The Iraq War

February 6: US Secretary of State Colin Powell calls for international backing for military action against Iraq. He presents satellite photographs and intercepted communications of Iraqi army units to the UN Security Council to try to illustrate Iraq’s deception over weapons of mass destruction.

February 25: The US and the UK submit a draft resolution to the UN, stating Iraq missed its "final opportunity" to disarm peacefully. This is opposed by France, Russia and Germany.

March 10: France and Russia announce they are ready to veto a UN Security Council resolution that gives Iraq seven days to disarm. France and Russia back the veto. 

March 17: The UK, US and Spain abandon their attempt to secure a second UN resolution authorising force. Mr Bush gives Saddam and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war.

March 18: UK Prime Minister Tony Blair wins House of Commons backing to send UK forces into war in Iraq, despite a major rebellion by Labour Members of Parliament.

March 20: Mr Bush announces US forces have begun a military operation in Iraq.

“These are the opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign,” he says in an address. The attack begins with a massive air strike campaign named “shock and awe”.

Bombs hit a farming community outside Baghdad, where intelligence incorrectly suggested Saddam Hussein might be hiding.

April 9: Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, falls to US forces. Saddam’s regime loses control as American troops enter the city centre. 

April 28: US forces shoot dead 17 protesters in Fallujah. 

May 1: Mr Bush delivers his “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Lincoln, prematurely declaring the end of major combat in Iraq.

May 12: US ambassador Paul Bremer is appointed to lead the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the US-led ruling authority during a transitional period, where power is handed to an interim Iraqi governing council — comprising a mix of Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites and mainly composed of former exiles. 

May 16: Mr Bremer outlaws the former ruling Baath Party and orders Iraq institutions to “de-Baathify”, by removing the top three ranks of party members from public sector jobs and ministerial posts. Iraqis soon complain that this category is rapidly expanded without warning, gutting the public sector of qualified staff. 

May 23: Mr Bremer dissolves the Iraqi military, leaving more than 350,000 soldiers without jobs. Former soldiers with the rank of colonel or above are banned from working for the new Iraqi government and do not receive severance or retirement. “We could have done a much better job of sorting through that and keeping the Iraqi army together,” Gen Ray Odierno, the US Army Chief of Staff, told TIME in 2015. “We struggled for years to try to put it back together again.” 

Some of the disaffected Sunni men later joined militant groups, including Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is already co-operating with some Baath Party insurgents. Mr Bremer served as head of a caretaker government until the June 2004 handover to a provisional Iraqi government.

August 19: The UN headquarters in Baghdad comes under attack as 23 people are killed, including UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, triggering the withdrawal of hundreds of UN workers from Iraq. Jordanian-born Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, later known as the Islamic State of Iraq, claims responsibility.

August 29: A car bomb kills 95 people at Najaf’s Imam Ali Mosque, the holiest Shiite shrine in Iraq. Among the dead was Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr Al Hakim, an important religious leader who had co-operated with the coalition. The attack raises sectarian tensions as thousands of Iraqi Shiites, some of them backed by Iran, demand the right to form militias. The Iran-backed Badr Organisation stages a large rally in Najaf, southern Iraq, the following month. 

December 13: Saddam is found by US troops in a cellar south of Tikrit, near his hometown. "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," says Mr Bremer. Reports of sectarian killings in and around Baghdad rise, with one police officer telling The Washington Post that the Badr Organisation has hit lists of Baathists, with hundreds of names on each list. 

January 4: The governor of Baghdad is assassinated. 

January 26: 36 US soldiers die when a helicopter is shot down by insurgents amid a wider wave of violence sweeping the country. Suicide attacks and car bombings, as well as assassinations of high-profile Iraqis, and anyone suspected of supporting the occupation, are now a regular occurrence. 

January 30: Iraqis vote in the first parliamentary elections of the post-Saddam era. Sunnis largely boycott the vote, while most Shiite parties coalesce into a sectarian bloc, cementing divisions within the country. 

February 15: At least 115 men are killed in a suicide attack while queuing to take a medical test for joining the police in Hillah, south of Baghdad. 

April 6: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Jalal Talabani is sworn in as the first democratically elected President of Iraq. 

April 29: Shiite Islamist Ibrahim Al Jaafari takes office as Prime Minister, hailing from the exiled Dawa Party. At least 17 car bombs are detonated across Iraq in a co-ordinated attack, killing at least 50 — a sign of the severity of violence that was to come as Iraq slid towards civil war. 

