Funeral mass for Iraqi archbishop

Christians from across Iraq have been attending the funeral of the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho.

Surrounded by armed guards, mourners wept and held flowers as the coffin was carried through the village of Kremlis, near Mosul in northern Iraq

$1 million ransom

Kidnappers of a Chaldean Catholic archbishop found dead in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul had demanded a $1 million ransom, a senior police official said on Friday.

The Catholic Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was found dead Thursday in a shallow grave in that northern Iraq city. On February 29, Islamist extremists had abducted the 65-year-old prelate while he prayed, in Aramaic, the language of Jesus himself, the Lenten Stations of the Cross at his church.

There could be no starker statement that Christians are targeted for their faith in a ruthlessly intolerant Iraq. Cardinal Delly, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, weeps in Baghdad; he weeps for his martyred friend, and for the bitter fate of Iraq’s ancient Christian Church.



The body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul, was found in a shallow grave close to the city.

Pope Benedict XVI said he was profoundly moved and saddened, calling the archbishop's death an act of inhuman violence.

Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped after leading prayers at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul on 29 February. Three people who were with him at the time, a driver and two guards, were killed by the gunmen.

According to the SIR Catholic news agency, the kidnappers told Iraqi church officials on Wednesday that Archbishop Rahho was very ill and, later on the same day, that he was dead.

Died at least a week ago

However, Iraqi police say the condition of the archbishop's body suggests that he may have died at least a week ago.

It is not clear whether he was killed, or died of natural causes. Nobody has claimed responsibility for his death.

The archbishop's body was found by church workers who went to the area after being contacted by the kidnappers.

'Horrible crime'

The archbishop, 65, was the latest in a long line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Only last Sunday, Pope Benedict had appealed for the archbishop's release.

A Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said: "The most absurd and unjustified violence continues to afflict the Iraqi people and in particular the small Christian community, whom the Pope holds in his prayers in this time of deep sadness.

"This tragic event underscored once more and with more urgency the duty of all, and in particular of the international community, to bring peace to a country that has been so tormented."

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said those behind the kidnapping would not escape justice.

It was, he said, a "horrible crime" by "a criminal, terrorist gang".


Who are the Chaldeans?

The Chaldeans are the largest sect within Iraq's Christian community, which was estimated at 800,000 before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Many have left their homes after attacks linked to the continuing insurgency.
IRAQ'S CHALDEAN CHRISTIANS
550,000 Chaldeans, forming majority of Iraq's Christians are an Eastern-rite Church with liturgical languag in Syriac, descended from Aramaic. They are autonomous from Rome but recognizes Pope's authority. Their spiritual leader is Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly, based in Baghdad

Iraqis continue to flee their country

Flies rest on the face of an Iraqi refugee child waiting with his family at the Tanaf border crossing between Syria and Iraq, some 300 kms northeast of Damascus, 10 November 2007. The number of Iraqis seeking asylum in Syria each month has dropped from 20,000 to a few hundred since Damascus imposed new visa restrictions last month, a senior border guard said. According to the UN High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR), 4.2 million Iraqis have fled the violence since the US-led invasion of March 2003.


RAQ: 'Not Our Country To Return To'
By Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail*

DAMASCUS, Mar 3 (IPS) - More Iraqis continue to flee their country than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary.

Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death.

"Return to Iraq?" asks 35-year-old Ahmed Alwan, an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus. "There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported September last year that there are between 1.2 and 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone.

Most, like Alwan, do not intend to return.

"I shall never return to Iraq until the last American soldier and Iranian mullah leaves," Alwan says. "It is their country now, not ours. The only thing that might take me back is when I decide to fight for Iraq's real liberty."

Why they won't go back

Iraqi refugees in Syria speak of lack of security back home, lack of services, fear of the future, mistrust of Iraqi politicians, and loss of homes. Most are simply too afraid to return.

