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| Iraq-Jordan |
| iraqi Army surrounds hostage town |
| 2005-04-16 |
| IRAQI soldiers have surrounded a town south of Baghdad where gunmen, believed to be Sunni militants, are holding scores of Shiite residents hostage and have threatened to kill them unless all Shiites leave. The mass seizure of residents coincided with a string of insurgent attacks across the country in which at least 17 Iraqis were killed, seven of them in one explosion in central Iraq. In an incident likely to heighten sectarian tension between the majority Shiites, who swept January's elections, and the embittered disempowered Sunnis, gunmen blew up an empty Shiite mosque in Al-Madain after taking the hostages. An interior ministry official said the gunmen were holding some 80 hostages and threatening to kill them unless all Shiites left the town, some 30km south of Baghdad. Iraqi army special forces had surrounded the town and there was a brief exchange of gunfire, the official added. The stand-off began when the gunmen, riding in pick-up trucks, seized hostages and called over loudspeakers on Shiites to leave, a defence ministry official said. Scores fled the town, some heading for the city of Kut further south. "They have detained more than 80 people, including women and children, and they are threatening to kill them unless Shiites leave," Captain Haitham Mohammed, of the Iraqi army, said. Many Iraqi soldiers and police put on civilian clothing to flee the mixed Sunni-Shiite town, located on the Tigris river on the site of the ancient city of Ctesiphon. The area around Al-Madain is home to several Sunni Arab tribes who follow the radical Wahabi brand of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia. Recent reports suggested that Shiites had set up vigilante groups for protection. An interior ministry official suggested events in Madain could be a response to the abduction of Sunnis from the powerful Dulaimi tribe, who have a presence in the area. In other violence, at least 17 people were killed, including two US soldiers and a Turkish truck driver, in separate incidents, US and Iraqi officials said. In the most lethal attack, seven died, including a number of policemen, and five were wounded when a bomb went off in at crowded restaurant in Baquba, north of the capital, police said. In Baghdad, one civilian was killed and three wounded when a suicide bomber drove his car into a military-guarded convoy. The al-Qaeda-linked group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in statements carried on the internet that it carried out both attacks. An Iraqi policeman was also shot dead in southern Baghdad while driving his car, the interior ministry said. In continuing attacks on the estimated 140,000 US troops in Iraq, one American soldier, travelling in a convoy, was killed by an explosion near Taji, north of Baghdad, the US military said, one day after another had died of his wounds in an attack near Tikrit, further north. A Turkish truck driver was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near the northern oil refining town of Baiji, setting his vehicle ablaze. An Iraqi soldier died and another was wounded in an explosion near Samarra, north of Baghdad, and four civilians were wounded in a car bomb attack against an Iraqi army convoy in the same area. The Iraqi army meanwhile said it had arrested 20 people in Khalis, north of Baghdad, on suspicion of involvement in insurgent attacks. It also said its soldiers had killed two leaders of Ansar al-Sunna, an al-Qaeda-linked network. The leader of the network was identified as Abu Bakr Mohammed Nayef al-Janabi, a former intelligence officer under Saddam Hussein. |
| Posted by:God Save The World |
| #2 Im expect MFP to chime in to. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-04-16 6:35:26 PM |
| #1 Omar at Iraq the Model has comments on this |
| Posted by: Sherry 2005-04-16 5:16:16 PM |