BAGHDAD - April was Iraq's bloodiest month for almost five years, with 712 people killed in bomb attacks and other violence, the United Nations Iraq mission said on Thursday.

KIRKUK, Iraq (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.

Anecdotal tales of inexplicable sickness and deformities have abounded in Iraq for years. In their broad brushstrokes, they seem plausible. The first Gulf War had littered much of Iraq with depleted uranium from the armor-piercing bullets the U.S. used to destroy Saddam Hussein's retreating columns in1991. (The Monitor's Scott Peterson traveled around Baghdad with a Geiger counter in 2003 and found plenty of "hot spots" more than a decade later).

BAGHDAD —  Iraqis thought a better life was at hand when Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April 2003, but after nine years of violence and suffering, many are still waiting for their dreams to be realized.

CAIRO — More than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that was proclaimed to help Iraqis build a multi-ethnic and democratic nation, sectarian sentiments are still simmering in Iraq, threatening to rekindle hostilities in the ethnically divided and war-battered nation.

WASHINGTON (IPS) — Amid high-level U.S. congressional delegations to evaluate developments in Iraq, a growing number of voices here, from both the Barack Obama administration and members of Congress, are concerned about a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country by December 2011 – a deadline set forth in the supposedly inviolable Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraqi governments back in 2008.