BAGHDAD (AP) — A series of bombings, including three over a span of less than 10 minutes, killed at least 27 people across Baghdad on Saturday, shaking the fragile sense of security the capital has maintained despite the Sunni militant offensive raging across northern and western Iraq.

Meanwhile in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah, Iraq's ailing president returned to the country after more than 18 months abroad for medical treatment following a stroke in late 2012, state TV said. Jalal Talabani is wrapping up his second consecutive term as president, and is not eligible to run again.

Saturday's attacks in Baghdad are among the most significant in the capital since insurgents led by the Islamic State extremist group captured Iraq's second-largest city Mosul last month at the start of its blitz. After Mosul's fall, the government moved aggressively to try to secure Baghdad amid fears it might fall as well, and the city has seen few major attacks in recent weeks.

Saturday's deadliest bombing took place in the Shiite neighborhood of Abu Dashir, where a suicide attacker rammed a car packed with explosives into a checkpoint, killing at least nine people and wounding 19, officials said. Four policemen were among the dead, a police officer said.

Later in the day, three car bombs in different neighborhoods of Baghdad went off in less than 10 minutes, hitting the districts of Baiyaa, Jihad and Khazimiyah. The attacks killed at least 15 people and wounded another 42, police officials said.

Another car bomb near a bus stop in Khazimiyah killed three people and wounded 15, police said.

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Civilians inspect the site of a bomb attack in the Jihad neighborhood in Baghdad, Saturday, July 19, …

Hospital officials in Baghdad confirmed the casualty figures in all of the attacks.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.

The Sunni militant blitz, led by the Islamic State extremist group, has pushed into areas west of Baghdad, and also has established a presence in a belt of Sunni areas running south and north of the capital. Baghdad itself has a predominantly Shiite population.

The Iraqi military launched a counteroffensive late last month to try to dislodge insurgents from the city of Tikrit, some 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad. That effort has sputtered, but has managed to secure much of the highway between Tikrit and the city of Samarra, home to one of the most important Shiite shrines. Tikrit itself remains in militant hands.

Northwest of the city, heavy fighting has raged around an air base that previously served as a U.S. military facility known as Camp Speicher.

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Civilians inspect the site of a bomb attack in the Jihad neighborhood in Baghdad, Saturday, July 19, …

On Saturday, Iraqi military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi denied reports that militants had captured Camp Speicher, saying government troops repelled an attack on Friday and the base remains fully in government hands.

Three security officials confirmed that the militants launched an assault on the air field late Thursday, blasting through an outside wall of the base and destroying one helicopter. One of the officials said the other helicopters at Speicher were "evacuated" from the base to prevent them from being damaged, but they have since been returned to duty.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

A resident of Tikrit, Ahmed Jassim, said by telephone that clashes were taking place around Speicher on Saturday, but "the gunmen are outside the camp." The center of Tikrit is still under insurgent control, and is being shelled by the Iraqi military, he said.

Iraq's president, Talabani, arrived in the far northern city of Sulaimaniyah in the largely autonomous Kurdish region early Saturday evening, state television said.

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Civilians inspect the site of a bomb attack in the Jihad neighborhood in Baghdad, Saturday, July 19, …

Talabani, who himself is Kurdish, suffered a stroke in late 2012. He was flown to Germany shortly afterwards for treatment and rehabilitation.

With Talabani's term set to expire, Iraqi political leaders are in talks to decide on a new president as part of broader negotiations over forming a new government. Parliament is expected to meet Wednesday to discuss potential candidates.

Under an informal agreement that emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Iraq's president is a Kurd, the prime minister a Shiite, and the speaker of parliament a Sunni.

Two names have emerged as front-runners to succeed Talabani — former deputy prime minister Barham Saleh and the Kirkuk provincial governor Najimaldin Karim.

The Iraqi presidency is a largely ceremonial role, with the prime minister acting as the head of government. But Talabani has at times played an important role in mediating disputes among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian factions.

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Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Bombings rock Iraq's capital

A series of explosions kill at least 27 in Baghdad as the country's president returns after an 18-month absence.
Security concerns

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli bulldozers demolished more than a dozen tunnels Saturday in the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian authorities reported intensified airstrikes and shelling as the death toll from Israel's ground offensive rose to at least 342 Palestinians. Diplomats struggled to revive a cease-fire.

