2011年6月26日星期日

US military deaths in Iraq war at 4,463 (AP)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

As of Tuesday, June 21, 2011, at least 4,463 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action.

At least 3,515 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is four fewer than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Monday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 32,120 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department's weekly tally.

___

The latest identifications reported by the military:

_Spc. Marcos A. Cintron, 32, of Orlando, Fla.; died June 16 at a medical facility in Boston, Mass., of wounds suffered June 6 at Baghdad, Iraq, when insurgents attacked his unit with indirect fire; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan.

_Two soldiers died June 13 in Wasit province, Iraq, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device; they were assigned to the 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas; killed were Staff Sgt. Nicholas P. Bellard, 26, of El Paso, Texas; and Sgt. Glenn M. Sewell, 23, of Live Oak, Texas.

___

Online: http://www.defense.gov/news/


View the original article here

Blasts rip through western Baghdad, killing 40 (AP)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

BAGHDAD – Four bombs ripped through Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad Thursday evening, killing at least 40 people in the worst violence the capital has seen in months, Iraqi officials said. An American civilian aid specialist working to improve education in Iraq was killed in a separate attack.

The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security gains in Iraq at a time when American forces are preparing to withdraw by the end of this year and the challenges facing the State Department personnel and American contractors who would continue on after the U.S. military is gone.

The first three bombs went off in quick succession in a southwestern Baghdad neighborhood shortly after 7 p.m. One targeted a Shiite mosque, another exploded just outside a popular market, while the third went off inside the market where people were doing their evening shopping ahead of the Muslim weekend, Iraqi police officials said.

The officials said 34 people died and 82 others were injured in the three blasts. An official from Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital confirmed the casualty figures.

An Iraqi resident, Jabir Ali, said he was about 200 yards (meters) away when one of the bombs went off near a barber shop where his cousin works.

"I saw many people killed and injured. I went to see my cousin. The glass at his shop was broken and he was injured in his head, chest and hand by the glass," said Ali, who drove his cousin to the hospital.

About an hour later, a parked car bomb targeting a police patrol killed six people, including one policeman and five bystanders in a different neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad, said hospital officials.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Sunni extremists such as al-Qaida in Iraq generally tend to target Shiite mosques and neighborhoods and Iraqi security forces.

It was the worst attack in the capital since a parked car bomb exploded near a mourning tent in a northern Baghdad neighborhood in January, killing 48 people.

The American civilian killed earlier Thursday was Dr. Stephen Everhart, said a U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland.

"Dr. Everhart was an American citizen who was working in Iraq for an implementing partner of the United States Agency for International Development's Mission in Iraq. He was killed while working on a project to introduce a new business curriculum to a Baghdad university in a program supported by the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education," she said in a statement.

"We are saddened by this tragedy and extend our thoughts and prayers to Dr. Everhart's family and loved ones, and to the three other injured victims and their families," she said.

Everhart worked at the American University in Cairo, where he was associate dean of the Business School and a finance professor. Before joining AUC, he worked extensively with the World Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. government agency designed to help businesses break into developing markets.

He also wrote articles on topics like international aid, corruption and financial markets.

Officials at Georgia State University said Everhart listed San Antonio, Texas, as his hometown on his registration paperwork. Everhart got both his master's and doctorate in economics at Georgia State in Atlanta.

Mary Beth Walker, dean of the School of Policy Studies, said Everhart met his wife, Stephanie, while in graduate school there. She described him as a "hard worker" with a good sense of humor.

Walker said Everhart had contact with Georgia State faculty members in the last two weeks about his work in Iraq and said he was planning to move to Vietnam soon to work at a university there.

The State Department gave no information about how he was killed, but an Iraqi police official said the American contractors were visiting a satellite office of Mustansiriyah University in eastern Baghdad when they were hit by a roadside bomb.

It was not known whether the assailants knew Americans were in the convoy or not. It is extremely rare for an American working so closely with the State Department to be killed.

Shiite militias who operate in the nearby neighborhood of Sadr City have stepped up attacks against the U.S. military in recent months and threatened violence against other American targets. Nine American soldiers have been killed in Iraq so far this month, one of the highest death tolls in two years.

