Monday, October 02, 2006
Iraqi, U.S. forces raid Baghdad sectarian hotspot
Security
Iraqi army forces started intensive raids on Sunday on houses in the western district of Hurriya in Baghdad, eyewitnesses told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). The forces confiscated unlicensed weapons found in some houses during the search campaign, he said. The Iraqi forces did not give details over whether or not some arrests were made. Despite the curfew imposed, unidentified gunmen killed two civilians Saturday night in Hurriya. U.S. and Iraqi forces have intensively deployed in Hurriya over the last two days.
COMMENT: It should be noted that the Hurriya district has been plagued by dozens of violent sectarian incidents over the last few weeks, with many Sunni families asserting that they are the victims of an ongoing campaign of assassinations and kidnappings by armed groups associated with the Office of Moqtada al-Sadr (which maintains four branches in the Hurriya district), and that local police forces are heavily involved in many of these incidents. An inside source at the Hurriya police station stated that sympathetic policemen would notify the local Sadr offices during unannounced visits by American forces so that they would have time to hide their weapons and any hostages held at the offices. He added that Sadr’s offices routinely collect information on Sunni families residing at Hurriya.
Hurriya is a Shia majority district in western Baghdad. Its population is mostly Shia but sections of the district contain sizeable Sunni communities, most of which hail from al-Anbar. There have been countless tit-for-tat assassinations going on in the district and surrounding areas since the bombing of the Shia Samarra shrine last February. Several mosques have been attacked and there were a couple of suicide attacks over the last few months. A large number of Sunni families have been forced to leave the district. COMMENT ENDS.