Israeli soldiers uncovered 34 shafts leading into about a dozen underground tunnels, some as deep as 30 meters (yards), that could be used to carry out attacks, the military said.

Still, Palestinian gunmen managed to infiltrate Israel from Gaza using another tunnel and killed two Israeli soldiers and injured several others, the military said. At least one Palestinian was killed in the clash. Hamas said 12 of its fighters participated in the attack.

It was the second time Palestinians had used their network of underground tunnels to penetrate Israel in the current round of fighting. Israel embarked on its ground offensive late Thursday in part to seek and destroy the tunnels.

Thirteen heavily armed Palestinians sneaked through a tunnel from Gaza and emerged inside Israel near a southern community. The militants were killed by an Israeli airstrike after they popped out of the tunnel.

Shimon Daniel, a retired brigadier general and former head of the Israeli military's engineer corps, said the military knew that Hamas had a large number of tunnels designed to assault Israel.

Raw: Aftermath of Israeli Airstrike on GazaPlay Video

"I think finding 13 tunnels in such a short time is a great achievement," he told Channel 10 TV.

He said demolishing the tunnels is dangerous. Troops must assume the passages are booby trapped. Soldiers first close off the area and check for additional openings. Then robots go inside to look around, he said.

After that, the tunnels are destroyed either by special explosives or by heavy equipment. He said it can take up to 12 hours to destroy each tunnel.

"These tunnels aren't for hiding. They are intended for large attacks in Israeli communities and army bases," chief military spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said.

Footage released by the Israeli military showed tunnels being demolished by army excavators and other equipment on the ground and by airstrikes from above.

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A Palestinian medic is overwhelmed by emotion as he takes a break treating wounded people by Israeli …

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said the new round of airstrikes raised the death toll from the 12-day offensive to at least 342 Palestinians, many of them civilians.

In Israel, a Gaza rocket killed a man near the southern city of Dimona and wounded four people, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, marking the second Israeli civilian casualty from the fighting. An Israeli soldier was killed after the start of the ground operation, probably from friendly fire.

Casualties could mount quickly if the military moves deeper into urban areas.

Some 50,000 Palestinians are already staying in United Nations shelters, according to UNRWA, the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians.

Early Saturday, Israeli tank fire killed at least five members of the Al Zawaydi family at their home in Beit Lahiya, including two children. In a separate incident, tank shell fire killed three members of the Hamooda family in their home, among them two children.

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Medics work on Palestinians wounded during Israeli strikes, at the emergency room of the Kamal Adwan …

In Gaza City, two boys and a 12-month-old infant neighbor were killed Friday evening following the break of the Ramadan fast. On Saturday, at least two of the bodies were carried by somber relatives during a funeral procession in Gaza City.

Israel says it is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and blames them on Hamas, accusing it of firing from within residential neighborhoods and using civilians as "human shields."

The military said it has hit more than 2,350 targets in Gaza, including 1,100 rocket launchers, during the 12 days of fighting. It said that some 70 "terrorists" were and another 13 brought to Israel for questioning.

Gaza militants have fired more than 1,600 rockets at Israeli cities since July 8.

The military said also it had received intelligence reports that Palestinians had strapped explosives to animals and intended to send them toward soldiers. A donkey laden with explosives approached soldiers later on and blew up causing no injuries, it said.

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Palestinian children look at mourners carrying the bodies of Roshdi, Mohammed and Reyad Naser, out o …

An Egyptian truce proposal was rejected by Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and has demanded the lifting of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade as part of any cease-fire agreement.

Israel's ground attack came after it became increasingly exasperated with rocket fire from Gaza, especially after Hamas rejected an Egyptian cease-fire plan earlier in the week.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri on Saturday repeated a call for the two sides to adopt the cease-fire, saying it is the only offer on the table, despite efforts from Hamas backers Turkey and Qatar to broker a deal.

"This initiative still presents the chance for the two sides to cease fire, ending the bloodshed," he said. "It meets the needs of both sides. We will continue to propose it. We hope both sides accept it."

