Word: iraqi
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...They think all of them are militia," said Thabit, the commander personally appointed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to clean up Samarra in the wake of a second bombing of the Shi'ite Askariya mosque June 13. Immediately after the bombing, Maliki ordered roughly 900 national police to Samarra, where the local police force had collapsed. And more are supposed to be coming. As many as 1,500 new national police could be inside the city in the next few weeks. So far, they have not been well received by the people of Samarra. "To be honest, they...
...American troops found the body hanging from an electrical pole a short distance from the office of the new Iraqi security forces commander for the city, Gen. Adnon Thabit. Foot soldiers from the Iraqi national police sent to Samarra in recent weeks had killed the man that morning during a firefight with insurgents, roped him to the back of one of their blue and white trucks by the feet and then dragged him through the city for all to see before stringing him up. The Americans, who've been working with the national police to check sectarian tensions here...
...Samarra, a flashpoint of sectarian and insurgent violence in years past, is dangerously close to erupting again. Insurgent violence driven by Sunni extremists is on the rise in the city. In the past two months, insurgent attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces in Samarra have nearly doubled, U.S. commanders say, rising to an average of roughly two per day. And U.S. troops who patrol the city say insurgents are operating in greater numbers than in months past...
...second briefing, at a bunkered, joint U.S.-Iraqi command post in the middle of Baquba, the news was less optimistic. An Iraqi General said that he was pretty certain that the al-Qaeda leadership had slipped away, north to Tikrit and Samarra, and that many of the fighters were burying their equipment before they left town, hoping to return-as always-when the Americans left. "Well, it's up to you to make sure they don't come back," Odierno said...
...Iraqi Army and local police have been pretty unreliable in Diyala-riddled with Shi'ite militia elements, incompetence and corruption. "They replaced the commander of the 5th Iraqi Army," Odierno told me. "He had a pretty clear Shi'ite agenda. The new guy says the right things, but we just don't know yet what he's going to be like...