Anti-terror chief among seven killed in Iraq blasts

Co-ordinated early-morning bombings on Thursday at the homes of four police officers in the western Iraqi town of Heet killed seven people, including the town's anti-terror chief, police said."At 3:00 am, men planted bombs around the bedrooms of four houses belonging to members of the police force, including Major Walid al-Heeti, the head of Heet's anti-terror department," said Lieutenant Colonel Fadhil Nimrawi, the head of the town's emergency response unit.

Baghdad (AFP) - The Islamic State group launched a major attack on the Iraqi city of Ramadi Friday, attempting to seize one of the last urban pockets under government control in troubled Anbar province.

BAGHDAD — The U.S. conducted a series of airstrikes targeting ISIS leaders near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, U.S. military officials said Saturday. The airstrikes on Friday night destroyed a convoy of 10 armed trucks believed to be carrying some ISIS leaders, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe military operations.

The war in Iraq cost the lives of 4,489 Americans, with another 51,778 wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed or injured. We wasted over a trillion dollars in the process.Why? To remove Saddam Hussein.Hussein was a brutal dictator, but that battle clearly was not our. And at least under Hussein, religious freedom existed. It doesn't now. Chaldean Catholics are targeted and killed simply because they are Catholic.There were no Al Qaeda forces in Iraq either. Hussein, a secular dictator, had no use for them.

BAGHDAD — Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) extremists lined up and shot dead at least 50 tribesmen and women in Iraq’s Anbar province, officials said Saturday, the latest mass killing committed by the group. The shooting happened late Friday in the village of Ras al-Maa, north of the provincial capital of Ramadi, Anbar councilman Faleh al-Issawi said. Militants accused the men and women of the Al Bu Nimr tribe of retaliating against them after being displaced from their homes when the group seized the Anbar town of Hit last month, al-Issawi said.

By Suadad al-SalhyBAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sunni insurgents clashed with troops and briefly occupied a town in northern Iraq on Friday night, the latest development in an escalating turf war with the Shi'ite-led government that has killed at least 21 people in the past two days, police said.Dozens of militants in SUVs drove into the small town of al-Sainiyah near Baiji, some 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, after bombing the local police headquarters and fought troops for several hours overnight, witnesses said on Saturday.

Kirkuk (Iraq) (AFP) - Iraqi forces broke a months-long siege by jihadist fighters of the country's largest oil refinery Saturday as the top US officer flew in to discuss the expanded war against the Islamic State group.

Sunni militants have seized another town in Iraq’s western Anbar province, the fourth to fall in two days, officials said Sunday, in what is shaping up to be a major offensive in one of Iraq’s most restive regions. Iran’s supreme leader meanwhile came out forcefully against any U.S. intervention in Iraq, accusing Washington of fomenting the unrest and appearing to quash recent speculation that the two rivals might co-operate in addressing the shared threat posed by the advance of Islamic extremists.