[Centraal] Irak na de oorlog - deel 37 : Irak staat op instorten

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From correspondents in Baghdad
February 22, 2007 07:34am
Article from: Agence France-PresseFont size: + -

A US army Black Hawk transport helicopter appears to have been shot down in Iraq today, the eighth such aircraft to go down in just over a month.

"The initial indications appear that it was brought down by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver said today.

A senior spokesman said earlier that no one on board had been hurt in what was initially described as a "hard landing" north of Baghdad."Initial reports are that there were nine people on board. An accompanying helicopter has already landed and picked those personnel up. They're all OK," Major General William Caldwell said.

Iraqi police officers said the chopper came down in fields near the town of Tarmiyah, the scene two days ago of a fierce battle between US troops and insurgents, some 30 kilometres north of the capital.

Seven US helicopters, including two operated by a private security firm, have been lost in Iraq since January 20.

Most of them were shot down, sparking speculation that insurgents are using new tactics or weapons.

The last was a Marine CH-47 transport helicopter that was shot down on February 7, killing all seven onboard.

In all, 27 people have died in the eight crashes, which include two private helicopters that belonged to the Blackwater security agency.

Two of the aircraft lost were Apache gunships with cutting-edge defences that were nonetheless hit by fire from the ground.

The worst US chopper crash in Iraq involved two Black Hawk transports near Mosul in the north of the country on November 15, 2003, and killed 17 soldiers.

Two weeks earlier, 16 soldiers died when their CH-47 Chinook was shot down near Fallujah, west of the capital.

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WASHINGTON (AFP) - Specialized Al-Qaeda cells are believed to be responsible for a spate of shootdowns of US military helicopters in Iraq and two insurgents have been captured in connection with them, a top US commander said Thursday.

Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the number two commander in Iraq, said insurgents appear to have ambushed two or three of the eight helicopters downed since January 20.

"I think they probably have been trying to do this for a long time, but my guess is they have a cell out there that is somewhat effective," Odierno told reporters here via video link from Iraq.

The general said an insurgent captured about a week ago had confessed to being involved in one of the helicopter shoot downs.

Raids launched over the past few nights "got into another part of a cell who might have shot down one of the aircraft," he said.

He said two people linked to the shoot downs have been captured but would not comment further.

The cells were associated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a militant Islamic Sunni group, he said.

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VS-militair krijgt 100 jaar na moordpartij Irak

Uitgegeven: 23 februari 2007 05:57
Laatst gewijzigd: 23 februari 2007 05:57
WASHINGTON - Een rechter van een Amerikaanse krijgsraad heeft donderdag een Amerikaanse militair tot 100 jaar celstraf veroordeeld voor de verkrachting van een Iraaks meisje en de moord op haar en drie van haar familieleden. Dat meldden Amerikaanse media.

De 24-jarige sergeant had schuld bekend om de doodstraf te ontlopen. Hij kan wel vervroegd vrijkomen. Mogelijk al na tien jaar. Een andere militair in de zaak werd in november tot 90 jaar celstraf veroordeeld.

In totaal moeten vier Amerikaanse militairen zich voor de krijgsraad verantwoorden voor de slachtpartij in maart 2006 in de stad Mahmudiya. Zij verkrachtten het meisje. Daarna vermoordden zij de vader, moeder en het zusje om vervolgens het meisje te doden en haar lijk in brand te steken.

Een vijfde verdachte in de zaak moet voor een civiele rechtbank verschijnen omdat hij al oneervol uit het leger ontslagen was toen het incident aan het licht kwam.

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Sunnis - not Shiites - biggest threat to U.S. troops

WASHINGTON - Sunni Muslim insurgents remain by far the biggest threat to American troops in Iraq, despite recent U.S. claims that Iran is providing Shiite Muslim militia groups with a new type of roadside bomb, a review of American casualty reports shows.

While U.S. military officials have held briefings to publicize their concerns about the potent bombs known as explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) or penetrators, casualty reports suggest that such weapons in the hands of Shiite militias are responsible for a relatively small number of American deaths.

U.S. officials have said that attacks with such weapons increased 150 percent in the past year. But a review of bombings by location shows that less than 10 percent of attacks that killed at least two American service members in the past 14 months were in areas where Shiite militias are dominant.

Those reports show that fewer than half the bomb attacks on heavily armored U.S. vehicles such as Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles were in areas where Shiite militias dominate.

While it's difficult to know which armed group planted a bomb, analysts say the casualty numbers show that U.S. officials are exaggerating the importance of EFPs, which military officials say have been used only by Shiites.

"There were relatively few American deaths from explosively formed penetrators until recently, but you can say the same thing about attacks on helicopters or chlorine attacks," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Arlington, Va. "The fact of the matter is that the insurgents, both Sunni and Shiite, are becoming a lot more sophisticated in their tactics. Explosively formed penetrators are only one part of that, and they are not a particularly important part."