UNHCR report contradicts US media claims

A UNHCR report issued last month contradicts reports by mainstream media in the U.S., and claims by the Bush administration, that more Iraqis are returning to their homes than the number leaving.

The report says that from February 2006-October 2007 Syria received between 30,000-60,000 refugees each month. Immigration officials at al-Tanf on the border say the daily average for those entering Syria from Iraq in late January was over 1,200, while the daily average crossing back was less than 700.

"Many assassinations take place all over Iraq, including Baghdad, and military operations are still being carried out the same way as 2004 and 2005," Nayil Mufeed, a security advisor with a mobile phone company in Baghdad told IPS. "We have advised our employers that moving out of Baghdad to Amman is a definite necessity in such a fragile security situation."

"Even if we believed that security is better in some areas, we know it is worse in other areas, and that it changes suddenly from one place to another," Farooq Munim, a retired school headmaster from Mosul, now a refugee in Syria told IPS.

"My city, Mosul, was safe for those who have no connection with Americans or government intelligence, but now it is not safe for anyone after the explosion at the Zinjilly neighbourhood that was carried out by Peshmerga (Kurdish militias) and Americans to justify the new surge against the city."

Mosul city, 300 km north of Baghdad, is under a major siege by the U.S. military supported by the Kurdish militia and Iraqi troops from southern Iraq. The city, a Sunni stronghold, has been a target for Kurdish militias attempting to cleanse it of its Arab majority in order to support claims that it is a Kurdish city.

Many Iraqis in Syria say they will not return for fear of detention.

"They (U.S. military) say Fallujah is safe now while over 800 men are detained there under the worst conditions," 25-year-old Omar, whose name is on a list of wanted persons by the local police, told IPS. "I am wanted by Fallujah police just because I helped some foreign journalists who visited the city to cover the American crime in 2004, and I showed them eyewitnesses who testified that there were Iraqis who helped the Americans destroy our city. At least 750 out of the 800 detainees are not resistance fighters, but people who refused to collaborate with occupation forces and their tails."

Iraqis commonly refer to Iraqis who collaborate with occupation forces as "tails of the Americans."

For Iraqis who do return home, the reasons usually have little to do with any perception that things are improving.

Iraqis return and leave

"If you do not mention my name and my company, I will tell you all about Iraqis returning home," a passenger transport company manager in Damascus told IPS. "People just move back and forth to check their property, cash their pensions and salaries and for other necessities, but the media make it look like people returning home."

"Some people did go back when they had nothing to spend any more, especially after the Iraqi government promised to pay them money on return," said the manager. "Many of them came back to Syria when they found that all those promises were just lies. On the other hand, Iraqis from the north and south are still fleeing because of the military operations everywhere in Iraq."

Another UN survey of Iraqis returning to their country found that "46 percent were leaving Syria because they could not afford to stay, 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security."

Others do not return for financial reasons.

"It is cheaper here than in Iraq," Hanan Jabbar, a 38-year-old housewife who fled to Syria five months ago told IPS. "A litre of kerosene costs a dollar back home, while it's 10 cents here. That is just one example for how impossible life now is in Iraq. My kids go to school safely and play like other children now without me worrying to death about them. God bless Syria and Jordan for having us, and God damn America and all its allies for doing all this to us."

On many streets of Damascus today one finds more Iraqis than Syrians, partly because Syrians are at work while most Iraqis are unemployed. They hang around Internet cafés, tea houses and on the streets, looking out for any kind of work.

"I took my family back home in January," Rasool Mussa, a shopkeeper from Baghdad now a refugee in Damascus told IPS. "The first night we arrived, Americans raided our house and kept us all in one room while their snipers used our rooftop to shoot at people. I decided to come back here the next morning after a horrifying night that we will never forget."

(*Maki, our correspondent in Damascus, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41430

Al Qaeda Holds “Kill A Cop Day” In Iraq Updated

September 25th, 2007 Posted By Pat Dollard.

r1487735922.jpg
A member of the Special Police Commandos gestures near a burnt vehicle after this morning’s suicide car bomb attack on police in Basra

Suicide bombers target cops in Basra, Fallujah, and Mosul, all in one day. Update: Fourth attack reported in Kut.

