Iraq civil war update - 07/08/2014

Reading the Dominion Post in a cafe yesterday I came across an article (which I can't find) that painted a picture of a 'softly-softly' approach by ISIS, reporting that some residents of Mosul were 'enjoying' the new regime.

Signs that for the US, the terrorist group may not be its greatest enemy, in Iraq, as well as Syria.

Surprise! Surprise!

July 8th Iraq SITREP by Mindfriedo

Vineyard of the Saker,

8 July, 2014

Iraq SITREP 8th July: Battle for Tikrit

A VERY INTERESTING LINK: ISIS: The Bombshell Interview to Impeach Obama

It shows Daash/ISIS being a proxy of US interests. It's Rolex wearing Caliph America's man. A subversion similar to the government backed Islamists during the Algerian Civil War.

7th July: Three mortar shells land near the Northern Saudi town of Arar. It is unclear who fired the rounds near the Iraqi Saudi border

7th July: The Iraqi army is preparing an all out assault on Tikrit. The authorities in Salahuddin province expect the armed forces to be in complete control of Tikrit in the next 48 hours

8th July: the Iraqi army started its advance on Tikrit from the north. Progress has been slow but steady with the army repelling a rebel counter offensive. A fifth of the residents of Tikrit have not fled and remain in the city as fighting escalates.

8th July: Rumours are circulating in Baghdad that the army plans to mount an Iranian backed coup in the absence political leadership and the deadlock in government formation

8th July: Daash (or should we call it blaaahsh) confiscates 20000 sheep from Nineveh and Salahuddin province and forcefully sells them to farmers in Diyalah

8th July: Moqtada Sadr meets with the military leadership of his Peace Brigades to be updated on the security situation in Samarra

8th July: Peshmerga fighters are negotiating with militants and local tribes in Jalawla in Diyala to let Peshmerga forces enter the town's southern districts. The two Arab Southern suburbs were the only ones still held by rebels and led to daily clashes and attrition losses on both sides. The Peshmergas were being held back by Ba'athist fighters.

8th July: The residents of Al Atheem in Diyala have formed people militias to protect themselves from the chaos and looting of Daash fighters

8th July: A mass grave of Daash fighters is discovered in Suleiman Bek town near the border of Diyala

8th July: Senator McCain tells CBS Maliki must go, Daash should be bombed first, FSA should be armed

8th July: Tribal fighters from Al Zweiya north of Tikrit kill 3 Daash fighters, the army assisted the tribal fighters with airstrikes destroying three vehicles. Daash has reportedly killed 50 tribal fighters it had captured in Baiji.

8th July: The Iraqi parliament has rescheduled its next session to the 12th of July

8th July: Massod Barzani is to announce the next President of Iraqi Kurdistan after consulting with the concerned political parties. The front runner is Abraham Salih.

8th July: A suicide bomber in a car bombed a check point north of Baghdad killing three police men and two civilians

8th July: Sunni cleric and head of the Scholars of Iraq Group, Shaikh Khalid Al Mulla stated that Sunni cities and towns including Mosul plan to organise National Defence Battalions to fight Islamic extremists in keeping with the call made by Sistani and other Sunni scholars

8th July: A road side bomb kills three federal police men and injures two west of Samarra

8th July: An IED explodes in Eastern Baghdad injuring two civilians

8th July: A suicide bomber driving a vehicle targets a checkpoint in Kadhmain in Baghdad, killing 3 civilians and injuring 10. A bomb explodes in the Abdul Mihsin Al Kadhimi square in Kadhmain injuring 2 civilians

8th July: A bomb explodes in Yusufiya, South Baghdad injuring 3 civilians

8th July: a According to Salama Al Khafaji, High Commission for Human Rights in Iraq, Daash is forcing a Sunni family in Mosul to have their daughter divorce her Shia husband

8th July: Hackers reported to be close to the government in Beijing target Iraqi related US interests

8th July: Maliki has appointed Major General Raed Shakir Jawdat as the new police chief of Iraq. He was earlier the police commander of Wasit.

