NEWS > 14 October 2006

Article sourced from

Houston Chronicle - United Sta
14 October 2006

This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.

Iraqi police force facing shak

BAGHDAD, Iraq � Iraq's Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, whose police forces have been accused of complicity in sectarian attacks, has fired 3,000 employees accused of corruption or rights abuses and will change top commanders, a spokesman said Saturday.

Thousands have died this year in the cycle of killings between Shiite and Sunni death squads. At least 22 were killed Saturday, mainly in sectarian attacks.

Authorities also said they discovered the headless bodies of 17 Shiite construction workers in an orchard outside Baghdad, kidnapped and decapitated in apparent retaliation for an attack on Sunni Arabs last week.

The decapitated corpses were found Friday outside the city of Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, along with four other unknown victims, also beheaded.

The killings of the workers came after the kidnapping Wednesday of three Sunni Arabs in Duluiyah by a Shiite militia based in Balad, police said. The three were killed and their bodies burned. After the discovery of the bodies late Friday and early Saturday, Sunni families living near Balad were starting to flee their homes, fearing Shiite retaliation.

Amid the growing tensions between Sunni Arabs and Shiites, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah met Saturday with prominent Iraqi clerics from both sects in the Islamic holy city of Mecca and urged them to seek an end to the violence to allow the two sides to reconcile.

"My brothers, we need now patience, calmness and quiet to get to know each other," the king told them.

Spokesman Abdul-Karim Khalaf said the Interior Ministry shake-up would ensure stronger action to stop the violence.

"We are working on reshuffling the ministry's vital posts like (the leaders of the) police commandos and public order forces, as well as some undersecretaries," he told The Associated Press, without elaborating.

He said most of the 3,000 employees who had been removed since May were suspected of corruption or human rights violations, but did not specify whether they were involved in militia activities. Up to 600 of them will face prosecution, he said.

The Shiite-led national police force, controlled by the Interior Ministry, is widely accused of being infiltrated by Shiite militias blamed in slayings of Sunni Arabs. Critics say Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been reluctant to move against the militias since many are linked to parties in his coalition.

The U.S. embarked on an intensive neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep of the capital in August in a crackdown on the killings.

But Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite slum of about 2 million where radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia draws much of its support, has been left alone, and U.S. commanders say they are waiting on the command from al-Maliki's government.

When al-Maliki's government was formed in May, Interior Minister Jawad Bolani was given the post as top security official in large part because he had no militia links. But his lack of militia connections also has given him less leverage to make change.

Earlier this month, an entire brigade of some 700 policemen was suspended from service and taken to barracks because of suspected militia sympathies. The commander of one of the brigade's battalions faces criminal prosecution and others are being investigated.

The troops were suspected of allowing Shiite militias to operate freely in their area, where there had been a mass kidnapping of some two dozen people from a frozen food factory, at least seven of whom have since been found dead.

Problems with the brigade emerged during a broad brigade-by-brigade assessment of police in Baghdad carried out by the U.S. military over the summer. At the time it was taken off line, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, suggested many of the policemen were involved in allowing death squads to operate and would not be brought back.

Still, Khalaf played down the role of the ministry's police forces in militia violence, blaming instead the Facilities Protection Service, rather than the police. The FPS, created to guard government buildings and infrastructure, has some 150,000 members but an unclear command structure.

He said the FPS is not working under the supervision of either the Interior or Defense ministries. U.S. commanders also have said FPS members may be carrying out a large portion of the killings.

The Interior Ministry also has said that many attacks are carried out by people impersonating either Iraqi soldiers or police, and this month introduced new uniforms for certain units and new markings for police vehicles.

Also Saturday, a U.S. airman operating with an Iraqi police unit was killed in combat in Baghdad, the military said, bringing to 46 the number of U.S. servicemembers who have died in Iraq this month.

Seven people were killed in an early morning mortar attack on a small Sunni village near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Residents blamed Shiite militias for the attack, in which four mortar rounds were fired into the village.

In the evening, gunmen in a vehicle opened fire in the Shiite village of Wahda, killing three women and four men. Police pursued them and caught one of the attackers, a Sunni gunman, police said.

A Shiite family of four was killed around dawn in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, army Capt. Oday Abdul-Ridha said. Abdul-Ridha said assailants dressed in military-style uniforms had stormed into the family's house.

In Baghdad, an employee of government-run TV was killed in a drive-by shooting Friday night, police said.

Raed Qais al-Shammari, a technician with the al-Iraqiya station, was standing near his home talking with a friend when he was shot by a gunman from a car in the violence-wracked Dora neighborhood, police said.

The attack follows Thursday's killings of 11 people at Baghdad's private Shaabiya television station. Shiite militiamen are suspected to have carried out that attack, possibly due to perceptions the newly formed station was backing their Sunni Arab rivals.

EiP Comments:

* We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper or periodical. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and we will remove the article. The articles republished on this site are provided for the purposes of research , private study, criticism , review, and the reporting of current events' We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper , periodical or other works. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and where necessary we will remove the work concerned.

Other related articles:

Article sourced from

Houston Chronicle - United Sta14 October 2006

Iraqi police force facing shak

EiP Comments:

Houston Chronicle - United Sta
14 October 2006