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Iraq army prepares to storm militant-held Falluja

Iraq army prepares to storm militant-held Falluja thumbnail

Iraqi security forces are preparing to storm Falluja and break a month-long standoff with militants who are in control of the city, senior security officials and troops told Reuters on Saturday.

Anti-government fighters, among them insurgents linked with al Qaeda, overran two cities in the Sunni-dominated western province of Anbar on January 1. against a backdrop of deteriorating security across the country.

At least 12 people were killed in bombings across Iraq on Saturday, mostly in the capital Baghdad, just 70 km (40 miles) away from Falluja, a city currently surrounded by the army.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had held off an all out assault on the city to give local tribesmen a chance to expel the militants themselves, but security officials told Reuters a decision had been made to enter Falluja by 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) on Sunday.

“That’s it: they were given enough time to make their choice, but they failed,” a top security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said of the tribesmen and militants.

Some of the militants have raised the black banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is seeking to establish a Sunni state straddling the border between Anbar and Syria, where the group is also active.

The official said the governor of Anbar had sent a “final warning” to militants and tribal fighters in Falluja. Whoever wanted to leave the city would be given safe passage and those who lay down their arms will be offered amnesty, he added.

“The message was clear, we offered them to leave the city and be a part of the national reconciliation project,” the security official said. “But, if anyone insists on fighting our forces, he will be considered an ISIL militant whether he is or not.”

Maliki has appealed for international support and weapons to fight al Qaeda, although critics say his own policies towards Iraq’s Sunni minority are at least partly to blame for reigniting an insurgency.

Once-dominant in Iraq, many Sunnis resent the Shi’ite-led government that came to power after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

“Security operations need to go hand-in-hand with inclusive policies, based on the respect for human rights, the rule of law, social development,” U.N. envoy to Iraq Nikolay Mladenov said in a statement on Saturday.

COMMUNICATIONS CUT

Falluja residents and local officials said communications had been cut in the city and its outskirts. Troops stationed in the surrounding area said they had received orders to be ready to raid the city.

“We are prepared to enter any minute. Some of our troops in southern and southeastern Falluja have already moved in closer to the city,” said a commando whose unit was deployed on the highway just outside.

More than 140,000 people have fled their homes in Anbar in recent weeks in what the United Nations described as the largest displacement in Iraq since the sectarian slaughter that climaxed in 2006-07.

Officials said airstrikes and shelling on the city would intensify before a ground assault by special operations SWAT teams to clear remaining pockets of resistance.

“We expect to engage in a fierce battle in the southern areas of the city where militants are holed up,” said a SWAT officer deployed in Falluja, who also declined to be named.

A total of 733 civilians were killed in acts of violence across Iraq January excluding Anbar, owing to the difficulty of verifying figures amid the conflict, the United Nations said on Saturday. A further 115 members of the security forces died.

reuters



11 Comments on "Iraq army prepares to storm militant-held Falluja"

  1. DC on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 3:16 am 

    Very good article Keith, thank you. The best wishes to all ‘militants’ and ‘insurgents’ wherever they are, that are resisting US corporate murderers and their proxies.

  2. Arthur on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 8:34 am 

    That al-Qaida story is largely bogus and used as a terrorism meme to justify any action in the Middle-East by the US-lead West. Al-Qaida was very real as a group of US-funded Jihadists in Afghanistan, fighting Soviet occupation. That was it. After the Soviets left Afghanistan al-Qaida blamed for the terrorists attacks of 9/11, where in reality a certain Silverstein, a personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu (connected to the Mossad), had bought the worthless WTC complex (worthless because of all the material used in these buildings from a Québécois town called Asbestos) for pennies on the dollar from ethnopall Lewis Eisenberg of the New York Port Authority. Shortly after the purchase, vans from a ‘moving company’ directed by a certain Dominique Sutter drove into the parking garage of the WTC during a weekend shortly before 9/11, so workers could mount radiographic controlled packages, stuffed with nano-thermite to the carying columns of the building, while standing on top of the elevator, one floor at a time, that went off after planes had telecrashed into WTC1&2 on the morning of 9/11. The plane (F93) intended for WTC7 never showed up as it was shut down by a local commander, causing some embarrassment for Silverstein.

