Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014...
has arrived in the city of Samarra where security forces are carrying out operations against Takfiri
...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who most be killed...
myrmidons.
Before arriving at the holy city on Friday, the Iraqi premier said soldiers began clearing cities of the forces of Evil of the al-Qaeda-linked 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...
(ISIL).
Security forces "began their work to clear all our dear cities from these terrorists," Maliki said in a statement without providing more details about the operations.
The Iraqi prime minister is said to have travelled to the embattled city to supervise the operations and hold security meetings.
Some areas of the city have reportedly fallen to the hands of the myrmidons.
Earlier in the day, officials said that Iraqi army helicopters fired rockets into myrmidon hideouts in Tikrit, the thriving provincial capital of Salah al-Din province.
Security sources said the army also shelled myrmidon positions in the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla, located in the eastern Diyala province.