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| Iraq |
| Iraq Speaker Targeted in Blast as 21 Militants Killed |
| 2014-02-11 |
| [An Nahar] Iraq's parliament speaker narrowly escaped an attack in his hometown on Monday while 21 Death Eaters died when a boom-mobile they were readying mistakenly went off in renewed nationwide violence. The unrest comes amid the worst protracted period of bloodshed in nearly six years, with more than 1,000 people killed last month as security forces grapple with near-daily attacks and battles with anti-government fighters in Anbar province. Foreign leaders have pressed the Shiite-led government to reach out to the disaffected Sunni minority to undermine support for Death Eaters, but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has taken a hard line ahead of April elections. On Monday, a convoy carrying Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, Iraq's most senior Sunni Arab politician, was hit by a roadside kaboom in the main northern city of djinn-infested Mosul ... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn... , his office said. One of Nujaifi's bodyguards was maimed, a police captain and a medical source said, but the speaker himself escaped unharmed. Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province, where Nujaifi's brother Atheel is governor, is one of Iraq's most violent areas, with attacks regularly targeting security forces, government officials as well as civilians. Also north of Storied Baghdad ...located along the Tigris River, founded in the 8th century, home of the Abbasid Caliphate... , a boom-mobile mistakenly went off in a Death Eater compound, killing 21 gunnies including a jacket wallah, an anti-Qaeda militia leader and a police officer said. The group were filming a propaganda video of the would-be suicide kaboomer when a technical glitch set off the boom-mobile in the Jilam area south of Samarra, according to Majeed Ali, the head of the Sahwa militia force in the city, and a police officer. Jilam, a mostly rural farming area just south of the mostly-Sunni city of Samarra, has long been an bad boy stronghold. The 8:00 am (0500 GMT) blast went off within a compound in the area, Ali and the police officer said. Elsewhere on Monday, attacks near Storied Baghdad in and around the towns of Mussayib and Balad left two people dead, while three Death Eaters were also killed in festivities with security forces. More than 1,000 people were killed nationwide last month, according to government data, the highest such figure since 2008, with violence surging markedly higher in recent months. No group has grabbed credit for most of the bloodshed, but Sunni Death Eaters including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original... , a powerful jihadist group, are often blamed. |
| Posted by:Fred |