Former Iraqi President Barham Salih is on track to become the next head of the U.N. refugee agency.

Fighters with a Kurdish separatist militant group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey have begun laying down their weapons.

With the world’s attention fixed on efforts to free Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, talks are quietly continuing to liberate a Princeton scholar and Israeli hostage held in Iraq by a different Iranian-backed militant group.

The official invitation extended by Iraq to new Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa to attend the upcoming Arab League summit in Baghdad has triggered sharp political divisions within Iraq.

The death of Pope Francis has sent shockwaves through Iraq’s Christian community, where his presence once brought hope after one of the darkest chapters in the country’s recent history.

Iraqi Prime Minister Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has said that the head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was killed in an operation by members of the Iraqi national intelligence service along with U.S.-led coalition forces Abdallah Maki Mosleh al-Rifai, or “Abu Khadija,” was “one of the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq and the world,” the statement said.

Human rights groups and diplomat have criticized a law that was quietly passed by the Iraqi parliament over the weekend that would impose heavy prison sentences on gay and transgender people.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has visited Michigan to meet with the state's large Iraqi community and update them on escalating tensions in the Middle East.

The United States and Iraq will soon begin talks to wind down the mission of a U.S.-led military coalition formed to fight the Islamic State group in Iraq.

The U.S. military has hit three facilities in Iraq and two anti-ship missiles in Yemen within hours of each other in its continued effort to keep violence from the Israel-Hamas war from spilling over into a wider conflict.

Iraqis have begun voting for the first time in a decade to select new provincial council members, who in turn will appoint governors, with the outcome seen as a bellwether for the parliamentary elections due to take place in 2025.

The Biden administration is balancing efforts to deter militants in the Middle East without triggering a broader regional conflict.

The Pentagon says the U.S. has carried out an airstrike on a weapons warehouse in eastern Syria.

Iraq is stepping up repatriation of its citizens from a camp in northeastern Syria housing tens of thousands of people, mostly wives and children of Islamic State fighters but also supporters of the militant group.

Iraqi medical officials say 18 people have been killed after a bus carrying pilgrims to the Iraqi city of Karbala overturned north of Baghdad.

U.N. experts say the Islamic State group still commands between 5,000 and 7,000 members across its former stronghold in Syria and Iraq and its fighters pose the most serious terrorist threat in Afghanistan today.

Protesters angered by an Iraqi man in Sweden who threatened to burn a copy of the Quran stormed the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad.

A multi-billion dollar agreement signed with France’s TotalEnergies could help resolve Iraq’s longstanding electricity crisis.

An Iraqi government spokesman says Baghdad has opened an investigation into the case of a dual Israeli-Russian academic who has been missing in Iraq since last March.

The European Union’s judicial cooperation agency says the Netherlands and Belgium have joined an international investigation into atrocities committed against the Yazidi minority in Syria and Iraq.

Two decades after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis are still trying to emigrate to the United States.

Congress is now considering doing something it hasn’t done since the Vietnam War — repealing authorizations for the use of military force.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says he opposes repeal of the 2002 and 1991 authorizations of force against Iraq, arguing that that authority “bears directly on the threats we face today in Iraq and Syria from Iran-backed terrorists.”.

Twenty years ago the U.S. invaded Iraq amid blinding explosions of shock and awe.

Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid says he wants the world to know that his country now is at peace, nearly 20 years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi authorities have reopened Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone in an attempt to ease traffic jams in the capital.

Security sources and a local government official say Islamic State group militants attacked an Iraqi army position in the northwestern governorate of Kirkuk killing four soldiers.

Iraq witnessed bloody street violence for nearly 24 hours spurred by loyalists of a powerful Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, that was the culmination of a 10-month power struggle.

Iraq’s caretaker prime minister has warned that the political crisis in the country is threatening security achievements made in past years.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have held a mass prayer called for by an influential Shiite cleric in Baghdad, a highly symbolic move amid an unprecedented political crisis roiling Iraq.

Residents of the impoverished Baghdad suburb of Sadr City say they support an influential Shiite cleric who called on thousands of his followers to storm Iraq's parliament.

Thousands of Shiites gathered in Baghdad for a counter-rally called by Iran-backed groups against their rival, an influential cleric whose followers are staging a sit-in inside the Iraqi parliament, have left the area.

Hundreds of followers of an influential Shiite cleric are camped out inside Iraq's parliament after toppling security walls around the building and storming in the previous day.

Thousands of followers of an influential Shiite cleric have stormed into Iraq's parliament to protest government formation efforts led by his rivals from Iran-backed groups.

Hundreds of Iraqi protesters breached Baghdad’s parliament Wednesday chanting anti-Iran curses in a demonstration against a nominee for prime minister by Iran-backed parties.

Hundreds of angry Iraqis have taken to the streets in Baghdad to decry deadly strikes on an Iraqi tourist resort the previous day that authorities blame on Turkey.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis are attending a mass prayer in Baghdad called for by an influential Shiite cleric.

Iraq still doesn’t have a government, eight months since national elections took place, and there seems no clear way out of the dangerous deadlock.

Hundreds of Iraqis have rushed to hospitals with breathing problems and the Baghdad airport suspended flights for several hours as a sandstorm blanketed the country, the fifth within a month.

Iraq’s new parliament has held its first session, nearly three months after Iraqis voted in a general election whose results have been contested by powerful Iran-backed factions.

The European Union is revamping the rules governing the movement of people and goods into and around Europe.

