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.
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.
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; a sizeable community is also found in Sydney, Australia.
Minorities in Iraq include various ethnic and religious groups.
The 2006 al-Askari Shrine bombing occurred on 22 February 2006 at approximately 6:44 a.m. local Iraqi time, and targeted the al-Askari Shrine in the city of Samarra, Iraq. The attack on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, has not been claimed by any group; the then President of the United States, George W. Bush, claimed that the bombing was an al-Qaeda plot. Although the mosque was severely damaged from the blast, there were no casualties.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, born Abdel Moneim Ezz El-Din Ali Al-Badawi, was the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq during the Iraqi insurgency, following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. He was war minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2006 to 2010 and prime minister of the Islamic State of Iraq from 2009 to 2010. He was killed during a raid on his safehouse on 18 April 2010.
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 al-Nazal al-Khalayleh, was a Jordanian jihadist who ran a terrorist 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".
On 7 August 2003, a bomb exploded outside the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 17 people and injuring dozens more. The bomb, concealed in a minibus, exploded outside the walls of the embassy compound at around 11:00am local time. The force of the explosion sent a car onto a nearby rooftop and killed several people nearby including women and children. Six police officers guarding the embassy were among the dead. Immediately after the blast, the embassy compound was swarmed by a mob of Iraqis who ransacked the building, chanting anti-Jordanian slogans and burning portraits of King Abdullah II. According to Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, the attack was the worst in Iraq since the capture of Baghdad that previous March.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world.
Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, more commonly known as 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 and Abu Ayyub al-Masri until its disbandment on 15 October 2006.
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.
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.
Hatem Kamil Abdul Fatah was the deputy governor of Iraq's Baghdad Governorate.
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 in Iraq.
