Iraqi Interior Ministry pledges action to deal with violence

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Media: The Associated Press
Byline: DAVID RISING
Date: 15 October 2006

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.

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.
 
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