1. A suicide car bomber struck the police headquarters in Basra on Tuesday, killing at least three officers and wounding 20 people amid fears over the southern city’s deteriorating security situation.

Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, had been relatively peaceful for much of the war but has seen tensions rise as Shiite militias battle for control of the oil-rich area.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, Basra’s police chief, said one of the suicide bomber’s legs had been found tied to the steering wheel, and he blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack.

“It seems that al-Qaida wants to make use of the fragile situation in the city caused by the tension among the parties and the city’s officials,” he said. “We cannot say that there is a security vacuum, but the security measures are less strong in the day than the night. After this attack, we will increase the police patrols in the day.”

Security concerns also rose after the British military last month pulled back its troops out of the city to a nearby airport to allow Iraqi security forces to take over—a move being closely watched by the U.S. military as it anticipates the eventual withdrawal of American forces in other areas of Iraq.



2. Mosul, Sept 25, (VOI)- Ninewa local police on Tuesday said a police chief was wounded as a suicide bomber blew himself up near him in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
“Chief of Abo Tamam police station, Lt. Colonel Abd Tobiyah, sustained injuries, today afternoon, when a suicide attacker detonated an explosives belt near him,” Brigadier Abdul Karim al-Juburi, head of Ninewa police operations room, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The source added “Tobiyah was supervising cars queuing in front of a petrol station in northern Mosul when the blast occurred.”

“The attack also left nine persons, including a judge, wounded,” said the source declining to name the wounded judge.

Mosul, capital city of Ninewa province, is 405 km north of Baghdad.

3. Falluja, Sept 25, (VOI)- A policeman was killed on Tuesday when a bomb exploded in the western Iraqi city of Falluja, a police source said.

“A roadside bomb detonated, today shortly before noon, near a police vehicle patrol in southern Falluja, killing a policeman,” the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

The source added “the blast also damaged a police vehicle.”

Falluja is 45 km west of Baghdad.

4.Kut, Sept 25, (VOI)- Suspected Al Qaeda gunmen blew up a policeman’s house in al-Kut al-Gharbiya district, while police forces discovered an unknown body in southern Kut, a police source said on Tuesday.

“Unknown armed men blew up a policeman’s house in Dour al-Shoaoon region in al-Kut al-Gharbiya district using high-explosive materials,” the source, who refused to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

“The house was empty, but the blast injured one passing by and damaged three houses,” he also said.

“The police opened investigation into the incident,” the source noted.

Meanwhile, the same source said that “police patrols found an unidentified body south of Kut and sent it to the forensic medicine department.”

“The body belongs to a man wearing civilian clothes and bore signs of gunshot wounds to different parts of the body,” the source added.

Kut, capital city of Wassit province, lies 180 km southeast Baghdad.

___

Associated Press writers Katarina Kratovac and Hamid Ahmed in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.

25 Insurgents Killed, .5 Civilians Killed, 7 Iraq Police killed, 15 American Soldiers injured

Insurgents Are Killed Trying to Overrun U.S. Outpost in Mosul

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and KHALID AL-ANSARY AGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 29 - United States troops and warplanes killed at least 25 insurgents who used car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to try to overrun an American combat outpost in Mosul on Wednesday afternoon, the American military said. It was the fiercest fighting the restive northern city has seen in weeks.

Fifteen American soldiers were wounded, military officials said.

The two-hour battle followed an ambush on Tuesday night in Baghdad where insurgents tricked the Iraqi police into raiding a booby-trapped home and then detonated a powerful bomb that killed at least seven police officers and 25 others, Iraqi officials said on Wednesday. Most of the civilian victims were family members who were crushed to death when the blast flattened nearby homes, the officials said.

Title links to New York Times article