Barham Salih is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the eighth president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022.
Events in the year 2005 in Iraq.
The 2003 Nasiriyah bombing was a suicide attack on the Italian Carabinieri MSU headquarters in Nasiriyah, Iraq, south of Baghdad on 12 November 2003. The attack resulted in the deaths of 18 Italian servicemembers, mostly members of the MSU Carabinieri, an Italian civilian, and 9 Iraqi civilians and was the worst Italian military disaster since the Second World War. The attack, labeled a "terrorist act" by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, was among a string of many attacks on non-American military international targets in Iraq that occurred shortly after the end of major combat operations, including the Jordanian and Turkish embassies, International Red Cross, and UN facilities.
The al-Khilani mosque bombing occurred on 19 June 2007 when a truck bomb exploded in front of the Shia Al-Khilani Mosque in Baghdad, Iraq. At least 78 people were killed and another 218 injured in the blast. The explosion occurred just two days after a four-day curfew banning vehicle movement in the city was lifted after the al-Askari Mosque bombing (2007), and just hours after 10,000 US troops began the Arrowhead Ripper offensive to the north of Baghdad. Because the site was a Shia mosque, the bombing is presumed to have been the work of Sunnis. The Sinak area where the explosion took place was also the targeted by a suicide car bomber on 28 May 2007, which resulted in 21 deaths.
The 2008 Iraqi Day of Ashura fighting was a series of clashes that occurred on the Islamic holy day of Ashura on January 18, 2008 and the next day in the Iraqi cities of Basra and Nasiriyah. The battles were fought between the Iraqi security forces and fighters of an Iraqi cult called the Soldiers of Heaven, which a year before fought a similar battle, also on Ashura, near the city of Najaf. Then their leader was reported killed along with his deputy Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni but this time around it was reported that al-Yemeni was still alive and leading the cultists.
Events in the year 2009 in Iraq.
The 20 June 2009 Taza bombing was an attack which took place in Taza near Kirkuk, Iraq on 20 June 2009 in a dominant Shia Turkmen community. At least 73 people were killed and over 200 more were injured. Thirty homes were destroyed in the bombing.
Events in the year 2011 in Iraq.
Nasiriyah, also spelled Nassiriya or Nasiriya, is a city in Iraq, the capital of the Dhi Qar Governorate. It lies on the lower Euphrates, about 360 km south-southeast of Baghdad, near the ruins of the ancient city of Ur. Its population in 2018 was about 558,000, making it the ninth-largest city in Iraq. It had a diverse population of Muslims, Mandaeans and Jews in the early 20th century; today its inhabitants are predominantly Shia Muslims.
The 9 September 2012 Iraq attacks were a series of coordinated bombings and shootings across the capital Baghdad and several major cities in the north and south of the country. At least 108 people were killed and 371 injured in the first major insurgent action since a similar wave of violence almost a month earlier.
On 14 September 2017, several members of ISIL staged multiple attacks on the outskirts of Nasiriyah in the southern Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq, killing at least 84 people and injuring 93 others.
The Karbala stampede occurred on 10 September 2019, 31 people were killed and approximately 100 more were injured in a crowd crush during Ashura processions in Karbala, Iraq. There are conflicting accounts of what caused the crush, one claimed that a walkway collapsed, leading the crowd to panic. Another account stated that one person tripped and fell among the runners and others fell over him.
A series of demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and civil disobedience took place in Iraq from 2019 until 2021. It started on 1 October 2019, a date which was set by civil activists on social media, spreading mainly over the central and southern provinces of Iraq, to protest corruption, high unemployment, political sectarianism, inefficient public services and foreign interventionism. Protests spread quickly, coordinated over social media, to other provinces in Iraq. As the intensity of the demonstrations peaked in late October, protesters' anger focused not only on the desire for a complete overhaul of the Iraqi government but also on driving out Iranian influence, including Iranian-aligned Shia militias. The government, with the help of Iranian-backed militias responded brutally using live bullets, marksmen, hot water, hot pepper gas and tear gas against protesters, leading to many deaths and injuries.
Events in the year 2020 in Iraq.
Mustafa Abdul Latif Mishatat, known as Mustafa al-Kadhimi, alternatively spelt Mustafa al-Kadhimy, is an Iraqi politician, lawyer and bureaucrat and former intelligence officer who served as the Prime Minister of Iraq from May 2020 to October 2022. He previously served as columnist for several news outlets and the Director of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, originally appointed in June 2016. He briefly served as Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs in an acting capacity in 2020. The latter part of his tenure closely followed the 2022 Iraqi political crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Iraq was a part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. During the pandemic, Iraq reported its first confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections on 22 February 2020 in Najaf. By April, the number of confirmed cases had exceeded the hundred mark in Baghdad, Basra, Sulaymaniyah, Erbil and Najaf.
In Lebanon, the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 has resulted in 1,238,552 confirmed cases and 10,936 all-time deaths after COVID-19 was confirmed to have reached Lebanon in February 2020.
Events in the year 2021 in Iraq.
On the night of 24 to 25 April 2021, a fire at the Ibn al-Khatib hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, left at least 82 people dead and 110 others injured. The fire was started by the explosion of oxygen tanks designated for COVID-19 patients. A lack of fire detection and suppression systems contributed to the spread of the fire, and many died as a result of being taken off their ventilators to escape. The disaster led to calls for accountability, and the Minister for Health, Hassan al-Tamimi, was suspended by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi the following day.
On 14 August 2022, a fire broke out at the Abu Sefein Church, a Coptic Christian Orthodox church in the Imbaba neighborhood of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. The fire started during Sunday worship services when nearly 5,000 worshippers were gathered. The fire, which investigations found started due to a faulty air-conditioning unit, spread to a nursery the church hosted, killing 41 people in total throughout the complex, including at least 18 children. One of the church's priests, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was among those who died in the fire.
