Militants kill top Iraqi army officers in ‘revenge’ attack

Victims of attack in Ambar include army commander who oversaw deadly raid on Sunni protest camp in Hawija earlier this year.

RAMADI, IRAQ // Militants killed at least 18 Iraqi officers and soldiers in Sunni-dominated Anbar province on Saturday, including a commander who oversaw a crackdown on Sunni protesters earlier this year.

Islamist militants’ posts on online forums called the slain commander, Mohammed Ahmed Al Kurwi, a “criminal” and celebrated the attack, which security sources described as carefully planned and executed.

Al Qaeda-linked Sunni militants have intensified attacks on Iraq’s security forces, civilians and anyone seen as supporting the Shiite-led government in recent months in the country’s deadliest violence in five years.

The circumstances of Saturday’s attack were in dispute.

The defence ministry said Al Kurwi, commander of the army’s Seventh Division, and several other high-ranking officers were killed by a roadside bomb while pursuing militants from an Al Qaeda training camp in the desert in Anbar, which borders Syria.

But other military sources said the officers were killed by three suicide bombers in the western town of Rutba, 360 kilometres west of Baghdad.

“All that we know so far is three suicide bombers wearing explosive vests came from nowhere and detonated themselves among the officers,” said a military who was at the scene.

Some security officials suggested that informants may have lured the commanders to the area under the pretext of raiding the Al Qaeda camp.

The assistant commander of the Seventh Division, the commander of its 27th Brigade, and several other high-ranking officers were also among those killed in the attack, sources said. Another 32 soldiers were wounded.

Militant Islamists online portrayed Al Kurwi’s death as retribution for the killings of more than 40 people in a raid by security forces on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawija in April.

“The criminal who was killed today at the hands of Al Baghdadi’s men was the leader of the Hawija massacre,” said one user on Twitter, referring to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader of Al Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, which merged this year with counterparts in Syria to form the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The April raid – which Al Kurwi oversaw – came after months of protests by Sunnis against what they see as marginalisation of their sect by the Iraqi prime minister Nouri Al Maliki’s government.

Mr Al Maliki, who also heads the armed forces, issued a statement of condolences.

“Those heroes were carrying out the most noble battles against the enemies of God and humanity who have killed Iraqis,” he said. “They have been fighting day and night ... to protect Iraq and its people.”

Since the Hawija raid, Isil insurgents have since stepped up attacks on strategic targets in parts of western Iraq in a bid to establish a state ruled by strict Sunni Islamic practice.

In a separate incident, the commander-in-chief of the police force in Shirqat, 300km north of Baghdad, was killed and four of his officers were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded by his convoy, police and medical sources said.

Another two soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb went off as their military patrol was passing through Riyadh, a small town near Hawija, police said.

In Latifiya, a town 40km south of Baghdad, two Shiite pilgrims were killed by rocket fire, police said. Another two Shiites were killed when militants raided a supermarket in the capital’s south-east.

Iraqi security services are expecting more attacks ahead of the Shiite holy day of Arbaeen next week.

* Reuters with additional reporting from Agence France-Presse