BAGHDAD — An al-Qaeda-affiliated group has claimed responsibility for a wave of bombings in Baghdad on Thursday that killed at least 65, saying that it “knows where and when to strike.” The group, Islamic State of Iraq, issued a communique on jihadist forums Monday, providing details about one of the attacks, a suicide car bombing that targeted an anti-corruption agency headquarters, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, a jihadist monitoring service. The group referred to the bombings as the “Thursday invasion” and said that it was acting against what it called Iraq’s Shiite-controlled government. Read full article > >

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Al-Qaeda-allied group claims responsibility for Baghdad bombings

Years of anger and disenfranchisement are driving some largely Sunni provinces to try to wrest more autonomy from Iraq’s Shiite leaders.

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Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites Clash Over Regional Power

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political process was unraveling faster than had been anticipated Saturday, with Sunni politicians walking out of the nation’s parliament and threatening to resign from the government even before the last U.S. troops have left the country. The crisis was triggered by reports that security forces loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, are planning to arrest the country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and charge him with terrorism. Read full article > >

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Iraq political crisis erupts as last U.S. troops leave

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military on Friday handed over its last and most controversial prisoner to the Iraqi government ahead of the departure of the remaining few thousand U.S. troops, officials said. The prisoner, Ali Musa Daqduq, a senior member of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, is suspected in the killings of five U.S. soldiers in 2007. He was transferred to Iraqi custody after the Obama administration “sought and received assurances that he will be tried for his crimes,” according to Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington. Read full article > >

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U.S. hands over Hezbollah prisoner to Iraq

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military on Friday handed over its last and most controversial prisoner to the Iraqi government ahead of the departure of the remaining few thousand U.S. troops, officials said. The prisoner, Ali Musa Daqduq, a senior member of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, is suspected in the killings of five U.S. soldiers in 2007. He was transferred to Iraqi custody after the Obama administration “sought and received assurances that he will be tried for his crimes,” according to Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington. Read full article > >

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U.S. hands over Hezbollah prisoner to Iraq

BAGHDAD — At the very moment American troops are pulling out of Iraq, the revolt in neighboring Syria is threatening to disrupt the fragile political consensus that U.S. forces spent most of the last few years striving to uphold. As the Syrian conflict takes on increasingly sectarian dimensions , the crisscrossing rivalries that had been held somewhat in check in recent years among Iraq’s Shiite majority and its Kurdish and Sunni minorities also risk being inflamed. Syria’s sectarian makeup is almost a reverse image of Iraq’s, with a minority, Shiite-affiliated Alawite regime confronting a protest movement drawn largely from the country’s Sunni majority. Read full article > >

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Syria conflict threatens Iraq consensus

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday that the suicide bombing targeting Shiite worshipers in Kabul that killed dozens was plotted in Pakistan. Speaking at a hospital where victims of Tuesday’s attack outside a shrine in the Afghan capital were being treated, Karzai said he would demand answers from the Pakistani government about the bombing. Read full article > >

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Karzai says Kabul attack was plotted in Pakistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s president vowed Wednesday to confront the government in Islamabad over a devastating suicide bombing against a Shiite shrine in Kabul that he said originated on Pakistani soil. At least 56 people were killed in Tuesday’s bombing at a shrine where hundreds had gathered to mark the Shiite holy day of Ashoura. One American citizen was among the dead. A second bomb hit a Shiite vehicle procession in a northern city at roughly the same time, killing four people. Read full article > >

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Afghan President Karzai vows to confront Pakistani government over Kabul suicide bombing

At least 58 people died after bombers struck Shiite religious observances in three cities on Tuesday, in the first such sectarian attacks in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

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Rare Attacks on Shiites Kill Scores in Afghanistan

Attack on Shiite Muslim shrine.

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Kabul Blast Kills Dozens

MANAMA, Bahrain — A canister containing powerful explosive material blew apart the front of a minibus near the British Embassy in Bahrain’s capital on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said. There were no injuries or other serious damage. Interior Ministry spokesman Salah Salem described the material as “highly explosive” and said it was undergoing further analysis. Authorities gave no details on possible suspects, but security has been boosted sharply across Bahrain during annual Shiite Muslim religious ceremonies. Read full article > >

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Blast damages bus parked near British Embassy in Bahrain’s capital; no injuries reported

BAGHDAD — The top U.S. general in Iraq on Monday predicted a level of upheaval in the country as militant groups jostle to fill the vacuum left behind by the withdrawal of all American forces in the coming weeks. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said the threat from the Sunni extremist organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq, could grow at the same time that Iranian-backed Shiite militias are also seeking to assert themselves. Read full article > >

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U.S. commander predicts turbulence ahead in Iraq

ISLAMABAD — Two police officers were indicted Saturday in the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and will face trial along with five members of the Pakistani Taliban, a state prosecutor said. The policemen were charged with failing to provide Bhutto with proper security and with destroying evidence, said the prosecutor, Zulfikar Ali. Their indictment triggers a new trial for the Taliban members so that all seven defendants can be tried together, he said. Read full article > >

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Pakistan indicts 2 more suspects in assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto

B arack Obama was a principled opponent of the Iraq war from its beginning. But when he became president in January 2009, he was handed a war that was won. The surge had succeeded. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been routed, driven to humiliating defeat by an Anbar Awakening of Sunnis fighting side-by-side with the infidel Americans. Even more remarkably, the Shiite militias had been taken down, with U.S. backing, by the forces of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. They crushed the Sadr militias from Basra to Sadr City. Read full article > >

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Who lost Iraq?

The allegations of a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington are the latest and perhaps most audacious eruption in the simmering feud between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two regional powers that have long waged proxy battles for influence in the Muslim world. The two countries have been locked in a cold war for decades, especially since the 1979 Iranian revolution established a theocracy in Tehran that has openly challenged the legitimacy of the royal House of Saud. The rivalry has been fueled by sectarian tensions — Iran has a predominantly Shiite Muslim population, while Saudi Arabia is mostly Sunni — but also centers on their respective ambitions to exercise political and economic power throughout the Middle East. Read full article > >

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For Iran and Saudi Arabia, simmering feud is rooted in history