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This is like something that happens in a CGI action flick or a cartoon, via the BBC’s Feras Kilani reporting near Kirkuk, Afghanistan: It appears to be the quickest way for a suicide car bomber to reach Heaven by exploding in the sky after US missile hit him near Apparently the missile hit one car bomb which caused the second car to fly into the air where it then exploded:

Wild boars mauled three Islamic State (Isil) fighters to death near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, according to Kurdish fighters. The jihadists’ bodies were found badly mangled by refugees fleeing through farmland as they tried to get away from Isil territory in al-Rashad, southwest of the city.

Of the 31 states that have declared their opposition to taking in Syrian refugees, one state, Kentucky, has a specific reason to be wary of the background check process: previously two Iraqi refugees who settled in Bowling Green turned out to be al Qaeda-linked terrorists with the blood of American soldiers on their hands, an ABC News investigation found. In the wake of the Kentucky case, the U.S. halted the refugee program for Iraqis for six months, a fact the Obama administration did not disclose to Congress at the time, officials told ABC News in the 2013 investigation.

The scale of the operation - the largest of several by Islamic State to divert an advance on their stronghold in Mosul - shows how tough the battle for Mosul may become and points to a continued ability of the militant group to undermine security across the country even if its northern bastion falls. Accounts gathered by Reuters from residents, police, security and intelligence officials suggest it was carried out by forces that were highly trained, well-prepared and - alarmingly for the government - supported from inside Kirkuk. “What was surprising is it was done so easily,” said Ranj Talabani,...

SIS fighters launched attacks on police Friday in the city of Kirkuk, as Iraqi security forces continued a massive military offensive to try to pry Mosul, one of Iraq's largest cities, from the militant group. "The fighters struck [Kirkuk] before dawn, with suicide bombers hitting four police stations and gunmen killing police," NPR's Alice Fordham reports from Irbil, Iraq, though the number of casualties wasn't immediately clear. "A curfew is imposed in Kirkuk, but eyewitnesses say fighting continues." The militants also hit an electricity station outside the city, Alice says. At least 13 workers died in the apparent suicide bombing,...

(IraqiNews.com) Kirkuk – Iraqi media outlets reported on Wednesday that a malfunction caused an explosive belt to explode and kill 16 members of the Islamic State (ISIS), including senior leaders, during their meeting in Hawija, southwest of Kirkuk. Alsumaria stated, “Today, an explosion took place amid a meeting of ISIS members in al-Mahawes village in Hawija district (55 km southwest of Kirkuk),” adding that, “The explosion resulted in the killing of 16 members of the Islamic State group, including senior leaders, as well as wounding of 16 others.” “A number of the ISIS members were wearing explosive belts during the...

A family including a two-year-old girl have been burned alive after they tried to escape from from ISIS savages in Iraq, it has emerged. The mother and father were captured along with their young daughter as they tried to flee from Rashad village, south west of Kirkuk in the north of the country. It comes amid claims ISIS fanatics have tasked members with tracking down families trying to run away from the terror group's territories in the area.

Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, on Saturday said that the Iraqi security forces captured a leading figure in Saddam Hussein’s Baath party in an operation based on intelligence reports. Al-Abadi said this in his address to a ceremony in Baghdad for the 146th anniversary of the Iraqi press. “The security forces managed to arrest the terrorist Abdul Karim al-Sadoun by the efforts of the Iraqi intelligence,” Abadi said. Abadi did not give further details about how or where the arrest took place, saying he preferred an official statement to declare the details later as interrogation was still underway. Al-Sadoun was...

Eight dead bodies hang from a metal frame in the Iraq's Kirkuk province in Islamic State's latest public display of barbarity. The gruesome images which emerged on social media show the men's limp bodies suspended from their feet off a tall structure in the town of Hawija. The notorious black flag used by Islamist groups like ISIS is displayed above them as horrified onlookers inspect the scene. Some of the deceased men appear to be wearing military fatigues but it is not known if they were Iraqi soldiers. An ISIS fighter believed to be Abu Al-Rahman poses triumphantly in one...

