Iraq

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Video footage released by a news outlet in Dubai purportedly shows militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an umbrella organization of Iraqi insurgent groups operating in Syria, raising the al Qaeda flag above a Catholic church in the northern Syrian city of al-Raqqa.

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Ali Nori Nadir, a Sunni Kurdish interpreter, said those who have aided U.S. troops in Iraq are captured and killed under unknown conditions, and the government blames "insurgents" or "al Qaeda." (Photograph provided by Ali Nori Nadir)

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People walk past election campaign posters of different parties, in Irbil, Iraq, 350 kilometers (217 miles) north of Baghdad, Friday, Sept. 20, 2013, day ahead of the self-ruled northern Kurdish region's fourth election for local parliament since 1992. (AP Photo/ Khalid Mohammed)

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An Iraqi policeman stands guard outside the Sunni Al-Hassan Mosque in Basra, 340 miles (550 kilometers) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013. Gunmen have shot dead over a dozen Sunnis in Iraq's Shiite-majority city of Basra over the past two weeks, following threats to retaliate against them for attacks on Shiites in other parts of Iraq, police and a Sunni community leader said. (AP Photo/ Nabil al-Jurani)