Mosul
Three women and one man are killed in a home invasion.
Tikrit
Two construction workers killed in armed assault on their company's headquarters.
Kirkuk
Eleven people injured in double bomb attack near a fuel station.
Baghdad
Two civilians are injured in a bombing. That's all the info I can glean from the Kurdish site of Aswat al-Iraq; their English site is still (mysteriously) down, so only headlines are available.
Other News of the Day
Iraq and Iran exchange the remains of dead from the 1980s war. You remember, the one in which the U.S. supported Iraq, including satellite intelligence and protection of Iraqi oil exports, and Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein a gold handled cane.
PM al-Maliki heads to the U.S. to discuss the future of Iraqi-U.S. relations.
AP offers a retrospective on the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Excerpt:
In the beginning, it all looked simple: topple Saddam Hussein, destroy his purported weapons of mass destruction and lay the foundation for a pro-Western government in the heart of the Arab world.
Nearly 4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives later, the objective now is simply to get out _ and leave behind a country where democracy has at least a chance, where Iran does not dominate and where conditions may not be good but "good enough." Even those modest goals may prove too ambitious after American forces leave and Iraq begins to chart its own course.
David Enders reports for McClatchy that millions of Iraqis are still internally displaced. More than half a million are squatters, who receive no government assistance.
Liz Sly of WaPo discusses the problem I mentioned last week -- that the conflict in Syria is exacerbated sectarian tensions in Iraq. The Shiite-dominated government is solicitous of the Assad regime, over the objections of Sunni Arabs.
Afghanistan Update
Karzai says the death toll from last week's attacks on Ashura ceremonies now stands at 80.
Australia is planning to accelerate the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan, aiming to be gone by 2013, a year ahead of the previous schedule.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador is talking about possibly staying after 2014 after all. (Coalition of the stupid?)
Karzai says foreigners are contributing to corruption in Afghanistan. (I can think of a solution for that.