Iraq: Tikrit Seized As Militants Surge South

Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seize control of three cities as reports emerge of fighting in a fourth.

Militants from an al Qaeda splinter group have launched a wave of attacks south of captured Mosul a day after more than 500,000 people fled the city.

Iraqi police said Sunni rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had seized control of Tikrit and freed hundreds of prisoners, AFP news agency reported.

Security sources cited by Reuters said the militants drove more than 60 vehicles into the city, occupying local government buildings and raising ISIS's black flag.

The city, which is the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, lies roughly halfway between the capital, Baghdad, and Mosul, which was taken on Tuesday.

Security sources said fighters drove into the town of Baiji in armed vehicles, setting fire to the court house and police station before freeing prisoners.

Local officials and residents said the militants later withdrew to surrounding villages after tribal leaders persuaded them not to take over the energy installations there.

A senior official from the Shi'ite-led government said the production of crude oil in Iraq - which produces around 3.5 million barrels a day - could be affected after the attack on Baiji.

A series of suicide and car bombings across the country, including one in Baghdad, have killed more than 30 people.

Militants executed 10 soldiers and policemen near the town of Riyadh, 40 miles (60km) southwest of Kirkuk, after establishing a checkpoint, police sources said.

Security forces thwarted an assault on Samarra, which is just 70 miles (110km) north of Baghdad.

In Mosul, gunmen wearing military uniforms and black clothing have been guarding banks and government buildings and calling over loudspeakers for government employees to return to work.

The militants also seized the Turkish consulate in the second city and kidnapped the head of the diplomatic mission and 48 staff members, including family members and special forces.

The militants are also holding 31 Turkish truck drivers hostage at a power station there.

Turkey's foreign minister said Ankara will retaliate if any of its citizens are hurt.

Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has asked parliament to declare a state of emergency that would grant him additional powers to tackle the crisis.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Baghdad will co-operate with Kurdish forces to "flush out these foreign fighters" and said Iraq's leaders have to unite to face a "mortal" threat.

Influential Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr has called for the formation of militia units to help defend religious sites.

ISIS, which wants to create a Sunni Caliphate straddling the border between Iraq and Syria, has made serious gains in Iraq in the last year, seizing control of the city of Falluja and parts of Ramadi.

It was formed after a split with al Qaeda's international leader, Ayman al Zawahiri.

http://news.sky.com/story/1280075/iraq-tikrit-seized-as-militants-surge-south


America and Britain caused this. We took a country that was the most advanced in the Middle East, the most stable in the Middle East and completely destabalised it. Yes Saddam did terrible things, but for the majority life was good. And then we arrived. Al Qaeda was never there before the invasion, the first lot that arrived the 'Sons of Iraq' were the major force that got rid of them. But once we invaded they never stood a chance and the 'government' they have now will never control this.

We have so much blood on our hands.

We invaded the advanced and stable country in the Middle East??

When did we invade Israel??

Please stop talking down our country Sassy.

I will not allow it to become a muslims State, just give up!

So nice to have comments from the two who can't see further than the ends of their noses, makes such a difference to a thread.   Fills it out somehow.  

Sassy wrote:


America and Britain caused this.   We took a country that was the most advanced in the Middle East, the most stable in the Middle East and completely destabalised it.   Yes Saddam did terrible things, but for the majority life was good.   And then we arrived.   Al Qaeda was never there before the invasion, the first lot that arrived the 'Sons of Iraq' were the major force that got rid of them.   But once we invaded they never stood a chance and the 'government' they have now will never control this.

We have so much blood on our hands.

Oh come ON!  Christ, do you really think Iraq was a civilized country under their wonderful leader Saddam Hussein?  You couldn't make it up!  What about the other wonderful peaceful Islamic countries that have had their Arab Springs and revolutions against their dictators, without the help (blame) of the West - Egypt, Libya, Syria... are we to blame for their misfortune too?  

I agree we should never get involved in their mess - let them keep on doing what they've been doing for centuries and what they'll keep on doing for more centuries - butchering and massacring each other, raping their women en masse and generally behaving like the violent bastards they are by nature.  But, hey, I'm sure it's all our fault...  

