In early morning, more than dozens of Al-Qaida fighters has launched an assault on checkpoints and officers’ homes across Haditha in west Iraq on Monday, killing 26 policemen, as per official report.
The fighters who were wearing military uniforms along with deploying in stolen army vehicles, being attacked two checkpoints of Haditha at one time before storming other security posts and raiding the homes of two officers.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Owaid Khalaf, who was involved in some of Monday’s firefights, said, “More than 50 gunmen altogether started attacking checkpoints all over the town.”
During a huge gunfight only one attacker was killed, but three bodyguards at each of two targeted senior officers’ house– Colonel Mohammed Shauffeur and Captain Khaled Mohammed Sayil- were killed and kidnapped both.
After passing few hours, Police found the Shauffeur’s body in a Haditha marketplace and Sayil was discovered in an alleyway, blindfolded with fatal gunshots to the head.
The outcome of that overall Haditha town covered with amid tight security, Khalaf informed, “Right now, police, army and forces from the rest of Anbar are searching the entire town, and a curfew has been imposed.”
“Al-Qaida is responsible for this,” Haditha police spokesman Major Tareq Sayeh Hardan declared after finding Al-Qaida literature in a vehicle that the attackers left behind.
As per official record, a total of 150 Iraqis were killed in February. Such assault in northeast of Baghdad, in Haditha one of the town that be Al-Qaida strongholds, is the first but a massive factor of violence in the town that is down across the country from its peaks in 2006 and 2007, but attacks remain common.
