A car-bombing attack on the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party [in Makhmur] killed over fifty people [May 13]. The blast comes as the autonomous and relatively stable Kurdish region in Iraq is in the grips of a fit of terrorist violence. [Makhmur's mayor was among the dead.] [AlJazeera, May 13] The militant group "Islamic State in Iraq"—with alleged al-Qaeda leadership—has claimed responsibility for the attack. [Reuters, May 14]

During a visit to the US-allied United Arab Emirates [May 13], Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the withdrawal of all US troops from the Persian Gulf region. [Reuters, May 13] He also promised "severe retaliation" to any attack on Iran by the United States. [AlJazeera, May 14] Ahmadinejad's bluster comes as US and Iranian representatives look likely to meet in the coming weeks to discuss how to stabilize the precarious security situation in Iraq. [AlJazeera, May 13]

Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite party, Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has announced key changes to its platform, moving closer to Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani—and away from Iran, where the party was formed in the 1980s to oppose Saddam Hussein. Under the new platform, the party will continue to receive guidance from the Shi'ite religious establishment—but more from Sistani, as opposed to Iran's Welayat al-Faqih, led by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iraqi MPs are gathering votes to force their government to set a deadline for US forces to withdraw from the country and think they have a majority, a leading Shiite politician announced May 11. Baha al-Aaraji, a supporter of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, told AFP that 144 members of the 275-seat national assembly have signed a draft law that would set a departure timetable for US troops. However, other legislators said the bill would probably become a non-binding petition, and that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki would martial enough support to renew the US mandate next month. (iAfrica, May 12)

A draft report by the US Government Accountability Office reveals between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels of oil from Iraq are unaccounted for and may have been siphoned off through corruption of smuggling. Based on an average of $50 per barrel, the report puts the discrepancy at between $5 million and $15 million daily. The report doesn't provide a final conclusion of what happened to the missing oil, but only offers suggestions including corruption, smuggling, pipeline sabotage, theft and inaccurate reports of production. The GAO tapped experts at the Energy Information Administration within the US Department of Energy for its oil analysis. (NYT, May 12)

Iraq's Kurdish regional government has mobilized 1,000 peshmerga troops to its border with Iran, ostensibly to stop the flow of men and weapons to support the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam. Maj. Gen. Jabbar Yawir said an Ansar-allied group calling itself the "Kurdistan Brigades of al-Qaeda" has repeatedly attacked Kurdish forces in the region around the border town of Penjwin.

British civil servant David Keogh has been sentenced to six months after being found guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act for leaking a classified memo about a meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush in which the US president reportedly called for the bombing of AlJazeera TV's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The Daily Mirror newspaper reported that the memo showed Blair arguing against Bush's suggestion, adding that its sources disagreed on whether it was serious. Blair said he had no information about any proposed US action against AlJazeera, and the White House called the claims "outlandish and inconceivable." The document, marked "Secret-Personal," was intended to be restricted to senior officials. The memo's contents are considered so sensitive that much of the trial was heard behind closed doors. (AP, Daily Mail, May 11)

One of the seven US marines facing charges related to the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha has admitted to lying about the deaths of five of them. Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz said he saw squad leader Sgt. Frank Wuterich shoot dead five men while they had their hands up to surrender. Cruz, granted immunity from prosecution, also admitted to urinating on one of the dead bodies and pumping bullets into all five of them after a squad member was killed in a roadside bombing. Wuterich, who reprotedly told Sela Cruz to blame the Iraqi army for the atrocity, is facing multiple murder charges. Cruz was testifying in a preliminary hearing on charges against Cpt. Randy Stone, accused of failing in his duty to investigate and report the 24 deaths. (AlJazeera, May 10)