Tesstacious wrote:

Sassy wrote:


America and Britain caused this.   We took a country that was the most advanced in the Middle East, the most stable in the Middle East and completely destabalised it.   Yes Saddam did terrible things, but for the majority life was good.   And then we arrived.   Al Qaeda was never there before the invasion, the first lot that arrived the 'Sons of Iraq' were the major force that got rid of them.   But once we invaded they never stood a chance and the 'government' they have now will never control this.

We have so much blood on our hands.

Oh come ON!  Christ, do you really think Iraq was a civilized country under their wonderful leader Saddam Hussein?  You couldn't make it up!  What about the other wonderful peaceful Islamic countries that have had their Arab Springs and revolutions against their dictators, without the help (blame) of the West - Egypt, Libya, Syria... are we to blame for their misfortune too?  

I agree we should never get involved in their mess - let them keep on doing what they've been doing for centuries and what they'll keep on doing for more centuries - butchering and massacring each other, raping their women en masse and generally behaving like the violent bastards they are by nature.  But, hey, I'm sure it's all our fault...  

Let's be fair

Sasquatch DOES have blood on her hands

She and the rest of the lefty mclunatic clan were cheering when the Arab spring started,I remember saying it would go pear shaped and got shouted down, I also remember saying ole saddam was the lesser of the two evils and guess what??

The left shouted me down

It was also labour a LEFTWING government that gave the invasion the thumbs up

The left are truly a hateful and warmongering bunch of murderers responsible for many deaths

This is what really happened:

A detailed study by the U.N. and Iraqi officials found that life in Iraq has decayed significantly since U.S-led foreign forces invaded and occupied the country, following a general trend seen in most sectors since the imposition of the sanctions in 1990. Iraqi civilians, mostly children, have suffered the consequences of this tragedy.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) conducted the survey (study), titled "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004," (ILCS) in cooperation with Iraq’s Ministry of Planning under Occupation. It should be noted that the study is not independent. The survey was conducted by Iraqi officials, who are serving the Occupation, with officials from the U.N.

Iraq had one of the best national health-care systems in the Middle East. For example, Saudi Arabia with all her petrodollar earnings had just a fraction of that of Iraq’s.

Iraq boasted a modern social infrastructure with a first-class range of health-care facilities, and the Iraqi people enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East. In 1991, there were 1,800 health-care centres in Iraq. More than a decade later, that number is almost half, and almost a third of them require major rehabilitation. Iraq had used its oil revenues, which accounted for 60% of its gross domestic product (GDP), to build a modern health-care system with large Western-style hospitals and modern technology. Iraqi medical and nursing schools attracted students from throughout the Middle East, and many Iraqi doctors were trained in Europe or the U.S.A. Primary health-care services reached about 97% of the urban population and 78% of the rural population in 1990. But the Gulf war of 1991 and more than 13 years of U.S-Britain sponsored sanctions have left the country's economy and infrastructure in ruins.

UNICEF reported on March 28, 2003 that, "The Education system in Iraq, prior to 1991, was one of the best in the region, with over 100% Gross Enrolment Rate for primary schooling and high levels of literacy, both of men and women. The Higher Education, especially the scientific and technological institutions, was of an international standard, staffed by high quality personnel". In the 1980s, a successful government program to eradicate illiteracy among Iraqi men and women was implemented.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO),

"Iraq had a modern sanitary infrastructure with an extensive network of water-purification and sewage-treatment systems. Water networks distributed clean, safe water to 95% of the urban population and to 75% of those in rural areas. In 1990, Iraq was ranked 50th out of 130 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index, which measures national achievements in health, education, and per capita GDP".

It has fallen to 127, one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history, as a result of the U.S-Britain-sponsored sanctions and wars, which needlessly killed civilians en mass.

The UN ILCS study , which took less than five months to complete and covered all of Iraq's provinces, reveals that some 24,000 Iraqis, 12 per cent of them children under the age of 18 years old, died as a result of the U.S-British invasion and the first year of Occupation. The three volumes report, which was based on interviews conducted with some 22,000 Iraqi households in 2004. The report estimates that the total number of Iraqi deaths is between 18,000 and 29,000. However, this estimate is misleading and does not take into account households where all members were lost, crimes that occurred very often in the indiscriminate bombings of population centres.

