Breaking: U.S. Joins Sunnis In Baghdad Takedown Of Al Qaeda
YESTERDAY’S FIGHTING LEADS TO TODAY’S
Jun 1 07:52 AM US/Eastern
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN
Associated Press Writers
AGHDAD (AP) - Iraqi and U.S. troops fanned out in a devastated Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad on Friday, residents said, adding they were holed up in their houses under a curfew that was imposed to restore calm after days of internal fighting between insurgent groups.
The developments were the latest in an apparently growing Sunni insurgent power struggle as U.S. and Iraqi officials try to isolate the terror network by turning other militant groups and tribal leaders against it. The tactic has proven successful in the western Anbar province, once considered the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, and Washington and the Iraqi government are trying to replicate it elsewhere.
Northeast of Baghdad, an al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew himself up Friday in a house sheltering members of the rival 1920 Revolution Brigades, killing two of the other militants and wounding four in the strife-ridden city of Baqouba, police said.
Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday that U.S. military officers were talking with Iraqi militants—excluding al-Qaida—about cease-fires and other arrangements to try to stop the violence. He said he thinks 80 percent of Iraqis, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militants, can reach reconciliation with each other, although most al-Qaida operatives will not.
Abu Ahmed, a 40-year-old Sunni father of four in Baghdad’s Amariyah neighborhood, said he was among a group of residents who joined in the clashes with al-Qaida fighters on Wednesday and Thursday—fed up with the gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors.
Ahmed denied being a member of any insurgent groups but said he sympathizes with “honest Iraqi resistance,” referring to those opposed to U.S.-led efforts in Iraq but also against the brutal tactics of al- Qaida.
“Al-Qaida fighters and leaders have completely destroyed Amariyah. No one can venture out and all the businesses are closed,” he said. “They kill everyone who criticizes them and is against their acts even if they are Sunnis.”
“What al-Qaida fighters do is not jihad (holy war), these acts are just criminal ones. Jihad must be against the occupation, Shiite militias and those who cooperate with them,” he added. “Those fighters are here only to kill Iraqis and not the Americans. They are like cancer and must be removed from the Iraqi body.”
Other residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution, said the clashes began after al-Qaida abducted and tortured Sunnis from the area, prompting a large number of residents, many members of the rival Islamic Army armed with guns and rocket- propelled grenades, to rise up against the terror network.
Official casualty figures were not immediately available. But a local council member, who declined to be identified because of security concerns, said at least 31 people, including six al-Qaida militants, were killed and 45 other fighters were detained in the clashes.
Lt. Col. Dale C. Kuehl, commander of 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, who is responsible for the Amariyah area of the capital, confirmed the U.S. military’s role in the fighting in the Sunni district. He said the battles raged Wednesday and Thursday but died off at night.
Although al-Qaida is a Sunni organization opposed to the Shiite Muslim-dominated government, its ruthlessness and reliance on foreign fighters have alienated many Sunnis in Iraq.
The U.S. military and the Iraqi government congratulated Amariyah residents for standing up to al-Qaida.
“Government security forces are now in control of the Amariyah district,” Iraqi military spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi was quoted as saying by Iraqi state TV. He also lauded “the cooperation of local residents with the government.”
Saif M. Fakhry, an Associated Press Television News cameraman, was shot twice and killed in the turmoil in Amariyah on Thursday. Fakhry, 26, was the fifth AP employee to die violently in the Iraq war and the third killed since December.
He was spending the day with his wife, Samah Abbas, who is expecting their first child in June. According to his family, Fakhry was walking to a mosque near his Amariyah home when he was killed. It was not clear who fired the shots.
The explosion in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, came as residents said al-Qaida is trying to regain control of the central Tahrir neighborhood from the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a group composed of officials and soldiers from the ousted regime who have allied themselves with local security forces against the terror network.
Mustafa Hadi, a 30-year-old man who lives in the neighborhood, said the insurgent group had set up several checkpoints and commandeered houses that have been vacated by Shiites and others fleeing the violence.
“These soldiers use empty houses as resting places,” he said. “At night they ask the residents to light a bulb outside their homes to make it easy for them to watch the area.”
