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| Iraq |
| Daesh hard boyz kill 12 in raid on Iraq police trainees |
| 2016-01-04 |
| Suicide attackers from the Daesh group killed at least 12 Iraqi forces on Sunday in a brazen attack on police training at a military base, officials said. A commando of fighters equipped with rifles and suicide vests snuck into Speicher base, near the city of Tikrit, in the middle of the night. Their target was a large group of police forces from Nineveh, a northern province of which Mosul is the capital, who were undergoing training. "Under the cover of fog, they broke into Speicher," said Mahmud Al Sorchi, spokesman for the paramilitary force being set up to take back Daesh-held Nineveh. "Nineveh police managed to kill seven attackers but three were able to detonate their suicide vests," he said, adding that three officers were among the 12 policemen killed. He also said 20 policemen were wounded in the attack. The militant organisation said seven suicide attackers managed to enter the huge military base, which lies about 160 kilometres north of Baghdad. In a statement posted online, Daesh said its commando reached a centre where 1,200 cadets were being trained, sparking clashes that lasted four hours. Speicher is located in Salaheddin province, which was one of the regions conquered by Daesh when it swept across much of Iraq's Sunni heartland in June 2014. The sprawling military base itself was never fully controlled by the militants but at the beginning of their offensive they committed one of the conflict's worst atrocities there. Daesh fighters assisted by local insurgents rounded up hundreds of cadets from Speicher, marched them to Tikrit and massacred them in several locations. Hundreds of bodies were discovered in shallow graves when the Iraqi forces retook Tikrit in April 2015 but other victims were shot and thrown into the Tigris and will likely never be found. The highest estimates put the number of executed cadets at 1,700. Security officials said the Sunday raid was launched from the western side of the base, a desert area where Daesh remains able to operate despite the increased presence of Iraqi forces. Attack on Iraqi military camp kills at least 15 [ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Attacks by five jacket wallahs on an Iraqi military base north of Baghdad on Sunday killed at least 15 members of the security forces and maimed 22 others, security sources said. Two of the bombers detonated their vehicle-borne explosives at the gate of Camp Speicher, a former U.S. base outside the Sunni city of Tikrit. Three others detonated their explosives after entering the base, the sources said. ISIS grabbed credit for the blasts in a statement distributed by supporters online. |
| Posted by:Steve White |