In a fresh effort to broker a truce, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon was to leave Saturday for the Middle East to help mediate the Gaza conflict. A cease-fire is "indispensable" for urgently needed humanitarian efforts to succeed, the undersecretary-general for political affairs Jeffrey Feltman told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Friday.

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Palestinian relatives of Mohammed Naser, chant slogans as they carry his lifeless body to the family …

Israeli officials have said the offensive could last up to two weeks or possibly longer.

"The Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip will not surrender to the enemy and will not raise the white flag," Ziad Nakhala, a leader in the Islamic Jihad militant group, told a Palestinian radio station.

Hamas has survived Israeli offensives in the past, including a major three-week ground operation in January 2009 and another weeklong air offensive in 2012. It now controls an arsenal of thousands of rockets, including long-range projectiles, and has built a system of underground bunkers.

But Hamas is weaker than it was during the previous two offensives, with little international or even regional support from its main allies, Turkey and Qatar. Protests against the offensive took place Friday in Turkey, Jordan and the West Bank. Protests against Israel also continued in European countries.

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Deitch reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Aron Heller in Tel Aviv, Yousur Alhlou in Jerusalem, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Lefteris Pitarakis in Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's military said militants firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades attacked a border guards checkpoint Saturday, killing 21 soldiers in one of the biggest assaults since Islamist president Mohamed Morsi's ouster.

The attack in a desert area 630 kilometres (390 miles) west of Cairo left four soldiers wounded, the military said in a statement, blaming "terrorists".

It said a rocket propelled grenade fired by the militants set off an explosion in an ammunition depot at the El-Farafrah post, killing the soldiers.

Militants have stepped up attacks on the security forces since Morsi was toppled in July 2013 as the army struggles to quell an Islamist insurgency that has killed scores of soldiers and police, mainly in the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The military statement said two vehicles booby trapped to blow up were used in the attack, and bomb experts have defused the explosives.

State news agency MENA said three of the assailants were killed in the clash, the second at the same checkpoint in less than three months.

The attack followed repeated warnings by officials of a possible spillover of violence from across the border with Libya, where relentless bloodshed over the past few months has sparked fears of all-out civil war.

Libya has been awash with weapons and gripped by unrest since the NATO-backed uprising that toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, with rival militias who ousted him vying for control.

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Seen across the Egyptian Rafah border with Israel, smoke ascends as Israeli artillery and air force …

- Porous border -

Egypt's porous western border with Libya stretches for more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles).

Saturday's attack comes just days after seven civilians and a soldier were killed in a series of rocket attacks in the restive Sinai.

A similar attack on Egyptian border guards in June killed six guards.

Most of the assaults that have surged since Morsi's ouster have been claimed by jihadists battling a bloody crackdown by the authorities on Morsi's supporters.

Aside from the Sinai, other areas including Cairo have been targeted, while bombings and assassinations have killed top police officers.

Since the army removed Morsi, a police crackdown on his supporters has left more than 1,400 people dead in street clashes, upwards of 15,000 jailed and some 200 sentenced to death.

Morsi himself and several senior leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood movement have been put on trial.

Egyptian officials accuse the Brotherhood of being behind attacks and designated it a "terrorist group" in December after a deadly car bombing on a police station north of Cairo killed more than a dozen people.

The Islamist movement has denied involvement and many of the attacks have been claimed by Sinai-based jihadist group Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem).

Officials say groups such as Beit al-Maqdis are linked to the Brotherhood, and often accuse the Islamist movement of funding the jihadists.

On July 10, Egypt's security forces seized 20 Grad rockets being smuggled from the Gaza Strip through a tunnel by militants in northern Sinai.

They were seized two days after the latest conflict erupted between Israel and militants from Palestinian Hamas movement, an affiliate of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

On Thursday, Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza aimed at destroying the network of sophisticated cross-border tunnels.

Gunmen firing rocket-propelled grenades kill at least 21 border guards at a checkpoint area near Cairo.

Escalating violence

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israel's operation against Hamas saw one of its bloodiest days on Saturday, with 46 Palestinians killed in Gaza and two Israeli soldiers and a civilian killed by militant fire.

