Guerra Eterna

Following are security incidents
reported in Iraq on July 7 as at 1730 GMT. U.S. and Iraqi forces
are battling a Sunni Arab insurgency against the Shi'ite- and
Kurdish-led government in Baghdad.

CAIRO - Egypt confirmed the death of its envoy to Iraq,
Ihab el-Sherif, who was kidnapped by gunmen in Baghdad on
Saturday. Al Qaeda's Iraq wing issued a video of the captive
diplomat and said it had killed him as an "enemy of God".

BAGHDAD - Gunmen assassinated Shi'ite imam Hashim Attiya
al-Fadhli in the Dora district of southern Baghdad, police
sources said. Two of his brothers, also clerics, were in the car
and one of them was seriously wounded.

MOSUL - At least 10 mortar rounds fell in a crowded market
in central Mosul near the city's provincial council headquarters.
Hospital officials said three Iraqi civilians were killed and 52
injured from the blasts. A second such attack killed two
civilians and wounded seven, the U.S. military said.

MASHRU - A double car bomb killed 18 people and wounded
dozens late on Wednesday in Mashru, near the mainly Shi'ite city
of Hilla, hospital sources said. It was the deadliest attack in
Iraq for several days.

BAGHDAD - At dawn, Iraqi police commandos stormed the Dahab
neighbourhood of the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib,
recovering dozens of tonnes of fuel and oil hijacked from road
tankers and stored in underground tanks for resale on the black
market, Interior Minister Bayan Jabor told a news conference.
Fuel shortages have been a major grievance in Baghdad for months.

BAGHDAD - Jabor also said an al Qaeda cell comprising eight
members, including officers, from his ministry's 8th Armoured
Brigade, a mechanised counter-insurgency unit, had been arrested
and accused of plotting to kill senior officials and to blow up
the Interior Ministry headquarters.

TIKRIT - Around 1,000 protesters clashed with Iraqi police
outside Tikrit's police headquarters, a Reuters witness said. One
policeman was killed and three protestors were injured when the
crowd overran the building, a local government spokesman said.
The protests were triggered by the killing of a former mayor in
the town which his tribe blamed on a rival clan.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Interior Minister said a counter-insurgency
campaign in central Iraq dubbed Operation Lightning had
captured 1,691 suspects so far, including 43 foreign Arabs. Bayan
Jabor said 14 members of Iraq's security forces have died in the
operation and a total of 160 car and roadside bombs were defused.

BAGHDAD - Three Baghdad barbers were shot dead by militants
on Tuesday in Baghdad, a Defence ministry statement said on
Thursday. Radical Islamists have killed dozens of barbers in the
past year for giving clean shaves which they say is "un-Islamic".

BAIJI - An Iraqi soldier and a civilian were shot and killed
as they were driving in a civilian car on Wednesday in the
northern Iraqi town of Baiji, the defence ministry said.