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| Iraq |
| Salman Pak 'Back in Iraq Government Hands' |
| 2014-02-23 |
| [An Nahar] Iraqi security forces have retaken a northern area from bully boyz after more than a week of heavy fighting during which parts of it repeatedly changed hands, an official said Saturday. Militants initially seized parts of Sulaiman Bek on February 13, setting off a cycle of festivities in the area which includes a town and several villages. Dozens of people -- Death Eaters, security personnel and civilians -- were killed in the fighting. Sulaiman Bek "has now been completely liberated, and there are no longer any gunnies, just police and soldiers", local official Talib al-Bayati told AFP. The army was reinforcing the area with watchtowers and sand barriers, Bayati said, adding that security forces were also preventing residents who had fled the fighting from returning to their homes. Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir al-Zaidi had said that security forces held Sulaiman Bek as of Thursday, but Bayati said it was the next day before they were fully in control. It was not immediately clear if the bully boyz were forced out during festivities or chose to withdraw. The situation in Sulaiman Bek is a small-scale version of the crisis being playing out in the mostly Sunni province of Anbar west of Storied Baghdad. Anti-government fighters have held the city of Fallujah and part of Ramadi in Anbar for weeks. The takeovers there mark the first time anti-government forces have exercised such open control in major cities since the bloody insurgency that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003. More than 370,000 people may have been displaced by the Anbar violence, according to the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... . Sulaiman Bek has been hit by numerous attacks over the past year, and was briefly seized by bully boyz in late April. In July, some 150 bully boyz launched an attack with mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, and also executed 14 Shiite truck drivers on a nearby highway. Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a period of brutal sectarian killings. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Thank you for the clarification, dear Besoeker. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2014-02-23 16:43 |
| #2 Above Sulaiman Bek link defaulted to Salmon Pak. My bad for not testing. Correct hyperlink here. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-02-23 11:43 |
| #1 Sulaiman Bek is north of Baghdad. Klik or drop this into Google: 34.790581,44.665793 Salman Pak was a rather nasty Saddam WND playground located south of Baghdad. Klik or drop this into Google: 33.101716,44.591482 |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-02-23 11:38 |