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| Iraq |
| Basra police chief fired |
| 2007-06-18 |
| Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki fired the Basra police chief Monday over his force's failure to stop weekend attacks on Sunni mosques in Iraq's second-largest city, police said. At least two major mosques were attacked in the Basra area over the weekend in retaliation for Wednesday's toppling of minarets at a prized Shiite shrine in Samarra. A new police chief would replace Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hamadi al-Mousawi on Monday, a Basra police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. Al-Mousawi was "seen as incompetent, because he couldn't stop attacks by Shiite extremists against two Sunni mosques in the wake of the Samara attacks," the officer said. An adviser to al-Maliki confirmed the report but would not elaborate. An official in the office of al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, confirmed it as well, saying only that the replacement came as part of the reconstruction of the police department. |
| Posted by:ed |