The Canal Hotel bombing was a suicide truck bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, during the afternoon of 19 August 2003. It killed 23 people, including the United Nations' Special Representative in Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and wounded over 100, including human rights lawyer and political activist Amin Mekki Medani. The blast targeted the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq created just five days earlier. The 19 August bombing resulted in the withdrawal within weeks of most of the 600 UN staff members from Iraq. These events were to have a profound and lasting impact on the UN's security practices globally.
The Ashura massacre of March 2, 2004 in Iraq was a series of planned terrorist explosions that killed at least 80–100 and injured at least 200 Iraqi Shi'a Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura. The bombings brought one of the deadliest days in the Iraq occupation after the Iraq War to topple Saddam Hussein.
Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, abbreviated as JTJ or Jama'at, was a Salafi jihadist militant group. It was founded in Jordan in 1999, and was led by Jordanian national Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for the entirety of its existence. During the Iraqi insurgency (2003–11), the group became a decentralized network with foreign fighters with a considerable Iraqi membership.
An Iraqi insurgency began shortly after the 2003 American invasion deposed longtime leader Saddam Hussein. It is considered to have lasted until the end of the Iraq War and U.S. withdrawal in 2011. It was followed by a renewed insurgency.
Qaraqosh, is an Assyrian city in the Nineveh Governorate, of Iraq located about 32 kilometres (20 mi) southeast of the city of Mosul and 60 kilometres (37 mi) west of Erbil amid agricultural lands, close to the ruins of the ancient Assyrian cities Kalhu and Nineveh.
Iraqi Assyrians are an ethnic and linguistic minority group, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia. They are defined as Assyrians residing in the country of Iraq, or members of the Assyrian diaspora who are of Iraqi-Assyrian heritage. They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iran, Turkey and Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora elsewhere. A significant number have emigrated to the United States, notably to the Detroit and Chicago; sizeable communities are also found in Sydney, Australia and Södertälje, Sweden.
Minorities in Iraq have been incredibly influential to the history of the country, and consist of various ethnic and religious groups. The largest minority group in Iraq is the Kurds, with Turkmen following shortly after. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Assyrians constituted a sizeable population of 1.5 million, and belonged to various different churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Orthodox/Catholic Churches. Other minority groups in Iraq include Armenians, Mandaeans, Baha'i, and Marsh Arabs, among others.
Abu Qaswarah al-Maghribi was a Moroccan national who was reportedly the No. 2 leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the senior leader in Northern Iraq. He died in a building in Mosul during a shootout with American troops.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, born Ahmad Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian militant jihadist who ran a training camp in Afghanistan. He became known after going to Iraq and being responsible for a series of bombings, beheadings, and attacks during the Iraq War, reportedly "turning an insurgency against US troops" in Iraq "into a Shia–Sunni civil war". He was sometimes known by his supporters as the "Sheikh of the slaughterers".
Nineveh Plains is a region in Nineveh Governorate in Iraq, to the north and east of the city Mosul. Control over the region is contested between Iraqi security forces, KRG security forces, Assyrian security forces, Babylon Brigade and the Shabak Militia.
The Imam Ali mosque bombing was the detonation of two car bombs outside the Shia Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf on 29 August 2003. The attack killed 95 people crowded around the mosque for Friday prayers, including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, spiritual leader of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
The vast majority of Christians in Iraq are indigenous Assyrians who descend from ancient Assyria, and are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world. They primarily adhere to the Syriac Christian tradition and rites and speak Northeastern Neo-Aramaic dialects, although Turoyo is also present on a smaller scale. Some are also known by the name of their religious denomination as well as their ethnic identity, such as Chaldo-Assyrians, Chaldean Catholics or Syriacs. Non-Assyrian Iraqi Christians include Arab Christians and Armenians, and a very small minority of Kurdish, Shabaks and Iraqi Turkmen Christians. Regardless of religious affiliation Assyrians Christians in Iraq and surrounding countries are one genetically homogeneous people and are of different origins than other groups in the country, with a distinct history of their own harking back to ancient Assyria and Mesopotamia.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was a Salafi jihadist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda. It was founded on 17 October 2004, and was led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until its disbandment on 15 October 2006 after he was killed in a targeted bombing on June 7, 2006 in Hibhib, Iraq by the United States Air Force.
The 2004 Karbala and Najaf bombings were car bombings that tore through a funeral procession in Najaf and through the main bus station in nearby Karbala—two Shia holy cities – on 19 December 2004. 66 people were killed and 191 wounded.
30 September 2004 Baghdad bombing was a series of bombings targeting U.S. soldiers handing out sweets to the Iraqi children at the celebration during the opening of a water treatment plant in the Amil District of Baghdad. The bombings killed at least 41, including 35 children, and wounded 131, including 10 U.S. soldiers.
It is believed that members of Al-Qaeda are hiding along the border of Afghanistan and northwest sections of Pakistan. In Iraq, elements loosely associated with al-Qaeda, in the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad organization commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have played a key role in the War in Iraq.
2008 attacks on Christians in Mosul was a series of attacks which targeted Iraqi Christians in Mosul, Iraq. The Christians of Mosul, who were already targeted during the Iraq War, left the city en masse heading to Assyrian villages in Nineveh Plains and Iraqi Kurdistan. Both Sunni extremists, and Kurdish Peshmerga were blamed for the attacks.
This article details major terrorist incidents in Iraq in 2008. In 2008, there were 257 suicide bombings in Iraq. On February 1, a pair of bombs detonated at a market in Baghdad, killing 99 people and injuring 200. Two other particularly deadly attacks occurred on March 6, and June 17.
In the 2010 Baghdad church massacre, six suicide bombers of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) militant group attacked a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad during Sunday evening Mass, on 31 October, 2010, and began killing the worshipers. ISI was a militant group which aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state in Iraq.
The Islamic State of Iraq was a Salafi jihadist militant organization that fought the forces of the U.S.-led coalition during the Iraqi insurgency. The organization aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state governed by Sharia law in Iraq.
