Baghdad: The recent wave of attacks by Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), an off-shot of global terror organisation, has created a fear in the minds of Iraqi officials. Fifteen neighborhood officials in the Iraqi city of Baquba have resigned to protest what they said was the government’s inability to protect them from Qaeda infiltrators, Iraqi officials said Friday.
It is to be mentioned that more than 100 people were killed this week soon after a message of ISI head, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, stated that the network would launch deadly attacks to regain its positions in the Sunni strongholds and asked the Sunni clerics and officials to assist the cause.
The resignations of the officials, known as “mukhtars,” were confirmed on Friday by Abdullah al-Hiali, the head of the City Council in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province.
He said that the officials resigned in recent days “to save their family members’ lives because of living under threats from Al Qaeda and militants.”
Mukhtars are representatives elected in each neighborhood in Iraqi communities, and they act as liaisons between residents and the government. There are about 100 of them in Baquba, a city north of Baghdad with a population of about half a million. A total of 50 have resigned since January, Mr. Hiali said.
Another City Council official said that eight mukhtars had been assassinated in Baquba this year in Al Qaeda’s effort to gain control of neighborhoods, particularly in the west of the city. In addition, seven family members were killed in those attacks, he said. Most were carried out by so-called “sticky bombs,” explosives attached to the underside of victims’ cars, he said.
Baquba was a Qaeda stronghold during the Iraq war, and the former Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed just outside the city in an American airstrike in 2006.
The group also announced its support for Syrian opposition groups battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Iraqi officials have expressed concern about Qaeda activities on both sides of the Iraq’s long border with Syria.
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