    The blame was put on ‘al-Qaida’, although the persons associated with that shady organizations always denied having anything to do with 9/11.

    Now ‘al-Qaida terrorists’ are at it again, masking the real events. There is no denying that there are indeed ‘militants’ in Fallujah, but the US elite does not want to face the fact that by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, they destroyed secular communist (Afghanistan) and secular national-socialist (Iraq) ideologies, and thereby paved the way for Islamic revolutionaries to fill the power vacuum. Although it is true that the majority of the population is not interested in becoming embroiled in this fight, it happens regardless, as history is made by small determined elites, not ‘majorities’. Sunni insurgents in Falluja today are not fighting ‘US corporate murderers’, these were send packing earlier, but today it is a fight between Tehran backed Shi’ites in Bagdad and Sunni Jihadists, fighting for the Caliphate. In the end Iraq will be split between them.

  3. paulo1 on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 1:54 pm 

    Arthur:

    Your reality is a little off as far as credible explanations for 911 go. This is sarcasm, right?

    Paulo

  4. Arthur on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 2:17 pm 

    No, dead serious.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58_rHPis0Ag

  5. DC on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 7:12 pm 

    Here is one for you Art;

    http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/31/folk-tales-and-foreign-policy/

    Now I dont entirely agree with everything the fellow says, but its essentially correct. Islamic fundamentalists actually dont really ‘hate’ the US empire at all. Arab fundamentalists rather admire the Xtian fundamentalists that pay their wages. Well, sure, they have minor doctrinal differences, but as far as the ‘average’ Islamic fundy is concerned, the amerikan fundies are fundies they can do business with, and they do.

    The formal US presence in that unfortunate city may be not what it was Arthur, but the ‘militants’ are fighting the US just the same.

  6. Northwest Resident on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 8:06 pm 

    Arthur and DC — I rarely get an opportunity to agree with you guys, so I’m going to jump at this opportunity.

    I’ve delved deeply into the 911 “conspiracy theory” and from my point of view, it is about 99.9% probable that the 911 was a planned event. I don’t know about all the details that you’re quoting, but in the videos I’ve watched and in the articles that I have read, very strong circumstantial evidence has been presented by highly authoritative and well-placed individuals.

    Especially given what we do know — that “TPTB” essentially lied us into the Iraq war — taken together with the global “war on terror” which can easily be reinterpreted as a master plan to move troops and equipment to strategic locations around the world all of which center around oil-producing areas.

    At the time of the Iraq invasion, public opinion was critical to the success of that operation, and equally critical to the success of the “global war on terror.” To get the public behind the invasion of Iraq, public opinion was manipulated with lies and false facts (“yellowcake”, WMD, etc…). People who stood up publicly to those lies were belittled, discredited and otherwise dealt with.

    And ask yourself, what really got the ball moving on all this: Answer — 911. Public opinion was galvanized, the same as occurred after Pearl Harbor. That galvanized public opinion was further solidified and manipulated to support the “war on terror” and the Iraq invasion.

    The end result is exactly what we see today. Masses of American and NATO troops in position to quickly defend and secure vital oil supplies. The untapped and vast Iraqi oilfields have been secured, and the chaos that continues in Iraq only assists in keeping those Iraqi oil reserves “in reserve”, as in, to be accessed at some future point in time.

    911 — the war on terror — Iraqi invasion. It was a brutal and masterful plan to secure the world’s major oil sources. Surely, everybody can see that.

  7. Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 8:31 pm 

    Arthur on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 8:34 am
    That al-Qaida story is largely bogus

    You and DC are out there with the Middle east history???

