Iraqi police concede Fallujah is al-Qaida’s

Mourners and Sunni gunmen in Fallujah chant slogans Saturday against Iraq’s Shiite-led government during the funeral of a man killed Friday in clashes between al-Qaida gunmen and Iraqi soldiers.
Mourners and Sunni gunmen in Fallujah chant slogans Saturday against Iraq’s Shiite-led government during the funeral of a man killed Friday in clashes between al-Qaida gunmen and Iraqi soldiers.

BAGHDAD - The city center of Iraq’s Fallujah has fallen completely into the hands of fighters from the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, police said Saturday.


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The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant also is one of the strongest rebel units in Syria, where it has imposed a strict version of Islamic law in territories it holds, and kidnapped and killed anyone it deems critical of its rule.

Hadi Razeij, head of the Anbar province police force, said police had left the city center entirely and had positioned themselves on the edge of town.

“The walls of the city are in the hands of the police force, but the people of Fallujah are the prisoners of ISIL,” he said, speaking on Arabic language satellite broadcaster al-Arabiya.

Fallujah, along with the capital of Anbar province, Ramadi, was a stronghold of Sunni insurgents during the U.S.-led war. Al-Qaida militants largely took over both cities last week and have been fending off incursions by government forces there since.

photo

AP

The mother (right) of a man killed in a bombing Thursday in southern Beirut attends his funeral procession Saturday. An al-Qaidabacked group claimed responsibility for the blast Saturday.

They shelled the city throughout Friday night and into Saturday morning, killing at least 19 civilians and wounding dozens more, according to a hospital official in Fallujah.

The fighting that has been going on for days has proved to be a crucial test for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Shiite-led government, which is facing an escalating Sunni-led insurgency that threatens to tear the country apart.

In a speech in Baghdad, al-Maliki said government forces would press on to clear the province of militants.

“There will be no retreat until we eliminate this gang and rid the people of Anbar of their evil acts,” he said. “The people of Anbar asked the government for help, they called us to come to rescue them from terrorists.”

In a statement, Lt. Gen. Ali Ghaidan Majid, the commander of Iraq’s ground forces, said that his troops had killed 60 insurgents Saturday and that the battles would continue until all Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters were “crushed.”

Dozens of families were fleeing Fallujah, finding shelter in schools in nearby towns, provincial official Dari al-Rishawi said. It appeared there was a shortage of fuel inside the city and food prices had doubled because supplies could no longer enter.

Hundreds of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters were in the city, he added, mostly armed with heavy mounted machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. On Saturday, Sunni tribesmen seeking to push out the group had yet to enter the city.

On Saturday, according to police officials in Anbar, militants took control of Karma, a town between Fallujah and Ramadi, after several hours of clashes.

The al-Qaida fighters have seized military equipment provided by the U.S. Marines to Fallujah police, whose headquarters have been taken over, Uthman Mohamed, a local reporter in Fallujah, said in a phone interview Friday. There’s no sign of government forces inside Fallujah, and most of the fighting is occurring on a highway that links the city to Baghdad, he said.

The U.S. State Department expressed its concern in a statement, saying it would continue to work with Iraqi authorities and tribes allied against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant “to defeat our common enemy.”

“We are also in contact with tribal leaders from Anbar province who are showing great courage as they fight to eject these terrorist groups from their cities,” deputy spokesman Marie Harf said.

“We would note that a number of tribal leaders in Iraq have declared an open revolt against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” Harf added. “We are working with the Iraqi government to support those tribes in every possible way.”

Government troops, backed by Sunni tribesmen who oppose al-Qaida, have encircled Fallujah for several days, and have entered parts of Ramadi. On Friday, troops bombarded militant positions outside Fallujah with artillery, a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to release information.

Iraq’s air force carried out two strikes Saturday on Fallujah and the nearby city of Ramadi that killed 55 al-Qaida fighters, Gen. Ali Ghaidan, chief of the country’s land forces, told al-Sumaria News.

Anbar province, a vast desert area on the borders with Syria and Jordan with an almost entirely Sunni population was the heartland of the Sunni insurgency that rose up against American troops and the Iraqi government after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The insurgency was fueled by anger about the dislodgment of their community from power during Saddam’s rule and the rise of Shiites. It was then that al-Qaida established its branch in the country.

In Syria, tensions between the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant and other rebel brigades increased Friday after residents in rebel-held areas demonstrated against the group, accusing the fighters of killing a man who was trying to mediate between the groups, said Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on Syria’s militant groups.

Fighting between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other anti-government rebel groups quickly spread through the northern province of Aleppo, the northeast province of Idlib and parts of the central province of Hama, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based group said it thought tens of fighters had been killed.

By Saturday evening, the al-Qaida group said in a video that it would withdraw fighters from strategic strongholds that the fighters have defended in the northern city of Aleppo if other rebels continue to attack the al-Qaida group.

Also on Saturday, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in a Shiite-dominated neighborhood in Lebanon.

It was the first time the al-Qaida group claimed responsibility for an attack in Lebanon, underscoring how the ever-more complex Syrian war is increasingly spilling over into its smaller neighbor.

At least five people were killed in the Thursday attack that targeted a south Beirut neighborhood that is bastion of support for the Shiite group Hezbollah.

The al-Qaida group vowed more attacks.

The bombing was the latest in a wave of attacks to hit Lebanon in recent months. The violence has targeted both Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods, further stoking sectarian tensions that are already running high as each community in Lebanon lines up with its brethren in Syria on opposing sides of the war.

It also reflected how Lebanese are turning on one another. On Saturday, Lebanese authorities confirmed the identity of Thursday’s suicide bomber, the state news agency reported. Local media identified him as a Lebanese citizen from a northern border town with Syria.

While President Barack Obama has declined to intervene directly in the Syrian war, the U.S. may come under increasing pressure to contain the fallout from that conflict if the al-Qaida militants gain a foothold in western Iraq, Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in an interview.

With the possible withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan looming this year, many fear that an insurgency will unravel that country, too, leaving another U.S. nation-building effort in ashes.

The Obama administration defends its record of engagement in the region, pointing to its efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis and the Palestinian dispute, but it acknowledges that there are limits.

“It’s not in America’s interests to have troops in the middle of every conflict in the Middle East, or to be permanently involved in open-ended wars in the Middle East,” Benjamin Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser, said in an email Saturday.

Information for this article was contributed by Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Deb Riechmann, Bassem Mroue and Diaa Hadid of The Associated Press; by Zaid Sabah, Gopal Ratnam, Glen Carey, Donna Abu-Nasr,Tony Capaccio and Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News; and by Yasir Ghazi, Tim Arango, Ben Hubbard, Robert F. Worth, Michael R. Gordon, Peter Baker and a staff member of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/05/2014

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