Militants capture village in northern Iraq
Iran Press TV
Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:59PM GMT
Al-Qaeda-linked militants have captured a village near the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit.
The militants initially drove an explosives-laden tanker into police headquarters in the village on Friday, killing eight security forces.
The commander of the federal police battalion and his assistant were among those killed in the attack.
The incident comes two days after fighting between insurgents and Iraqi government troops claimed over a dozen lives in the city of Fallujah, in the restive Anbar Province.
The militants are members of a notorious Takfiri group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and is one of the major militant groups that has incited violence in the country. The Takfiri militants have been also wreaking havoc on neighboring Syria.
Iraq is experiencing its deadliest cycle of violence with Anbar Province viewed as the epicenter of al-Qaeda-linked militancy that has gripped the country's west over the past two months.
Violence hiked in Iraq's Anbar Province in December 2013, when the army removed an anti-government protest camp in Ramadi. Authorities said the camp was used as "headquarters for the leadership of al-Qaeda." The bloodshed later spread to the nearby city of Fallujah.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed Saudi Arabia and Qatar as responsible for the security crisis and growing terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq, and denounced Riyadh as a major supporter of global terrorism.
According to figures released by the United Nations, at least 8,000 people lost their lives in Iraq last year, which was the highest death toll since a peak of violence in the country in 2007.
MRS/SS
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