The contagion in Anbar
seems to have spread to Salahuddin governorate, and the only crossing that was
available for Anbaris on their way to Baghdad
has been closed in Samarra , one of
biggest districts in Salahuddin, with a population of more than 500,000
inhabitants.
Since 04:00 a.m.
today, more than 150 ISIL gunmen have been able to seize control of the eastern
parts of Samarra
- about 40% of the province. Army and police forces withdrew suddenly from the
checkpoints in those areas. Some police and army vehicles were burned and an
initial count shows that 55 people - mostly police and army personnel - have
been killed or wounded in Samarra . A very large re-enforcement operation is underway to Samarra , and air raids have been launched
against some of the groups of gunmen within the city. The security situation is
in a state of confusion, while security forces have imposed a curfew on Samarra , as well as on several other districts in the
governorate as a precautionary measure to prevent a security collapse such as
that which took place in Samarra .
Security forces are also stating that they will re-establish control within the
next few hours.
In Fallujah, the
civilian exodus is still underway and the city will soon be emptied of its
civilian inhabitants. Dr. Ahmed Al-Shami, the senior resident at the Fallujah General Hospital , announced today that the
shelling of Fallujah has since last night killed 8 residents and wounded 10
others, among them 4 women and 2 children.
An important
development has been the shooting down of an aircraft ; it crashed in the
Al-Sichir, northeast of Fallujah, according to eyewitness reports.
Some Ramadi areas are relatively calm and other areas are tense, with occasional
widely-dispersed gunfire. We have observed the return of more than 6,000
residents to their homes in some of the districts of central and west-central
Ramadi.
The conference called
by Nouri Al-Maliki aimed at getting the displaced families home for the month of
Ramadan is still being supported by some and rejected by others. Both the
residents and the local government have rejected plans to build new residential
districts to replace those that have been severely damaged; the districts are
being described as historically important. They are also concerned that they
will lose money by giving up their centrally located homes by being moved out
into the city's outlying areas.
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