Al Qaeda fighters kill 5 police, plant flag in Baghdad
Al Qaeda fighters killed five policemen at a Baghdad checkpoint on Tuesday and planted the black flag of the terror network’s front group in Iraq, an interior ministry official said.
The flag-planting was the second such move in less than a week and comes as concerns mount that Iraq’s security may be deteriorating after the government said more people died in violence in July than in any month since May 2008.
“Around 5.30 am, men with silencer pistols shot dead five policemen at a checkpoint in Mansur neighbourhood before planting the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI),” the ministry official said.
The shootings followed a brazen series of attacks in the Iraqi capital on Thursday that killed 16 people, after which insurgents also planted the Al Qaeda front group’s black flag.
Those attacks, which occurred in the north Baghdad neighbourhood of Adhamiyah within 15 minutes of each other, began with the killing of three soldiers. The fighters then burned their bodies and planted the flag.
Three homemade bomb attacks on different routes to the scene of Thursday’s shooting killed 13 more people, including three soldiers and three policemen, and wounded 14.
In a statement on the Honein jihadi website on Tuesday, ISI claimed last week’s attacks which it said “targeted the heart of the failed security plan of the Green Zone government,” using its standard term for the Iraqi government to allege that it only controls the heavily-fortified centre of Baghdad.
Tuesday’s violence comes after Iraqi figures compiled by the ministries of health, interior and defence showed 535 people were killed by violence in July, the highest monthly figure in more than two years.
The US military, however, has disputed those figures, saying they were “grossly overstated”.
US and Iraqi officials have warned of the dangers of an upsurge in violence if negotiations on forming a new government drag on, giving insurgent groups an opportunity to further destabilise the country.
Nearly five months since the March 7 general election, which gave no single bloc an overall parliamentary majority, the two lists which won the most seats are still bickering over who should be the next Prime Minister.
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