Iraqi Kurdish forces and police retook an oil field in Kirkuk province Saturday that was seized by the Islamic State group overnight, and freed 24 workers who had been taken captive, officers said. "Peshmerga forces and police cleared the Khubbaz (oil) field a little while ago and were able to enter it after surrounding it for hours," police Brigadier General Sarhad Qader said of the fighting, adding that they also retook eight villages. IS had moved into the oil field Friday night and seized 24 workers, who were freed after they withdrew, peshmerga Major General Westa Rasul said. A police...

>Stories are emerging from Christian communities in Iraq that are vaguely reminiscent of the plight of Jews in Nazi Germany. AINA, the Assyrian International News Agency, reported this week on a dozen Christians helped by a Muslim man in the north of Iraq who has helped Christians escape areas controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Those familiar with the history of the Holocaust may be reminded of anti-Nazi Christians who hid Jews and helped them escape persecution. The AINA story details the plight of 12 Assyrian Christians who failed to leave their town of...

Two days before Mosul fell to the Islamic insurgent group Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant), Iraqi commanders stood eyeballing its most trusted messenger. The man, known within the extremist group as Abu Hajjar, had finally cracked after a fortnight of interrogation and given up the head of Isis's military council. "He said to us, 'you don't realise what you have done'," an intelligence official recalled. "Then he said: 'Mosul will be an inferno this week'.' Several hours later, the man he had served as a courier and been attempting to protect, Abdulrahman al-Bilawi, lay dead in...

The little video below comes via Natalia Trouiller’s Facebook page. She is accompanying the delegation of French bishops that is visiting Iraq right now. Here are the people we are praying and fasting for tomorrow. Roll clip!

Iraq was on the brink of disintegration Thursday as al-Qaeda-inspired fighters swept through northern Iraq toward Baghdad and Kurdish soldiers seized the city of Kirkuk without a fight.

How bad has the situation in Iraq become? The city of Kirkuk has long been a point of contention between the Kurds and the Iraqi government. Saddam Hussein expelled the Kurds from the city, and ever since the Kurds have laid claim to it — and its oil resources. The new government in Iraq similarly refused to cede the territory to the Kurds, and for the same reason.Now they’ve run away from Kirkuk, and the Kurds have it again by default as the Iraqi army collapses: Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil...

Iraqi Kurdistan's president vowed to protect Kurdish interests during a visit to the city of Kirkuk on Monday, in a show of defiance of Iraq's central government over disputed territory and oil. Tensions are running high between autonomous Kurdistan and Baghdad after both sent troops to reinforce areas along their disputed internal border, bringing them close to confrontation in their long-running feud. Dressed in military uniform and flanked by troops, Kurdistan's President Masoud Barzani visited Kurdish-controlled areas of Kirkuk, a city long seen as a flashpoint for Arab-Kurdish tensions after the U.S. military withdrawal a year ago. "Kurds, throughout history,...

LONDON – An Iraqi archbishop has predicted a new wave of emigration from Iraq involving Christians who have tired of waiting for their situation to improve. Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk said many Christians taking refuge in northern Iraq were determined “to leave the country for good” after concluding that, nearly seven years after the invasion of Iraq by a U.S.-led coalition, it was still unsafe to return to their homes in the South. He told the British branch of Aid to the Church in Need, a charity set up to help suffering and persecuted Christians, that a...

Many connect US Defense Secretary’s sudden visit to Iraq with a new problem which has appeared in the US administration. The Pentagon has recently announced that the United States would accelerate the withdrawal of US troops from the war-torn nation, although the situation in Iraq is far from being stable. The US administration is particularly concerned about the Kurds’ claims for Iraqi oil wells. It is an open secret that Iraq’s Kurdish minority has been a staunch ally of the United States during the nation’s incursion in the country to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime. On the one hand, Gates had...

KIRKUK, Iraq, July 13, 2009 – Despite the historical differences that challenge progress in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and Kirkuk province, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he’s struck by the governance and security milestones recently achieved here. “It’s been pretty impressive watching the province develop here,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters today after meeting with U.S. military and local Iraqi leadership. “Overall, [issues here] were more balanced than I thought they would be, based on the kinds of demands I was expecting [and] based on my understanding of the depth of the challenges here historically,” the...

SNIPPET: "Hanna, a Christian, was driving with his daughter in Kirkuk when gunmen pulled him from the car and shot him dead, police there told the German Press Agency dpa. His daughter witnessed her father's murder, which took place in the predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Dumiz, police added...."