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| Iraq |
| Iraq Forces Free Hostages as January Toll Tops 900 |
| 2014-01-31 |
| [An Nahar] Iraqi forces ended a hostage-taking at a Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... government building killing four hard boyz on Thursday, as nationwide violence took January's corpse count past 900 with elections looming. The brazen assault on a building in the northeast of the capital came as security forces grapple with intensifying violence and an extended standoff with anti-government fighters in the western province of Anbar. It is likely to raise fresh concerns about the capabilities of Iraq's security forces amid fears the April 30 general election could be partially delayed, as was the case for provincial elections in April 2013. Six hard boyz wearing boom jackets initially attempted to storm the building, which houses offices of a state-owned firm, by blowing up a minibus rigged with explosives at the main gate, police at the scene said. When the kaboom did not go off, one of the attackers went kaboom!to clear the way for his fellow hard boys, followed by a second bomber who set off his vest at an inner gate. The four remaining fighters then took hostages in the building for several hours before they were eventually killed by security forces, interior ministry front man Brigadier General Saad Maan said. At least two people were killed in the attack overall -- a policeman at the main gate and an employee responsible for monitoring security cameras in the main building, Maan said. Eight more were maimed. A police colonel and an interior ministry official confirmed the account and the toll. "At the time of the attack, the employees in the building behaved very wisely and shut all their doors," Maan told Agence La Belle France Presse. "They kept all the employees inside. "The whole operation is now finished, everything is under control." The blood of the first guard killed in the initial suicide kaboom, as well as pieces of the attacker's flesh and parts of his boom jacket, were still visible on the ground when AFP journalists arrived at the scene after the hostages were freed. Mobile phone footage shown to AFP by coppers indicated the inside of the building was badly damaged by firefights and kabooms. Security forces had sealed off the surrounding area, which is home to other government offices, including the transport ministry and a human rights ...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... ministry building. Elsewhere in the Iraqi capital, three bombings near markets and a restaurant in the Shiite-majority neighborhoods of Kasra, Shaab and Talbiyah killed 10 people and maimed 32, officials said. They struck hours after boom-mobiles destroyed Storied Baghdad Jadidah, Shuala and Talbiyah, which are predominantly Shiite, leaving nine people dead on Wednesday evening. Attacks on Wednesday also hit the capital's outskirts, as well as the northern cities of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... and Tuz Khurmatu, killing seven others. Violence has killed at least 917 people in Iraq this month, more than three times the toll for January 2013, according to an AFP tally based on reports from security and medical officials. No group grabbed credit for the ministry assault and the bombings, but Sunni hard boyz affiliated with the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... (ISIL) have mounted similar attacks in Storied Baghdad. On Wednesday, Iraqi officials published a rare photograph purportedly of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the first of its kind released by an official source. The black and white picture, which provides a rare glimpse of the hard boy commander accused of ordering the killings of countless Iraqis, shows a balding man with a beard wearing a suit and tie. The latest bloodletting comes as security forces are locked in battles with hard boys, some of them affiliated with ISIL, in Anbar, a mostly Sunni Arab desert region west of Storied Baghdad that shares a border with Syria. It is the first time hard boyz have exercised such open control in Iraqi cities since the peak of violence that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. The standoff has prompted more than 140,000 people to flee their homes, the U.N. refugee agency said, describing it as the worst displacement in Iraq since the peak of sectarian conflict in 2006-2008. Washington has provided Storied Baghdad with weaponry to help it combat hard boyz and also plans to sell it 24 Apache attack helicopters. But diplomats and analysts say the Shiite-led government must do more to reach out to the disaffected Sunni Arab minority in order to undercut support for militancy. |
| Posted by:Fred |