A battle raged in west Baghdad on Thursday after residents rose up against al-Qaida and called for U.S. military help to end random gunfire that forced people to huddle indoors and threats that kept students from final exams, a member of the district council said. . .MORE:
U.S. forces backed by helicopter gunships clashed with suspected al- Qaida gunmen in western Baghdad's primarily Sunni Muslim Amariyah neighborhood in an engagement that lasted several hours, said the district councilman, who would not allow use of his name for fear of al-Qaida retribution.
Casualty figures were not immediately available and there was not immediate word from the U.S. military on the engagement.
But the councilman said the al-Qaida leader in the Amariyah district, known as Haji [sic] Hameed, was killed and 45 other fighters were detained.
Members of al-Qaida, who consider the district part of their so-called Islamic State of Iraq, were preventing students from attending final exams, shooting randomly and forcing residents to stay in their homes, the councilman said.
Some doubts from Omar of Iraq the Model:
While I so much wish this was true, the information I received from inside Amiriyah says that the fighting was mostly between the two groups mentioned above and the intervention by the American troops was only a routine response to the spike in violence.(via Instapundit, LGF)
Either way, al-Qaeda is under pressure on more than one front and it has lost a bunch of its commanders and fighters and this is always good news.
One correction to the AP story, Hajj Hameed was the chief of the Sharia courts of al-Qaeda in Amiriyah, not the leader of the network. Only god knows how many innocent people were executed by orders from this terrorist. Whether killed by Baathists, fellow terrorists, good Iraqis or American troops. . .. Good riddance!
No comments:
Post a Comment