Iraq Oil Report's Daily Brief compiles the most important news and analysis about Iraq from around the web.
Aberdeen-based Wood Group has been awarded a contract to help develop what is thought to be one of the world's biggest oil fields, in Iraq.
Majnoon is estimated to hold about 38 billion barrels of oil.
About 200 Wood Group workers will provide tools, services and test equipment to assist the start-up, commissioning and testing of the field, which lies near Basra.
Joel Wing writes for Foreign Policy:
Iraq recently saw a huge increase in the number of attacks and casualties in April 2013. Iraq Body Count recorded 561 deaths for the month, the highest since August 2009, while the United Nations reported 712 killed, the most since June 2008. That caused Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to go on national TV to call for calm, and warn against the rise of sectarianism and violence. (3) The cause of the deterioration in security is the combination of an ongoing offensive by al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and retaliatory attacks by other insurgent groups for the government raiding a protest site in the town of Hawija in Kirkuk province.
The former will eventually end, while the latter could lead to increased support for militants. Either way, it appears that talk of a renewed civil war is premature. Yes, militants are becoming more active in the country, but they are for the most part isolated in certain areas; Shiites are relying upon the government to respond to them rather than militias, and the majority of the population is going about their business.
Jane Arraf reports for Al Jazeera:
The number of people fleeing the conflict in Syria continues to rise.
Iraq's central government has closed its borders to most refugees but the Kurdish region has welcomed 90 percent of those seeking shelter in the country - almost all of them Syrian Kurds.
Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf reports that living in Iraq has rekindled the refugees' nationalist spirit.
The steady implosion of Iraq as a unitary state has been eclipsed – by historic upheavals across the Arab world; by the pitiless conflict in Syria; and by the growing fears of failure in Afghanistan, a collision with Iran, and the death of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is, as these rival calls on diplomatic ingenuity suggest, wholly understandable. It is still a big mistake.
Kareem Raheem reports for Reuters:
At least 11 people were killed in three bomb explosions in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Monday, medics and police said.
Iraq has become increasingly volatile with fragile relations between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims under strain from the largely sectarian civil war in neighbouring Syria. Tensions are at their highest since U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011.
Acting defence minister Saadun al-Dulaimi on Sunday accused Turkey of controlling Sunni anti-government protests in Shiite-majority Iraq, saying the demonstrations are a haven for "terrorists and killers."
"There are foreign agendas controlling these sites," Dulaimi said of the protests.
"It is like Anbar, or Mosul or Samarra are part of the Ottoman Empire," he said, referring to Sunni areas in Iraq.
David Keys reports for the London Independent:
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, weren’t in Babylon at all – but were instead located 300 miles to the north in Babylon’s greatest rival Nineveh, according to a leading Oxford-based historian.
After more than 20 years of research, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute, has finally pieced together enough evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the famed gardens were built in Nineveh by the great Assyrian ruler Sennacherib - and not, as historians have always thought, by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
Like so many Indonesian women, Eli Anita wanted to earn more money than she could at home.
In 2007, she moved to Dubai through a labor recruitment company where, she says, her manager immediately began harassing her for sex, at one point becoming violent.
“He got very angry and he also beat me and kidnapped me in the bathroom for many hours. He locked the door,” she says in broken English.
A series of attacks including a blast near an Internet cafe in a Sunni area of Baghdad killed nine people and wounded dozens on Sunday in and around the Iraqi capital.
The attacks came amid heightened sectarian tension following a deadly security crackdown on a camp in northern Iraq run by Sunnis, protesting what they consider to be their second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government. Government investigators say the April 23 incident left 40 people dead, while a spate of follow-up attacks and battles has killed well over 200 more.
The regional sectarian war that has always been one of the greatest dangers of the crisis in Syria is alarmingly close to erupting. To the west of Damascus, Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah militia has publicly committed itself to defending the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and Syrian opposition sources say it has been instrumental in the regime’s recent battlefield gains. Apparent Iranian attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah have provoked at least one Israeli airstrike in Syria in recent days.
Even more disturbing is what is happening to Syria’s east: the bloodiest confrontation between Iraq’s minority Sunni community and the Shiite regime since the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops nearly two years ago. According to a count by the Associated Press, at least 218 people have been killed in gun battles and bombings since the Iraqi army stormed a Sunni protest encampment near Kirkuk on April 23. The United Nations says 712 people died in political violence during April, the most since 2008.
Beyond the Headlines features a raw translation of Cabinet decisions, as made public in Arabic by the media office of the Council of Ministers.
