Screw Harry Reid!
God bless America again!
Qaeda chased from last Baghdad bastion
An armed Sunni group has ended Al-Qaeda’s tight two-year grip on north Baghdad’s volatile Adhamiyah neighbourhood and is now in control, an AFP correspondent witnessed on Friday.
A local militia calling itself the “revolutionaries of Adhamiyah” took over the Sunni district on the east bank of the Tigris on November 10 in a swift and audacious raid that sent Al-Qaeda fleeing from its last stronghold in Baghdad.
On Friday, members of the “revolutionaries of Adhamiyah” controlled main roads into the neighbourhood as well the square housing the famous Abu Hanifa mosque where Saddam Hussein made his last public appearance before fleeing Baghdad in 2003 as US-led forces invaded the country.
A Sunni bastion encircled by Shiite districts, Adhamiyah had been one of the most dangerous areas of Baghdad, under the tight control of Al Qaeda “emirs”.
The AFP correspondent said the neighbourhood was calm with the streets taken over by men wearing dark grey shirts and toting light weapons, Kalashnikovs and machine guns.
There was no sign of any Iraqi police or soldiers as militiamen, most of them in their early twenties, manned makeshift checkpoints, demanding at gunpoint identification from all motorists and passersby.
They were operating without hindrance by the US military, who were patrolling the streets in armoured vehicles.
Occasional sporadic shots could be heard but despite the volatile atmosphere many traders opened their doors and the faithful went quietly to the Abu Hanifa mosque for Friday prayers, lending a semblance of normality to the district.
“We got rid of the groups of murderers who assassinated people in the streets with impunity”, the leader of the group, Abu Abed, told AFP at his headquarters in Adhamiya — a disused library near the mosque.
“We, the sons of Adhamiyah, decided to fight the terrorists and to chase them out of our district,” said 35-year-old Abu Abed, a baby-faced man whose eyes were hidden by dark glasses.
Abu Abed said his group had seized control of Adhamiyah “in less than two hours” with only around 50 men in a “surprise attack” very early on November 10.
“The Al Qaeda fighters fled when they saw us and took refuge in the bazaar, and then in Kam (in the northern part of Adhamiyah). Thank God we overcame them and we now control the entire zone.”
Three Al Qaeda combatants were killed while 15 were taken prisoner and handed over to the Iraqi security forces, according to Abu Abed, who said only one of his group had died “as a martyr.”
“Our men seized 11 car bombs and discovered several clandestine bomb-making workshops,” said the chief of the “revolutionaries of Adhamiyah”, surrounded by armed bodyguards.
“We fought alone,” he stressed. “Nobody helped us — neither government forces nor the American army.
“Our only support, material and moral, come from our brothers in the Sunni Endowment who provided us with money, weapons and ammunition,” added Abu Abed, referring to the body which manages Sunni religious sites across Iraq.
He said that the US military had offered to aid the group should there be a massive counter-attack by Al Qaeda, which so far had not occurred.
“We were 50 at the start, we now number more than 1,000. If God wants it, we will soon be 1,500.”
