BAGHDAD, March 9 (Reuters) – The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was once supposed to topple a dictator who had inflicted reckless wars and financial distress on his fellow Iraqis, after which to bring in a thriving democracy.

As a substitute, Iraqis confronted years of upheaval and chaos.

A devastating insurgency, first through Saddam Hussein loyalists after which through al Qaeda, was once adopted through a sectarian civil battle and later the upward thrust of Islamic State, which occupied a 3rd of the rustic and slaughtered hundreds.

Here’s a have a look at one of the crucial violence, together with suicide bombings and beheadings, that has plagued Iraq, a significant OPEC oil manufacturer and key U.S. best friend, because the 2003 battle.

* March 20, 2003 – U.S.-led forces invade Iraq from Kuwait to oust Saddam Hussein. The assault crushes the Iraqi army and chases Saddam from energy in a span of weeks.

* April 9, 2003 – U.S. troops take hold of Baghdad. Saddam is going into hiding. Lawlessness emerges in Baghdad and somewhere else.

* Would possibly 1, 2003 – President George W. Bush proclaims that “the US and our allies have prevailed” in Iraq. As he spoke aboard the plane provider Abraham Lincoln, a banner at the back of him mentioned, “Project Achieved.”

* Would possibly 23, 2003 – Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer disbands Iraq’s military and intelligence products and services, sending loads of hundreds of indignant armed males into the streets.

* Aug. 7, 2003 – A minimum of 17 persons are killed in a truck bomb assault on Jordan’s embassy in Baghdad.

* Aug. 19, 2003 – Suicide truck bomb wrecks U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 other people together with U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.

* Aug. 29, 2003 – A automotive bomb kills no less than 83 other people, together with best Shi’ite Muslim chief Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, at Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.

* Summer time 2003 – Insurgency in opposition to U.S.-led forces emerges, waged through pro-Saddam guerrillas, then al Qaeda and Shi’ite warring parties. U.S. forces fail to search out guns of mass destruction.

* Dec. 13, 2003 – U.S. troops seize Saddam, bearded and bedraggled, hiding in a hollow close to Tikrit.

* Spring 2004 – Insurgency intensifies in Falluja and somewhere else in principally Sunni Muslim Anbar province and violence through fans of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada Sadr within the south. U.S. faces world condemnation after pictures emerge appearing abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

* March 31, 2004 – In Fallujah 4 Blackwater non-public safety contractors are killed and one of the crucial burnt our bodies hung from a bridge.

* Would possibly 11, 2004 – Kidnappers behead U.S. businessman Nicholas Berg and videotape his killing.

* October 2004 – Al Qaeda chief in Iraq Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi begins waging bloody assaults designed to show majority Shi’ite Muslims in opposition to minority Sunnis in a civil battle.

* June 8, 2006 – Zarqawi is killed through U.S. forces.

* Dec. 30, 2006 – Saddam Hussein hanged through masked executioners after Iraqi court docket sentences him to demise for killings of 148 males and boys in northern Iraq in 1982.

* January 2007 – Bush pronounces a brand new battle technique together with a “surge” of U.S. troops into Iraq to struggle the insurgency.

* October 2007 – Iraq says safety guards from the U.S. company Blackwater “intentionally killed” 17 Iraqis in a capturing in Baghdad, and plans prison steps in opposition to them. Blackwater says its guards reacted lawfully to an assault on a convoy.

*Aug. 2010 – Final U.S. struggle brigade leaves Iraq.

* July 4, 2014 – Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seizes international’s consideration through mountain climbing the pulpit of Mosul’s medieval al-Nuri mosque in black clerical garb on a Friday to claim his caliphate.

*2017 – Islamic State’s brutal rule, throughout which it killed and completed hundreds within the title of a slender interpretation of Islam, involves an lead to Mosul when Iraqi and world forces defeat the gang there.

* Oct. 19, 2018 – President Donald Trump proclaims ISIS defeated.

* Oct. 27, 2019 – Trump pronounces Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself throughout an evening raid through U.S. particular forces in Syria. Baghdadi dies along 3 of his kids through detonating an explosives-laden vest when he fled right into a dead-end tunnel throughout the assault.

Reporting through Michael Georgy, Modifying through William Maclean

Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Consider Ideas.