Drive out militants, urges Iraq PM
Print Edition
Iraq’s prime minister urged people in the besieged city of Fallujah yesterday to drive out al-Qaida-linked insurgents to pre-empt a military offensive that officials said could be launched within days.
In a statement on state television, Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim whose government has little support in Sunni-dominated Fallujah, called on tribal leaders to drive out militants who last week seized key towns in the desert leading to the Syrian border.
“The prime minister appeals to the tribes and people of Fallujah to expel the terrorists from the city in order to spare themselves the risk of armed clashes,” read the statement.
Two local tribal leaders said meetings were being held with clerics and community leaders to find a way to persuade fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to quit Fallujah.
Maliki promised the army, stationed outside the city, would not attack residential areas in Fallujah as his forces prepare an offensive that has echoes of US assaults in 2004 on the city, some 40 kilometers west of Baghdad’s main airport.
Security officials said Maliki, who is also commander in chief of the armed forces, had agreed to hold off an offensive to give tribal leaders in Fallujah more time to drive out the militants.
“No specific deadline was determined, but it will not be open-ended,” a special forces officer said of plans to attack.
SIL, has emerged in Syria’s civil war as an affiliate of the international al-Qaida network and a powerful force among Sunni Muslim rebels seeking to oust President Bashar Assad.
Sunni state
In Iraq, it has been tightening its grip on Anbar province, a thinly populated, mainly Sunni region the size of Greece, and on the area’s main towns along the Euphrates river. Its stated aim has been to create a Sunni state straddling the border into Syria’s rebel-held desert provinces.
Some tribesmen from Iraq’s once dominant Sunni minority have been fighting ISIL militants since last week. But others baulk at taking sides with the Shiite government in Baghdad.
Two years after US troops ended nine years of occupation, violence in Iraq underlines how civil war between Syrian rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers on one side and Assad, an ally of Shiite Iran, on the other has inflamed a broader regional confrontation along sectarian lines.
The United States said on Sunday it would help Maliki fight al-Qaida but would not send troops back. An Iranian official offered similar help.
Residents have been fleeing Fallujah in droves to escape fighting, looming food and water shortages and power cuts.
“The situation in Fallujah is getting worse. There are gunmen everywhere,” said doctor Mohammed al-Nuaimi, as he prepared to leave the city.
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