Pentagon officials say the issue is important because the Iranian government appears to be involved.

"I think the issue is not whether or not materials and supplies are coming from Iran - they are - but rather how far up the Iranian leadership is involved," said Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon's chief spokesman.

U.S. military officials accuse Iran of supplying Shiite militants with EFPs, which fire a molten slug of metal that can punch through the thickest American armor, including tanks and other vehicles designed to withstand heavy blasts. The officials say the bombs have killed at least 170 U.S. and allied service members and wounded more than 620 since they were first discovered on the battlefield in mid-2004.

Those officials have declined to provide other information about the bombs' use, including when and where the explosions that killed Americans took place. They say that such information would tip off the enemy to its successes.

Roadside bombs have killed at least 1,150 Americans since the war began, according to Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those, 496 died from Dec. 1, 2005, through Jan. 31 of this year.

U.S. military officials point to the discovery of a weapons cache in a Shiite village near Baqouba, about 40 miles from Baghdad, as the latest evidence that Iran is supplying Shiite militants with weapons.

On Monday, the Defense Department posted a video of the discovery on the Web and American officers in Baghdad displayed weapons seized in the raid, including rocket-propelled grenades, 120 mm mortars and 122 mm rockets that they said bore markings that proved the weapons were made in Iran last year.

The find also included artillery rounds, land mines, detonation cord, triggering devices, C-4 explosives and more than 140 metal discs, which U.S. military officers said were components for making EFPs.

Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said earlier this week that the weapons clearly were linked to Iran.

"The mortar tubes were made in Iran," he said. "We know that the pieces of the explosively formed projectiles, the machine pieces, were made in Iran. So we know they're being developed and brought into Iraq."

Odierno said on CNN this week that he was convinced that the EFP materials were coming from Iran.

"We have tried to see people replicate them here in Iraq, and they have not been able to do it," he said. "The machining required, the materials that are required, we think absolutely are coming from Iran, and you saw the big cache we found just the other day - almost 140 of these could be produced from that cache that we found."

Odierno said Iran's al Quds commando force was involved either in training or supplying Shiite groups, but the full extent of the Iranian government's involvement remains unclear.

Analysts say the evidence is far from clear that Iran could be the only source for the bomb components.

"Explosively formed penetrators are not some exclusive franchise for the Iranians," Thompson said. "They are fairly common around the world."

Explosively formed penetrators are also known as shaped charges. The warheads were developed after World War I to penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles. Rocket-propelled grenades and antitank missiles are conventional examples. Shaped charges also are used in the oil and gas industry.

John Pike, the executive director of GlobalSecurity.org, an online clearinghouse for military, intelligence and homeland-security information, said that while designing a shaped charge would require expertise, fabricating the devices was simpler, requiring only skill in using metal-machining tools.

"These are not factory-produced munitions," he said.

Asked who'd have the expertise to manufacture a shaped charge, Pike cited "people who had worked with explosives in the petroleum industry." In Iraq, he said, "there would be a fair number of those."

Roadside bombs have been the No. 1 killer of U.S. service members in Iraq for years, though the numbers were dropping last year compared with the year before until October, when they shot up sharply, according to the Coalition Casualty Count Web site. December was the deadliest month of the war for roadside bombs, with 67 American deaths, nearly half of which were in Baghdad.

Overall, however, the number of U.S. deaths from IEDs in 2006 was up less than 6 percent from the year before; 419 last year compared with 397 in 2005, according to Coalition Casualty Count.

The spike in the last quarter of the year corresponded with an increased use of explosively formed projectiles during the same period, according to American defense officials. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said on the Senate floor recently that 90 percent of the EFPs detonated in Iraq had been used in Baghdad.

U.S. military officials say EFPs are more dangerous than other types of roadside bombs because they typically produce more casualties.

American casualty reports show that the deadliest roadside-bomb attacks of the war have occurred in predominantly Sunni areas or areas with mixed ethnic and religious populations.

Of the 81 roadside bomb attacks that killed two or more soldiers from December 2005 through January 2007, one-quarter occurred in western Iraq, which is predominantly Sunni, and nearly two-thirds took place in Baghdad and other ethnically and religiously mixed areas, the reports show. Fewer than 10 percent were in predominantly Shiite areas.

Of the 10 fatal bomb attacks on M1 Abrams tanks in the same period, four were in Baghdad and four in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni area. One each occurred in Balad and Taji, which have large Sunni populations and big U.S. bases.

Of the 11 fatal attacks on Bradley Fighting Vehicles during that period, four were in Baghdad. Four were in Taji, and one each occurred in Ramadi, Balad and al Muqdadiyah, all of which have large concentrations of Sunnis.