    I will say al Qaeda succeeded in draining wealth from the west by initiating a never ending low level war. They succeeded in creating an excuse for the West to stamp on civil liberties. Al Qaeda succeeded in making life for Muslims in the west miserable. The Al Qaeda threat allowed the creation of the huge NSA buildup. All the camera’s watching us from all the traffic light poles thank Al Qaeda. So in a sense Al Qaeda was a perfect tool of the security establishment to expand their influence. Another scary thing is the fact that my including Al Qaeda in this blog response means I am now on some shmucks list at some NSA contract workers terminal. That is the worst thing for me.

  8. DC on Sun, 2nd Feb 2014 8:57 pm 

    Davy, I know this late-breaking news for you, but there is no, Al-qaeda’ ok? They did not initiate squat. Well, the media creation called ‘Al-Qaeda’ does not exist at any rate-the media fiction, is ‘real’ in the sense that they are constantly being promoted as such.

    Consider a few things. When was the last time ‘Al-Qaeda’ ever made any kind of announcement that could unambiguously attributed to them? Well, you cant and you wont-because every single time Al-Queda’ is the ‘new’s, its OUR western press that does the speaking for them. They NEVER speak for themselves or on their own behalf. And also take note of the proliferation of weasel words that crept into the news lately

    -Al-qaeda ‘affiliates’.
    -‘Linked to’
    -‘Associated with’.
    -‘Franchises’ even , LoL.

    No, try hard as you might, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone anywhere that says, Yea, Im Al-qaeda. You wont find AL-Q no matter how hard you look anymore than Winston Smith could find Goldstein and sit down for shots of some Victory Gin and plot the otherthrow of Big Brother.

  9. Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 3rd Feb 2014 1:14 am 

    Ok, agreed, but in a macro sense the Muslim fudamentalist hit the west where it hurt the most….the pocket book!

  10. Arthur on Tue, 4th Feb 2014 8:10 am 

    I’ve delved deeply into the 911 “conspiracy theory” and from my point of view, it is about 99.9% probable that the 911 was a planned event. I don’t know about all the details that you’re quoting, but in the videos I’ve watched and in the articles that I have read, very strong circumstantial evidence has been presented by highly authoritative and well-placed individuals.

    The 9/11-truthers are getting better all the time. The best and very recent video (2014) outlining Israeli involvement is in this video concerning the big picture:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPiMzSQCtG8

    Here an excellent detailed video exposing the fraud that the ‘Pentagon-attack’ was (Seattle 2013, Barbara Honeger):

    youtube 4fvJ8nFa5Qk

    (there was no jetliner crashing into the Pentagon, just bombs went off from the inside)

    Here is another professional general expose about the the fraud that was WTC1/2/7 by Richard Gage:

    youtube Ucoo7NxOCPg
    (Toronto 2012)

    (all buildings were blown up)

    Look this picture, crash site Shanksville:

    tinyurl . com/22yo8p

    People who think that a jetliner crashed here should have their heads checked. No major debris, bodies, luggage, chairs, no nothing. What happened was that F93 was shot down up in the air by a [ilot called Eric Gibney from a squadron called the ‘Happy Hooligans’, after he had observed that all people on board of the plane, including crew were either unconscious or dead. Here are the details in an interview the American Lech Walesa (Alex Jones) had with a retired colonel about the incident:

    www . prisonplanet . com/290204degrand.mp3

    BBC interview with Danish professor Niels Harrit about nano-thermite being used to blow up WTC:

    youtube XF334x-xWz8

    The irritating Jewish BBC interviewer, who tries to fry Harrit, is no match for this formidable Dane.

    I will say al Qaeda succeeded in draining wealth from the west by initiating a never ending low level war. They succeeded in creating an excuse for the West to stamp on civil liberties

    The only thing incompetent Muslims can blow up is themselves. The only party eager to stamp out civil liberties and the Constitution are your own rulers, not a bunch of goat herders.

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