The U.S. military has also accused Shiite militias of lobbing mortars and rockets at the U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone.

Shiite militias are trying to claim they are driving the U.S. military from Iraq and make the U.S. think twice before agreeing to have U.S. troops stay in the country past the Dec. 31 date by which they're slated to go home.

The attack against Everhart and the other contractors could have serious repercussions for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the ability to conduct operations in the country. Already, U.S. Embassy staff and contractors working with agencies such as USAID generally travel in armored vehicles with guards and sometimes with U.S. military assistance.

Earlier this week, a convoy carrying French Embassy staff was targeted by a roadside bomb in the Karradah neighborhood. No one was killed in that incident.

__

Associated Press writer Saad Abdul-Kadir in Baghdad and Dorie Turner in Atlanta contributed to this report.


View the original article here

Iraq blasts kill at least 23, scores wounded (Reuters)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Three bombs exploded near a busy street market and a religious site in a mainly Shi'ite area of southwestern Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and wounding scores of others, security sources said.

A parked car bomb exploded a short time later in the Iraqi's capital's southern Abu Dsheer district, killing two people and wounding 10.

Iraq's police and army have ramped up security in the run-up to a major Shi'ite religious occasion that climaxes next week.

The first explosions occurred in quick succession in the al-Shurta al-Rabaa district of Baghdad, and one of the blasts struck near a Husseiniya, a place of worship for Shi'ites.

An Interior Ministry source put the toll at 23 dead and 107 wounded, but sources at three local hospitals said a total of 35 people had been killed, with another 80 wounded.

"I was on my way to the market when the first bomb blew up, said Sijad, a teenager who lives in the area. "People ran to see what was going on and the second one blew up. Suddenly there were bodies everywhere around me, most of them women and children, and their things were scattered everywhere."

Iraqi security forces are on high alert in Baghdad, where Shi'ites, Iraq's majority community, have already started trekking through the streets for an annual pilgrimage to commemorate the death of Shi'ite holy man Imam Moussa al-Kadhim.

Shi'ite pilgrims have been frequent targets of a stubborn Sunni Islamist insurgency in recent years. Shi'ite religious rites were banned under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

A series of attacks during the pilgrimage last year killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds. In 2005, rumours of a bombing on the Bridge of the Imams near the Imam Kadhim shrine in Baghdad touched off a stampede that killed 1,000 people.

An Interior Ministry source said the bombers struck at the street market's busiest hour, employing wooden carts usually used for merchandise to transport their explosives.

Ali al-Haidari, who suffered a shrapnel wound in his back, said he tried to rescue two children at the scene.

"There was a big explosion. Dust was everywhere. I was running to the place of the explosion and then (when I was) a few yards away, the second explosion happened," he said. "I didn't feel that I was wounded until I reached the hospital."

"Bodies were everywhere. I carried two children in my arms. One of them was dead and the other one, a girl, was seriously wounded."

Violence has dropped since sectarian slaughter peaked in 2006-07 but Sunni insurgents linked to al Qaeda and rival Shi'ite militias still carry out bombings and other attacks.

Insurgents have targeted Iraqi security forces in recent weeks. Four people were killed and nearly three dozen were wounded on Wednesday in a series of attacks on police in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul.

(Additional reporting by Reuters Television; writing by Jim Loney; editing by Alistair Lyon)


View the original article here

Iraq probes missing $17B reconstruction funds (AP)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

BAGHDAD – Iraqi lawmakers say they are trying to figure out what happened to about $17 billion that was supposed to be used for reconstruction.

Iraq's parliament speaker is to meet Wednesday in Washington with Vice President Joe Biden to discuss several issues, including the missing Iraqi money administered by the U.S.

Bahaa al-Araji, the head of parliament's integrity committee, said Iraqi auditors and general inspectors have been investigating how the money was spent and found huge irregularities.

Iraq's new figure for the unaccounted funds is much higher than the $8.7 billion mentioned in a report last year by the U.S. watchdog for reconstruction spending.

The money had come from Iraqi oil sales and frozen Saddam Hussein-era assets.


View the original article here

Fuel theft hits Iraq power grid: inspector (AFP)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

BAGHDAD (AFP) – Large volumes of diesel fuel destined for Iraq's power stations are stolen each month by transportation contractors in cahoots with electricity ministry officials, an inspector said on Thursday.

