Two foreign tankers were seen ablaze in Iraqi territorial waters after a strike near the al-Faw port. Authorities say they evacuated 25 crew members but have confirmed at least one death and are battling to control the flames.
Published On 11 Mar 202611 Mar 2026
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The killing of prominent Iraqi women’s rights activist Yanar Mohammed has fuelled an outpouring of grief and calls for justice, with advocates from around the world remembering Mohammed as a “courageous” voice.
Mohammed, 66, was killed earlier this week after unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire outside her home in the north of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.
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“Despite being rushed to the hospital and attempts to save her life, she succumbed to her wounds,” the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, a group that Mohammed co-founded, said in a statement shared on social media.
“We at the Organisation for Women’s Freedom in Iraq condemn in the strongest terms this cowardly terrorist crime, which we consider a direct attack on the feminist struggle and the values of freedom and equality.”
Several international rights groups also condemned Mohammed’s killing, with Amnesty International on Wednesday decrying the deadly attack as “brutal” and “a calculated assault to stifle human rights defenders, especially those defending women’s rights”.
The organisation, which said Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al‑Sudani ordered an investigation into the killing, also called on the Iraqi authorities to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice.
“Yanar Mohammed … dedicated her life to defending women’s rights,” Amnesty’s Iraq researcher, Razaw Salihy, said in a statement. “The Iraqi authorities must stop this pattern of targeted attacks in their tracks, and take seriously the sustained smear campaigns designed to discredit and endanger activists.”
Mohammed was one of Iraq’s most prominent women’s rights activists, working since the early 2000s “to protect women facing gender-based violence, including domestic abuse, trafficking, and so-called ‘honour killings’”, Front Line Defenders said.
Her work included the establishment of safe houses, which sheltered hundreds of women experiencing exploitation and abuse.
In a 2022 interview with Al Jazeera, Mohammed described her organisation’s efforts to support Iraqi women who survived violence at the hands of ISIS (ISIL), which had seized control of large swathes of the country.
“Muslim-Arab women who were enslaved by ISIL and have not found a place to go back to, they are still living in the shadows of the society,” she said at the time.
“Not less than 10,000 women were the victims of ISIL attack[s], and this femicide is not really acknowledged by the international community or dealt with in a way that keeps the dignity or the respect [of], or compensates, those who were the victims.”
Mohammed had been the target of death threats for decades, “aimed at dissuading her from defending women’s rights”, Front Line Defenders said. “Yet she remained defiant in the face of threats from ISIS and other armed groups.”
In 2016, she was awarded the Rafto Prize “for her tireless work for women’s rights in Iraq under extremely challenging conditions”.
The Rafto Foundation, the Norway-based nonprofit group that administers the award, said it was “deeply shaken” by her killing. “We are deeply shocked by this brutal attack on one of the most courageous human rights defenders of our time,” the foundation said in a statement.
“The assassination represents not only an attack on Yanar Mohammed as a person, but also on the fundamental values she dedicated her life to defending: women’s freedom, democracy, and universal human rights.”
Other activists and human rights groups also paid tribute to Mohammed this week, with Human Rights Watch describing her as “one of Iraq’s most courageous advocates for women’s rights” for more than two decades.
“Yanar was a dear colleague and friend to so many of us in the women’s rights and feminist community, one of our icons. She spent her life standing up for women’s rights in the most dangerous environment,” said Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International.
“She faced constant threats, but she never stopped. And today we cry and mourn her energy, her commitment, her profound humanity, her amazing courage.”
Iraq says more than 3,000 Syrians are among the ISIL-linked detainees transferred to one of its prisons by US military.
More than 5,000 ISIL-linked (ISIS) detainees have been transferred from Syrian jails to a prison in neighbouring Iraq so far, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Justice.
In comments to the Iraqi News Agency on Friday, ministry spokesperson Ahmed Laibi said the transfers and ongoing detention of the prisoners had been carried out at the request of an international coalition led by the United States to combat ISIL, of which Iraq is a key member.
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In separate comments on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein gave a lower figure, telling Reuters that about 3,000 ISIL-linked detainees had been transferred.
He told the news agency that the process was ongoing and that Baghdad was in discussions with various countries about repatriating their nationals who had been transferred.
Iraq would need more financial assistance to deal with the intake, he said, adding that there had been a recent uptick in ISIL activity in Syria.
The US military has been transporting thousands of ISIL-linked prisoners from jails and detention centres previously run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria.
The transfers have come as control of the prisons has been handed over to the Syrian government, amid a push by Damascus to assert its authority over the full extent of a country still fragmented in the wake of a brutal war.
Deadly clashes with SDF forces broke out amid the Syrian army’s advance in recent weeks, including in and around key prison sites, resulting in some ISIL detainees escaping and raising fears the armed group could exploit any security vacuum to regroup.
A ceasefire has since been struck between the government and the SDF.
Laibi, the Iraqi Justice Ministry spokesperson, said that of the 5,064 ISIL detainees transferred so far, more than 3,000 were Syrian, while at least 270 were Iraqi.
He said the detainees were being held in a single prison, in a section separated from other prisoners.
The detainees would all be investigated and prosecuted under Iraqi law, he said, while the responsibility for feeding the thousands of detainees was being handled by the international coalition, rather than Iraq.
Last month, lawyers for a group of French ISIL suspects who had been transported by the US military from Syria to Iraqi prisons in an earlier series of transfers claimed the inmates had been subjected to “torture and inhumane treatment” there.
The US military has previously said up to 7,000 people with alleged ISIL links could be transferred to Iraqi-controlled facilities.
US Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US forces in the Middle East, said last month that facilitating the secure transfer of detainees was critical to preventing mass breakouts that could pose a direct threat to the US and regional security.
The statement came shortly after the US special envoy to Syria said that Washington’s main partner against ISIL in Syria would be the Syrian government, rather than the SDF, which had held that position for years.
The shift followed Syria – under new President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of the armed group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who was once deemed a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the US – joining the anti-ISIL coalition in November.
The ongoing transfers of the detainees from Syria have come as the US military reduces its presence in the country, where it has conducted operations against ISIL for years.
On Thursday, Syrian forces announced they had taken control of the al-Tanf military base, a strategic garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan, following the withdrawal of US forces.
Cooper, the commander of US forces in the Middle East, said the departure was “part of a deliberate and conditions-based transition”, and that US forces remained “poised to respond to any [ISIL] threats that arise in the region as we support partner-led efforts” to prevent the group’s resurgence.
While ISIL was largely defeated in 2017 in Iraq and in Syria two years later, sleeper cells still carry out attacks in both countries.