As Israeli warplanes bombarded Gaza from the air, and ground troops pressed an assault on land, the Palestinian overall death toll on day 12 of Israel's Operation Protective Edge rose to 342, with rights groups warning that a growing number of victims are children.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon was Saturday headed for the region to bolster intense diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the bloodshed in and around Gaza.

Israel meanwhile warned it was ready to intensify its ground assault aimed at destroying a network of cross-border tunnels.

Despite the blistering offensive, Palestinian commandos in central Gaza managed to use tunnels to infiltrate southern Israel in three separate cases, killing two soldiers in one incident with four of their men killed in the attacks.

Also Saturday, an Israeli Bedouin was killed when a rocket hit his encampment in southern Israel in an attack which also wounded four of his family, among them two young children, police said.

Gazans mourn victims of strikes that killed childr …Play Video

The deaths raised to five the total number of Israelis killed since July 8 -- three soldiers and two civilians -- in the deadliest confrontation between Israel and Hamas militants since 2009.

According to army data, 76 rockets and mortars hit Israel on Saturday with another 14 intercepted, bringing the number of projectiles hitting Israel in the past 12 days to 1,321, with 356 intercepted.

Israel's Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, said the army was "expanding the ground phase of the operation", warning there would be "moments of hardship", alluding to the possibility of further Israeli casualties.

In Gaza, after a relative lull on Friday, violence picked up again, with intensifying tank shelling and air strikes killing 46 people on Saturday.

Among Saturday's dead were two six-year-olds and a toddler, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.

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Israeli forces' flares light up the night sky in the northern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, July 19, 2 …

The increasing number of children killed in the conflict is causing a growing outcry, with a joint statement from the NGOs War Child and Defence for Children International saying more children had been killed than militants.

Figures provided by the UN children's agency, UNICEF, indicate 73 of the victims were under the age of 18.

"Children should be protected from the violence, and they should not be the victims of a conflict for which they have no responsibility," UNICEF's Catherine Weibel told AFP.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA has opened 44 of its schools to shelter those fleeing the most heavily-bombarded areas.

So far, more than 50,000 Gazans have sought sanctuary at UN institutions, the agency said.

Israeli army video claims to show tunnels from Gaz …Play Video

-Diplomacy efforts-

Ban was leaving for the Middle East on Saturday to help Israelis and Palestinians "end the violence and find a way forward", the agency said.

In Amman, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said brokering a ceasefire must be the "absolute priority," urging all parties an Egyptian-led effort.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal will meanwhile meet in Qatar on Sunday to discuss a truce in Gaza, an official close to Abbas said.

An Egyptian-led truce effort collapsed earlier this week after Israel accepted it but Hamas militants continued to fire rockets over the border.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP his movement had given "the demands of the resistance to all the parties concerned, including Qatar, Turkey and the Arab League" as well as Abbas and Egypt.

The demands included an end of the "war on the Gaza Strip," a complete lift of the siege on it, opening the Rafah crossing with Egypt, freedom of movement in the border areas, cancelling the buffer zone and expanding the freedom to fish 12 nautical miles from shore.

In addition, Hamas demanded the release of its members who had been freed in the 2011 Shalit deal and recently arrested in an Israeli crackdown on the West Bank.

In northern Israel, the growing violence brought angry protestors onto the streets, where 1,500 Arab Israelis demonstrated in Kafr Kana against Israel's military operation, police said.

In the northern coastal city Haifa some 800 Israelis held a demonstration in favour of Israel expanding its Gaza operation, while 350 Israelis at the same site were protesting against it.

Protests against the Israeli offensive have also sprung up across the world, with thousands joining a pro-Palestinian rally in London, chanting "Israel is a terror state", while demonstrators in Paris clashed with riot police after their own protest was banned.

Gaza toll tops 300 as U.N. chief seeks truce

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will try to halt the violence before the death toll climbs further.
Israeli ground assault expansion

Video: The Gaza Bombardment – What We’re Not Being Told

Thanks to Alice.

If you feel something isn’t quite adding up with regards the current Israeli military invasion of Gaza, this video may hold some answers.

Posted by YouTube user StormCloudsGathering, it questions the ‘official’ story and suggests that the ‘real’ reason for the current military action is quite different to what the mainstream news would have us believe.

Remember, as always, to use your own discernment.

Transcript of video: