Pope assassination plot foiled by UK intelligence


A plot to assassinate Pope Francis during a trip to Iraq was stopped following a tip-off from British intelligence, according to his upcoming autobiography.

The Pope writes that, after landing in Baghdad in March 2021, he was told an event at which he was set to appear was being targeted by two suicide bombers. Both attackers were subsequently intercepted and killed, he said in excerpts published by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. The visit, which took place over three days during the coronavirus pandemic, was the first ever to Iraq by a pope and saw an intense security operation.

Read more…
Source: BBC News


Sign up for Counter-IED Report Newsletter


Related:

  • Turkish soldier succumbs to injuries from terror attack in northern Iraq

    August 26, 2023

    A Turkish soldier has died after being injured in a terror attack in Türkiye’s anti-terror operation zone in northern Iraq, according to the Turkish National Defense Ministry on Saturday. The soldier, Erkan Selcuk, who was injured Friday, died from injuries sustained from an explosion of an improvised explosive device positioned by terrorists on Türkiye’s Operation Claw-Lock ...

  • Iraq: 59% of areas contaminated with landmines cleared

    August 21, 2023

    The Iraqi Minister of Environment, Nizar Amidi, announced on Monday that 59 percent of the areas contaminated with mines have been cleared. Amidi confirmed that Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani prioritizes issues related to the environment, adding that sufficient funds have been allocated in the federal budget to clear areas planted with landmines, according to ...

  • Iraq: Explosion targets military patrol in Kirkuk

    August 17, 2023

    On Thursday, a security source informed Shafaq News Agency that an improvised explosive device detonated, targeting a military vehicle in the Daquq district, south of Kirkuk, resulting in the initial toll of three army personnel being wounded. Daquq is a town in the Kirkuk Governorate of Iraq located about 60 kilometers south of Kirkuk city. Read more… Source: Shafaq ...

  • Germany supported mine clearance projects in Iraq with more than $100 million

    August 9, 2023

    The Chargé d’Affaires of the German Embassy in Baghdad, Maximilian Rasch, said, in a speech during the launching ceremony of the National Strategic Plan for Mine Action, which was attended by the correspondent of the Iraqi News Agency (INA): “His country has been and remains an active contributor to mine clearance efforts in many areas ...

  • Iraq’s electric grid hit by fire, explosions amid scorching heat

    July 30, 2023

    A fire at a power station in southern Iraq and several explosions have affected the country’s ailing national electricity grid as temperatures rise. A statement by Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity on Saturday said a fire broke out shortly after noon at the Al-Bkir station in the southern city of Basra. Three electricity towers in the north ...

  • Iraq begins program to support mine victims

    July 9, 2023

    A new step adopted by the Iraqi government to support victims of mines left during successive wars by starting a support program, amid local and international commendations that it is the best in the world. According to a statement issued by the Directorate for Mine Action (DMA) of the Iraqi Ministry of Environment, the issue of ...

  • Iraq launches strategy for mine action

    June 22, 2023

    According to international and local statistics and reports, Iraq is classified as the most contaminated country with mines and unexploded ordnance, which claim many Iraqi lives or cause them permanent disabilities and are spread as a result of the wars Iraq has gone through over the past decades. To address the issues, the Supreme National Committee ...

  • Iraq: Demining agency clears a minefield in Soran independent administration

    June 14, 2023

    The General Directorate of the Iraqi Kurdistan Mine Action Agency (MAA) in Erbil on Wednesday announced in a statement that they had defused a number of mines in the Sidekan district of the Soran independent administration. The statement added that 10 VS-50 mines were defused in the minefield of Spindarok in the Sidekan district. Read more… Source: Kurdistan24 ...

  • Belgium police arrest Iraqi suspected of al-Qaeda car bombing in Baghdad

    May 5, 2023

    Belgium police have arrested an Iraqi immigrant suspected of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell that carried out deadly car bombings in Baghdad in 2009-2010, prosecutors said Friday. The man, identified by the initials O.Y.T., born in 1979, was detained on Wednesday when police raided an address near the city of Antwerp on orders of an anti-terrorist ...

  • Iraq: IED explosion damages villagers’ vehicle in Erbil

    April 6, 2023

    An IED allegedly planted by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Erbil province damaged a vehicle carrying three villagers on Thursday morning, but did not result in any casualties, according to a local official speaking to Kurdistan 24. The passengers were traveling in the Sidakan district to collect springtime wild vegetables and herbs, Ihsan Chalabi, ...

