hembo
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Guys, this one is the most saddenning news I have read this year. I din't have the heart to post the grusome photo the Iraqi police had released. I wept when I read and saw the photo. May the almighty put sense to us humankind and peace to those we have killed.
Policeman's family killed as they slept in Iraq
Associated Press Writer David Rising, Associated Press Writer Sun Sep 13, 2:03 pm ET
BAGHDAD Gunmen killed a Kurdish policeman's wife and three young children with execution-style shots to the head Sunday as they slept in their home in the northern city of Kirkuk, where tension is building between Arabs and Kurds over land and oil.
Police Sgt. Omed Abdul-Hamid had already left for work when the gunmen burst into the house and shot the woman and children as they lay sleeping together on a mattress on the floor, police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir said.
In vivid crime scene photos released by police, a 2-year-old boy could be seen lying on his back to the right of his mother with his head on a pillow, his face caked with blood where he had been shot. The boy's two sisters, ages 6 and 9, lay to the left of their mother; all three were face down and shot in the back of the head.
At the house later in the day, Abdul-Hamid sat by his doorway weeping, unable to talk.
U.S. commanders have warned that insurgents are trying to exploit tension in Kirkuk and elsewhere in Iraq's north between Arabs and Kurds. The potential for conflict between them over land and oil poses a greater long-term threat to Iraq's stability than the Sunni-Shiite conflict that nearly plunged the country into civil war in 2006 and 2007, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
Though nobody claimed responsibility for the killing of Abdul-Hamid's family, the police sergeant had recently been involved in raids on suspected insurgents' homes, according to Qadir. Nothing had been stolen in the home, he said, also suggesting insurgents were behind the killings. Three gunmen are believed to have been involved, he added.
The oil-rich city of Kirkuk has been at the heart of the dispute between Arabs and Kurds.
Kurds want to incorporate the city, along with villages in the next-door province of Ninevah, into their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, despite opposition from Arabs and the minority Turkomen ethnic group.
Abdul-Hamid is one of the tens of thousands of Kurds who were forced out of the area under Saddam Hussein's massive resettlement effort to Arabize the region, Qadir said.
He, like thousands of others, returned after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam's regime, and there is now an uneasy coexistence of about 850,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen an ethnic Turkish minority in Kirkuk.
Arif Taifoor, the Kurdish deputy speaker of Iraq's parliament, issued a statement unrelated to Sunday's attack in which he called for all Arabs who had been resettled in the region to be returned to their original homes. He blamed them for being the cause of recent violence and instability in the region.
"The evidence for this is the increase of terrorist operations aimed against citizens of the province," he said in a statement. "We demand the authorities ... hasten the return of all Arab families who immigrated to the province to where they originally lived."
After a series of horrific bombings in August that targeted non-Arab minorities in the north of the country, the top U.S. commander in Iraq proposed the idea of deploying U.S. troops alongside Iraqi and Kurdish forces to help increase security in the region.
Gen. Ray Odierno suggested the deployment of the U.S.-Iraqi-Kurdish forces could start in Ninevah province, which includes the restive city of Mosul, and then extend to Kirkuk and to Diyala province north of Baghdad.
The move to deploy U.S. troops there, which has not been implemented, would represent a step back from a security pact that saw Americans pull out from populated areas including cities, villages and localities by June 30.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Sunday, a civilian contractor was shot and killed on an American military base in Tikrit and a U.S. soldier was detained in the incident, said Maj. Derrick Cheng, a public affairs officer.
Houston-based KBR confirmed in a short statement that the person killed at Camp Speicher was one of its employees. The investigation into the incident is ongoing, and no further details were immediately available.
___
Associated Press Writer Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report from Kirkuk.
Policeman's family killed as they slept in Iraq
Associated Press Writer David Rising, Associated Press Writer Sun Sep 13, 2:03 pm ET
BAGHDAD Gunmen killed a Kurdish policeman's wife and three young children with execution-style shots to the head Sunday as they slept in their home in the northern city of Kirkuk, where tension is building between Arabs and Kurds over land and oil.
Police Sgt. Omed Abdul-Hamid had already left for work when the gunmen burst into the house and shot the woman and children as they lay sleeping together on a mattress on the floor, police Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir said.
In vivid crime scene photos released by police, a 2-year-old boy could be seen lying on his back to the right of his mother with his head on a pillow, his face caked with blood where he had been shot. The boy's two sisters, ages 6 and 9, lay to the left of their mother; all three were face down and shot in the back of the head.
At the house later in the day, Abdul-Hamid sat by his doorway weeping, unable to talk.
U.S. commanders have warned that insurgents are trying to exploit tension in Kirkuk and elsewhere in Iraq's north between Arabs and Kurds. The potential for conflict between them over land and oil poses a greater long-term threat to Iraq's stability than the Sunni-Shiite conflict that nearly plunged the country into civil war in 2006 and 2007, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
Though nobody claimed responsibility for the killing of Abdul-Hamid's family, the police sergeant had recently been involved in raids on suspected insurgents' homes, according to Qadir. Nothing had been stolen in the home, he said, also suggesting insurgents were behind the killings. Three gunmen are believed to have been involved, he added.
The oil-rich city of Kirkuk has been at the heart of the dispute between Arabs and Kurds.
Kurds want to incorporate the city, along with villages in the next-door province of Ninevah, into their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, despite opposition from Arabs and the minority Turkomen ethnic group.
Abdul-Hamid is one of the tens of thousands of Kurds who were forced out of the area under Saddam Hussein's massive resettlement effort to Arabize the region, Qadir said.
He, like thousands of others, returned after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam's regime, and there is now an uneasy coexistence of about 850,000 Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen an ethnic Turkish minority in Kirkuk.
Arif Taifoor, the Kurdish deputy speaker of Iraq's parliament, issued a statement unrelated to Sunday's attack in which he called for all Arabs who had been resettled in the region to be returned to their original homes. He blamed them for being the cause of recent violence and instability in the region.
"The evidence for this is the increase of terrorist operations aimed against citizens of the province," he said in a statement. "We demand the authorities ... hasten the return of all Arab families who immigrated to the province to where they originally lived."
After a series of horrific bombings in August that targeted non-Arab minorities in the north of the country, the top U.S. commander in Iraq proposed the idea of deploying U.S. troops alongside Iraqi and Kurdish forces to help increase security in the region.
Gen. Ray Odierno suggested the deployment of the U.S.-Iraqi-Kurdish forces could start in Ninevah province, which includes the restive city of Mosul, and then extend to Kirkuk and to Diyala province north of Baghdad.
The move to deploy U.S. troops there, which has not been implemented, would represent a step back from a security pact that saw Americans pull out from populated areas including cities, villages and localities by June 30.
Elsewhere in Iraq on Sunday, a civilian contractor was shot and killed on an American military base in Tikrit and a U.S. soldier was detained in the incident, said Maj. Derrick Cheng, a public affairs officer.
Houston-based KBR confirmed in a short statement that the person killed at Camp Speicher was one of its employees. The investigation into the incident is ongoing, and no further details were immediately available.
___
Associated Press Writer Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report from Kirkuk.
