|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Middle-East |
Cuttings |
|||
|
Red hackles rise as the Black Watch stride out
Tam o'shanter on his head, pistol in his belt, the commanding officer of the Black Watch is striding ahead through the crowded market place in the centre of the town of Az Zubayr.
Yesterday this street was thought still too dangerous to drive down in a soft-skinned Land Rover, but the CO has decided enough is enough.
After days of sitting back and watching his troops come under attack from militiamen armed with mortars, AK47s and rocket propelled grenades, he has decided that he and his men are not going to be forced to hide behind the safety of the armour-plate of their Warriors any longer.
The order has gone out that the Black Watch is going to patrol the streets of Zubayr on foot.
|
|
|||
|
. |
||||
|
Iraq |
Video |
Iraq gallery |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Featured |
||||
|
"I want this moving now, now, now," he screamed, and there was another burst of gunfire overhead. Then they were there, the Warriors, with their 30mm cannon and chain guns, appearing over the crest of the bridge, just as the cavalry should. |
ODAY al-Dibaj clasps the bars of his prison cell, his hair cropped close to his head, his beard neatly trimmed. He speaks fast, and passionately. The people love Muqtada al-Sadr, Dibaj says, because Sadr loves his country and supports all the good people in Iraq. Around him, the 20 or so other men with whom he shares his filthy cell in Basra's main prison press forward, agreeing with him, talking over him. Behind them, in between the slogans painted on black sheets, a picture of Sadr dominates the rear wall. |
I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war, warns Shia leader
THE MOST influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war. Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks. |
||
|
Hands up if you've lost the plot...
First, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad alienated the rest of the world with his religious extremism, nuclear ambitions and global grandstanding. Now, due to domestic failures and economic incompetence, he is doing the same to ordinary Iranians. |
IN THE darkness by the side of the road, Robert Grieve's Land Rover rolled over and over, bullets ripping through it and out the other side. The rocket-propelled grenade had hit the tyre and bounced off, but the force of the blast had tipped the vehicle over. |
Gulf states load up on weapons of war
Leaders of Sunni Arab states are embarking on a military spending spree in an attempt to contain the growing threat from Iran. Alarmed by the progress of Iran's nuclear programme and the prospect of a military clash between its Shia regime and the United States, Gulf leaders intend to use billions of dollars of oil revenue to purchase a huge array of military hardware. |
||
|
. |
||||
|
'We are tired of firing at people – get us out of here’
It was as astonishing an admission as any that has emerged from the lips of a British officer in the four and a half years since the tanks rolled over the Iraqi border. The British Army, said the man sitting in a prefab hut in Britain’s last base in the country, were tired of fighting. |
When they awoke it was everywhere, the oily cinders coating every surface, falling like tiny flakes of black snow. On their sleeping bags, on their skin, in their hair, breathing it in, impossible to brush off, melting into diesel-dark streaks, seeping into their pores. |
Tortured screams ring out as Iraqis take over Abu Ghraib
THE NOTORIOUS Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad is at the centre of fresh abuse allegations just a week after it was handed over to Iraqi authorities, with claims that inmates are being tortured by their new captors. An independent witness who went into Abu Ghraib this week told The Sunday Telegraph that screams were coming from the cell blocks housing the terrorist suspects. |
||
|
. |
||||
|
Hands tied behind his back, feet bound, Saddam Hussein shuffled on to the red-painted metal gallows for his execution yesterday. A shadow of his arrogant former self, he looked bemused, beaten. His executioners had let him wear his long black overcoat, but made him take off his woolly hat and denied him a tie. Before they led him into the room, he was asked if he wanted to say anything. "No,'' the old dictator replied. "Come on. Just do it.''
|
The ballot boxes were full almost to overflowing, and still people queued up to get in to the polling stations. They turned out in their hundreds of thousands, walking in family groups, couples with their children, talking excitedly about what for the majority was their first chance to cast a vote in an election for anyone other than Saddam Hussein.
|
Iran has established a sophisticated spying operation at the head of the Arabian Gulf in a move which has significantly heightened tensions in its standoff with the United States. |
||
|
In brief |
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
Copyright ©2011 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
||||
Caught
in the middle as Amarah explodes
