News & Politics - Fighting breaks out after Iraq hijacking

Lexis · 11-17-2006, 09:28 AM

Quote:

British ground forces and U.S. military helicopters fought with gunmen Friday in southern
Iraq where four American security contractors and their Austrian co-worker were abducted in a convoy hijacking.
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The Austrian was found dead and one of the Americans was found gravely wounded, an Iraqi police officer said. The three Americans who were among the five Crescent Security Group employees taken hostage remained missing in the largely Sunni area.

Nine employees from Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and the Philippines were released by the captors, the company said.

Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces who were fighting gunmen in the area where the kidnapping took place, said in a telephone interview from Basra that the hijacking occurred at 1 p.m. Thursday in Safwan, an Iraqi city near the Kuwait border. He said the convoy was coming from Kuwait.

At dawn Friday, British ground forces and helicopters searched an area of Safwan for gunmen who had attacked coalition forces in the past few days when about 10 of them opened fire from farm buildings, Dunlop said. The British and U.S. forces returned fire, Dunlop said.

As violence in Iraq continued to spiral out of control, a crisis was brewing for Iraq's Shiite-led government.

The influential Association of Muslim Scholars called on Sunni politicians to quit Iraq's government and parliament, angered by the government's decision to issue an arrest warrant for the association's leader, Harith al-Dhari.

Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, a spokesman for the association, said the arrest warrant was political cover for "the acts of the government's security agencies that kill dozens of Iraqis every day."

Al-Kubaisi called for "political groups to withdraw from parliament and the government, which has proven that it is not a national government."

Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi also condemned the arrest warrant saying "it is destructive to the national reconciliation plan." In a statement, al-Hashimi urged the government to cancel the warrant immediately.

Fighting breaks out after Iraq hijacking - Yahoo! News

Poor guys. I hope they find them soon.

dayne · 11-17-2006, 08:17 PM

Well, this stuff is pretty much standard. It's a sad and disturbing reality, but that place is pure chaos and mayhem. It's a disaster zone. And it's probably not going to get better for another 10-15 years. There's practically a brutal civil war war going on there.

Everyday, more than a 100 bodies are found with their heads, limbs, genitals choppped off or with the standard drill-to-the head.

While, another 100 or so one-hundred people are killed by gunmen or suicide bombers. In the process, it is inevitable that other foreign bystanders are going to get caught in the middle.

Terrorists, militias, death squads, and criminal gangs are rampant in Iraq. Which begs some question - was it all worth it ? And did it not exasperate the situation?

IMO, it wasn't worth it at all. At the risk of being frayed on this board, I will say this. For all his brutality, Sadaam did know to an extent what he was doing. He could at least keep some order and civility in his country. That's one the US will probably not ever be able to do.

I don't want to trivialize the despair and misery felt by those living under his regime, but from a safety standpoint, Iraq just seems ten-times worse. Worse for the US, Iraq is now filled with terrorism. And there might be more freedom in the country, but what good is that if you have live in the constant fear of being murdered?


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