Such theft is exacerbating life in Iraq where ordinary citizens receive no more than six hours of state-supplied electricity a day in winter and fewer than four hours in the summer.

Those who can afford it get added supplies from private generators.

"Very large volumes of the fuel sent by tankers to power stations never make it to their destinations and disappear en route," said Alaa Mohieddin, an inspector general at the electricity ministry.

"The theft leads to shortages of about 300 to 400 megawatts of electricity per day," he told AFP.

Mohieddin said that according to a continuing year-long investigation, the theft was being carried out by several senior electricity ministry officials working together with contractors running the transportation network.

"We are still trying to figure out the scale of the theft and exact volumes involved, but this is very big theft," he said.

The official cited one example where 120 tankers carrying fuel in the north from the Baiji refinery to the city of Samarra had been diverted, and the fuel stolen.

In another case the same month, inspectors had found that fuel from 260 tankers had gone missing en route in Baghdad.

"We tried to put a strict inspection process in place to control the theft, but faced harassment from groups inside the electricity ministry and from contractors," Mohieddin said.

Meanwhile, electricity ministry spokesman Musa al-Mudares said that four million litres of the fuel for power stations is supplied by the oil ministry, and three million litres by Iran and private companies.

He added that Iraq had signed a contract with Iran to buy 1.5 million litres of diesel a day.

"We signed the contract yesterday (Wednesday) with the Iranian oil ministry to provide 1.5 million litres of diesel per day, but the Iranians had already begun providing us with the fuel about two weeks ago," he said.

Mudares added that the fuel, which would generate 250 megawatts of electricity per day, would run the Sadr power station in northern Baghdad.

Iraq's total electricity needs are 12,500 megawatts per day, but production is currently at 6,000 megawatts, with another 1,000 megawatts supplied together by Iran and Syria.

Iraq's entire electricity network -- from generation plants to hub stations and transmission lines -- took a beating under the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, the 1991 Gulf War, more than a decade of UN sanctions that followed, and finally by the US invasion in 2003 and subsequent insurgent attacks.

Angry Iraqis staged violent demonstrations last summer in several southern cities over power rationing as temperatures reached 54 degrees Celsius (130 degrees Fahrenheit) and air conditioners sat idle.

Poor public services, official corruption and government inefficiency have also been behind nationwide protests since mid-February.


View the original article here

For Baghdad's poor, city garbage brings in the bread (Reuters)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq's leaders hope the country's still largely untapped oil wealth can one day rival Saudi Arabia and provide a decent living to its citizens after years of conflict and chaos.

But for 12-year-old Abbas Mohammed and his family, it is used plastic bottles and empty aluminum cans that keep them alive. Mohammed spends his school summer holidays picking through a Baghdad garbage dump so he can sell the discarded items and help support his family.

In the refuse dump near Abbas's home in the Iraqi capital's impoverished district of Sadr City, men, women and children swarm over the stinking piles of garbage.

Mohammed, a slim boy dressed in grubby clothes, runs with other children to greet the arrival of trucks carrying fresh rubbish, waiting anxiously for them to unload so they can start raking through the refuse despite the smell and the dirt.

"We earn our living through this garbage," shrugged Mohammed, holding a big sack and a metal hook.

"We start work in the morning, we collect Pepsi cans, plastic bottles and then we sell them. I have been working in this place since I was three years old," he told Reuters.

Sadr City, a warren of narrow streets and low-built slums housing more than 3 million people, is a sprawling area of poverty east of the Tigris river in the Iraqi capital.

Once known as Saddam City, the Shi'ite stronghold suffered years of neglect under the Sunni-led government of Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Oil producer Iraq, which is still struggling to emerge from years of war, chaos and sectarian bloodshed triggered by the invasion, has an official unemployment rate of 15 percent and another 28 percent of the workforce are in part-time jobs.

Despite its huge untapped oil and gas reserves and steadily rising oil output and revenue, 23 percent of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Ministry of Planning.

For Mohammed, life in Sadr City means long days during his school holidays scrabbling through the refuse in the scorching summer heat before selling his daily haul to a middleman.

