Militants shoot down Iraqi helicopter, occupy northern town

BAGHDAD — Sunni Islamists shot down a helicopter on Saturday and briefly occupied a town overnight, in an escalating turf war with Iraq’s Shiite-led government that has killed at least 25 people in two days, police said.

All four crew members were killed when their helicopter was downed during a reconaissance flight over the town of Karma in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, where the army is engaged in a standoff with anti-government fighters.

Sunni Islamist insurgents have been gaining ground in Iraq over the past year and in recent weeks overran several towns, raising the stakes in a conflict that made last year the deadliest since sectarian civil strife began to abate in 2008.

Late on Friday, dozens of militants in SUVs drove into the small town of Al Sainiyah near Baiji, some 180km north of Baghdad, after bombing the local police headquarters, and fought troops for several hours overnight, witnesses said.

At least four policemen and two Sunni government-backed militia members were killed in the fighting, officials said.

The militants raised the black flag of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) over government buildings in the town, recording their victory on video, before withdrawing on Saturday morning.

“The attack started at 7:30pm [Friday] when we heard intense gunfire and successive mortar explosions near the police department. This situation lasted for around three hours,” a resident called Yasser told Reuters by telephone.

He said the militants drove round the town all night, blasting religious anthems glorifying ISIL from their cars.

‘War of attrition’

Police sources said the militants came from Anbar province, where the Iraqi army has been laying siege to the city of Fallujah since early this year, when ISIL and other militant groups took it over.

A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives blew himself up at the entrance to a military base in the east of Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, killing at least six people on Saturday, security sources said.

Security officials say ISIL, which is also active in neighbouring Syria and seeks to establish a Sunni state spanning the border into Iraq, wants to divert the security forces’ attention away from Fallujah.

“It’s a war of attrition and they are attempting to exhaust the capabilities of the army by dragging it into sporadic fighting here and there,” a senior security official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

“ISIL is still looking to find a suitable land to plant the seed of their Islamic emirate.”

By Saturday, troops had regained control over most of Sulaiman Pek, another town in northern Iraq overrun last week by militants who also raised ISIL’s banner, senior security officials said.

Three villages in the area surrounding Sulaiman Pek, 60km north of Baghdad, remain under the control of militants, they said.

Separately, five policemen were killed when gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint in a village east of Baqouba, 65km northeast of Baghdad, police said.

A further three policemen were killed in three car bomb explosions on Saturday near the homes of police commanders in Tikrit, 150km north of Baghdad, said police.

Police declared a curfew in the city and its suburbs in response, anticipating more attacks.

Last year was Iraq’s bloodiest since sectarian violence began to abate in 2008.

Deteriorating security in northern and western Iraq has raised doubts that parliamentary elections can be held nationwide in April as scheduled.