IRAQ: Heavily armed and masked, elite anti-terror forces carry out searches in Baghdad

Record ID: 352025

  • Title: IRAQ: Heavily armed and masked, elite anti-terror forces carry out searches in Baghdad
  • Date: 18th June 2014
  • Summary: BAGHDAD, IRAQ (JUNE 18, 2014) (REUTERS) VEHICLE OF COUNTER-TERRORISM FORCE DRIVING IN BAGHDAD STREET CARS DRIVING THROUGH CHECKPOINT MANNED BY MEMBERS OF COUNTER-TERRORISM FORCE ARMED AND MASKED MEMBER OF FORCE MANNING CHECKPOINT/ MILITARY VEHICLE/ CIVILIAN CARS DRIVING THROUGH HEAVILY-ARMED MEMBER OF COUNTER-TERRORISM FORCE IN STREET TWO MEMBERS OF COUNTER-TERRORISM TR
  • Embargoed: 3rd July 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAE7DSIH6ZQHBS7GTS866KMZCGD
  • Story Text: Iraq's counter-terrorism troops fanned out across the capital city of Baghdad on Tuesday (June 18), carrying out a security operations, searching vehicles and manning checkpoints.
    The heavily-armed and masked fighters manned checkpoints in Baghdad's western mainly Sunni district of Amiriya, bearing U.S.-made weapons as cars rushed past them.

    "Counter-terrorism operations are currently under way in Samarra as well as in Anbar and also we have troops participating in operations in Tal Afar in addition to forces deployed to various parts of the city of Baghdad," said one counter-insurgency operative at a bustling checkpoint. He declined to give his name.
    U.S. special operations forces began a month of counter-terrorism training for a group of Iraqi military troops on Monday (June 16) in Jordan. It is the second group of Iraqi soldiers to go through the U.S. counter-terrorism training.

    "These forces are highly and well-trained. They have recently returned after completing their training outside Iraq," said spokesman Samir Shaweeli.
    The Iraqi military collapsed in the face of an onslaught by fighters of the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in recent weeks, despite military equipment and training from the United States.
    The collapse this week started at the top with the senior-most commanders abandoning their positions early on Tuesday morning as black-clad fighters of the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) swept into the country's second city of Mosul.
    Mosul's defenders held up well for three days until late Monday evening, but over the next few hours the force imploded, with the senior commander for all of Nineveh province, Mahdi Garawi, fleeing.
    The commander of Iraq's ground forces, General Ali Ghaidan, and the vice chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar, also abandoned their posts, according to an Iraqi official and a Western security expert.
    The entire military structure deployed by the Shi'ite government in Baghdad to protect the north and west melted away before the well-armed Sunni rebels, who had been advancing for weeks across the rocky, dusty flatlands of western Iraq.
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