A suicide assault team likely from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, al Qaeda’s branch inside Iraq, killed at least 18 people after attempting to storm the Transportation Ministry today.
A heavily armed team of six suicide bombers “took a number of hostages .. and killed nine of them inside the building, which was used to receive visiting delegations,” Reuters reported. “It was not immediately known where the other eight victims died.”
Iraqi security forces responded and killed the suicide assault team in a firefight. At least one policeman was killed while battling the insurgents, the National Iraqi News Agency reported, and 50 people are said to have been wounded during the assault.
While no group has claimed credit for today’s attack, the ISIS is currently the only group in Iraq staging suicide assaults of this magnitude in the Iraqi capital. Ansar al Islam (or Ansar al Sunnah), another al Qaeda linked group that operates in Iraq, occasionally deploys suicide bombers against Iraqi security forces and civilian targets, but has yet to claim what the ISIS calls a “storming operation.”
The suicide assault, or coordinated attack using multiple suicide bombers and an assault team, is a tactic that is frequently used in Iraq by the ISIS. Suicide assaults are also commonly executed by al Qaeda and its branches and allied jihadist groups in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Egypt, and Nigeria.
Today’s suicide assault in Baghdad is the latest in a series of brazen attacks by the ISIS that has enabled the group to overtly seize control of areas of Anbar province in western Iraq. The situation in Anbar began to spiral out of the Iraqi government’s control after the ISIS executed a complex suicide operation that decapitated the leadership of the 7th Iraqi Army Division in the town of Rutbah in December 2013. The ISIS laid a trap that killed the commanding general and 17 members of his staff and security detail. The 7th Iraqi Army Division is primarily responsible for security in Anbar.
After the attack, the ISIS took advantage of the political dispute between Sunnis and the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. As soon as Maliki ordered the Army to withdraw from cities in Anbar, the ISIS moved forces into the cities. The ISIS remains in control of the city of Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, after storming the cities at the beginning of January. The ISIS controls Fallujah in conjunction with sympathetic Sunni tribes as well as tribes that oppose Maliki. Several towns in Anbar, including Karmah, Saqlawiyah, and Khaladiyah are also controlled by the ISIS. The Iraqi government is hesitant to launch a military operation against the ISIS and is instead encouraging the Sunni tribes to battle the al Qaeda group.
Across the border, in Syria, the ISIS controls territory along the Euphrates River Valley all the way to the provincial capital of Raqqah. Despite an ongoing dispute which has often broken out into open warfare with the Al Nusrah Front and allied Islamists groups such as the Islamic Front, the ISIS remains a formidable forces on both sides of the border.
2 Comments
Was this attack by “core” al-Qaeda, a wholly-owned subsidiary, an affiliate, a franchisee or simply a like minded group of community disorganizers? For some reason, such meaningless distinctions are important to Obama and his State Department spokespeople.
From LWJ on Wednesday: “In his State of the Union address, President Obama said that while “core al Qaeda” is “on a path to defeat,” threats are posed by al Qaeda affiliates….”
I am relatively new to this subject, so forgive me if I sound naive. A couple years ago I was always speaking about the like-minded groups using the al-Qaeda brand to appeal to recruits, etc. without much real connection to an impotent core leadership on the run struggling for relevancy. I am really rethinking that perspective. Maybe I have been slow to see it, but in my mind the open source evidence is mounting that there is more interaction between the so-called franchises and the core than I had professed two years ago. It appears there is a measure of command being exercised by the core elite, but it still seems they struggle with the control that follows the command function.
In terms of the President’s speech, I have come to learn that things publicly spoken by politicians in all countries really have only an oblique correspondence to what they speak in private. In other words, it doesn’t bother me because I have come to expect it.