SAMARRA, Iraq: A few days after insurgents killed two of his bodyguards, Asaad Ali Yaseen sat in his living room with a pistol beside him and pondered the challenges of running this city. As if on ...

"Samarra is one example of many towns in Iraq that are barely functioning," said Capt. Ryan Edwards, 31, of Plain City, Ohio, who majored in Middle Eastern studies at West Point.

Still, Samarra has come so far from its days as a place of unrelenting violence that many in Iraq insist that it can ultimately be an example of nation building for the rest of the country. There ...

As the smoke clears from heavy fighting in downtown Samarra, what emerges is the portrait of a city deeply connected to the Iraqi resistance. Samarra is a town of 200,000 inhabitants. While ...

“Currently Task Force 1-26, along with the local government of Samarra, has control of the city,” said Maj. Jeffrey Church, executive officer of the Army’s 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry ...

SAMARRA, Iraq -- The U.S. military on Tuesday handed over the last of its bases outside Samarra, a city billed as a reconciliation success story.

Iraqi helicopters bombed the city of Samarra after insurgents overran parts of it early on Thursday, bringing them within striking distance of a Shi'ite shrine the destruction of which in a 2006 ...

In Samarra, the Sunni city that was the site of the 2006 Golden Mosque bombing (and which still houses the 1,255-year old Great Samarran Mosque, formerly the largest such structure in the world ...

City officials in Samarra accuse the Endowment of violating an agreement to limit the expansion of the shrine's territory to about 80 meters (yards). They say the Endowment has been buying houses ...

Military officials in Samarra insist that they will never again agree to keeping U.S. troops outside city limits, as is the case in peace deals signed in Fallouja and Najaf.

Oday Taha, 36, said he longs for the days when pilgrims from Iraq, Iran and other countries flooded Samarra. Many came to his clothing store, which has been handed down in his family more two ...