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Mosul (Iraq) (AFP) - A pre-dawn attack on an army encampment guarding an oil pipeline in northern Iraq left 15 soldiers dead on Tuesday, as authorities grapple with near-daily attacks and running battles with militants.The latest bloodshed comes with unrest at its worst in Iraq in nearly six years, and has fuelled fears that, with elections due in April, the country is on the brink of slipping back into the sectarian violence that plagued it in the years following the 2003 US-led invasion.Foreign leaders have urged the Shiite-led government to do more to reach out to the disaffected Sunni Arab minority but Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has taken a hard line and trumpeted wide-ranging operations against militants.Insurgents regularly mount deadly attacks, with gunmen early Tuesday morning entering the army encampment in Nineveh province and killing all 15 soldiers at the site before fleeing the scene, according to a police officer and a morgue official.The encampment was set up to guard an oil pipeline near Hamam al-Alil, a town that like the rest of the surrounding province is regularly hit by militant attacks.The style of the attack, targeting a station housing security forces guarding an important piece of infrastructure, mirrored that of a similar shooting in the northern town of Tuz Khurmatu on Sunday in which six policemen were killed.In that instance, the policemen were forced to pray in front of their attackers, who wanted to establish that the police were Shiite Muslims before killing them.
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Topic: 15 Iraqi soldiers killed in pre-dawn attack (Read 505 times)
