Reuters

Baghdad

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his security officials are to blame for the rise of Sunni Muslim insurgents who have seized parts of Iraq, the country’s foreign minister said.

The comments by Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd, are likely to worsen relations between Maliki’s Shia Muslim-led government and the Kurds, complicating efforts to form a power-sharing government capable of countering Islamic State militants.

At stake is the survival of Iraq as a unified country. Islamic State have declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria they control, alarming other Arab states who fear their campaign will embolden militants on their patch.

“Surely the man who is responsible for the general policies bears the responsibility and the general commander of the armed force, the ministers of defence and interior also bear these responsibilities,” Zebari told Al Arabiya television.

“There are other sides who bear responsibility, maybe political partners, but the biggest and greatest responsibility is on the person in charge of public policies.”

Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah called on regional leaders and religious scholars to prevent Islam from being hijacked by militants. He named no groups but was alluding to violence in neighbouring countries, including Iraq and Syria, where the Islamic State has executed scores of people and imposed their radical views in areas they captured.

In July, the Kurdish political bloc ended all participation in Iraq’s national government in protest over Maliki’s accusation that Kurds were allowing terrorists to stay in Arbil, the capital of their semi-autonomous region known as Kurdistan.

Maliki is currently ruling in a caretaker capacity, having won a parliamentary election in April but failing to win enough support from the Kurdish and Arab Sunni minorities as well as fellow Shias to form a new government.

The United States, the United Nations and Iraq’s own Shia clerics have urged lawmakers to form a new government swiftly to deal with the Sunni insurgency.

Islamic State’s offensive has whipped up sectarian tensions and threatened to dismember Iraq. The sectarian conflict poses the biggest danger to the Opec member’s stability since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussain after a US-led invasion.

Maliki has appointed Hussain al-Shahristani, the Shia deputy prime minister, as acting foreign minister.

The Kurds have long dreamed of their own independent state, an aspiration that angers Maliki, who has frequently clashed with the non-Arabs over budgets, land and oil.

After the Sunni militants arrived almost unopposed by the army, Kurdish forces seized two oilfields in northern Iraq and took over operations from a state-run oil company.

In another move certain to infuriate the government, the Kurdish region is pressing Washington for sophisticated weapons it says Kurdish fighters need to push back Islamist militants, Kurdish and US officials said.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shia militias now rival the Iraqi army in its ability to confront the Islamic State, whose fighters had taken control of parts of western Iraq before their advance through the north.

There has been a pause in the Sunni insurgents’ campaign in towns just north of Baghdad, which could partly explain why UN figures show the number of Iraqi deaths dropped to 1,737, mostly civilians, in July compared to 2,400 in June.

There are signs of a backlash among Iraqis against the Islamic State, which has blown up mosques and shrines and imposed its hardline rules in Mosul and other cities it controls in the north.

One of the Islamic State’s propaganda centres in Mosul, which contains a big screen where the group showcases its operations, was set ablaze last night, a witness said.

 

17 soldiers die in battle as
Baghdad hit by bombings

AFP

Baghdad

At least 17 Iraqi soldiers were killed in a fierce battle against jihadists south of Baghdad yesterday while bombs in and around the capital left another 16 people dead.

The clashes took place in Jurf al-Sakhr, a small Euphrates River town on a road linking Sunni insurgent strongholds in the west to Shia holy cities south of Baghdad.

“Seventeen soldiers were killed and three wounded during clashes with insurgents in Jurf al-Sakhr that lasted two hours this morning,” an army lieutenant said.

An army medic confirmed the death toll, with both sources saying 23 jihadists from the Islamic State were also killed.

The mainly Sunni town, which lies in the north of Babil province, is the scene of almost daily fighting between pro-government forces and Sunni militants.

IS launched a sweeping offensive in northern Iraq on June 9, conquering the second city Mosul and large parts of the country’s Sunni heartland.

Jurf al-Sakhr lies on the edge of what became known during a previous wave of sectarian bloodshed eight years ago as the “triangle of death”.

The army and allied Shia militia, such as Asaib Ahl al-Haq, take up positions in the town during the day but often pull back at night, which allows insurgents to plant roadside bombs.

The loss of Jurf al-Sakhr would threaten government control over one of only two main roads linking Baghdad to the southern Shia heartland, including the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf.

Another 17 people, including some IS fighters, were killed in a government air raid on Jurf al-Sakhr on Monday.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded on a busy street of the large Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City, killing at least nine and wounding 21, according to a police colonel and medical sources.

Three blasts near the Baghdad’s central Kholani Square also went off near a Shia mosque, killing five and wounding 16, according to the same sources.

And just south of the capital, in the town of Madain, at least two civilians were killed and seven wounded in another bomb blast.

Figures compiled by the health, interior and defence ministries showed that 1,401 civilians, 185 soldiers and 83 policemen were killed in July.

The UN provided a higher figure, saying at least 1,737 people were killed.

“I am concerned about the rising number of casualties in Iraq, particularly among the civilian population. Children and women are most vulnerable,” top UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov said.

Iraq’s scattered, moving frontlines and myriad fighting groups make independent verification of casualty figures very difficult.

The government’s civilian tally includes an unknown number of volunteers who enlisted with government-backed Shia militia.

The Islamic State does not divulge casualty figures.

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