Iraq weekly security weekly report

Last week a total of 24 bomb attacks left 27 people dead and 79 injured. Small arms attacks left 31 people dead and nine injured, including members of the security forces shot during clashes with militants. Indirect fire incidents (rockets, mortars and military artillery shelling) left 34 people dead and 74 injured.

Islamist militants led by the Islamic State (IS) continue to battle with the federal and Kurdish security forces in several parts of the central and northern region. They managed to gain several new towns over the weekend to the north and west of the city of Mosul.

Elsewhere violence remains particularly concentrated in urban parts of Anbar, Salah ad-Din, western Diyala, south-western Ta'mim and northern Babil provinces. Terrorist attacks also continue to take place throughout Baghdad.

Air strikes also continue to target militant positions in sparsely populated areas in the west of Anbar and Ninawa provinces near the border with Syria.

Last week saw a handful of attacks in the south of the country. The region remains comparatively much quieter than the central and northern provinces. To reflect this AKE created a new separate security risk rating for the region last week.

The new internal region is rated at AKE30 (Grave Security Concerns) and encompasses the provinces of Basrah, Maysan, Muthanna, Dhi Qar and Qadissiyah. The predominantly Shi'ah region contains the "super giant” oilfields of Rumaila, West Qurna, Majnoon and Halfaya which are arguably the most strategic assets in the country.

AKE maintains a unique 1-100 security risk rating system which expresses how hazardous a country or sub-national region is from a security perspective. A rating of 1 denotes that conditions are safe and stable, whereas a rating of 100 denotes widespread and terminal threat to life.  The ratings are updated in real-time by the AKE intelligence department. Unlike many existing risk rating scales, it does not state that a country is too dangerous to work in. Instead, it expresses in detail how hazardous an operating environment is, allowing a traveller or organisation to judge themselves whether or not they want to do business there.

The Iraq countrywide security risk rating was recently affirmed at 45 (Highly Dangerous Business Environment). KRG territory is rated at 19 (Elevated Risk). As a comparison, the United Kingdom is rated at 7 (Stable) and Iraq's neighbour Syria is rated at 56 (Extreme Security Risks).

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Source: AKE