News stories by Karlos Zurutuza, page 8

QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq, Jul 26 (IPS) - "I witnessed a Turkish tank made in Germany destroying a Kurdish village. Civilians, children included, were wounded, and many were taking shelter inside a besieged church," said Media, the German nurse who has become legendary in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq and is known here only by this name.

GIRKE LEGE, Syria, Jun 26 (IPS) - The soldiers of former Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi had left just a few days before, but a group of about 50 children were already singing in the Amazigh language in the village of Yefren, 110 kilometres south of Tripoli. This month will mark two years since the establishment of the first Amazigh school in Libya.

GIRKE LEGE, Syria, Jun 18 (IPS) - A ban on political and even social gatherings, a bar on Kurdish language and culture; uprooting people, forced disappearances and a ‘caste' of hundreds of thousands of local Kurds deprived of citizenship... life for Kurds in pre-war Syria was probably as dire as it is today for their kin in Iran.

BASHIQA, Iraq, May 20 (IPS) - Luis Shabi nostalgically recalls his nine years of novitiate in Rome and a "fantastic road trip through Europe" before returning to Iraq in 1969. "Those were the good times," sighs the Chaldean Archbishop of Baghdad from a bunker in the heart of the Iraqi capital.

PENJWIN, Iraqi Kurdistan, Apr 17 (IPS) - When 37-year-old Igor Urizar first happened upon the isolated mountain village of Penjwin, 300 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, he had a vision of this border-town -- nestled in the pristine, snow-capped mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan -- transformed into a haven for skiers.

DERIK, Syria, Apr 11 (IPS) - At seven o'clock in the morning on Mar. 1, Kurdish militias took over the only operational oil refinery in Syria, located about 800 kilometres northwest of Damascus.

MOSUL, Iraq, Apr 04 (IPS) - Armoured vehicles and thousands of soldiers masked in black balaclavas guard the entrance to the city of Mosul, 350 kilometres northwest of Baghdad. Arriving here gives one the unmistakable feeling of entering a territory that is still under occupation – only this time, the Iraqi Federal soldiers, not the U.S. military, play the role of the occupying army, locals tell IPS.

QANDIL MOUNTAINS, Iraq, Mar 22 (IPS) - It was only seven in the morning when Mohamed Abdi spread out a rug a few metres away from an artillery crater, up in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq. This Iraqi Kurd from Suleimaniyah, 260 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, was ready to celebrate the Newroz – the Kurdish and Persian New Year – along with his family.

KIRKUK, Iraq, Mar 19 (IPS) - Driving into the city of Kirkuk, one is greeted by the view of a huge sea of grey concrete houses from which laundry has been hung out to dry in the wind and be blackened by smoke rising from the surrounding oil wells.

BAGHDAD, Jan 16 (IPS) - From full literacy declared in the seventies, Iraq is down to 40 percent literacy for women. From the first woman prime minister and the first woman judge in the Middle East in 1959, Iraq has slipped to a place where an abnormal number of widows struggle, and where child marriages are on the rise. Hanaa Edwar is putting up a fight to win Iraqi women their freedoms again.