Al-Badeel Al-Iraqi reported that efforts are underway to convince the Uwaisat tribe in Ameriyat Al-Fallujah to abandon its alliance with Al-Qaeda and join the Anbar Salvation Council, especially after the influential Zoba’ tribe, which fills most of the ranks of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, joined the fight against Al-Qaeda west of Baghdad. Contacts have also been made with major Sunni tribes, such as Al-Jubour north of Tikrit, whose leader Sheikh Naji Jibara was abducted recently by Al-Qaeda. Sources said that clashes have broke out between the Islamic Army and Al-Qaeda in Dor, Samarra, Tuz Khurmatu and Dhilu’iya, north of Baghdad, while the Sunni tribes of Azza and Dainiya in the Diyala governorate have also turned against Al-Qaeda.
Two Sunni politicians survived an assassination attempt by an IED explosion against their motorcades in the Sunni-majority Yarmouk district west of Baghdad, WNA News reported Sunday. Iraqi police said the explosion, which targeted MP Omar Abdul Sattar Al-Karbuli (Iraqi Accord Front) and Omar Al-Jubouri, an advisor to Vice President Tariq Al-Hashimi, as they passed through the district, injured two of their bodyguards.
An unnamed Kurdish source alleged that Kurdistan president Massoud Barzani threatened to withdraw Kurdish backing for Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and join former PM Ayad Allawi in a new alliance if he does not immediately implement article 140 of the Iraqi constitution and start the relocation of Arabs from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, the Iraq News Agency reported. A source close to the Iraqi government said that Iraqi politicians attempted to postpone endorsing a decision that would relocate and compensate thousands of Arabs who settled in Kirkuk as part of an Arabization campaign under Saddam Hussein’s regime, but Kurdish politicians refused.
SCIRI’s Buratha News Agency reported that fierce clashes erupted between unknown gunmen and U.S. troops in the Amil district, south of Baghdad, Sunday night, while mortar shells were fired from nearby Amiriya against the district. The mixed Amil district has recently been the scene of a bloody struggle between the Mahdi Army and insurgent groups in a small Sunni enclave near the Baghdad Airport highway. Most Sunni families have left the district as Shi’ite militiamen pushed westwards from the Shi’ite district of Bayaa’ but the situation had calmed down over the last few weeks when the Imposing Law security operation was launched. The remaining Sunni families in the district have accused militiamen of attacking U.S. troops over the last two days to provoke them into raiding the Sunni part of Amil. Buratha also reports that 19 Shi’ite civilians were abducted at a fake checkpoint in Hibhib, northeast of Baghdad, Sunday evening.
The Haqq Agency posts photos of the aftermath of a raid by Iraqi Army soldiers against an abandoned house in a Sunni majority district in Baghdad. The soldiers scrawled sectarian slurs and messages of support for Shi’ite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr on the walls of the house. “Longlive Muqtada Al-Sadr and down with the Sunni Nawasib and death to them,” read one message, signed by “followers of Muqtada Al-Sadr.” Another message read, “Down with Bush. Longlive Muqtada Al-Sadr. Death to Sunni dogs.”
The Iraqi Journalists Union announced that Dr. Emad Al-Din Al-Hashimi, editor in chief of the Al-Wakeel newspaper, was assassinated by unknown gunmen in the Adil district west of Baghdad.
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq issued a press release in which it accused “sectarian militias of a well-known political movement” of burning the Rahman Mosque and four commercial stores at Jibala in the Babel governorate, south of Baghdad. According to the statement, militiamen attacked the mosque with small arms after noon prayers and killed one guard before setting it on fire. The association also issued statement No. 391 condemning the release of policemen who were accused of killing dozens of Sunni civilians in reprisals following a deadly truck bombing in the Shi’ite part of Tal Afar. The association said that hundreds of Sunni families have started leaving the mixed Turkmen city after 17 corpses of Sunnis who were abducted earlier were discovered with signs of torture yesterday. About 20 others remain missing, residents said. The Voice of Iraq Radio website ran a scathing editorial attacking the Sharqiya satellite channel without naming it for its repeated ads for Shada Hassoun, the Iraqi contestant on the Star Academy show. The radio station, which covers central Iraq and is owned by the clerical Shirazi family in Karbala, described the Shada frenzy as a “media attempt to misrepresent Iraq and the Iraqi identity, which is not reflected by Shada Hassoun’s behavior.” Iraqi women are not honored to be represented by an ambassador such as this woman, who lacks the most basic criteria of honorable Iraqi women, the editorial said.
Al-Najaf News reported that several citizens in the holy city of Najaf demanded that Shada Hassoun and her father be stripped of their Iraqi citizenship for taking part in a dubious program that “aims to destroy Islamic morals and spread indecency because of its segments that include mingling and touching between the sexes and semi-nudity.” Callers to Radio Najaf FM called for suing the Lebanese LBC satellite channel that runs the show and Al-Arabiya TV for airing a short video of Iraqis in Najaf celebrating Shada’s victory. A source close to the Marja’iya refused to comment, but he described the news as a “farce.”
The Iraqi Rabita website, on the other hand, featured a mock voting campaign for “the ideal Iraqi woman,” with Shada Hassoun running against Um Qasim, an Iraqi woman from Fallujah, shrouded in black, who refused to leave her house during the U.S. military campaign so that she could bake bread for the Mujahideen. Voting results on the website so far are 960 votes for Um Qasim and 199 for Shada.
