A suicide bomber in a truck filled with cooking gas and explosives detonated his payload in Baghdad's Khalani Square June 19 just as worshippers were finishing midday prayers at the square's large Shi'ite mosque, killing 87, injuring more than 200 and partially destroying the mosque. That night, three Sunni mosques were attacked in Babil province—the Osama bin Zaid and Abdulla al-Jabouri mosques in Iskandariya, and the Asfouk Mosque at Ajbala outside Mahawil, near the so-called "Triangle of Death." Gunmen stormed the mosques, then set off bombs. No casualties were reported, but the mosques were all damaged. (NYT, CNN, June 20)

Via PRWeb, the Press Release Newswire, June 15:

Noam Chomsky Voices Support for the "Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007"
House Resolution 2265 would allow more Iraqis into the United States, including religious minorities suffering from persecution.
Mandaean Crisis International, an organization dedicated to ending persecution of the Mandaean community, today announced that Professor Noam Chomsky has publicly lent his support to the passage of House Resolution 2265. Called the Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees Act of 2007, the bill would confer immigration status to the U.S. for many religious minorities, including the Mandaean community in Iraq. The Mandaeans, also known as Sabian Mandaeans, are an ethnic and religious group of great but uncertain antiquity who revere John the Baptist as their last great teacher, but are not Christian.

From Reporters Without Borders, June 18, via International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX):

Reporters Without Borders has voiced deep outrage at the murder of Filaih Wadi Mijthab, editor of the daily "al-Sabah", whom kidnappers snatched from his car on 13 June 2007 as he was driving to work.

Former US ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke has an essay in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, "Defying Orders, Saving Lives: Heroic Diplomats of the Holocaust," which draws an unsettlingly valid analogy to contemporary Iraq. Holbrooke outlines the cases of Sweden's Raoul Wallenberg, Portugal's Aristedes de Sousa Mendes and the USA's Hiram Bingham IV, who all risked their careers and even their lives to help Jews escape Axis Europe in defiance of their own governments' policies. Holbrooke notes that asylum policies are similarly restrictive today, even as Iraq approaches a genocidal situation—and asks where such heroes as Wallenberg are in the face of Iraq's refugee crisis:

Two minarets at Shia Islam's revered Golden Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra were blown up June 13. The government has imposed a total curfew on the city until further notice. Shi'ite officials blamed al-Qaeda for the attack, but Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, has called for restraint. "He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis," Sistani's spokesman, Hamed Khafaf, told Reuters.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerillas have declared a unilateral cease-fire, while still maintaining the right to "self-defense" against Turkish forces. "We are renewing our declaration to halt attacks against the Turkish army," said PKK official Abdul Rahman Chaderchi, speaking in northern Iraq, AP reported. "We want peace and we are ready for negotiations. But if Turkey decides to attack our bases inside Turkey or inside Iraqi Kurdistan, then this unilateral cease-fire will be meaningless. If we are attacked, we will fight back and we have the ability to confront any Turkish aggression." (IraqSlogger, June 12)

In the west and central regions of Iraq, heart of the supposed "Sunni insurgency", US forces are equipping and training former Sunni insurgents to fight al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in a bid to turn local and tribal groups against the presence of "foreign" Islamists. [First pioneered in Anbar province, the "Anbar model" is now being replicated in other Sunni areas, including the Amiriya district of Baghdad.] [NYT, June 11]

The headquarters of the Iraq Freedom Congress, a civil anti-occupation coalition, were raided by US troops June 7. The premises were damaged when the soldiers forced down the door, and five of the office's guards were arrested and their weapons confiscated. Documents were also seized in the raid.