Plan to attack shrines foiled
BAGHDAD, July 30, (AP): Iraqi intelligence officials said Sunday they foiled an attempt by the Islamic State group to attack revered Shiite shrines and the sect’s spiritual leader.
The IS plan was to launch a series of suicide attacks in Karbala and Najaf that house the shrines as well as the home of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, two officers told The Associated Press.
The simultaneous airstrikes by Iraqi and Russian air forces two weeks ago hit gatherings of suicide bombers in the Iraqi town of Qaim and in Syria’s Mayadeen area, both under IS control. They gave no details on casualties.
Recent meetings with the Russians yielded increased intelligence sharing between the two nations, they said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Early this month, IS suffered a major blow as US-backed Iraqi troops captured the northern city of Mosul after nine months of highly destructive warfare. The militants now control small towns mainly near the border with Syria.
IS took over Iraq’s secondlargest city in summer 2014 when it conquered much of northern and western Iraq. Along with territories in Syria, they declared a caliphate and governed according to a harsh and violent interpretation of Islamic law.
In other news, Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr is on a rare visit to Saudi Arabia.
Al-Sadr’s office released a statement Sunday saying he’d been invited to the Sunni kingdom.
Saudi Arabia is concerned about the influence of its rival Iran in Iraq, which backs Shiite militias fighting against the Islamic State group there. Al-Sadr is among those who’ve called for the militias to disband.
Pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat posted a photo on its Twitter account of al-Sadr arriving in Saudi Arabia and being greeted by Thamer Al-Sabhan, the kingdom’s former ambassador to Iraq and its first to be assigned to Baghdad after a 25-year break.
Al-Sabhan was renamed minister of state for the Gulf region after tensions with the Iraqi government. He’d claimed that Iranian-backed militias were plotting to assassinate him.