody Sunni-Shia violence that peaked in 2006-2007 and killed thousands of people, and there are persistent fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict.

The suicide bombing in the Dura area of south Baghdad hit a funeral tent for a Sunni man who had been shot dead three days before, and also wounded 46 people.

On Saturday, two bombings targeted people mourning a tribal sheikh in Sadr City, a Shia district of north Baghdad, killing at least 73 and wounding more than 200.

And on Friday, two bombs exploded in a Sunni mosque near Samarra, north of Baghdad, killing 18 and wounding 21.

The United Nations had warned against revenge attacks for the Sadr City bombings.

“Retaliation can only bring more violence and it is the responsibility of all leaders to take strong action not to let violence escalate further,” Gyorgy Busztin, the UN chief’s deputy special representative for Iraq, said in a statement.

“Attacks like these are perpetrated by a small minority of terrorists who wish to destabilise Iraq,” the British embassy said of the Sadr City blasts.

It called on “all political, religious and community leaders to unite against those who perpetrate these crimes”.

Mourners placed coffins containing the bodies of victims of the Sadr City bombings atop vehicles for transport to Najaf on Sunday for burial near the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.

A bare metal frame was all that remained of a large funeral tent at the scene of the explosions. Debris including broken plastic furniture and bottles of water distributed to mourners littered the ground.

Eighteen more people died in other violence on Saturday, including 11 members of the security forces, and four people shot dead at a Baghdad alcohol shop.

It was the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, which calls for a “complete global cessation of hostilities for one day”.

In other violence on Sunday, attacks in Nineveh province in Iraq’s north killed two police and a soldier and wounded seven people.

And in the northern city of Kirkuk, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle near the home of a Christian MP, wounding 47 people including three of the lawmaker’s children.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level this year not seen since 2008, a surge in unrest that authorities have so far failed to stem.

With the latest violence, more than 580 people have been killed this month and over 4,400 since the beginning of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.

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News Network
October 29,2024

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At least 60 people, including children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on several areas in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, the Lebanese Health Ministry says.

The ministry said at least 58 people were also wounded in the attacks on 12 areas in the Bekaa Valley on Monday.

Of the 60 killed, at least 16 deaths were recorded in al-Alaq, west of Baalbek city, the ministry added.

The casualty figures were preliminary and are expected to rise as rescue efforts were still ongoing, according to to the ministry.

Baalbek governor Bachir Khodr denounced the attacks on the area as the "most violent" since the start of the Israeli aggression.

Israel has been targeting Lebanon since October 2023, when it launched a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Hezbollah has been responding to the aggression with numerous retaliatory operations, including one with a hypersonic ballistic missile, targeting the occupied Palestinian territories.

Since late September, Israel has escalated its strikes against Hezbollah, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and a number of its senior figures.

At least 2,710 people have been killed by Israeli fire, and 12,592 others wounded since the clashes began last year, the health ministry says.

The Lebanese resistance movement has vowed to keep up its operations against Israel as long as the Israeli regime continues its Gaza war, which has so far killed at least 43,020 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

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October 27,2024

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The death toll from the overnight Israeli aggression against a number of military positions across Iran has risen to four.

Earlier the Iranian Army had announced the martyrdom of two of its forces in the Israeli attack, who lost their lives “while confronting the projectiles of the criminal Zionist regime in order to safeguard the security of Iran and prevent harm to the Iranian nation and interests.”

Media reports identified the two martyred Army forces as Major Hamzeh Jahandideh and Sergeant Mohammad-Mehdi Shahrokhifar.

Major Sajjad Mansouri and Sergeant Mehdi Naghavi, who had been injured in line of duty, also succumbed to their injuries, reports said.  

The strikes targeted parts of military sites in the capital Tehran as well as the western and southwestern provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan, with Iran’s air defense saying the attacks were “successfully intercepted and countered.”

The attacks caused “limited damage” in some locations and the dimensions of the incident are under investigation.

Despite Israeli media reports overplaying the Israeli attack by circulating fake images, the Iranian public returned to their routines and daily life continued smoothly across the country.

Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization announced that flights had resumed after a short interruption and footage from Mehrabad Airport in western Tehran showed operations running normally, with passengers moving through as usual.

The Tehran Oil Refining Company also dismissed rumors of an Israeli attack on its facilities.

On October 1, Iran responded to the Israeli assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and senior IRGC commander Abbas Nilforoushan by launching as many as 200 ballistic missiles toward the occupying regime’s military and intelligence bases all over the occupied Palestinian territories.

Dubbed Operation True Promise II, the retaliatory strike dealt a severe blow to the illegal regime all the more ruinous than its prequel in April, with Tel Aviv having so far declined to reveal the extent of loss it suffered despite vowing to respond on several occasions.

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News Network
October 21,2024

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The UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories has described Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip as “the collective shame of the century” amid the failure of the international community to protect Palestinians’ rights.

Francesca Albanese made the remarks in an X post on Sunday, as more than a year of the Israeli onslaught has flattened Gaza, killed tens of thousands of innocent people, and displaced almost the entire population in the besieged territory, often multiple times.

“In Gaza, the collective shame of the century continues unabated and unstopped, in defiance of every norm of international law and morale,” she said.

“The Palestinians, exhausted by relentless attacks on their bodies and souls are abandoned to their tormentors.”

Albanese also noted that “summary executions, mass forced displacements, and other egregious abuses” that are being perpetrated by the occupation forces against Palestinians in Gaza are all “a disgraceful testament to our global failure to protect basic human rights.”

“The United Nations, once a believed beacon of hope and a force for peace, are crumbling under the weight of this shame - and the pressure of the inaction or complicity of its most powerful member states,” she emphasized.

Israel unleashed its brutal Gaza offensive on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Tel Aviv regime has so far killed at least 42,603 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 99,795 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In a violation of international law, Israel has issued mass evacuation orders in Gaza and deliberately targeted schools and hospitals, used as shelters by displaced Palestinians.

The US and its allies, which have been supporting Israel, have prevented the UN from putting an end to the brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip despite an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe there.

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