Man Eating Badgers And Carp Who Love Corpses

Bombs, guns, gangs – now Basra falls prey to the monster badger

"British forces in Basra, blamed for a host of ills from militia turf wars to rising Iranian influence, are being held responsible for the latest danger to strike the city – a plague of giant man-eating badgers.
For weeks, the southern Iraqi city has been abuzz with talk of a bear-like monster stalking the suburbs and attacking livestock and humans alike. The appearance of the beasts close to the British military base at the airport has sparked rumours that soldiers released them to terrify the populace.
British officials were at a loss to explain the phenomenon until a local farmer caught and killed several of the animals, subsequently identified as honey badgers, a large, sharp-clawed mammal renowned as the world’s most fearless creature.
(...)
Sattar Jabbar, a 50-year-old farmer, claimed to have seen the badger tackling prey many times its own size. “I saw it three days ago at night attacking animals. It even ate a cow. It tore the cow up piece by piece,” he said. “I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the orchards. I missed it,” he said."

River's abundance of corpses ruins Iraqis' appetite for carp

BAGHDAD – River fish are off the menu in Baghdad.Dead bodies frequently pulled from the River Tigris have dulled the Iraqi capital's appetite for masqouf, its popular dish of grilled carp, after it was reported that clerics had warned that the fish dined on rotting corpses.

Don't forget the giant camel spiders...