The most credible study so far was published in November 2004 in the Lancet, the highly reputable British medical journal. It shows that U.S. occupation forces in Iraq have killed more than 100,000 civilians between March 2003 and October 2004, the great majority of them are women and children. The estimate is considered "conservative" because it excludes the high death toll in areas such as Fallujah, where the U.S. committed crimes against humanity by obliterating the entire city of 300,000 people. Further, the Lancet study also shows that 14 per cent of U.S. soldiers and 28 per cent of U.S. marines had killed a civilian: U.S-authorised war crimes ignored in the ILCS Report.

Consistent with other studies, the ILCS study reveals that Iraqi civilians, mostly children, have suffered from lack of health care and adequate nutrition. The Data shows that 23 per cent of children under the age of 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition, and 12 percent suffer from general malnutrition, 8 per cent suffer acute malnutrition.

In a study published in November, the Norwegian-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science found that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children between the ages of six months and 5 years has increased from 4% before the invasion to 7.7% since the US invasion of Iraq. In other words, despite the 13-years sanctions, Iraqi children were living much better (by 3.7%) under the regime of Saddam Hussein than under the Occupation. Officials from the Institute revealed that the Iraqi malnutrition rate is similar to the level in some hard-hit African countries. A generation ago, obesity was the main nutrition-related public health concern, today at 7.7 per cent, Iraq's child malnutrition rate is roughly equal to that of Burundi, an African nation ravaged by more than a decade of war. The study was substantiated by new study prepared for the U.N. Human Rights Commission by the reputed Swiss professor of Sociology and expert on the right to food, Dr. Jean Ziegler.

Infant mortality and malnutrition findings show clearly that, ''the suffering of children due to war and conflict in Iraq is not limited to those directly wounded or killed by military activities",' says the study. With children under the age of 15 make up 39 per cent of the country’s total population of 27 million, the ILCS study notes that, "Most Iraqi children today have lived their whole lives under sanctions and war". In other words, most Iraqi children today have lived their lives in constant fear of U.S-British sponsored terrorism. "We find record of not a single significant demonstration protesting the wholesale destruction of Iraqi children," wrote Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado.

A detailed study by the British-based charity organisation (Medact) that examines the impact of war on health, revealed cases of vaccine-preventable diseases were rising and relief and reconstruction work had been mismanaged. Gill Reeve, deputy director of Medact, said, "[t]he health of the Iraqi people has deteriorated since the 2003 invasion. The 2003 war not only created the conditions for further health decline, but also damaged the ability of Iraqi society to reverse it".

And as a consequence of the war, "Hundreds of thousands of children born since the beginning of the present war [March 2003] have had none of their required vaccinations, and routine immunization services in major areas of the country are all but disrupted. Destruction of refrigeration systems needed to store vaccines have rendered the vaccine supply virtually useless", writes Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant. "Even antibiotics of minimal cost are in short supply, increasing the population's risk of dying from common infections. Hospitals are overcrowded, and many hospitals go dark at night for lack of lighting fixtures. The Iraqi minister of health claims that 100 percent of the hospitals in Iraq need rehabilitation", added César Chelala. The "current major problems" includes "lack of health personnel, lack of medicines, non-functioning medical equipments and destroyed hospitals and health centres", the study reveals. It is a U.S-made and a U.S-accelerated tragedy.

After health, Iraq’s education system has also deteriorated. Again, Iraqis youngsters are hard hit under Occupation. The literacy rate among Iraqis between the ages of 15 and 24 is just 74 per cent, which is according to the study is only "slightly higher than the literacy rate for the population at large". The figure is lower than that for those 25-34, "indicating that the younger generation lags behind its predecessors on educational performance", said the study. As a result of high unemployment (over 70 per cent), males have neglected their education and are in search of work to support their families. Contrary to the ILCS study, like males, women literacy has declined markedly.

In reference to the past, the study acknowledge that while the previous regime (of Saddam Hussein) built up many of the country's service networks, like electricity grids, sewage systems and water, the systems are widely in disrepair, the study reveals. However, in scathing over the sanctions and war, the ILCS study fails to condemn and attribute the causes of Iraq’s current conditions to the deliberate and systematic U.S-British bombings campaign (since 1991) to destroy the entire of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure, including water purification plants, sewage treatment plants, electricity grids, and communications.

