Iraq Flashcards
Canal Hotel bombing
The Canal Hotel Bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, in the afternoon of August 19, 2003, killed at least 22 people, including the United Nations’ Special Representative in Iraq Sérgio Vieira de Mello, and wounded over 100. The blast targeted the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq created just 5 days earlier. (The United Nations had used the hotel as its headquarters in Iraq since the early 1990s.) That 19 August bombing resulted in the withdrawal within weeks of most of the 600 UN staff members from Iraq.[2] These events were to have a profound and lasting impact on the UN’s security practices globally.[3][4]
The attack was followed by a suicide car bomb attack on 22 September 2003 near U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing a security guard and wounding 19 people.[5]
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of terrorist organization Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, in April 2004 claimed responsibility for the 19 August blast.
Great Mosque of al-Nuri (Mosul)
The Great Mosque of al-Nuri (جامع النوري) is a historical mosque in Mosul, Iraq famous for its leaning minaret which gave the city its nickname “the hunchback” (الحدباء al-Ḥadbāˈ).
The structure was targeted by ISIS militants who occupied Mosul on June 10, 2014 and previously destroyed the Tomb of Jonah. However residents of Mosul incensed with the destruction of their cultural sites protected the mosque by forming a human chain and forming a resistance against ISIS.[7]
Allegedly, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi recently appeared first time during a Friday prayer in this mosque.
Ali al-Sistani
Al-Sayyid Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani Arabic: السيد علي الحسيني السيستاني), or Sayyed Ali Hosseini Sistani (Persian: سید علی حسینی سیستانی), commonly known as Ayatollah Sistani in the Western world (born August 4, 1930), is an Usuli marja in Iraq and the head of many of the seminaries (Hawzahs) in Najaf.[1]
He is described as the spiritual leader of Iraqi Shia Muslims[2] and senior-most cleric in Shia Islam.
In June 2014 Sistani issued a fatwa calling for “Citizens to defend the country, its people, the honor of its citizens, and its sacred places,” against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group
On 4 March 2014, the Daily Telegraph commentator Colin Freeman published an article[26] naming Ali al-Sistani as the most appropriate Nobel Peace Prize candidate. He also reported that he had been nominated earlier in 2006, by a group of Iraqi Christians.
