Police Chief of Embattled Province Is Killed in Iraq

Sunday, October 12, 2014

5:47 AM

By Unknown

In: 2014, News, Top story, Update

Police Chief of Embattled Province Is Killed in Iraq - New York Times

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Middle East |Police Chief of Embattled Province Is Killed in Iraq

http://nyti.ms/1tlQl8u

BAGHDAD â€” The police chief of the embattled province of Anbar in western Iraq was killed Sunday morning in the explosion of two roadside bombs, officials said, in a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi security forces to wrest full control of the province back from the jihadist insurgency called the Islamic State.

The police chief, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Saddag, was traveling in a convoy that included his personal security detail when the bombs were detonated, said a staff member for a senior Anbar provincial council member.

Three of General Saddagâ€™s bodyguards were also killed in the attack, said the staff member, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

The Iraqi authorities have been battling the Islamic State in Anbar since the insurgency swept from Syria into the province at the beginning of the year and quickly seized control of cities and territory throughout the Euphrates River Valley, from the Syrian border to the rural western suburbs of the Baghdad metropolitan area.

The attack came a day after a rash of bombings in several districts around greater Baghdad killed more than 50 people and wounded nearly 100, unnerving the capital on what, for many, was the final day of a weeklong holiday.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a crowded market on Saturday in Mishahda, in the rural northern outskirts of the capital, killing 14 people and wounding 27, said police officials and an employee at a hospital, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Three more bombings occurred in quick succession around nightfall. A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives detonated his payload at a police checkpoint in Khadamiya, a predominantly Shiite middle-class neighborhood in northern Baghdad, killing 12 people, including four police officers, and wounding 20, officials said.

Around the same time, a car packed with explosives blew up next to a marketplace in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northwestern Baghdad, killing eight and wounding 24, officials said.

After the Shula bombing, the authorities blocked off the road leading to the scene, causing traffic to back up, and cars were rerouted. The final attack occurred when a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into the traffic congestion and set off his explosives, killing 17 people and wounding 28, officials said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Islamic State, which has taken control of vast regions of the country, often uses suicide bombers and car bombs, usually targeting majority-Shiite neighborhoods. Saturday was the end of a holiday week that began with the celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice.

Elsewhere in Iraq, fighters for the Islamic State killed four brothers, including an Iraqi cameraman for a local television station in Salahuddin Province, which is predominantly Sunni, officials and local tribal leaders said Saturday. The journalist, Raad al-Azzawi, and his brothers were shot in the head on Friday in a village near Tikrit while their mother was forced to watch, the officials said.

Mr. Azzawi was kidnapped on Sept. 7 by the insurgents, who said they planned to decapitate him because he refused to work for them, according to Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog group based in Paris.

Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting from Baghdad, and employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Tikrit, Iraq.