He sells each kilogram (2.2 lb) of plastic bottles or soda cans for 250 Iraqi dinars (around 20 U.S. cents), earning between 2,000 to 4,000 dinars ($1.50-$3) a day.

His mother and one of his brothers work with him in and around Sadr City. The three of them bring in around $250 to $400 a month, meager earnings to support a large family. The brothers only work during school holidays, but other children at the dump have left school behind to work full-time gathering garbage.

Mohammed's mother, Zubaida Khazaal, a mother of 12, said they were obliged to be garbage pickers because they are poor and her husband is unemployed because he cannot work.

"We do not have anything, we live in a mud house and my husband is sick," said Khazaal who wore an improvised cloth mask against the stench as she emptied a sack of bottles.

"We wish the government could help us."

CHILDREN MOST VULNERABLE

Popular anger over power outages, food ration shortages, corruption and government ineffectiveness is heating up the political climate in Iraq as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's shaky cross-sectarian coalition considers whether to ask U.S. troops to stay on past an end-year withdrawal deadline.

Sadr City is a powerbase for Moqtada al-Sadr, a fiercely anti-American Shi'ite cleric whose Mehdi Army insurgents once battled U.S. and Iraqi troops during the peak of the sectarian conflict in 2006-2007. He opposes U.S. troops staying on and has threatened "military resistance" if they do.

Security officials expect insurgents and militias to try to test Iraq's forces when the U.S. troops prepare to leave.

As Iraq battles to emerge from the ruins of war, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF estimates nearly a quarter of Iraq's children -- over three million youngsters, the most vulnerable group in society -- scrape by on an income of less than $2.20 a day. One child in nine is working.

A recent International Labor Organization report listing dangerous jobs in which children are engaged across the world mentioned collecting garbage as one of the activities in which minors risked suffering violence and injury.

Mohammed wears a glove over his left hand to protect himself from sharp objects in the dump and his mother says she fears he could catch a disease. But she says she needs him to work.

At a location near the dump, a middleman supervises the operation of a machine which compresses the plastic bottles into a wire-wrapped pack weighing around 300 kg (660 lbs).

The package will be sold to an Iraqi trader who exports the packs of plastic to Turkey and Syria. No industry has existed in Iraq to recycle bottles and cans, business experts say.

In Baghdad, the trade for export is a lifeline: "There are no jobs, so what else can I do but this. A lot of families depend on this business," said Haider Muhsin, 36, as he stood by the machine compacting plastic bottles.

Iraq has around 40,000 private small and medium-sized factories, but 90 percent of them are idle, said Hashim al-Atrakchi, chairman of the Iraqi Federation of Industries.

The 10 percent, or 4,000, which are functioning are not at full capacity after years of war and economic sanctions put in place two decades ago after Saddam invaded Kuwait.

Plastic manufacturing is patchy partly because many industries are just restarting and also require a stable supply of electricity. Iraq's national power sector is still in ruins and coping with frequent outages is a hefty business expense.

From the garbage heap of Sadr City, however, Mohammed dreams of a better future, when he can quit his garbage-picking job and spend more time on school work: "I want to complete my studies," he said, "And become a teacher."

(Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Alastair Macdonald)


View the original article here

Alstom in deal to build high-speed rail in Iraq (AFP)

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

LE BOURGET, France (AFP) – French engineering group Alstom is in exclusive talks to build a high-speed rail line between Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, French junior transport minister Thierry Mariani said Friday.

"Alstom and the Iraqi railway have signed a memorandum of understanding to build a high-speed rail line between Baghdad and Basra," Mariani told journalists at the Paris International Airshow.

The two will hold exclusive talks for 12 months to try to wrap up a final agreement.

An Alstom spokesman confirmed the agreement, and said they were seeking a deal that would include the construction of the rail line plus trains and service.

The spokesman said the 650-kilometre rail network would handle speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour (135 mph).

The network would include a 150 kilometre link between Baghdad and Basra and serve the cities of Karbala, Najaf, Moussayeb and Samawah.

Mariani said he would travel to Iraq in September or October to discuss the possible deal.

No financial details were immediately available.

In May, Alstom announced a separate preliminary deal to build a 25 kilometre elevated commuter train network in Baghdad.


View the original article here