Suicide Attack Kills 7, Wounds 17 North of Baghdad
Published Thursday, January 22, 2015
A suicide attack in the Taji area, north of the Iraqi capital, killed at least seven people and wounded 17 on Thursday, security and medical officials said.
It was not immediately clear if the target was the area's sprawling military base or an entrance to Taji itself, and the number of suicide bombers was unknown.
US military trainers are based at Taji, helping to instruct some 1,600 Iraqi soldiers in a six-week program aimed at readying them to face Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) jihadist group, which declared a “caliphate” in swathes of land it captured in Syria and Iraq.
A US-led coalition is carrying out airstrikes against ISIS as well as advising and training both Iraqi federal and Kurdish forces to fight SIS.
Critics doubt the tactics and effectiveness of the US-led anti-ISIS air campaign, which Washington says aims to degrade ISIS' military capability, pointing to ISIS’ advances and battlefield successes despite the raids.
The increasing number displaced Iraqis is a factor that revealed ISIS has achieved hegemony in broad parts of Iraq and Syria.
On January 17, an Iraqi governmental official announced that the number of internally displaced Iraqi families fleeing to capital has increased to 40,000.
“Recently, 6,000 families have moved to Baghdad as last statistics of December 2014 showed the number of 34,000 displaced families existed in Baghdad,” Riyad al-Addad the president of the Baghdad governorate council, said.
According to Addad, the internally displaced families moved from Diyala, Anbar, Saladin and Nineveh provinces to Baghdad due to lack of security.
Addad called on national and international authorities to provide shelter and aid for the families
http://worldaffairsjournal.org/content/syrias-air-force-carries-out-more-5000-air-strikes-three-months
