Killing of Qaeda leaders 'won't end Iraq attacks'

Al-Qaeda has confirmed the deaths of its top two Iraq commanders in a joint US-Iraqi military raid, a US monitoring group said, days after a wave of apparent revenge attacks killed 58 Iraqis.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, who had direct links with Osama bin Laden, were reported by Iraqi and US officials to have been killed in a shootout on April 18 near Tikrit in central Iraq.

Having noted that voter angst has been riled, propagandized, and fear-mongered to the point at which the most pressing priority for Congress is to 'fix' terrorism, it is perhaps not entirely surprising that we discover - deep down in the archives - that giving the public someone to 'hate' as opposed to something may have been an entire fiction.

Baghdad (AFP) - Washington is considering launching air strikes, possibly within days, to back up Iraqi and Shiite forces battling to recapture Tikrit from the Islamic State jihadist group, US officials said.

Washington (AFP) - US aircraft launched bombing raids to support Iraqi forces fighting to recapture Tikrit from the Islamic State group on Wednesday, after Baghdad issued a request for air power.

Iraqi authorities said on Thursday that the arrest of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Baghdad chief six weeks ago triggered a series of events that culminated in the killing of the jihadist network's top commanders.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the political leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant and the insurgent group's self-styled "minister of war," died on Sunday, according to Iraqi and US officials.

The Al-Qaeda breakaway group that has seized much of northern Syria and huge tracks of neighbouring Iraq formally declared the creation of an Islamic state on Sunday in the territory under its control.

The U.S. and allies began airstrikes on the Iraqi city of Tikrit, supporting Iranian-backed Shiite militias seeking to expel Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham fighters from the area. Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is about 140 kilometres northwest of Baghdad. The U.S. had stayed out of the fight in Tikrit for weeks, saying the Iraqi government hadn’t requested its help until now.