A chlorine bomb has exploded in a village [Abu Sayda] in the religiously-mixed province of Diyala, killing 32 people [May 16]. Iraqi insurgents have been increasingly accused of using chlorine—which causes severe burns—in their attacks. [BBC, May 16] Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute has been appointed as the US' new "war tsar" for Iraq, a position that has proven quite difficult for the Bush administration to fill. [AlJazeera, May 16]

The "Islamic State of Iraq," having claimed responsibility for an ambush on a US patrol south of Baghdad May 12, has warned the US military to stop searching for three soldiers missing after the incident, if they want them to remain safe. (The Guardian, May 15) In a Web statement, a rival coalition of Sunni insurgent groups—the "Jihad and Reform Front"—accused al-Qaeda of killing 12 of its senior members in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood. The coalition claimed to represent the "Islamic Army of Iraq," the "1920 Revolution Brigade" and the "Mujahedeen Army." (Newsday, May 15)

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.