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq’s largest Shiite party, meanwhile, returned to Baghdad from Iran after completing the first phase of his treatment for lung cancer, according to the Web site of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq.
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This is good news. Hopefully the Sunnis have come under the realization that they cannot have want they want (us leaving) until the senseless killing of innocents comes to an end. The killing won’t stop until Al Qaeda has been completely purged from existence.
Semper Fi
June 1st, 2007 at 6:37 amyeah GREAT NEWS.
momentum is everything now.
& YES Paul… sorry but ALL insurgents must die… Old Testament like Law should apply. No one who stands for killing us & the freedom-wanting Iraqi citizens should be left to even breed again.
Purge is a great word.
Great there is light in sight.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:50 am“They are like cancer and must be removed from the Iraqi body.”
June 1st, 2007 at 7:53 amYES! This is fantastic news. Thanks!!!! Been wondering how another culture could be that far off from ours to help those who slaughter babes, even out of fear for their lives….
June 1st, 2007 at 8:52 amThis is great news cuz it means that regardless of the political fight going on here, they trust our guys…as well they should.
Super job… j
You’re runnin’ with the devil it’s touch and go
All systems go friend or foe
It’s all dependin’ on the dice you throw
Come without a warning like a U.F.O.
You’re runnin’ with the devil it’s touch and go. - ELP
Iraqi Tribal leaders working with the US? I don’t understand, I thought Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D(feat) apperceived we had lost the war in Iraq. I wonder if the demedia will be as quick to give a positive spin on this latest news from Iraq as they gave Reid’s incredulous statement. Not holding my breath. Even at the cost of fellow American lives and ordinary Iraqi’s searching for a better life, the demedia must not lose their “precious”.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:04 amHere is the sign that we really have turned the corner in this war. Our workload won’t be going down any time soon, but the day will come when the medevac flights will slow down to a trickle! Next round’s on me…
LTG Odierno is a smooth customer: always promise less than you can deliver. He says that he might not know in September if the surge is working- it won’t be September…it’ll be July!
Besides AQI the big losers- in more ways than one- are those on the left in this country who continue the drumbeat that we have lost the war. Sorry Charlie…Mac and Joe are on the job…with Steve Canyon flying CAS.
I was interested to see in the news today a blurb about John Edwards admitting that he hadn’t read the classified intel report before voting for the Iraq war…and neither had Hillary (she admitted that in public when pressed very hard by a soon to be unemployed reporter). Both of these bozos have claimed that they wouldn’t have voted for the war if they knew then what they know now…that they’d been misled: a variation of the “Bush Lied” canard that is so popular with the left.
Now both have admitted that they cast their votes in ignorance; a self-imposed ignorance, at that. If they voted on this war based not upon a careful consideration of the intelligence at hand, then some other consideration was used to inform their vote. What consideration could that have been? Cold, hard, cynical political positioning is all- pure and simple. President Bush rightly put them the spot by forcing them to take an official stand on Operation Iraqi Freedom, which- at the time- was a popular move and one which still remains in the best interest of our country. Now what will these cynical wags have to say when they are exposed to be the despicable curs that they are? A pox on all their houses!
I prefer the word “expunge” as it is more flavorful than purge.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:34 amWhat the AQI can’t achieve, Shia bureaucrats may yet. Seems they are pocketing most of the limited funds they approve for Sunni areas trying to implement the Awakening revival. Petraeus has about had it with them, too. That’s where a “purge” would do the most good.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:03 pmdamn it took em long enough..its enjoyable reading the news..good people have finally had enough of the dirty bastards in irag, lebannon, gaza..God is amazing
June 1st, 2007 at 4:48 pm“this war is lost”
- Democrat leader harry reid
June 1st, 2007 at 11:26 pmApril 2007
Steve,
I don’t know what to say! If Harry Reid said it it must be true!
Lets get out our prayer rugs now and all do a mass conversion if that is the case.
When did the term winning ever get deleted in the Democratic lexicon?
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:59 amthe democrats have supplanted the french as leading surrender monkeys.when is the formal white flag handing over ceremony?
June 3rd, 2007 at 5:15 amharry forgot to tell the colonel the war was lost
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 pmhttp://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6b4_1179991132