Iraq’s prime minister said Friday he would submit his resignation to parliament, a day after more than 40 people were killed by security forces and following calls by Iraq’s top Shiite cleric for lawmakers to withdraw support.
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The move by Adel Abdul-Mahdi 13 months after he took over as prime minister triggered celebrations by anti-government protesters who have been camped out in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square for nearly two months. Young men and women broke out in song and dance as news of his imminent resignation reached the square, the capital’s largest.

In a statement, Abdul-Mahdi said he had “listened with great concern” to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s sermon and made his decision in response to his call and in order to “facilitate and hasten its fulfillment as soon as possible.”

“I will submit to parliament an official memorandum resigning from the current prime ministry so that the parliament can review its choices,” he said. Abdul-Mahdi was appointed prime minister just over a year ago as a consensus candidate between political blocs.

A range of different security forces descended on protesters in the Iraqi city of Nasiriyah overnight, killing at least 25 people and injuring scores more by this morning, Amnesty International confirmed after interviewing eyewitnesses and verifying a dozen videos and images from the scene.

The organization urged Iraqi authorities to rein in security forces, amid reports of ongoing use of live ammunition against protesters in Nasiriyah on Thursday afternoon.

Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps verified footage showing troops charging as they fired at protesters from what sound like automatic weapons near the city’s al-Zaitoon bridge. Multiple other verified videos show protesters running from gunfire, or screaming in fear or anguish, and tending to those killed or wounded in the violence.

“The scenes from Nasiriyah this morning more closely resemble a warzone than city streets and bridges. This brutal onslaught is just the latest in a long series of deadly events where Iraqi security forces meted out appalling violence against largely peaceful protesters,” said Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director at Amnesty International.

Iraq’s defense minister is under investigation for crimes against humanity and for claiming Swedish social benefits while he was living in Iraq.

​Sweden has opened three investigations into Iraq’s defense minister, including looking into the possible commission of crimes against humanity.

The defense minister, Najah al-Shammari, a major general who was an officer under Saddam Hussein, holds dual citizenship in Iraq and Sweden, and the other investigations involve possible benefits fraud in Sweden and the breaking of Sweden’s registration laws, which require people to register where they live.

“The accusations leveled at him are serious, and now the Swedish authorities are trying to bring clarity to them,” said Annika Soder, Sweden’s state secretary for foreign affairs.
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Mr. al-Shammari, 52, who has been serving in his current job since June, denied the allegations in a statement released earlier this week.

More than a decade and a half after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a new study found that babies are being born today with gruesome birth defects connected to the ongoing American military presence there.

​The report, issued by a team of independent medical researchers and published in the journal Environmental Pollution, examined congenital anomalies recorded in Iraqi babies born near Tallil Air Base, a base operated by the U.S.-led foreign military coalition. According to the study, babies showing severe birth defects — including neurological problems, congenital heart disease, and paralyzed or missing limbs — also had corresponding elevated levels of a radioactive compound known as thorium in their bodies.

“Doctors are regularly encountering anomalies in babies that are so gruesome they cannot even find precedents for them.”“We collected hair samples, deciduous (baby) teeth, and bone marrow from subjects living in proximity to the base,” said Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the study’s lead researchers.

“In all three tissues we see the same trend: higher levels of thorium.” Savabieasfahani, who has authored studies on the radioactive footprint of the U.S. military presence in Iraq for years, says that the new findings contribute to a growing body of evidence about the serious long-term health impact of U.S. military operations on Iraqi civilians. “The closer that you live to a U.S. military base in Iraq,” she said, “the higher the thorium in your body and the more likely you are to suffer serious congenital deformities and birth defects.”

With ongoing protests making other investors nervous, Moscow is charging ahead.

Despite ongoing protests in Baghdad, which have seen the departure of many foreign diplomats for security concerns, Russia has doubled down. Not only has its embassy stayed open in the recent weeks of turmoil, but its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, also paid a visit last month, first touring Baghdad and then Erbil.

His tour did not look like a regular diplomatic mission. There were no official agreements signed; politics, Syria, and terrorism seemed like an afterthought; and diplomats were in the minority during the week’s events. In fact, the majority of the participants were businesspeople, including representatives of such Russian oil and gas companies as Gazprom Neft, Rosneft, Soyuzneftegaz, and Lukoil.

Also in attendance were representatives of Technopromexport, a Russian company that builds energy facilities, and from Russia’s Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation. “Only bilateral trade relations were discussed on the meetings,” one source with ties to the Iraqi prime minister who requested anonymity told us this month. “Russians wanted to make sure everything is going smoothly regarding Russian energy companies’ projects in Iraq.” Another source with links to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which is headquartered in Erbil, concurred.

