Two Families From Different Sects Meet Similar, Violent Fates In Iraq

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
December 12, 2006
Pg. 20

By Nancy Trejos, Washington Post Staff Writer
BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 -- Twenty armed men entered the Subhi family home in southern Kirkuk at dawn Monday, killing a 12-year-old boy, his 13-year-old sister and their pregnant mother, police said.
The al-Jubori family met a similar fate on Sunday when gunmen opened fire on their minibus in Muqdadiyah, northeast of Baghdad. Among the dead were two children, ages 3 and 4, police and two relatives said.
The Subhi family is Shiite. The Jubori family is Sunni.
Both families were warned by their neighbors to leave their homes because they were not of the desired sect, according to police. The Jubori family left. The Subhi family did not.
In the wake of last month's car bombings in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City and this past weekend's purging of Sunnis from the Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah, members of both sects say they are gripped by fear.
"We sacrificed everything," said Ghalib Ibrahim, 50, a retired army officer whose sister was one of the Sunnis attacked in Muqdadiyah. "We left the house and we left the town that we lived in all our lives just to stay away from troubles."
"Now since they are after us and they do not and will not leave us alone, now I'm going to look for them and I'm going to hold my gun and get revenge and kill those who killed my family," Ibrahim said.
The Iraqi government on Monday said it had achieved some success in thwarting sectarian violence. Iraqi army soldiers rescued 27 people snatched at a fake checkpoint in the mixed Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad, said Iraqi army Brig. Gen. Abdul Jalil Kalaf. The soldiers surrounded a house in which the kidnappers were hiding out, killed one, injured two and arrested four.
The U.S. military offered more details about the mission, but said 23 Iraqis had been kidnapped and six kidnappers arrested.
A military statement said that Iraqi soldiers followed a suspicious car to a house. A search of the car turned up two kidnapped Iraqis. They found 20 more hostages in the house.
Later on at a checkpoint, the Iraqi soldiers, with the help of American troops, saw suspected insurgents in two vehicles stop a bus and try to abduct its passengers. The soldiers killed one kidnapper in a car, wounded two, and found another hostage in the trunk, the statement said.
Elsewhere, the violence continued. In the mostly Sunni Mansour district in western Baghdad, a car bomb exploded near Mahmoun College Monday afternoon. The explosion killed three people and injured five, according to an Interior Ministry official.
National police patrols found five bodies across the capital, one of them beheaded, the official said.
North of Baghdad, the site of heavy sectarian fighting in October, four teachers at an elementary school in the Sunni district of Yathrib were kidnapped by armed men in two cars, a Balad police captain said. In retaliation, an armed group from the predominantly Shiite city of Balad kidnapped eight farmers. The captain added that tribal sheiks were trying to resolve the problem through negotiations.
In north Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded two others Sunday as they conducted a late-night combat patrol, the U.S. military said Monday.
In western Anbar province, a Marine CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter assigned to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing made an emergency landing about noon while conducting a routine flight, the U.S. military said. Of the 21 people aboard, 18 were injured. Nine of them were treated for minor injuries and returned to duty. The military said the incident did not appear to be the result of enemy action.
The Jubori family lived in the Shiite town of Abu Sayda, northeast of Baqubah in Diyala province. After receiving threats from neighbors, the family decided to flee to Muqdadiyah, on the eastern fringe of the Sunni Triangle, relatives said.
On Monday, 10 members of the extended family loaded their furniture into a minibus for their journey. Five died and five were injured in the attack in Muqdadiyah, said a police lieutenant in Diyala province.
In the Sunni village of Yenja in southern Kirkuk, Abbas Subhi had received a letter last week saying he would be in danger if he did not leave the village, a Kirkuk police official said.
The gunmen killed his wife and two children and wounded two other daughters, but left him alive because they did not see him, the official said.
In a case that seemed less about sectarian violence and more about graft, armed men wearing police uniforms in cars resembling those used by the Interior Ministry intercepted a vehicle belonging to the Central Bank of Iraq and stole $1 million, the Interior Ministry official said.
Special correspondents Naseer Mehdawi and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
 
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