Gaylan Delir Ismael, a 25-year-old from Iraq’s Kurdistan region, jumped at the chance to try to get to Europe when he heard that thousands from the Middle East were taking advantage of easily obtained tourist visas from Belarus.

Pro-Iran Shiite militias that emerged as the biggest losers in Iraq's parliamentary elections three weeks ago are still rejecting the outcome of the vote.

For many Iraqis, the name Colin Powell conjures up one image: the man who as U.S. secretary of State went before the U.N. Security Council in 2003 to make the case for war against their country.

Iraq’s elections on Sunday come with enormous challenges: Iraq’s economy has been battered by years of conflict, endemic corruption and more recently, the coronavirus pandemic.

It was looted from an Iraqi museum 30 years ago, Now, a 3,500-year-old clay tablet discovered in the ruins of the library of an ancient Middle Eastern king is finally headed back to Iraq.

Not long after 9/11, the Bush administration shifted its attention to Iraq, saying it was part of an “axis of evil” that pursued anti-American policies.

News of the death of former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has hit far differently in Baghdad than in the U.S. capital.

Lithuania is seeing a growing number of migrants entering the Baltic country from neighboring Belarus in recent weeks.

Clashes between security forces and protesters have left one person dead after hundreds of Iraqis took to the streets in Baghdad to protest a rise in targeted killings of prominent activists and journalists.

Francis said the idea of a trip “cooks over time in my conscience,” and that the pandemic was the issue that weighed most heavily on him. Francis, the Vatican delegation and traveling media were vaccinated against COVID-19, while most Iraqis haven't been. Francis said he wasn’t sure if he would have to slow down his usual whirlwind pace on future trips. Otherwise, the only other trip Francis has promised to make is to Lebanon, though he offered no time frame. He said the country's patriarch had asked him to add a Beirut leg onto his Iraq trip but that he had declined, thinking it would be like tossing the country “crumbs," given all Lebanon’s current problems.

Pope Francis celebrates mass at the Franso Hariri Stadium in Irbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Sunday, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)IRBIL – Pope Francis urged Iraq’s Christians on Sunday to forgive the injustices against them by Muslim extremists and to rebuild as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the Islamic State group’s horrific reign. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was at the heart of the IS so-called “caliphate” and witnessed the worst of the group’s rule inflicted on Muslims, Christians and others, including beheadings and mass killings. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, became IS’s bureaucratic and financial backbone. Things are difficult for those living here.”At Qaraqosh, Francis urged its residents to continue to dream, and forgive.

Eric Holcomb received his COVID-19 vaccine shot Friday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the opening of the state’s first mass vaccination clinic. Holcomb wore a face mask in the front passenger seat of an SUV while getting the shot of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine at the drive-through clinic. Ad___TORONTO — Canada is getting a fourth vaccine to prevent COVID-19, approving the Johnson & Johnson shot that works with just one dose. Canada has pre-purchased 10 million Johnson & Johnson doses, with options to buy another 28 million. The U.S. approved the Johnson & Johnson vaccine last month.

Pope Francis delivers his speech during a meeting with bishops and priests, at the Sayidat al-Nejat (Our Lady of Salvation) Cathedral, in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, March 5, 2021. The pontiff’s landmark visit has been months in the making and is the first papal visit to Iraq, one that eluded his predecessors. The Alitalia flight, with both Vatican and Iraqi flags, carrying the pope and his delegation landed just before 2 p.m. (1100GMT). Dozens of Christians are gathering at the Church of the Virgin Mary in Baghdad hours before Pope Francis was due to land in Iraq for a first papal visit to the war-weary country. The papal visit has raised alarm among public health experts, who fear large crowds will inevitably gather to see the pope.

The Vatican has taken its own precautions, with the 84-year-old pope, his 20-member Vatican entourage and the 70-plus journalists on the papal plane all vaccinated. Iraq, however, only began its vaccination campaign Tuesday and most Iraqis who come to see the pope won't be inoculated. Bruni noted that Iraq has a predominantly young population and that the current daily caseload was small compared to the overall population. The trip will mark the first-ever papal meeting with a grand ayatollah, the Iranian-born Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani. In between, Francis will travel to southern Najaf to the home of al-Sistani, a figure revered in Iraq and the Shiite world.

A Christian priest holds a Vatican flag as he walks by a poster of Pope Francis during preparations for the Pope's visit in Mar Youssif Church in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Feb. 26, 2021. (AP/Photo/Hadi Mizban)VATICAN CITY – Infectious disease experts are expressing concern about Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Iraq, given a sharp rise in coronavirus infections there, a fragile health care system and the unavoidable likelihood that Iraqis will crowd to see him. But from a purely epidemiological standpoint, as well as the public health message it sends, a papal trip to Iraq amid a global pandemic is not advisable, health experts say. And the Vatican has taken its own precautions, with the 84-year-old pope, his 20-member Vatican entourage and the 70-plus journalists on the papal plane all vaccinated. Head said for any trip to Iraq, there must be infection control practices in force, including mask-wearing, hand-washing, social distancing and good ventilation in indoor spaces.

SAN ANTONIO – It’s been exactly 30 years since the start of the first Gulf War. The war began after then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded the oil rich nation of Kuwait in August, 1990. Bush ordered Operation Desert Storm. David Stewart, a Gulf War veteran, was then 22-years-old and formed part of the U.S. Army’s 101st airborne division. Operation Desert Storm has since been the largest and deepest air assault in history.