East Baghdad, January 25, 2007. Newly minted 1st Lieutenant Danny Sjursen, all of 23-years-old, led his scout platoon – the “Ghost Riders” – on yet another meaningless presence patrol in an increasingly aimless war, at about 9:00pm local time in the Al Amin neighborhood of Shia-majority East Baghdad.

We were no longer allowed to call them “presence patrols,” of course. From now on, each patrol had to – imagine that! – have a specific mission, a purpose, something, you know, worth dying for. The army, mind you, is traditionally masterful at bending language to its tactically fashionable whims. So, while the nomenclature changed, the nature of the actual patrols themselves remained remarkably consistent. From the perspective of my young privates and sergeants – laying their lives on the line for some $30,000 annually – nothing changed…not a lick.

I hadn’t wanted to roll out my platoon that night, and had told my obtuse captain so in no uncertain terms. He was, unsurprisingly I’d found, just another mediocre careerist, a “company man,” and could hardly spell Iraq. In that sense, he had much in common with our shared commander-in-chief, George W. Bush (the lesser), who’d reportedly been unaware of the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims just two months prior to America’s ill-fated invasion.

​My hesitancy that night stemmed from basic logic, not some (as of yet) advanced knowledge of Iraq or the Arab World. It was simple. The U.S. military kept civilian foot traffic, and more importantly, vehicles, off the roads in Baghdad after dark. Which meant, in my part of town, that the vaguely Iranian-backed Shia militiamen could emplace their new, advanced explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) – a lethal form of IED, then the bane of our existence – replete with a passive infrared (PIR) detonation triggers all over their end of the city without fear of causing civilian casualties.

The UK government and armed forces have been accused of covering up the killing of civilians by British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

An investigation by BBC Panorama and the Sunday Times has spoken to 11 British detectives who said they found credible evidence of war crimes.

Soldiers should have been prosecuted for the killings, say insiders.
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The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it rejected the unsubstantiated allegation of a pattern of cover-ups.

Waves of violent protests have engulfed Baghdad and Iraq’s southern provinces, with demonstrators chanting for the downfall of a political establishment that they say doesn’t prioritize them.

Fueling the unrest is anger over an economy flush with oil money that has failed to bring jobs or improvements to the lives of young people, who are the majority of those taking to the streets. They say they have had enough of blatant government corruption and subpar basic services.
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At least 320 people have died, and thousands have been wounded since the unrest began on Oct. 1.

​“We are jobless and poor, but every day we see the flares of the oil fields,” said Huda, an activist in Basra, the province that accounts for the lion’s share of Iraq’s crude exports. She spoke on condition she be identified only by her first name for security reasons.

Fire Teargas, Live Ammunition; Destroy Medical Tents

​Iraqi security forces have attacked medical workers for treating protesters since protests began on October 25, 2019, firing on medical workers, tents, and ambulances with teargas and live ammunition, Human Rights Watch said today. The attacks have left at least one medic dead.

“Medics have become another victim of the state’s excessive force,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “These attacks show an utter disregard for the overriding need to ensure medical workers can do their essential job.”

A Baghdad doctor told Human Rights Watch that he has seen security forces in Tahrir Square and on three Baghdad bridges fire teargas cartridges at ambulances at least five times since October 25. On October 25, they fired live ammunition that struck an ambulance, he said.

A medic working in Tahrir Square said that on October 25, at around 6:15 p.m., he was in the back of an ambulance with the doors open facing Jumhuriya Bridge, where security forces were firing teargas cartridges in the direction of the ambulance. The ambulance he was in was parked away from protesters when a teargas cartridge struck him: “Something hit my chest, it was heavy, but I could not see what it was because the ambulance filled up with smoke. Everyone in the ambulance started having a hard time breathing.”

Iraq’s Allies Should Condemn Lethal Crackdown by Security Forces

​Today the UN Human Rights Council will hold a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session to examine Iraq’s human rights records. The rash of killings of protestors by Iraqi security forces over the past month should at the front of diplomats’ minds as they shape their recommendations.

At least 147 protesters were killed by security forces in protests in Baghdad and Iraq’s southern cities in early October; more than 100 have been killed in a second wave since October 25.

In the second wave, Baghdad security forces have fired teargas cartridges not just to disperse crowds, but in some cases directly at protesters, a brutal form of lethal force. The UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) documented 16 protesters killed by teargas cartridges striking their heads or chests. Amnesty International has identified that some of the teargas cartridges Iraqi forces are using to kill protesters were made in Iran.