  • Iraq: Spiking violence strains sectarian ties

    March 25, 2023

    “I only remember the explosion,” Maytham, 16, said from his hospital bed, his pale arms speckled brown by shrapnel. The attack took place earlier this month in the Shiite-majority village of Hazanieh. The force of the blast hurled the teenager out of the vehicle, but his family — his parents, an aunt and three cousins ...

  • The Radioactive Legacy of Depleted Uranium Ammunition Comes to Ukraine

    March 23, 2023

    The United Kingdom is sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine equipped with armor piercing depleted uranium rounds. Countries like the U.S., U.K., and Russia manufacture ammunition using depleted uranium because the metal is heavy and dense, making it ideal to break apart enemy armor. But it’s a highly controversial weapon because it’s radioactive and toxic, ...

  • Twenty Years on, Iraq Bears Scars of US-led Invasion

    March 19, 2023

    In the lead up to the US-led invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, proponents of the war spoke of the Iraqi people as helpless victims of a dictatorial regime. Yet the Iraqi people paid the heaviest price of the invasion. Almost half a million people lost their lives, millions lost homes, and countless civilians suffered abuses by ...

  • Iraq: Basra, the city most saturated with landmines worldwide

    March 14, 2023

    The Directorate for Mine Action (DMA) of the Iraqi Ministry of Environment revealed that Basra came first worldwide as the city with the most landmines. Media Director of the DMA, Mustafa Hamid, explained that the southern Iraqi city of Basra has about 1,200 square kilometers full of landmines, pointing out that areas where landmines are planted ...

  • Saddam Hussein fell. Then violence in Iraq spiralled

    March 14, 2023

    When U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Adel Amer celebrated what he thought marked the end of two decades of war and isolation under sanctions that had brought Iraq and its people to their knees. But it turned out to be just the beginning of another era of conflict and chaos that saw an insurgency, the rise of ...

  • Iraq: Four killed, three injured in armed attack in Diyala governorate

    March 7, 2023

    An Iraqi security source mentioned on Monday that four civilians were killed and three others were wounded in an armed attack that followed an explosion of an improvised explosive device in Diyala governorate in eastern Iraq. The source elaborated that four civilians were killed and three others were wounded after an improvised explosive device targeted a ...

  • Former Iraqi Turkmen official killed in Kirkuk

    March 3, 2023

    There are conflicting reports as to the killing of Ahmed Tahir Ismail, a former Iraqi Turkmen Front official, in Kirkuk today. According to Kirkuk security sources, Ismail was killed by an improvised explosive device at his home. On the other hand, the Turkmen National Movement party announced that Ismail was killed in an explosion in his ...

  • Denmark supports explosive hazards management activities in Iraq

    January 18, 2023

    The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in Iraq welcomed a contribution of 14 million DKK (over two million USD) from the Danish government, which will assist the Iraqi government to reduce the threat of explosive ordnance impacting civilians and support the development of a sustainable, well-coordinated national mine action sector, according to a press ...

  • Iraq: 2 killed, injured in mine explosion in Iraq

    January 14, 2023

    Two civilians were killed and injured following the explosion of a mine left by ISIL terrorists in the west of Al Anbar province of Iraq. One civilian was killed and another one was injured during the incident, a PMU official announced. Read more… Source: MEHR News Agency  

  • Iraq: Kurdistan Region records over 30 causalities to mines last year

    January 12, 2023

    The remains of decades-old explosives in the Kurdistan Region have killed or wounded over 30 people in 2022, according to figures published by the mines’ authority. A total of 24 people were wounded by unexploded mines across Iraq’s Kurdish region last year, mostly in the border areas with neighboring countries that had witnessed numerous battles, including ...

  • Iraq reopens Baghdad’s Green Zone to ease traffic jams

    January 8, 2023

    Iraqi authorities reopened Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone on Sunday in an attempt to ease traffic jams in the capital after it was closed and reopened several times in recent years. Starting in the early hours of the day, Iraqi authorities removed checkpoints and opened major roads and tunnels that cut through the zone on the ...

  • Iraq: Explosion in Erbil Governorate kills two soldiers, injures three

    December 22, 2022

    Two soldiers were killed and three were injured in an explosion in northern Iraq, Iraqi state news said Thursday. The soldiers were traveling in an army vehicle a day earlier in the Makhmour district when an explosive device detonated, the state Iraqi News Agency reported. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. It was the latest ...