Antichrist’s Men Taking Tikrit (Rev 13)

Iraqi militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric al-Sadr joins fight for Islamic State-held Tikrit

Published March 15, 2015
Associated Press

BAGHDAD – A spokesman for the Iraqi Peace Brigades, the fighting force loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, says dozens of its fighters are traveling to help an offensive to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State group.

Ali al-Mosawi told The Associated Press on Sunday that the men will travel to the Shiite holy city of Samarra, the launching point for operations to recapture Saddam Hussein’s hometown. About a dozen heavily armed trucks packed with fighters left Baghdad for Samarra earlier Sunday.

An offensive to liberate Tikrit including the Iraqi military, Shiite militias, police officers and Sunni tribes has been underway since March 2.

Al-Sadr announced last month that he would withdraw the Peace Brigades from fighting following accusations that the militias were responsible for battlefield atrocities.

Antichrist’s Men Take Tikrit (Revelation 13:18)

UPDATE: Iraq Claims Gains In Tikrit Offensive Against Islamic State

March 6, 2015

Baghdad (Alliance News) – Iraqi government forces Tuesday said they had gained ground in a major offensive aimed at recapturing the city of Tikrit and other areas along the Tigris river north of Baghdad that have been held for months by the Islamic State militant group.

Military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they had taken the Hamrin district east of Tikrit and two villages east of Dur from the jihadists.

The reported gains suggest that government forces are advancing westwards through mainly desert areas towards the Tigris.

Iraqi state television said that the army had also surrounded the Qadisiyyeh district on the northern outskirts of Tikrit, the hometown of former ruler Saddam Hussein.

Local news site Alsumaria quoted the commander of a mainly Shiite volunteer force, the Popular Mobilization, as saying that troops were also surrounding Islamic State forces in the city centre from the north, south and west.

In a sign of the challenge facing government forces, local news service Alsumaria News reported that they had dismantled 57 bombs and booby traps in just one district south-east of the city.

Security forces fear that Islamic State fighters have rigged explosives throughout the city centre to impede their advance. The extremist group has previously used that tactic before retreating from other areas.

Officials have said some 30,000 members of the security forces and mainly Shiite volunteers are taking part in the operation, which was launched at dawn on Monday.

Large numbers of Shiite militias are also thought to be involved in the operation, despite repeated allegations that they been responsible for abuses against civilians in other Sunni areas.
Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr warned against the involvement of what he called “brazen militias.”

Al-Sadr, who recently suspended the activities of his own paramilitaries, said in comments reported by Alsumaria that they risked becoming “a black mark on the forehead of the jihad.”

The offensive is the largest to be undertaken by the Iraqi government since Islamic State overran large areas of Sunni Arab northern and western Iraq.

Unlike previous offensives, the Iraqi forces have not been supported with airstrikes by the US-led alliance against the Islamic State.

The Washington Post Monday quoted US officials as saying that Iraq had not informed them of the operation or requested support.

Iran, a key backer of the Shiite militias, has been more forthcoming.

Its semi-official Fars News Agency on Monday published what it said were photographs of Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Suleimani who had “offered advice” to Iraqi commanders ahead of the Tikrit offensive.

Iran Would Prefer To Take Iraq For Itself

Khamenei says Iraq can beat IS without foreigners

Iranian Hegemony

AFP By Arthur MacMillan

Tehran (AFP) – Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday told Iraq’s visiting premier that the Baghdad government is capable of defeating Islamic State jihadists without foreign troops being deployed.

The military campaign against IS now encompasses US and other foreign air strikes in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, but more than four months after breaking into the country IS retains strongholds in the north and west while trying to seize other territory.

Having threatened to reach Baghdad’s outskirts, some Iraqi officials and Sunni tribal leaders in areas most affected by the unrest have argued that the world should step up its military involvement to a ground intervention against IS.

But Khamenei, whose authority surpasses Iran’s politicians on all matters, knocked down the idea, saying he believed Iraqis had “the capacity to overcome the terrorists and establish security” alone without the “need for foreign presence”.

“We stand beside you and will seriously defend your government like the previous government,” Khamenei, quoted by state television, said in a meeting in Tehran with Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.

“Iran recognises the security of Iraq, (our) neighbour and brother country, as its own security.”

To counter an offensive launched by the Islamic State group (IS) on June 9, Iran has supplied Iraqi Kurds with weapons and sent military advisers to Baghdad, while denying it has deployed ground troops.

In early October, Iranian television published a rare picture of its elite Quds Force chief, Major General Qassem Suleimani, on an Iraqi battlefield alongside Kurdish peshmerga forces. A series of photos published on social media in recent weeks have appeared to corroborate his presence.

And in September, a senior Iranian military official threatened to attack deep inside Iraq if the IS jihadists approached his country’s border.

Tehran, which has refused to join the international coalition against IS, advocates regional support for the Iraqi and Syrian governments, and says that air strikes are insufficient.

Before flying to Iran, Abadi ruled out any foreign ground intervention to assist government forces in retaking territory lost to the jihadists.

But at the same time the Iraqi premier appeared to set restrictions on Iran, saying no “regional power will fight here”.

‘Extremists threaten region’

On Tuesday during his first official visit to Iran since his appointment last month – he took over after Nuri al-Maliki’s failed bid to win a new term after the IS offensive brought Iraq close to collapse – Abadi said Iraq was at war with “terrorists” who threaten the whole region.

“Iraq is not fighting terrorism only. It is an extensive war with all these groups,” he said, alluding to IS and other extremist fighters such as Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

“It’s a threat to the region and these terrorist groups are trying to create a division between Shiites and Sunnis,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Abadi, from Iraq’s Shiite majority, also met with President Hassan Rouhani and Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri.

The visit was originally scheduled to last one day but will continue on Wednesday with Abadi set to meet influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and parliament speaker Ali Larijani.

As mainly Shiite neighbours, Iran and Iraq have been close since the ouster of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, with Tehran’s role becoming increasingly open in recent years.

Iran had resolutely backed Maliki since he took office in Baghdad in 2006, but lost faith in him after the capitulation of the Iraqi military in the face of only a few thousand IS jihadists.

– See more at: http://news.asiaone.com/news/world/khamenei-says-iraq-can-beat-without-foreigners#sthash.J8NtivZw.dpuf