Iraqi soldiers defeated a complex and coordinated suicide assault today on an Army base in central Baghdad.
The daylight attack was carried out by a five-man team of armed al Qaeda in Iraq fighters wearing suicide vests, and included a minibus packed with explosives.
The assault began when the al Qaeda team arrived at the back gate of the Rusafa Military Command headquarters in central Baghdad, Major General Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command, told Reuters.
Two of the suicide bombers, armed with assault rifles, dismounted from the bus and attempted to storm the back gate and clear a path for the minivan. The two fighters were shot by Iraqi guards and then detonated their vests.
Two other fighters dismounted from the van, again to open up a lane for the van to hit the back gate. Iraqi soldiers shot the driver before he could reach the gate. The driver then detonated the car bomb. The two remaining al Qaeda fighters fled to a nearby building and were killed after an hour-long standoff.
In addition to the five al Qaeda fighters killed, four Iraqi soldiers and three civilians were reported killed while defending the base.
Background on recent al Qaeda attacks against Iraqi security forces
In recent months, al Qaeda in Iraq has stepped up attacks against the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, and the pro-government Awakening auxiliaries, in an effort to destabilize the country and force it to slip into a civil war. Iraqi soldiers, policemen, and Awakening fighters are killed on a daily basis. The police have been hit especially hard in Baghdad and in the northern city of Mosul.
The most recent major attack took place on Aug. 25, when al Qaeda in Iraq launched coordinated suicide attacks on Iraqi police stations in Baghdad and Al Kut, and also targeted police in bombings in Karbala, Basrah, and Buhriz. More than 60 people were reported killed and over 250 were wounded in the attacks.
On Aug, 20, an al Qaeda suicide bomber killed 57 Army recruits and soldiers at a recruiting station in Baghdad. Days later, the Islamic State of Iraq, al Qaeda’s front group, claimed responsibility for the suicide attack. “Our brother triggered and exploded his vest after plunging himself into the crowd,” the terror group said in a statement released on the Internet.
On July 18, al Qaeda suicide bombers killed 46 Awakening fighters in attacks in Baghdad and Al Qaim.
The attacks on Iraqi security forces are occurring as the US has drawn down its forces from a peak of 170,000 troops in 2008 to below 50,000 currently. The US has withdrawn its combat brigades from Iraq and reconfigured its remaining forces to conduct an “advise and assist” mission. More than 4,500 US special operations forces with their Iraqi counterparts are actively hunting members of al Qaeda in Iraq as well as Iranian-sponsored Shia terrorists.
In early June, the US military claimed that al Qaeda in Iraq’s leadership had been dealt a near-fatal blow during a series of raids.
“Over the last 90 days or so, we’ve either picked up or killed 34 out of the top 42 al Qaeda in Iraq leaders,” General Ray Odierno, the commander of US Forces – Iraq, told reporters during a Pentagon press briefing in early June. “They’re clearly now attempting to reorganize themselves … They’re struggling a little bit. They’ve broken — they’ve lost connection with AQSL [al Qaeda Senior Leadership] in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
But al Qaeda in Iraq, while unable to hold territory and directly threaten the Iraqi state, has been able to reorganize and launch high-profile terror attacks against the Iraqi security forces and government institutions.
The recent attacks are being directed by Nasser al Din Allah Abu Suleiman, al Qaeda’s new ‘war minister’ for Iraq. Suleiman was appointed in May after his predecessor, Abu Ayyub al Masri, was killed in a US raid along with Abu Omar al Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq. Also in May, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi al Hussieni al Qurshi was named the new emir of the Islamic State of Iraq, and Abu Abdullah al Hussieni al Qurshi, was named the deputy emir.
Al Qaeda in Iraq is supported primarily through its networks in eastern Syria. Last year, al Qaeda’s central leadership based in Pakistan reportedly sent a senior ideologue to Syria to partner with a dangerous operative who ran the network that funnels foreign fighters, cash, and weapons into western Iraq. Sheikh Issa al Masri is thought to have left Pakistan’s tribal agency of North Waziristan and entered Syria in June 2009, where he paired up with Abu Khalaf, a senior al Qaeda operative who had been instrumental in reviving al Qaeda in Iraq’s network in eastern Syria and directing terror operations in Iraq, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.
Sheikh Issa is believed to be based in Damascus and is protected by the Mukhabarat, Syria’s secret intelligence service. The US killed Abu Khalaf during a Jan. 22 raid in the northern city of Mosul.
5 Comments
It’s a good thing that they repelled the attack, but I’m wondering how the cars got through so many checkpoints to get that close. Someone needs to figure out the route these guys took and subject the people who passed them through to some serious discipline.
When General Odierno gave the green light to the massive 9/1 drawdown in July, he knew the ISF was more than competent to handle its domestic criminals.
We’ll help them with enabling services while we support/teach them about ISR, airlift etc.
I’m not worried about the murderous punks still in Iraq even though they can inflict a lot of pain on the innocents. And, I think we have enough American muscle still there to forestall Iranian/Syrian troublemaking on anything but a covert level.
Eventually the Iraqis will build to be a strong partner capable of not only defeating their domestic criminals but also as a sovereign power capable of protecting themselves from the less enlightened thugs in their region. That’s going to take a little longer than the end of 2011 and I support deploying (i.e. paying for) our SuperHornets, missile cruisers and other assets to help them accomplish that.
Iran is our first and foremost geopolitical problem and our strong foothold in the incipient stable democracies of Iraq and Afghanistan are worth the ongoing effort in my opinion.
“four Iraqi soldiers and three civilians were reported killed while defending the base.”
Well done by the Iraqi soldiers & guards – doing their job defending the base, at cost of their lives; saving many lives inside the base.
This seems like good news to me, these guys are fanatics who obviously went on this operation knowing they would die, and although the article doesn’t state how the Iraqi Soldiers or the civilians died it would seem they detonated their vests and managed only to kill themselves in the process. Now they knew they were on a suicide mission you think they would have tried a little harder? Like the last two guys running away? Allah will not be happy.
In seriousness do we think this demostrates the Iraqi armies increased capabilities or is it AQs perhaps increased desperation as they try anything to get at least a propaganda victory out of anything? thankfully they don’t seem to be having much success with these combat operations and it is only their cowardly suicide bombings of civilians and use of IEDs (which I assume most of the Iraqi populus despise them for) that are effective.
good job to repeal them / for the Iraqi troops anyway.
but they need sound weapons and heat weapons at them places. that would repeal them instantly.
In Afghanistan they need sound and heat weapons on them bases that could be over run. it would repeal a attack instantly.
they should have them on all sides of the bases, always turned on as well.
the bases out there need solar panels as well. it cost $400 a gallon of fuel to get to them troops out in bases in Afghanistan.
in a day they use mass amounts of fuel. It works out that they could buy solar panels and have payee them off after 4 weeks tops.
if they just spend $50,000 on solar panels, the bases would be free power for life.
i worked it out months ago. it cost them like 15,000 a week to supply fuel to 1 base with like 10 / 20 men.
if they did all bases, they would save billions of $ a year on fuel.