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Iraq Fighters, Qaeda Allies, Claim Falluja as New State

Black-clad Sunni militants of Al Qaeda destroyed the Falluja Police Headquarters and mayor’s office, planted their flag atop other government buildings and decreed the western Iraqi city to be their new independent state on Friday in an escalating threat to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whose forces were struggling to retake control late into the night. The advances by the militants — members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS — came after days of fighting in Falluja, Ramadi and other areas of Anbar Province. The region is a center of Sunni extremism that has grown more intense in reaction to Mr. Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and the neighboring civil war in Syria. Assertions by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria fighters that they were in complete control of Falluja were disputed by government security forces and an alliance of tribal leaders who […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Scores Dead in Iraqi Battle With Al Qaeda-Linked Fighters

Iraqi security forces, backed by local tribesmen, fought on Friday to retake control of two cities from al Qaeda-linked fighters in the restive western province of Anbar, leaving scores of people dead. Police and military clashed with militants armed with machine guns and wearing black balaclavas on the outskirts of Fallujah throughout the afternoon, according to a local security official in Anbar province who declined to be identified because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media. The battle left 21 people dead, including at least a few women and children, as Iraqi forces employed helicopters, tanks and mortars to lay siege to the city. The latest assault on Fallujah marks the fourth government attempt to retake the city since Thursday evening, when Islamist fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Shams, or ISIS, seized the vast majority of the city from the government, according to the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq's annual death toll highest in five years – UN

The UN’s head of mission urged the Iraqi authorities to address the roots of the violence The United Nations says at least 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces were killed in violent attacks across Iraq in 2013. December alone saw at least 759 people killed, 661 of them civilians. The annual toll is the highest in five years, but still significantly below those recoded at the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007. Violence has surged since April, when the Shia-led government launched a crackdown on a Sunni protest camp. Extremist Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda subsequently stepped up attacks across the country, while Shia groups began deadly reprisals. ‘Sad and terrible record’ Tensions […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Iraq’s annual death toll highest in five years – UN

The UN’s head of mission urged the Iraqi authorities to address the roots of the violence The United Nations says at least 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces were killed in violent attacks across Iraq in 2013. December alone saw at least 759 people killed, 661 of them civilians. The annual toll is the highest in five years, but still significantly below those recoded at the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007. Violence has surged since April, when the Shia-led government launched a crackdown on a Sunni protest camp. Extremist Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda subsequently stepped up attacks across the country, while Shia groups began deadly reprisals. ‘Sad and terrible record’ Tensions […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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75 al-Qaida militants killed in clashes in western Iraq

At least 75 al-Qaida-linked militants, including one of their top leaders, were killed on Friday in the clashes with Iraqi security forces and local tribesmen in western Iraq, police said. Fifty-two militants were killed in Ramadi, Anbar’s provincial capital city, and 23 others were killed in the nearby areas of the city, which is about 100 km west of Baghdad, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Among the dead was Abdul Rahman al-Baghdadi, one of the leaders of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, commonly known as al-Qaida in Iraq, the police source said. Clashes continued on Friday in Ramadi and Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, as Iraqi forces and tribesmen were fighting the al-Qaida militants who have been controlling some parts of the two cities. Tensions flared in the province on Monday when Iraqi […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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2 killed in pro-Morsi protests in Egypt

At least two people were killed and nine others injured on Friday in clashes across Egypt between supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and security forces, health ministry said. Following the Friday prayers, hundreds of Morsi’s supporters took to main squares in Egypt to protest against the armed forces, the police and the new draft constitution. One of the death cases was reported in Faiyum governorate, where the other one was killed in the coastal city of Alexandria. The protesters in the Faysal district in Giza hurled Molotov Cocktail at an armored police vehicle and set it on fire. They also blocked the roads and fired at police officers, the official news agency MENA reported. State TV’s footage showed hundreds of Morsi’s loyalists protested in eastern Cairo’s Nasr City, carrying posters against the interim government and Defense Minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who led the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Talks Don't Halt South Sudan Conflict

South Sudan’s warring parties began talks Friday with mediators in Ethiopia, as both sides ignored calls for a cease-fire. Negotiators met separately with representatives from the regional trade block, known as the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, or IGAD in Addis Ababa. These preliminary talks aim to narrow differences that have led to clashes killing more than 1,000 people and displacing nearly 200,000. The mediators hope both sides of the conflict can hold direct talks on Saturday, according to a spokesman for Ethiopia’s foreign ministry, Dina Mufti. The modest beginning marks a breakthrough for African-led efforts to end more than two weeks of fighting in the world’s youngest nation. The conflict—which pits the country’s President Salva Kiir, against his former deputy, Riek Machar —threatens to render South Sudan along ethnic lines and upend its oil industry. Energy exports account for nearly all of South Sudan’s exports and foreign revenue. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Talks Don’t Halt South Sudan Conflict

South Sudan’s warring parties began talks Friday with mediators in Ethiopia, as both sides ignored calls for a cease-fire. Negotiators met separately with representatives from the regional trade block, known as the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, or IGAD in Addis Ababa. These preliminary talks aim to narrow differences that have led to clashes killing more than 1,000 people and displacing nearly 200,000. The mediators hope both sides of the conflict can hold direct talks on Saturday, according to a spokesman for Ethiopia’s foreign ministry, Dina Mufti. The modest beginning marks a breakthrough for African-led efforts to end more than two weeks of fighting in the world’s youngest nation. The conflict—which pits the country’s President Salva Kiir, against his former deputy, Riek Machar —threatens to render South Sudan along ethnic lines and upend its oil industry. Energy exports account for nearly all of South Sudan’s exports and foreign revenue. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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U.S. Is Facing Hard Choices in South Sudan

South Sudan is in many ways an American creation, carved out of war-torn Sudan in a referendum largely orchestrated by the United States, its fragile institutions nurtured with billions of dollars in American aid. But a murky, vicious conflict there has left the Obama administration scrambling to prevent the unraveling of a major American achievement in Africa. With at least 1,000 people killed in fighting between government and rebel forces, and with disturbing reports of ethnically motivated atrocities by both sides, President Obama faces the real prospect that South Sudan could become Africa’s next failed state. On the first morning of his Hawaii visit, two weeks ago, Mr. Obama woke up to an urgent conference call with his national security team about the fighting in South Sudan, and efforts to evacuate American citizens. He has been briefed on it every day since, his aides said — a […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Fear Keeps Thousands of South Sudanese on the Run

As the city of Bor fell into chaos, Lual Alier watched a fellow teacher pick up a Kalashnikov rifle and kill a shopkeeper. Then the man turned and began firing at him, too. “He wanted to kill me, but I ran into the water,” Mr. Alier, 28, said. What left him in shock was more than the violence and the threat to his life. Until that moment Mr. Alier thought that the two, who came from different ethnic groups but went to a teacher training institute together, were friends. They lived together “as brothers and sisters,” Mr. Alier said of the two groups, his disbelief evident as he stood beside a tree that was now the only shelter for his extended family of more than 30 people. As the halting talks to end the conflict in South Sudan finally got underway on Friday, international negotiators […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple