Free the Captives: Witness Against Illegal Detention and Torture

There was no news on Tuesday January 24 of the fate of Tom Fox and the other three CPT peaceworkers held captive in Iraq.

However, a touching recollection of another of the captives, James Loney, is in a piece called Two Photographs by Scott Marratto at Common Dreams.

"Hanging on my fridge are two photographs," Scott writes. "One is a picture of my dear friend Jim Loney holding up another photo of an Iraqi who, at the time the photograph was taken, was being held without recourse to any system of justice ..."

from Reuters: Two German engineers kidnapped in Iraq

Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped two German engineers outside their workplace in the Iraqi industrial town of Baiji on Tuesday, police said, the latest in a surge of abductions of foreigners in Iraq.
At least six gunmen, in two unmarked cars, grabbed the two men just outside a detergent plant in an industrial complex around Iraq's biggest oil refinery, police Lieutenant Colonel Kadhem Abbas said.

Children's hospital struggling in wake of bombing

The country's main children's hospital is operating at less than one third of its capacity after a bomb attack nearly a month ago, say doctors.

The Children's Central Teaching Hospital in the capital, Baghdad, was hit by a suicide bomb targeting a police official on 19 December. Two security guards and ten staff members were injured in the attack.

The Associated Press has a useful listing of the known insurgent groups, with brief descriptions: Militia and Militant Groups in Iraq