Basrah Governor Mohammed Misbah Al-Wa’ili said the Iraqi government is fully responsible for recent developments and deteriorating security in the southern oil-rich city, Al-Melaf Press reported. Al-Wa’ili, a member of the Shi’ite Fadhila Islamic Party, which dominates the governorate council and the police and army force in Basrah, denied reports that he was sacked by the governorate council, dismissing them as rumors, and adding that any such attempt would worsen the situation in the city. “Any attempts to dismiss me are against the law,” Al-Wa’ili said. The Associated Press had reported Friday that the Basrah Governorate Council is preparing to hold a vote of no confidence soon against Al-Wa’ili, who is accused by rival political parties in the governorate – mainly Sadrists and SCIRI – of corruption.

The Basrah council had submitted a petition to Iraqi parliament and the central government in Baghdad to this effect. Hussein Al-Ba’aj, a spokesman for the Thar Allah Movement said the council is expected to vote against the governor soon. The council theoretically needs a two-thirds majority in order to dismiss the governor, but Al-Wa’ili and other Fadhila Party officials had described the charges of corruption and misconduct as a conspiracy to punish the party for withdrawing from the United Iraqi Alliance bloc in Iraqi parliament. Tensions have risen in Basrah over the last few days as Shi’ite political parties led by Sadrists staged a sit-in outside of Al-Wa’ili’s residence demanding his immediate removal, while the city also witnessed an unprecedented wave of attacks and assassinations of political figures. Sources said that unknown gunmen assassinate 12 to 20 people every day.

Up to 20 thousand policemen have been recruited by the Anbar Salvation Council in recent weeks in Iraq’s troublesome western governorate, Sunni tribal leader Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha said Friday, adding that his initiative has given early signs of success. “The situation in Anbar was unbearable; people were tortured and shot and the streets were filled with bodies,” Abu Risha said in a press statement from Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar governorate. Abu Risha, who heads the local tribal coalition in Anbar, said that tribesmen in Ramadi cooperating with Iraqi security forces had managed to detain 30 militants, including members of Al-Qaeda, and intercepted three explosive-rigged vehicles.

Only three million date palm trees are left of Basrah’s 10 million trees and that is also diminishing continuously, an official in the Basrah Agriculture Directorate said Friday, according to WNA News. Agricultural engineer Abdul Adheem Kadhim, head of the date palms department in the Basrah Agriculture Directorate said consecutive wars, mass infection with pests, and the U.S. ban on aerial pesticide spraying are behind the problem. Pesticides are unaffordable for most farmers, and the price of dates has fallen during the last few years, while importing countries have turned to other markets such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Palm dates were Iraq’s second major export after oil, and it held the lion share of world date exports at 80% in 1971. Up to 20 million palm trees have been destroyed as a result of wars, with only 10 million palm trees left of Iraq’s 33 million trees, according to statistics by Green Peace, an Iraqi environmental protection group. About half of the country’s palm trees were in the southern governorate of Basrah.

The Haqq Agency reported that dozens of young Kurdish men descended on a hotel in Erbil in the Kurdish region Friday and attacked Yazidi workers who were staying at the hotel. The manager of the Merga Sur Hotel said that up to 50 men attempted to storm the hotel to attack Yazidis working in Erbil, and that a large number of Yazidis have slipped away back to their villages around Mosul fearing further attacks. The reactions against members of the Yazidi faith, an ancient sect in northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria and the Caucasus, which combines Islamic teachings with Zoroastrianism, were thought to be in retaliation against the murder of a Yezidi teenage woman who converted to Islam after falling in love with a Muslim Kurd. The girl was detained by the police and then sheltered by a Muslim sheikh before she was returned to her village near Mosul after assurance was received from her family that she was forgiven. The woman was then ambushed by dozens of members of her community, stripped naked and stoned to death.

An extremely graphic cellphone video of the incident has been published on the Kurdish website Jebar.info. In one of the clips the bloodied naked girl is shown lying on the ground alive and crying for help as she is kicked in the stomach and finished off with a large rock to her face. The clip shows that policemen were present and at the scene and they were seen assisting in the crime. Honor killings, as the one described above, are not uncommon among conservative communities in northern Iraq, and they are not restricted to Muslim communities.

The Iraqi Command of the Baath Party headed by Izzat Ibrahim Al-Duri, seen as a successor to Saddam Hussein in the leadership of the party, issued a statement announcing that 30 senior command members of the party have been expelled for attempting to divide the party, for contacting “foreign intelligence agencies,” and for “high treason” against the party and nation, Al-Badeel Al-Iraqi reported. Almost all of the members mentioned in the statement are currently residing in Syria, and are members of the Baath Party branch led by Mohammed Yunis Ahmed, a former Iraqi general wanted by the U.S. and the Iraqi government. The named members according to the statement are: Mizhir Matni Awwad, Mahmoud Abdul Aziz, Sachir Zubair, Ni’ma Al-Eithawi, Aboud Alwan Al-Zubaidi, Mohammed Al-Fad’am, Jabbar Rijab Al-Hadushi, Ahmed Rijab Al-Hadushi, Abdullah Salih Al-Jubouri, Walid Al-Izzi, Khalaf Ali Nasir, Shamil Yass Khudhair, Sattam Al-Azzawi, Nadhum Mikhlif, Tu’ma Dha’eef Gaitan, Turki Baider, Khair Allah Khalaf, Mansour Dilyan, Mohammed Ali Yousif, Ali Hussein Jibara, Majeed Hatem, Hassan Jadou’, Khaz’al Abbas Hameed, Mohammed Faraj Al-Kubaisi, Abdul Hussein Majeed, Anwar Mawlud Dheeban, Mahdi Fadhil, Farhan Hameed Al-Mohammedi, Mohammed Sa’eed, Ali Al-Lihaibi.