June 17: Insurgent violence mounts. As hundreds of civilians and Iraqi security forces die each month in suicide attacks and reprisal killings, US and Iraqi forces launch a large-scale operation, known as Iron Curtain, near the Syrian border to stop infiltrating terrorists. 

July 17: Another wave of suicide attacks hits Iraq, killing at least 150 people. 

August 31: At least 950 Shiite pilgrims are crushed or drowned in a stampede over Al Aimmah bridge in central Baghdad, as they march towards the holy Al Kadhimiya shrine in the centre of the city. The stampede was reportedly sparked by fears that a suicide bomber was in the procession. 

September 20: Iraqi authorities say the country’s interim defence minister may have stolen around $2.3 billion by rigging defence contracts, a sign of increased political corruption in the country. 

September: Iraq and the UK suffer a diplomatic rift after British forces clash with police in the southern port city of Basra. Two British Special Forces soldiers had been detained and were subsequently rescued from a police station after a warning that they faced execution. Much of Iraq’s police force, particularly in the south of the country, has been infiltrated by large numbers of Iran-backed militia members opposed to the British presence. 

October 19: Saddam’s trial begins. Prosecutors focus on a massacre in the village of Dujail, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, where about 150 people, including children, were killed following an assassination attempt against the former dictator. Many other charges relate to a genocidal campaign against Kurds during the 1980s, during which Saddam ordered a chemical attack on the town of Hallabjah, killing up to 5,000 people. 

October 25: A referendum on Iraq’s constitution sees the document ratified by the majority of Iraqi voters, although many Sunnis boycott the poll or are unable to vote due to security risks. The document says Islam will be a source of law in a democratic Iraq, outlines how oil revenue and oil contracts will be managed across the country, and enshrines basic freedom. It calls for a series of parliamentary committees and special laws to clarify energy policies and citizens’ rights, but little action is taken, leaving Iraq open to seemingly endless political disputes. 

December 15: Parliamentary elections are held amid unprecedented security with a reported turnout of more than 70 per cent. A large bloc, the United Iraqi Alliance, wins 128 seats in the 275-member assembly, based on uniting Shiite political parties. The main Kurdish and Sunni parties also unite in separate blocs, but Sunni politicians strongly contest the outcome. 

January 10: Mr Bush announces that another 20,000 soldiers will be sent to Iraq, and a new strategy will focus on protecting the population, rather than killing insurgents. The approach becomes known as the “Surge,” and envisages a closer partnership between US and Iraqi forces and tribes, as well as American forces being stationed closer to Iraqi communities. US forces organise 100,000 Sunni tribesmen into militia groups to fight Al Qaeda. 

January 22: Nearly 100 people are killed when car bombs go off in a market in central Baghdad, one of many similar attacks during this period. 

February 3: A bomb explodes in a market in Sadr city, killing 135.

March 28: At least 70 Sunni men are found dead in Tal Afar, after a series of bombings in the northern Iraqi town leaves 85 dead. 

April 12: A suicide bomber kills an Iraqi MP and injures 22 others in parliament. 

May 8: In a vote demanding a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, 144 Iraqi MPs out of 275 back the call. 

July 12: Two Reuters photographers and five civilians are killed by a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad. US video footage of the incident would later be released by Wikileaks. 

November: US troop casualties fall from a high of 121 in May to 42 in September. The US military declares an end to the Surge strategy and begins to drawdown troop numbers from a high of 168,000. With the Jaish Al Mahdi observing a ceasefire and Al Qaeda largely routed by US forces and their Sunni tribal allies, civilian casualties begin to drop sharply. 

January 1: Iraq’s government takes full control of the Green Zone from US forces. The area is home to offices and residences of diplomats, embassies and Iraqi government officials. American forces have been responsible for securing the area until this point.

February 27: US President Barack Obama announces Washington’s decision to withdraw most American troops by August 31, 2010. Mr Obama says 50,000 troops will remain for smaller missions and to train Iraqi soldiers. 

April 23: At least 80 people are killed in three suicide bombings in Baghdad, making it the biggest daily death toll since early 2008. A female standing in a group of women and children receiving aid reportedly set off one of the bombs.

June 30:  US troops complete their withdrawal from Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, and officially transfer responsibility of security to Iraqi forces. Mr Al Maliki names June 30 “National Sovereignty Day” and a public holiday is declared. 

August 19: In the worst attack since April 23, two bomb attacks kill 95 people and injure more than 600 in Baghdad. 

