With fight for Mosul in final stage, militants strike back
MOSUL, Iraq — With the fight for Mosul in its final stage Monday, Islamic State militants sent female suicide bombers hidden among fleeing civilians, while Iraqi forces and the U.S.led coalition unleashed punishing airstrikes and artillery fire that set dozens of buildings ablaze.
At least one
Iraqi soldier was killed and five were wounded in the two separate suicide attacks, the military said. On Sunday, a bomber in women’s clothing killed 14 people at a camp for displaced residents in Anbar province, a provincial official said. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
“These tactics don’t surprise me,” said Sgt. Ahmed Fadil, who patrolled Mosul’s Old City just 50 yards from the front.
The militants “have nowhere to go. They’re trapped,” he said.
Monday’s two suicide bombings against Iraqi soldiers followed three other such attacks by women — some of them teenagers — in the previous two days, said Sgt. Ali Abdullah Hussein.
A soldier displayed the school ID card retrieved from the body of one of the bombers, showing her to be only 15.
Dunn, whose jurisdiction includes Sevier and Cocke counties, isn’t talking. He issued a statement on the dismissal of charges against the boys Friday but did not mention his lack of jurisdiction. Instead, he said he couldn’t prove the the boys’ horseplay with matches on the Chimney Tops Trail on Nov. 23 led to the fatal fires in Gatlinburg and the surrounding region five days later.
Blount County District Attorney General Mike Flynn said Friday his office has never prosecuted crimes committed solely within the park’s borders, leaving that to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Knoxville.
“That’s the way we have always handled it,” Flynn said.
He was unaware of the 1997 agreement and its omission of the park until alerted by the USA Today Network-Tennessee.
An investigation by the newspaper revealed that someone added the park to the document — without new written authority or new signatures — and filed it with the office of the Tennessee secretary of state in 2002.
The original agreement was signed in April 1997 by then-Gov. Don Sundquist and a copy filed with the Register of Deeds office in Sevier County.
It listed 10 federal properties in which the two governments — federal and state — were agreeing to share jurisdiction. The park is not included in the list.
In February 2002, the exact same document was filed with the secretary of state — with one exception. Someone added the park, tucking it in the middle of the list of 10 properties cited in the 1997 agreement. There was no new signature from Sundquist, whose term ended later that year, or the director of the National Park Service. Instead, the signature page from the original 1997 agreement was attached.
The 1997 agreement required written approval from both governments before any changes could be made and new signatures attesting to that approval. Without that approval, the park could not be added, and state prosecutors remained without jurisdiction over crimes committed in the park.
The state Attorney General’s Office would not say Friday if Dunn sought advice on the validity of that 2002 filing or whether Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III gave an opinion. But USA Today Network-Tennessee confirmed Dunn concluded his office was bound by the 1997 original agreement and, therefore, could not prosecute the Anderson County teenagers for the Chimney Tops fire.
Harlow B. Sumerford said Friday he could neither confirm nor deny “advice [or] discussions with our clients.” Slatery’s office does not prosecute criminal cases. Instead, it handles appeals, defends the constitutionality of state laws and issues legal opinions about the law when asked to do so.
It’s not yet known if Gov. Bill Haslam will seek a new agreement from the National Park Service allowing prosecution by state authorities of crimes committed in the park or whether an investigation will be ordered into who doctored the agreement.
A review of court cases showed this wasn’t the only foul-up involving that 1997 agreement. Seven motorists who had been stopped by National Park Service rangers on county and state roads running through the Natchez Trace Parkway and charged with various driving offenses in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Tennessee challenged the ranger’s authority in a 2003 case.
According to the opinion filed in that case, the 1997 agreement that gave the ranger authority to stop motorists on county and state roads running through the Natchez Trace was not filed with the Register of Deeds office in the counties at issue. A ranger only identified by last name “testified that he personally went with another ranger to file the document with the Tennessee Secretary of State on Feb. 7, 2000,” the opinion stated.
There was no such filing with the Secretary of State’s office in 2000. But the 2002 document — in which the park had been added — is dated as having been received by the Secretary of State on Feb. 7, 2002.
The Anderson County teenagers whose case brought to light the mystery surrounding the 1997 agreement and its unauthorized revision were hiking on the Chimney Tops trail in the park on Nov. 23 and tossing lit matches onto the ground around the trail. Brush caught fire. The boys continued hiking down the trail.
Park officials decided to let the fire burn. Five days later, winds of nearly 90 mph inexplicably whipped up, spreading deadly flames into Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. The emergency response was fretted with flaws, including the failure to warn residents and delayed evacuations. The fire eventually would encompass more than 17,000 acres, kill 14 people, hurt nearly 200 more and burn more than 2,400 buildings — at the height of Sevier County’s winter tourism season.