Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

33 Iraqis Killed, 90 Injured at an Election Rally in Baghdad

April 25, 2014

33 killed, 90 wounded at election rally in Iraq

English.news.cn   2014-04-26 06:12:36

BAGHDAD, April 25, 2014 (Xinhua) --

At least 33 people were killed and 90 others wounded in a series of bombing attacks at a parliamentary election rally in Iraq's capital city of Baghdad on Friday, an Interior Ministry source said.

The three back-to-back attacks, one roadside bomb and two car bombs, struck as supporters of the Sadiqun bloc, the political wing of Iraqi Shiite Islamist group Asaeb Ahel al-Haq, were holding a parliamentary election rally near a sports club in eastern Baghdad, the source said.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group has claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks in a statement, but the authenticity of the claim could not be independently verified.

The militant group said its members carried out the bombings to avenge the killing and torturing of Sunnis by Shiite militias.

The attack came just less than one week from Iraq's April 30 parliamentary elections, the first in the country since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in late 2011.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

As Iraq violence grows, U.S. sends more intelligence officers

By Mark Hosenball and Warren Strobel

WASHINGTON Fri Apr 25, 2014 4:35pm EDT

(Reuters) -

The United States is quietly expanding the number of intelligence officers in Iraq and holding urgent meetings in Washington and Baghdad to find ways to counter growing violence by Islamic militants, U.S. government sources said.

A high-level Pentagon team is now in Iraq to assess possible assistance for Iraqi forces in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) said two current government officials and one former U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The powerful ISIL now boasts territorial influence stretching from Iraq's western Anbar province to northern Syria, operating in some areas close to Baghdad, say U.S. officials.

Senior U.S. policy officials, known as the "Deputies Committee," met in Washington this week to discuss possible responses to the deteriorating security outlook in Iraq, said a government source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

The source did not know the outcome of the meeting.

White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan declined to comment.

The meetings underscore how Iraq's instability is posing a new foreign policy challenge for President Barack Obama, who celebrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops more than two years ago. Despite the concern, officials said it remains unclear whether Obama will commit significant new resources to the conflict.

Four months after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki declared war on Sunni militants in Iraq's western Anbar province, the fighting has descended into brutal atrocities, often caught on video and in photographs by both militants and Iraqi soldiers.

Iraqi soldiers say they are bogged down in a slow, vicious fight with ISIL and other Sunni factions in the city of Ramadi and around nearby Falluja.

LIMITED OPTIONS

One former and two current U.S. security officials said the number of U.S. intelligence personnel in Baghdad had already begun to rise but that the numbers remained relatively small.

"It's more than before, but not really a lot," said one former official with knowledge of the matter.

Much of the pressure to do more is coming from the U.S. military, the former official said, but it is unclear if the White House wants to get more deeply involved.

After ending nearly nine years of war in Iraq, the United States has limited military options inside the country. About 100 U.S. military personnel remain, overseeing weapons sales and cooperation with Iraqi security forces.

The U.S. government has rushed nearly 100 Hellfire missiles, M4 rifles, surveillance drones and 14 million rounds of ammunition to the Iraqi military since January, U.S. officials said. The Obama administration has also started training Iraqi special forces in neighboring Jordan.

Before the U.S. military withdrew, it trained, equipped and conducted operations with Iraqi special forces.

Staff from the Pentagon's Central Command are working closely with the Iraqi military but have advised it against launching major operations due to concerns Iraqi forces are not prepared for such campaigns, the former U.S. official said.

In Anbar, militants have a major presence in Fallouja, while in Ramadi there is a stalemate, with territory divided among Iraqi government forces, ISIL and other Sunni armed groups.

In testimony before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in February, Brett McGurk, the State Department's top official on Iraq, described how convoys of up to 100 trucks, mounted with heavy weapons moved into Ramadi and Falluja on New Year's Day.

Local forces in Ramadi subsequently succeeded in pushing militants back, but the situation in Falluja remained "far more serious," McGurk said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and by Ned Parker in Baghdad. Editing by Jason Szep and Ross Colvin)