October 25: Two suicide bombings in Baghdad kill at least 155 people and injure 700 others. It is the deadliest attack since 2007, raising questions over the safety of the country and Mr Al Maliki’s assurances that Iraq is secure. Al Qaeda claims responsibility for the attack.

December 8: At least 120 people are killed and 400 injured when five bombs are set off near government buildings in Baghdad. Al Qaeda once again claims responsibility for the attacks. Civilian deaths at the end of 2009 are recorded at 5,382 by the war monitor Iraq Body Count. This is down from the civil war high of 30,000 per year, but attacks appear well-planned and carefully targeted at government and civilian sites. 

January: Populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr returns after four years of self-imposed exile in Iran. In his first public statement, he urges his followers to resist the “occupiers” of Iraq. 

February 25: A "day of rage" is declared as tens of thousands of Iraqis protest against Mr Al Maliki’s government. At least 23 people are killed and hundreds injured in a sign of Mr Al Maliki’s growing authoritarianism.  

August 15: At least 89 people die after insurgents launch more than 40 co-ordinated attacks throughout the country, mostly on civilians. Three hundred are injured in suicide attacks, car bombings and gunfire.

December 15: The US military formally declares the end of the Iraq War in a ceremony in Baghdad, as the last US forces leave the country. 

January: Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Karim Al Luaibi warns US oil company Exxon that it must choose between operating in the south of the country or the Kurdish region, another sign of Baghdad’s growing impatience with Kurdish oil deals. 

May 20: A co-ordinated attack by ISIS with a dozen car bombs kills more than 80 people in Baghdad.

April 23: At least 42 Sunni protesters are shot dead at a rally in Hawija, northern Iraq, during an attempt by the Iraqi army to break up their protest camp. Local insurgents exploit growing anger in the Sunni community and hundreds are killed in three days of clashes across central Iraq, an early indicator of the chaos that accompanied ISIS’s rise. 

July 22: Co-ordinated attacks on Abu Ghraib prison and another jail in Tikrit by ISIS fighters free between 500 and 1,000 prisoners, including veteran radical fighters. Hundreds are said to be apprehended and Iraq later moves its maximum security prison to the south of the country, far from the insurgency. But the move comes too late, and ISIS attacks dramatically escalate. 

December: The leadership of Iraq’s 7th division of the army in Anbar are killed when a house they are raiding explodes after being rigged with bombs. The mixed Sunni-Shiite group is seen as one of the last non-sectarian units in the Iraqi army. ISIS soon gains control of Fallujah, Anbar’s second-largest city. 

March 15: Iraqi officials announce that ISIS has destroyed the ruins at the ancient city of Hatra. The insurgents said the shrines and statues were "false idols" that had to be smashed.

March 16: Iraq deploys 30,000 forces in a major offensive to recapture Tikrit from ISIS. Hadi Al Amiri, head of the Iran-backed Badr Organisation, rejects calls by Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi for more US air strikes. In a later interview with Reuters, Mr Al Amiri calls for the US to speed up arms deliveries. 

April 1: Iraqi forces receive a boost when ISIS is pushed out of Tikrit, the city closest to Saddam Hussein’s home village of Awja. While the Counter Terrorism Service leads the fight at US urging, Shiite militias follow them into the town, setting off a wave of looting and tribal violence. 

May 17: After a relentless assault of dozens of truck and car bombs, ISIS force Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service from Ramadi, Anbar governorate’s largest city. The setback for Iraq’s best unit in the war forces the US to re-evaluate its strategy and speed up air strike approval against ISIS targets.

July 17: A car bomb kills more than 115 people in Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad. The bombing is claimed by ISIS.

October 15: Iraq recaptures the Baiji oil refinery, the country’s largest, from ISIS. Much of the complex is in ruins after heavy bombardment, and some equipment is later stolen by Iran-backed militias. 

November 13: Kurdish forces seized Sinjar from ISIS after a prolonged siege, in the largest urban battle undertaken by the Kurdish Peshmerga. 

December 17: Backed by heavy US air strikes, the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service forces ISIS out of Ramadi. 

March 17: More than 200 civilians are killed in a suspected US air strike against ISIS in Mosul.

May 30: At least 20 civilians are killed in a car and suicide bomb attack by ISIS.

June 21: Great Mosque of Al Nuri, built in 1172 AD, is destroyed as ISIS militants retreat from Mosul.

July 9: Mr Al Abadi declares victory over ISIS in Mosul.

December 9: Mr Al Abadi declares full victory over ISIS.