• Iraq chases Baghdad sleeper cells as 'Zero Hour' looms over capital
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[IMG]http://www.noisyroom.net/blog/jihadsyria.jpg[/IMG] [QUOTE]BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi insurgents are preparing for an assault on Baghdad, with sleeper cells planted inside the capital to rise up at "Zero Hour" and aid fighters pushing in from the outskirts, according to senior Iraqi and U.S. security officials. Sunni fighters have seized wide swathes of the north and west of the country in a three week lightning advance and say they are bearing down on the capital, a city of 7 million people still scarred by the intense street fighting between its Sunni and Shi'ite neighborhoods during U.S. occupation. The government says it is rounding up members of sleeper cells to help safeguard the capital, and Shi'ite paramilitary groups say they are helping the authorities. Some Sunni residents say the crackdown is being used to intimidate them. Iraqis speak of a "Zero Hour" as the moment a previously-prepared attack plan would start to unfold. A high-level Iraqi security official estimated there were 1,500 sleeper cell members hibernating in western Baghdad and a further 1,000 in areas on the outskirts of the capital. He said their goal was to penetrate the U.S.-made "Green Zone" - a fortified enclave of government buildings on the west bank of the Tigris - as a propaganda victory and then carve out enclaves in west Baghdad and in outlying areas. “There are so many sleeper cells in Baghdad,” the official said. “They will seize an area and won’t let anyone take it back... In western Baghdad, they are ready and prepared.” A man who describes himself as a member of one such cell, originally from Anbar province, the mainly Sunni Western area that has been a heartland of the insurgency, said he has been working in Baghdad as a laborer while secretly coordinating intelligence for his group of Sunni fighters. The attack on the capital will come soon, said the man, who asked to be called Abu Ahmed. “We are ready. It can come any minute,” he told Reuters during a meeting in a public place, glancing nervously around to see if anyone was watching. “We will have some surprises,” he said. He pulled his baseball cap down tight on his face and stopped speaking anytime a stranger approached. A portly man in his mid-30s wearing a striped sports shirt, the man said he fought as part of an insurgent group called the 1920 Revolution Brigades during the U.S. occupation and was jailed by the Iraqi government from 2007-2009. He gave up fighting in 2010, tired from war and relatively optimistic about the future. But last year, he took up arms again out of anger at a crackdown against Sunni protesters by the Shi'ite-led government, joining the Military Council, a loose federation of Sunni armed groups and tribal fighters that has since emerged as a full-fledged insurgent umbrella group. While it was not possible to verify all details of his story, Reuters reporters are confident of his identity. Like many Sunni fighters, Abu Ahmed is not a member of the al Qaeda offshoot once known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and is ambivalent about the group which launched the latest uprising by seizing the main northern city Mosul on June 10 and shortened its name this week to the Islamic State. Many Sunni armed groups turned against al Qaeda during the U.S. occupation but are now rallying to ISIL's rebellion against the Shi'ite led government, though some say they deplore ISIL's tactics of killing civilians and branding Shi'ites heretics. Abu Ahmed said his own group, which includes former officers in Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein's disbanded army, supports some aims of ISIL. "There are some good members of ISIL and some bad," he said. Of the good ones: "We have the same cause."[/QUOTE] [url]http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-chases-baghdad-sleeper-cells-zero-hour-looms-133259139.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory[/url]
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