Homes burned, looted during ISIS defeat
Conflicting reports from Fallujah hint at sectarian violence
FALLUJAH, Iraq — Dozens of homes were looted and burned as Fallujah was liberated from the Islamic State group, and Iraqi government forces Monday accused the retreating militants.
But some provincial police blamed the fires on Shiite militias operating with the federal police.
The allegations of sectarian incidents in Fallujah are on a much smaller scale than those that unfolded in another Sunni-majority city, Tikrit, after governmentsanctioned Shiite militias helped retake it from the ISIS group. The Iraqi government had sought to try to prevent similar abuses in the Fallujah campaign.
U.S.-led coalition
Iraqi forces declared Sunday they had “fully liberated” Fallujah from the Sunni-led extremist group that took over the city 40 miles west of Baghdad more than two years ago. The operation, backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, began May 22, and involved a number of Iraqi security forces: elite special operations troops, federal police, Anbar provincial police, and an umbrella group of governmentapproved mostly Shiite militias.
Clouds of black smoke billowed over the Julan neighborhood in northwestern Fallujah, one of the last strongholds of the militants, from burning homes.
Special forces Lt. Gen. Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, who led the operation, said ISIS militants had torched hundreds of houses in Fallujah’s north and west as they fled Sunday, just as the fighters did in many other neighborhoods in the last five weeks.
But some commanders said many of the fires burning Monday were lit by Shiite militiamen operating with the federal police.
Cpl. Arsan Majid, an Anbar provincial policeman, said he saw men in federal police uniforms looting and burning dozens of homes. An Iraqi special forces soldier, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, confirmed Majid’s account.
The Shiite militias largely had remained on Fallujah’s outskirts during the operation while the special forces and federal police took the lead in clearing the center of the city. Fearing sectarian conflict, authorities did not want the militias inside the city that has long been a stronghold of Sunni opposition to the Shiiteled government in Baghdad.
But small numbers of militia fighters entered the center of the city with Iraq’s federal police forces, according to Iraqi commanders and Associated Press reporters at the scene.
Majid, of the Anbar police, told a reporter that Shiite militias operating with the federal police were to blame.
“They destroyed 50 homes in a single day,” he said out of earshot of the group of Iraqi army officers.
Arrests for looting
Special forces Cpl. Mohammad Hussein, stationed at a makeshift base in the city center, said his men arrested a halfdozen people who were caught looting.
“They were just taking whatever they could find,” he said.
The overall damage to Fallujah appears to be much lower than in Ramadi and Sinjar. In those areas, entire blocks were left largely uninhabitable by intense Iraqi and coalition airstrikes to clear territory and hundreds of planted bombs.
The U.N. estimates 85,000 people have fled Fallujah in the past month, and many are sheltering in hot, overcrowded camps in the middle of the desert as the Iraqi government is ill-prepared to deal with the humanitarian crisis.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said Washington “remained concerned about the humanitarian situation for Iraqis fleeing the fighting.”