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Checkpoints attacked in Iraq, 26 police killed
[Dawn] Dozens of gunnies, some dressed in army uniforms, killed 26 coppers in a wave of coordinated attacks on checkpoints and officers' homes across the western Iraqi city of Haditha on Monday, police said.

The assault, launched at 2:00 am (2300 GMT on Sunday), saw beturbanned goons dressed in military uniforms and riding in stolen army vehicles simultaneously attacking two checkpoints in the east and west of Haditha before storming other security posts and raiding the homes of two officers.

"They then entered the city and were distributed throughout Haditha, where other gunnies were waiting for them in civilian cars," said police Lieutenant Colonel Owaid Khalaf, who said he was involved in some of Monday's firefights.

Khalaf said the attackers also targeted two senior coppers' homes, Colonel Mohammed Shauffeur and Captain Khaled Mohammed Sayil. They killed three bodyguards at each of the officer's houses, and kidnapped both.

Shauffeur's body was found in a Haditha marketplace and Sayil was discovered in an alleyway, blindfolded with fatal gunshots to the head.

"Right now, police, army and forces from the rest of Anbar are searching the entire city, and a curfew has been imposed," Khalaf said, referring to the province where Haditha lies.

"A total of 26 coppers were killed, including a colonel and a captain, and three others were maimed when several gunnies wearing security uniforms and carrying forged arrest warrants attacked several checkpoints," said Haditha police front man Major Tareq Sayeh Hardan.

"Al-Qaeda is responsible for this," Hardan said, noting that Sherlocks found Al-Qaeda literature in a vehicle that the attackers left behind.

The attack in Haditha, 210 kilometres (130 miles) northeast of Storied Baghdad
...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate...
, is the first major instance of violence in the town since a jacket wallah went kaboom!" inside a bank, killing nine people, including three police, and wounding eight others on March 3, 2011.

Posted by: Fred 2012-03-06
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=340341