8th July: Atta's/Government claims for the day:

Tribal forces and the government are planning to expel Rebel forces from Salah il-din and Nineveh provinces

Abdul Qader Hmaat a Colonel in Saddam's army has been killed along with 33 rebels in government airstrikes in Tal Afar north of Iraq. Another 38 rebels were injured

Related NEWS:

8th July: Bahrain expels the American Ambassador Tom Malinowski for talking with opposition Shia groups

8th July: The Battle for Aleppo begins in earnest with government troops, elite Republican guards, and Hezballah reinforcements having encircled the rebel held city.

8th July: Rebels receive a second batch of anti tank TOW missiles from the US

8th July: Daash has captured Kurdish villages along the Syrian Turkish border

8th July: Arsonists burn a Shia Mosque in Istanbul

8th July: A former Turkish jihadist: there are over 6000 Turkish Islamists who have received training by Daash

Further reading:

Whitewashing Saudi Arabia:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28133086

Insurgents seize chemical weapons depot

Stuff,

9 July, 2014

The Islamic State extremist group has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility northwest of Baghdad, where 2500 degraded chemical rockets filled decades ago with the deadly nerve agent sarin or their remnants were stored along with other chemical warfare agents, Iraq said in a letter circulated Tuesday (local time) at the United Nations.

The US government played down the threat from the takeover, saying there are no intact chemical weapons and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to use the material for military purposes.

Iraq’s UN Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a letter that ‘‘armed terrorist groups’’ entered the Muthanna site on June 11, detained officers and soldiers from the protection force guarding the facilities and seized their weapons. The following morning, the project manager spotted the looting of some equipment via the camera surveillance system before the ‘‘terrorists’’ disabled it, he said.

The Islamic State group, which controls parts of Syria, sent its fighters into neighbouring Iraq last month and quickly captured a vast stretch of territory straddling the border between the two countries. Last week, its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared the establishment of an Islamic state, or caliphate, in the land the extremists control.

Alhakim said as a result of the takeover of Muthanna, Iraq is unable ‘‘to fulfil its obligations to destroy chemical weapons’’ because of the deteriorating security situation. He said it would resume its obligations ‘‘as soon as the security situation has improved and control of the facility has been regained".

Alhakim singled out the capture of bunkers 13 and 41 in the sprawling complex 56 kilometres northwest of Baghdad in the notorious ‘‘Sunni Triangle".

The last major report by UN inspectors on the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program was released about a year after the experts left in March 2003. It states that Bunker 13 contained 2,500 sarin-filled 122-mm chemical rockets produced and filled before 1991, and about 180 tons of sodium cyanide, ‘‘a very toxic chemical and a precursor for the warfare agent tabun’’.

The UN said the bunker was bombed during the first Gulf War in February 1991, which routed Iraq from Kuwait, and the rockets were ‘‘partially destroyed or damaged.’’

It said the sarin munitions were ‘‘of poor quality’’ and ‘‘would largely be degraded after years of storage under the conditions existing there.’’ It said the tabun-filled containers were all treated with decontamination solution and likely no longer contain any agent, but ‘‘the residue of this decontamination would contain cyanides, which would still be a hazard.’’

According to the report, Bunker 41 contained 2000 empty 155-mm artillery shells contaminated with the chemical warfare agent mustard, 605 one-ton mustard containers with residues, and heavily contaminated construction material. It said the shells could contain mustard residues which can’t be used for chemical warfare but ‘‘remain highly toxic’’.

US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed concern on June 20 about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seizing the complex, but played down the importance of the two bunkers with ‘‘degraded chemical remnants,’’ saying the material dates back to the 1980s and was stored after being dismantled by UN inspectors in the 1990s.

She said the remnants ‘‘don’t include intact chemical weapons ... and would be very difficult, if not impossible, to safely use this for military purposes or, frankly, to move it.’’

The Muthanna facility, south of the city of Samarra, was Iraq’s primary site for the production of chemical weapons agents. After the end of the first Gulf War, UN weapons inspectors worked there to get rid of chemicals that could be used in weapons, destroy production plants and equipment, and eliminate chemical warfare agents. The UN inspectors left just before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and never returned. The US-led Iraq Survey Group then took over the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and found none.

News of the facility’s takeover came amid continued political uncertainty in Iraq as leaders must agree on a new government that can confront the militant offensive that has plunged the country into its worst crisis since the last US troops left in 2011.

Iraq’s parliament on Tuesday officially rescheduled its next session for Sunday after it was criticised for earlier plans to take a five-week break.