| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraqi troops rescue Shiite hostages in besieged town |
| 2005-04-17 |
| Update on the situation with some interesting background. BAGHDAD : Iraqi troops rescued several Shiite hostages after they battled their way into a town where Sunni extremists abducted dozens of people and threatened to kill the town's Shiite residents. The hostage-taking in Al-Madain south of Baghdad has sparked fears of wider sectarian strife between Iraq's Shiite majority and the Sunnis at a time when leaders from both communities seek agreement on the make-up of a government. Parliament was meeting Sunday, but a new government was not expected to be announced before the end of the week. "Police forces, backed by coalition forces, entered the town at 9:00 am (05H00 GMT) and encountered severe resistance from the terrorists", a defence ministry official told AFP. Government forces have recaptured half of the town and freed 10 to 15 families held hostage by the gunmen, he said, adding that the clashes were continuing. Officials have suggested the number of Shiite hostages in town could be as high as 80. National Security Advisor Qassem Daoud told the Al-Arabiya satellite news channel: "Iraqi security forces have the situation under control and are dealing with the hostage takers in a serious manner." Iraqi army special forces on Saturday surrounded the town, home to Shiites and Sunnis, in hopes of averting a sectarian bloodbath that could badly damage Iraq's ethnic and religious ties. On Saturday afternoon, gunmen blew up the building housing the Husseiniyat al-Rasul al-Adham mosque in Madain, a town 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of Baghdad built on the ruins of the ancient city of Ctesiphon, said a source at the interior ministry, adding that it was empty at the time. The same source said events in Madain may be a tit-for-tat kidnapping of Shiites after the abduction of Sunnis from the powerful Dulaimi tribe, who have a presence in the area. A spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, Abdul Hadi al-Darraji also suggested the incident may be part of a settling of scores among some families in the community. "They have detained more than 80 people, including women and children, and they are threatening to kill them unless Shiites leave", one of the refugees, Captain Haitham Mohammed of the Iraqi army, told AFP on Friday. The road linking Baghdad with Kut, 200 kilometres (120 miles) to the south, is among the most dangerous in the country where several beheaded bodies have surfaced in recent months. The area around Madain and neighbouring Salman Pak is home to several Sunni Arab tribes who follow the radical Wahabi brand of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia and recent reports suggested that Shiites have set up vigilante groups for protection. Daoud's fellow National Security Advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie blamed the rising wave of Islamic extremism around Madain on Saddam's policy of settling Sunni extremists in the stretch of towns just south of Baghdad after the 1991 Shiite uprising against the old regime. "Saddam started a policy of 'colonies' whereby he allowed and encouraged some of the Sunni extremists to live at the southern Baghdad borders ... basically to put a human barrier between Baghdad and the (Shiite) south and stop any future uprising in the south from reaching Baghdad." Rubaie urged Iraq's 15-million-strong Shiite majority not to carry out reprisals against the country's Sunnis, dominant under Saddam Hussein and believed to form the backbone of the current insurgency. "We have called for people not to take the law into their own hands," Rubaie said. "In killing innocent Sunnis, this is what the extremist Salafists want. They want to draw the Shiites into a sectarian conflict. This is a fatal mistake." The latest incident in Madain came as the Shiites have been trying to woo the Sunnis, who largely boycotted the January 30 elections, to join the political process. "The more this process drags on, the more terrorist attacks and instability we'll see," said outgoing Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP. In the latest insurgency attack, an Iraqi officer of the Wolf Brigade, who have taken a leading role in the fight against militants, was gunned down in Baghdad's al-Iskan neighbourhood on Saturday evening, an interior ministry official said. Two senior Iraqi police officers were also shot dead by insurgents Sunday morning and Saturday evening in the northern town of Mosul and in the capital, Baghdad, police and hospital sources said. |
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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. |
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