Free Republic

Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group....

The British hostage Peter Moore was dramatically set free yesterday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen. Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was freed by League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) — an extremist Shia group allied to Iran — after 31 months and spent his first night of freedom at the British Embassy in Baghdad. He is expected to fly home today.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fistfights broke out Friday around Najaf's most sacred shrine, a day after U.S. troops refused to intervene when gunmen loyal to a radical cleric ransacked an Iraqi police station there. Coalition forces came under fire in another Shiite city south of Baghdad. In the capital, a car bomb exploded on a highway in the Sayediya district as a U.S. patrol passed nearby. Two U.S. Humvees were slightly damaged but there was no U.S. confirmation of any casualties. The trouble in Najaf started Friday morning when hundreds of protesters marched toward the Imam Ali Shrine to express support...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite gunmen seized a police station Thursday in Najaf in the first outbreak of fighting since an agreement to end weeks of bloody clashes between U.S. troops and militia forces. Four Iraqis were killed and 13 were injured, hospital and militia officials said. Gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took control of the Ghari police station just 250 yards from the Imam Ali Shrine, witness Mohammed Hussein said. The station was looted and police cars were burned. "We sent a quick-reaction unit to assist the policemen defending the station, but they were overwhelmed by al-Sadr fighters,"...