Iraq's Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi said he was unhurt and appealed for "calm and restraint" after a drone attack on his residence early Sunday as political tensions mounted in the country. The attack in Baghdad's Green Zone was the first to target the residence of Kadhemi, who has been in power since May 2020, and came as Iraq's political parties wrangle over who will run the next government after elections […]
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appealed to US President Joe Biden's administration to lift or waive all sanctions on Iran as agreed under a 2015 deal aimed at stopping Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. In a report to the UN Security Council, Guterres also urged the United States to "extend the waivers with regard to the trade in oil with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and fully renew waivers […]
Iraqi authorities said Sunday the remains of 123 people killed by Islamic State (IS) group militants had been removed from a mass grave in the Nineveh governorate in order to start the process of identifying them. In one of its worst crimes in Iraq, IS carried out a massacre at Badush prison in June 2014 after it captured a third of Iraq in a lightning offensive that year. IS militants […]
Eighteen Iraqis, the majority military personnel, were killed overnight Friday to Saturday in separate attacks by militants, mainly in the greater Baghdad area, security sources told AFP. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but they were in line with the modus operandi of the Islamic State (IS) group, which still has sleeper cells in Iraq despite its territorial defeat in 2017. One attack targetted troops in […]
A leaked draft of Iraq’s state budget sent Iraqis into a panic on Thursday as it confirmed the government’s intentions to devalue the national currency, the Iraqi dinar, and cut salaries to cope with the impacts of a severe economic crisis. Discussions about devaluating the Iraqi dinar, which has been pegged to the dollar for decades, have been going on for weeks as the government worked to finalise the 2021 […]
The Iraqi government is seeking to open a "Al-Khasfa" tomb in the country's northern governorate of Nineveh, where some 2,000 bodies of civilians killed by Daesh are buried, local media reported yesterday. Saad Al-Abdali, a member of the Iraqi Council of Ministers' board, told Assabah that the opening of the tomb required "an international effort", adding that the hole was "the largest and bloodiest". "The corpses were thrown vertically and […]
The United States has made preparations to withdraw diplomats from Iraq after warning Baghdad it could shut its embassy, two Iraqi officials and two Western diplomats say, a step Iraqis fear could turn their country into a battle zone. Any move by the US to scale down its diplomatic presence in a country where it has up to 5,000 troops would be widely seen in the region as an escalation […]
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein has concluded a two-day diplomatic trip to Tehran, during which he met with top Iranian officials to discuss boosting political and economic ties, and the role of the United States in the region. On Saturday, Hussein met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and parliament Speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf. The high-level meetings came after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in […]
United States President Donald Trump will announce a further withdrawal of US troops from Iraq on Wednesday, according to a senior administration official, as he faces a backlash from reports that he allegedly insulted American veterans and war dead. He will also announce an additional reduction in US forces in Afghanistan, the official said. Trump is trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden in opinion polls ahead of the November 3 election. […]
VOC became the first Muslim radio station in South Africa when a special events license was granted to the station in Ramadan/January 1995. Subsequent temporary broadcast licenses were granted, permitting the station to broadcast for 24 hours.