The deliberate destruction of Iraq’s water and sewage systems by U.S. bombings has been the major cause (for a decade) of an outbreak of diarrhoea and hepatitis, particularly lethal to pregnant women and young children. Diarrhoea killed two out of every 10 children before the 1991 Gulf War and four in 10 after the war. The study indicates that only 54 per cent of households nationwide have access to a "safe and stable" supply of drinking water. An estimated 722,000 Iraqis, the report also notes, rely on sources that are both unreliable and unsafe.

Conditions are worse in rural areas, with 80 per cent of families drinking unsafe water, the report says. According to researchers, "the situation is alarming" in the southern governorates of Basra, Dhiqar, Qadisiyah, Wasit, and Babel, located near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. A large percentage of the population in this region relies on water from polluted rivers and local streams.

Although 98 per cent of Iraqi households are connected to the electrical grid, 78 per cent of them experience "severe instability" and low quality in the service, according to the survey. One in three Iraqi families now relies on electricity generators, most of which are shared between households. In all, daily living conditions under the Occupation have deteriorated markedly.

According to Barham Salih, Iraq's minister of planning, "This survey shows a rather tragic situation of the quality of life in Iraq". Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. secretary general's deputy special representative in Iraq, said the study "not only provides a better understanding of socio-economic conditions in Iraq, but it will certainly benefit the development and reconstruction processes". The study will help address the grave disparities between urban and rural [areas] and between governorates in a more targeted fashion", Mistura added.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/HAS506A.html

That was in 2005, after years of sanctions and at the beginning of the war. Since then, because we destablised it, Al Qaeda have arrived. They were never there before. Gen Petraeus acknowledged this:

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 8, 2008, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. and coalition forces commander in Iraq, reported a dramatic reduction in violence levels and civilian deaths from fifteen months before when Iraq seemed on the brink of civil war.[1] Petraeus attributed this turning point to the increased numbers of coalition and Iraqi forces, part of the surge declared by President George W. Bush in January 2007, but he gave equal credit to the predominantly Sunni popular movement known as the Sons of Iraq (SOI). "These volunteers have contributed significantly in various areas," he said. "With their assistance and with relentless pursuit of al-Qaeda-Iraq, the threat posed by AQI, while still lethal and substantial, has been reduced significantly." http://www.meforum.org/2788/sons-of-iraq

Whatever we thought of him, Saddam had kept the balances in the area checked. Now we have left, made money out of building up some infrastructure again, but all stability has gone and the people are being terrorised, whole cities now becoming refugees.

Without the Tory votes Smelly, Blair would never have got the bill through. Conservatives were all for the war.

The latest Muslim rationalization for the 1,400-year-old war between Islam and all that is non-Islamic is the so-called “occupation” of Muslim countries; as well as the military actions (including drone attacks) carried out by Western states in Muslim countries.

Take Asghar Bukhari (a British Pakistani) of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK). He has justified just about every act of Islamic violence and terrorism (including the slaughter of Lee Rigby) in terms of the “occupations” of what he calls “Muslim lands”. More precisely, Bukhari has said that “Muslims who fight the occupation of their lands are Mujahadeen and are blessed by Allah”. Most of the time that Muslims (as well as Western Leftists) say this kind of thing they have in mind Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. That's strange really because most British soldiers withdrew from Iraq in 2009 (the few remaining left in 2011) and the Americans did the same in 2011. And since then, there has been a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq...

Now between September 2001 and May 2011, 35,000 Pakistanis were killed due to Islamic terrorism alone. That's 15,000 more than the 20,000 (max) civilian deaths (most of whom were killed by fellow Muslims) in Afghanistan; though in a shorter period.

http://americanthinker.com/2014/06/mpacuk_and_western_imperialism.html

Sassy wrote:Without the Tory votes Smelly, Blair would never have got the bill through.   Conservatives were all for the war.  

Was it a labour government or Tory government that led us to war?

It was of course definitely NOT the BNP who opposed the invasion

Anyway it doesn't matter , labour and Tory are twin brothers nowadays anyway.