The three worst attacks on Bradleys were in Taji: Three American soldiers died in a roadside bombing Feb. 22, three in an attack last April 11 and four in a bombing Aug. 27.

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al Qaeda-linked group says killed 18 Iraqi policemen
Fri Mar 2, 2007 12:21PM EST
DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-linked Iraqi militant group said on Friday it had killed 18 policemen it seized in Diyala province after the government ignored demands it made for their release.

"The Islamic State in Iraq has given the infidel government of (Nuri) al-Maliki 24 hours to respond to its demands ... but it (the government) did not give any importance for their blood," said the self-styled group in a statement.

"We will show the film of the implementation (of the execution ruling) soon, God willing," it said in the statement posted on the Internet.

Iraqi police found the bodies of 14 policemen shot in the head hours after the group showed pictures of the 18 men it said were seized to avenge the alleged rape of a woman last month.

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Qaeda-led militants storm Iraq jail, free 140

MOSUL, Iraq, March 6 (Reuters) - Dozens of al Qaeda-led militants stormed an Iraqi jail in the northern city of Mosul on Tuesday and freed up to 140 prisoners in one of the biggest prison breaks since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, police said.

As many as 300 militants led by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq, attacked Mosul's northwestern Badoush prison just after sunset in the ethnically mixed city and overwhelmed police, who were forced to call the U.S. military for backup, officials said.

Hisham al-Hamdani, a member of the Mosul provincial government, said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi took part in the attack himself. The Islamic State in Iraq is a body set up by al Qaeda's Iraq wing and other Sunni militant groups in October.

Most of the prisoners were believed to be insurgents, police said.

It was unclear if there were any clashes between gunmen and police during the incident.

Saddam Hussein's nephew, Ayham Sabawi, escaped the same prison in December after he was accused of financing the Sunni insurgency against U.S. forces and the Shi'ite-led government.

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Op zaterdag 10 maart 2007 01:57 schreef damian5700 het volgende:
'Opstandelingenleider Irak opgepakt'
(Novum/AP) - De leider van de opstandelingengroepering Islamitische Staat Irak, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, is vrijdag aan de rand van Bagdad opgepakt. Dat heeft een Iraakse legerwoordvoerder verklaard. Een prominente sjiiet die het vertrouwen van premier Nouri Al-Maliki heeft, bevestigde op voorwaarde van anonimiteit dat Al-Baghdadi is gevangengenomen.

Al-Baghdadi zou aan het hoofd staan van de Mujahedeen Shura Raad, een alliantie tussen Al-Qaida en andere jihadistische organisaties.

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Captured man 'not Iraqi al-Qaeda leader'

A TOP leader of an al-Qaeda linked group arrested on Friday and initially thought to be Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was not in fact the head of the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq, Iraqi officials have said.

Baghdadi's Islamic State of Iraq, a body set up by al Qaeda's Iraq wing and some other Sunni militant groups in October, has claimed responsibility for a string of major attacks.

"We captured a figure who was a senior al-Qaeda member and we suspected that he was Abu Omar al-Baghdadi but after initial investigations it was proven it was not Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

"But he was a senior al Qaeda leader," said Iraqi military spokesman Qassim Moussawi.

Iraqiya state television reported the man's capture on Friday, saying he was detained in the Abu Ghraib area on the western outskirts of Baghdad.

US officials will sit down with Iranian and Syrian counterparts on Saturday at a conference in Baghdad designed to stop sectarian fighting in Iraq before the conflict spreads throughout the oil-rich region.

Iraq called the conference.

The one-day conference brings together mid-level officials from Iraq's neighbours, the permanent UN Security Council members - the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France - and Arab countries. There will be 16 delegations in all.

But attention is likely to be focused on the United States sitting down with Syria and Iran, both accused by Washington of fuelling violence in Iraq by supporting either Sunni insurgents or Shiite Muslim militias.

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By M.R. Narayan Swamy, New Delhi, March 14: Drawing an analogy with Vietnam, a long-time Iraqi dissident says the armed resistance in his country against the US is winning, but it will take a long time to make the American troops go home.

Kamal Majid, a Professor Emeritus in the University of Wales (Cardiff), also said here that Iraqis had every right to invite foreigners to join the fighting against the US troops as Washington too had other governments on its side.

"The Iraqi people are optimistic that they will succeed (against the US)," Majid told an "International Conference on War, Imperialism and Resistance" here, drawing thunderous applause at the end of an impassioned speech.

And soon afterwards, the 77-year-old academic, who counts Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih and Irrigation Minister Latif Rashid as his students, told IANS that he expected violence in Iraq to continue for a long time.

"It will take a very long time (to make the Americans pull out)," Majid said. "After all the Americans have invested $350 billion and they are not going to go home easily. They are not going to leave tomorrow. This is also what happened in Vietnam."

