| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
Tikrit city center shelled by Badr.. full frontal assault would come at a heavy cost
Tikrit city center shelled by Badr – YouTube
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/03/20/260513/operation-to-retake-tikrit-from.html
….Even during the pause, pro-government casualties remain high. A
witness in the main government hospital at the nearby city of Samarra
said that at least 100 dead or wounded fighters had been brought in over
the last four days and that “bodies are everywhere” at the facility.
The witness asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.
Difficulties
with the Tikrit operation underscore how unlikely it is that the Iraqi
military will be in any position soon to launch an assault to recapture
Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, which fell to the Islamic State last
June. A U.S. military officer in February created a stir when he told
reporters at the Pentagon that such an assault might come as soon as
April. Pentagon officials later acknowledged that Iraqi troops might not
be in such a position before the fall.
How to proceed in Tikrit
has left the government and the militias split. Iraqi officials say a
full frontal assault against the Islamic State forces might succeed but
would come at a heavy cost. Commanders of Iraq’s special operation
forces, which would lead such a charge, are opposed to it.
The
Shiite militias come to the battle with a sectarian zeal and are said to
be untroubled by the prospect of casualties. Tikrit is the hometown of
the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, whom most Shiites detest for his
repression of their sect. It is also the scene last summer of a
notorious massacre of 1,000 Shiite air force recruits, whose
video-recorded deaths at the hands of the Islamic State were widely
distributed on the Internet. Hadi al Ameri, the leader of one of the
militias, the Badr Organization, openly referred to the retaking of
Tikrit as “revenge for Speicher,” the military camp where the recruits
were murdered.
The militias’ Iranian advisers, against whom
Saddam fought an eight-year war and who have also battled the Islamic
State in Syria, also are said to favor an advance, whatever the cost.
Iraqi
Prime Minister Haider al Abadi, however, has asked for a better plan,
apparently hesitant to unleash the militias for fear of an American
backlash after reports that Shiite militias have terrorized the local
Sunni population, pillaging houses and raping women. The United States,
whose commanders apparently opposed the Tikrit operation, so far has
declined to commit American air power to it.
An Iraqi military
commander on the scene who asked not be identified discussing sensitive
national security matters described a difficult task ahead for any
troops sent in to dislodge the Islamic State forces, whose numbers have
been described as a few hundred. The Islamic State portions of the town
are heavily fortified with booby-traps and defended by snipers and
suicide bombers scattered among civilians unable to leave, he said.
The
presence of massive fortifications, hundreds of roadside bombs and the
effective use of suicide bombers, a tactic the Islamic State – also
known as ISIL or ISIS – has employed in both Iraq and Syria, would lead
to enormous destruction and the likely loss of hundreds of civilian
lives, the officer said.
That has led the military command of
Salahuddin province, of which Tikrit is the capital, the Iraqi army’s
so-called Golden Brigade of special operators, and the Iraqi Interior
Ministry to clash with the militias, the officer said.
“The
militia leadership insists on completing the attack with massive air
cover, artillery and the heavy bombing on Daash elements,” the officer
said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.
The officer’s
comments were later endorsed by an Iraqi political leader, who also
asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Such
seemingly indiscriminate bombardment of a populated area would kill
many civilians and likely would inflame both the international community
and U.S. officials, who’ve openly warned that they are watching the operation for such problems.
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2015/03/tikrit-city-center-shelled-by-badr-full.html
