Iraq militants seize 3 towns, border point

Key dam on Sunnis’ route

A line of rocket-launcher-equipped trucks moves by as Shiite volunteers parade through the Sadr City area of Baghdad on Saturday to show their readiness to take on Sunni insurgents.
A line of rocket-launcher-equipped trucks moves by as Shiite volunteers parade through the Sadr City area of Baghdad on Saturday to show their readiness to take on Sunni insurgents.

BAGHDAD -- Sunni insurgents led by an al-Qaida breakaway group expanded their offensive in a volatile western province Saturday, capturing three strategic towns and a border crossing with Syria, the first to fall on the Iraqi side.

It's the latest blow against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is fighting for his political life even as forces beyond his control are pushing the country toward a sectarian showdown.

In a reflection of the bitter divide, thousands of heavily armed Shiite militiamen -- eager to take on the Sunni insurgents -- marched through Iraqi cities in military-style parades on streets where many of them battled U.S. forces a half decade ago.

The towns of Qaim, Rawah and Anah are the first territory seized in predominantly Sunni Anbar province, west of Baghdad, since fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group overran the city of Fallujah and parts of the provincial capital of Ramadi earlier this year.

The capture of Rawah on the Euphrates River and the nearby town of Anah appeared to be part of a march toward a key dam in the city of Haditha, which was built in 1986 and has a hydraulic power station that produces 1,000 megawatts. Destruction of the dam would affect adversely the country's electrical grid and cause major flooding.

Iraqi military officials said more than 2,000 troops were dispatched to the dam to protect it against a possible attack by the Sunni militants. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Rawah's mayor, Hussein Ali al-Aujail, said the militants ransacked the town's government offices and forced local army and police forces to pull out. Rawah and Anah had remained under government control since nearby Fallujah fell to the Sunni militants in January.

The Islamic State's Sunni militants have carved out a large fiefdom along the Iraqi-Syrian border and have traveled back and forth with ease, but control over crossings such as that one in Qaim allows them to more easily move weapons and heavy equipment to different battlefields. Syrian rebels already have seized the facilities on the Syrian side of the border and several other posts in areas under their control.

Police and army officials said Saturday that the Sunni insurgents seized Qaim and its crossing, about 200 miles west of Baghdad, after killing 30 Iraqi troops in daylong clashes Friday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, said people were now crossing back and forth freely.

Chief military spokesman Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi acknowledged Qaim's fall, saying troops aided by local tribesmen sought to clear the city of "terrorists."

The vast Anbar province stretches from the western edges of Baghdad all the way to Jordan and Syria to the northwest. The fighting in Anbar has disrupted use of the highway linking Baghdad to the Jordanian border, a key artery for goods and passengers.

Al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government has struggled to push back against Islamic extremists and allied Sunni militants who have seized large sections of the country's north since taking control of the second-largest city, Mosul, on June 10.

The prime minister, who has led the country since 2006 and has not yet secured a third term after recent parliamentary elections, also has turned to Iranian-backed Shiite militias and volunteers to bolster his security forces.

The parades in Baghdad and other cities in the mainly Shiite south revealed the depth and diversity of the militia's arsenal, from field artillery and missiles to multiple-rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, adding a new layer to mounting evidence that Iraq is inching closer to a religious war between Sunnis and Shiites.

In Baghdad, about 20,000 militiamen loyal to anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr -- many in military fatigues and some wearing red berets, white gloves and combat helmets -- marched through the sprawling Shiite Sadr City district, which saw some of the worst fighting between Shiite militias and U.S. soldiers before a cease-fire was reached in 2008 that helped stem the sectarian bloodshed that was pushing the country to the brink of civil war.

Similar parades took place in the southern cities of Amarah and Basra, both strongholds of al-Sadr supporters.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected voice for Iraq's Shiite majority, on Friday joined calls for al-Maliki to reach out to the Kurdish and Sunni minorities a day after President Barack Obama challenged al-Maliki to create a leadership representative of all Iraqis.

The U.S. is pressing Iraq's leaders to form a new government quickly, seeking to achieve in weeks a political agreement that took eight months in 2010.

Although the U.S. has limited influence in Iraq, the pace of U.S. diplomacy will intensify as Secretary of State John Kerry arrives in the region today for talks with Iraq's neighbors on its future.

The U.S. can't "undo the damage that Maliki has done to the nation's unity, quality of governance, economy and security forces since the 2010 election," Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a commentary Friday.

Al-Maliki's State of Law bloc won the most seats in the April vote, but his hopes to retain his job have been thrown into doubt, with rivals challenging him from within the broader Shiite alliance. To govern, his bloc, which won 92 seats, must first form a majority coalition in the new 328-seat Legislature, which must meet by June 30.

"Those who call for him to step down, step aside or otherwise quit are ignoring the clear message of the last election: Most Shi'a want him to stay in place and crack down on a Sunni insurgency," said Daniel Serwer, a professor of conflict management at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

If al-Maliki were to relinquish his post now, according to the constitution, the president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, would assume the job until a new prime minister is elected. But the ailing Talabani has been in Germany for treatment since 2012, so his deputy, Khudeir al-Khuzaie, a Shiite, would step in for him.

The U.S., meanwhile, has been drawn back into the conflict. Obama announced Thursday that he was deploying up to 300 military advisers to help quell the insurgency. They join some 275 troops in and around Iraq to provide security and support for the U.S. Embassy and other American interests.

Obama has been adamant that U.S. troops would not be returning to combat but has said he could approve "targeted and precise" strikes requested by Baghdad.

Manned and unmanned U.S. aircraft are now flying over Iraq 24 hours a day on intelligence missions, U.S. officials say.

Iraq enjoyed several years of relative calm before violence spiked a year ago after al-Maliki moved to crush a Sunni protest movement against what the minority sect claimed was discrimination and abuse at the hands of his government and security forces.

Meanwhile on Saturday, four explosions killed 10 people, including two policemen, and wounded 22 in Baghdad, according to police and hospital officials.

In one instance, a bomb exploded in a market in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniya, killing four shoppers.

In an episode reminiscent of the peak days of sectarian killings in 2006 and 2007, two bodies were found riddled with bullets in Zafaraniya, police and morgue officials said. The two men were handcuffed. The victims likely were killed because the area is controlled by Shiite militiamen.

In the insurgent-held city of Tikrit, in Salahuddin province, the morgue at the hospital reported that it had received 84 bodies of policemen, soldiers and government employees who had been executed. Seven of them had been beheaded, according to an official there who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of angering the militants.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.

In a separate development, President Vladimir Putin of Russia called al-Maliki and offered Russia's "full support for the Iraqi government's efforts to liberate Iraqi territory from the terrorists' hands as quickly as possible," according to the Kremlin.

Information for this article was contributed by Hamza Hendawi, Sameer N. Yacoub and Qassim Abdul-Zahra of The Associated Press; by Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News; and by Rod Nordland, Suadad al-Salhy and Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times.

A Section on 06/22/2014

Upcoming Events