An Iraqi Kurd, Majid said he had not visited Iraq for decades - first because he was bitterly opposed to deposed ruler Saddam Hussein and now because he feared death at the hands of Americans and "these people" - a reference to Deputy Prime Minister Salih and minister Rashid. "I hate them," he added.

Majid squarely blamed the Americans for the Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict in Iraq that has claimed hundreds of lives and threatens to rip apart the country as never before.

"There was no such conflict before the Americans came," he said. "My own uncle, a Sunni, had nine children, six of whom married Shias.

"What happened is that the Americans trained death squads (of Iraqis) in Hungary before the invasion to take on members of one another community. My own cousin, a Shia, was trained in Turkey. But when he was asked to kill Sunnis, he just ran away.

"It was the Americans who spoke about Shia majority areas and Sunni triangles. Iraqis never used such expressions earlier. Despite American propaganda (that only Sunnis are against them), three Shia groups are fighting the Americans.

"We do hope that once the Americans leave," Majid added, "Shias and Sunnis will realize that they need to live in peace, and for 200 centuries more."

Majid said that despite media reports about a possible US troops withdrawal, it was unlikely the Americans would leave Iraq.

"The Americans never leave once they go any place. That is why they have not left Okinawa in Japan after World War II. That is why they have not left South Korea. They have not left Haiti, and they have not left Grenada."

And in comments that appeared to justify the use of suicide bombers, he went on: "The Americans decide where to fight and what weapons to use. We also need (to do that). War has no laws. War has no logic. The enemy uses their own bombs, the resistance uses its (weapons).

"The US uses armies from other countries. So it is also our right to invite people from other countries to fight for our rights. They are not foreigners, they are fighting for us."

The US says that besides the Iraqis connected to the former Baath regime of Saddam Hussein, Arabs from many countries, including those linked to Al Qaeda, are fighting in Iraq.

According to Iraqi and American researchers, over 600,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the country since the US invasion of 2003. American military casualties total over 3,100 - most of them after US President George W. Bush made the now famous "Mission Accomplished" statement in May 2003. American wounded total at least 23,000, anti-war groups say.

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Sunni militants disrupt efforts to calm Baghdad

Sunday, March 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — In January, when President Bush announced his plans to reinforce U.S. troops in Baghdad, Shiite militias were seen as the main worry. Some analysts predicted that bloody clashes with Shiite militants in Baghdad's northeastern Sadr City district were inevitable.

Instead, during the early weeks of the Baghdad security operation, deadly bombings by Sunni militants have emerged as a greater danger.

In particular, the threat posed by the Sunni group al Qaeda in Iraq was underscored when U.S. troops seized a laptop computer from a senior operative in the group who was reported killed in late December.

Information from captured materials indicates that the group's leadership sees "the sectarian war for Baghdad as the necessary main focus of its operations," according to an intelligence report that was described by U.S. officials.

At the same time, the group has continued attacks in Anbar province on U.S. troops and on Sunni tribal leaders who have defied it.

Reflecting concern over the group's bomb attacks, especially car bombings, U.S. military officials have begun to emphasize that bringing security to Iraq's capital will involve not only the protection of Baghdad neighborhoods but also the use of raids to shut down bomb factories and uncover arms caches in the largely Sunni areas on the outskirts of the city.

"The Baghdad belts are increasingly seen as the key to security in Baghdad," Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the U.S. officer in charge of day-to-day operations in Iraq, said in an e-mail message. "I believe this is where you can stop the accelerants to Baghdad violence. We have already found a large number of significant caches in these areas related to car bombs and IEDs," or improvised explosive devices.

"The Shia have gone to ground for the most part, but there are still rogue elements of Shia extremists that are still a threat and conducting operations against the coalition, but more importantly against the government of Iraq," he added.

The threat has shifted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, in which U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein only to face a growing insurgency and find themselves involved in an arduous effort to head off growing sectarian strife.

According to captured memos from early December, al Qaeda in Iraq was frustrated with the Shiite militias' success, was unhappy with weapons shortages and was somewhat disorganized, according to an account by an U.S. official who asked not to be identified because he was discussing intelligence materials.

As a result, the organization adjusted its tactics. It began to rely more on the Sunni enclaves on the outskirts of Baghdad. Car-bomb components are also made in the surrounding Sunni areas and then smuggled into Baghdad where they are assembled.

In a reflection of the group's tactical shift, car bombings have greatly increased this year, reaching an all-time high in Iraq in January and February, according to the U.S. military. Of the 77 car bombings in Iraq in February, 44 were in Baghdad.

Col. J.B. Burton, commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team for the 1st Infantry Division, said Friday that the Sunni militants were also taking advantage of the decision of some Shiite militias to become less active or leave Baghdad. Sunni militants "have seen an opportunity, with Shia extremists out of the area, to strike with much violence," Burton said.