Kin of missing soldiers storm Parliament
Iraqi soldiers capture key highway Amnesty accuses ISIS of ethnic cleansing
Amerli ( Iraq), Sept. 2: Iraqi forces made more progress on Tuesday in their fightback against jihadists, but in Baghdad anger boiled over as hundreds stormed Parliament over the fate of missing soldiers who surrendered in June.
After breaking a monthslong jihadist siege of the Shia Turkmen town of Amerli by ISIS fighters, troops on Tuesday regained control of part of a key highway linking Baghdad to the north.
Two towns north of Amerli were also taken from the jihadists on Monday as Iraqi forces — backed by US airstrikes — score their first major victories since the Army’s collapse across much of the north in June. That collapse left some 1,700 soldiers in jihadist hands, with many believed to have been executed.
Demanding to know their fates, angry relatives stormed Parliament in Baghdad, attacked MPs and began a sit- in in its main chamber, an official said.
Anti- riot police was trying to evict the hundreds of protesters, who were also calling for some officers to be held accountable, said the official, who was present at Parliament.
Concern over those in jihadist hands has been fuelled by reports of widespread atrocities, including accusations from Amnesty International of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.
The Sunni extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIS), now known as the Islamic State, declared an Islamic “caliphate” in regions under its control in Iraq and Syria after it swept through much of the Sunni Arab heartland north of Baghdad in June and then stormed minority Christian and Yazidi Kurdish areas.
The ISIS has carried out beheadings, crucifixions and public stonings, and the Amnesty International on Tuesday accused it of “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions” in areas it controls. “The massacres and abductions being carried out by the ISIS provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” said its senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera. The UN Human Rights Council unanimously agreed to send an emergency mission to Iraq to investigate ISIS atrocities, after a senior UN official said the jihadist group had carried out “acts of inhumanity on an unimaginable scale”.
Concern over the scale of the humanitarian crisis helped prompt limited US airstrikes in support of Iraqi forces, Shia militia and Kurdish troops battling the jihadists.
Such strikes were used in the area during the Amerli operation — the first time Washington has expanded its more than three- week air campaign against ISIS outside the north.
Desperate residents rushed to receive aid deliveries after Iraqi forces moved in to the town, scrambling to grab food and bottles of water from flatbed trucks. A day after seizing Amerli, troops and Shia militiamen on Monday retook Sulaiman Bek and Yankaja, two towns to its north that had been important militant strongholds.
Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir al-Zaidi said they had continued the advance on Tuesday, regaining control of a stretch of the main highway to the north which had been closed by the militants for almost three months.
A senior militia commander said it would be several days before the road reopened as sappers needed to clear it of mines and booby- traps planted by the retreating militants.
The United States said it launched four airstrikes in the Amerli area, meaning that it effectively supported operations involving militia forces that previously fought against US troops in Iraq.
The government’s reliance on Shia militiamen in this and other operations risks entrenching groups which themselves have a history of brutal sectarian killings.
David Petraeus, a former commander- in- chief of US- led forces in Iraq, has warned against America becoming an “air force for Shia militias”.
But worries over the rise of ISIS seem to be outweighing other concerns.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Tuesday said that “extreme force” was justified against ISIS militants, describing them as worse than Nazis or Communists.