Group's militants kill 40 Iraq troops

Fighters in army uniforms capture 68

Australia's Defense Minister David Johnston speaks to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Sept 22, 2014. Johnston arrived in Baghdad on Monday to show solidarity with the Iraqi authorities and discuss Australia's participation in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Australia's Defense Minister David Johnston speaks to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Sept 22, 2014. Johnston arrived in Baghdad on Monday to show solidarity with the Iraqi authorities and discuss Australia's participation in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

BAGHDAD -- Islamic State militants disguised in Iraqi army uniforms and driving stolen Humvees killed at least 40 Iraqi soldiers and captured 68 others in western Anbar province, breaking through a deteriorating Iraqi military offensive in an area where the United States recently broadened its airstrike campaign.

The wave of suicide bombings dealt a heavy blow to government efforts to rein in the militants, whose rampage has seized much of the country's north and west -- even as the U.S. and its allies began training Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga fighters to bolster their ability to battle the Sunni extremists.

The attacks Sunday targeted troops stationed at Camp Saqlawiyah near the town of Sijir, 45 miles west of Baghdad. There has been no contact with the 68 captured Iraqi soldiers, who were believed to have been taken to the nearby city of Fallujah, an Islamic State stronghold, said Gen. Rasheed Fleih.

By midday, there were reports that hundreds of soldiers had been killed in battle or mass executions. A lawmaker from the governing alliance, Ali Bedairi, said more than 300 soldiers had died after the loss of Camp Saqlawiyah, although his count could not be confirmed.

"They did not have any food, and they were starving for four days," a soldier who said he was one of 200 who managed to escape said in a videotaped statement that he circulated online. "We drank salty water. We could not even run."

After the attacks, the Iraqi military withdrew 700 more troops stationed in the area, he said.

After battlefield successes in both Iraq and neighboring Syria, Islamic State fighters, among them many Iraqis, have re-entered Iraq through Anbar province, engaging in fierce battles with the Iraqi military. In this Sunni-majority territory, the group has quickly capitalized on long-standing grievances against the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, earning support from local populations.

Iraq's new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement Monday that his government is committed to reinforcing military and police forces in Anbar and will increase airstrikes to target the pockets of militant fighters across the province. Last week, he declared an end to the shelling of towns where militants are suspected of hiding, so as not to rile the local populations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Monday that airstrikes on Islamic State targets southwest of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk destroyed two military vehicles and a tank and damaged a Humvee, bringing the total U.S. strikes on the militants to 190 since the aerial campaign began Aug. 8.

In northern Iraq, meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies began training Kurdish peshmerga forces to enhance their ability to fight the Sunni extremists.

Helgurd Hikmet, general director of the ministry overseeing the Kurdish forces, said France, Italy and Germany were among countries providing training in the use of the new machine guns, mortars, rockets and de-mining robots the Kurdish fighters have received.

The U.S. forces are part of the advise-and-assist teams that have been in Irbil, the provincial capital of the semiautonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, for several weeks. The U.S. has also provided equipment against roadside bombs and other sophisticated artillery to the Kurdish fighters.

Last week, the French joined in the aerial campaign, and a number of European countries have committed to arming the Kurds and providing humanitarian support for the more than 1 million people displaced by the onslaught of the Islamic State group.

Extremists urge unity

The Islamic State, for its part, has kept up a public attitude of extreme confidence. Photographs and videos emerging from the cities it controls, including Fallujah and Mosul, show its officials opening the school year with a puritanical Islamic curriculum, establishing Sharia courts or even patrolling the streets in newly painted police cars labeled "the Islamic Police of the Islamic State of Iraq."

Positioning itself as the leadership of the jihadi world, the Islamic State's spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, issued a statement Monday dispensing advice across the region. It urged unity among the mujahedeen of Libya. It asked the Tunisians to step up their attacks. And it encouraged Yemenis to take revenge against the country's Shiite factions.

The group also issued a pep talk for Egyptian militants waging guerrilla attacks against the soldiers and police of military-backed government in Cairo, urging them to keep up the good work: "Rig the roads with explosives for them. Attack their bases. Raid their homes. Cut off their heads. Do not let them feel secure. Hunt them wherever they may be. Turn their worldly life into fear and fire."

Responding to the military campaign against it, the Islamic State's new statement called for swift execution of any nonbelieving citizen of any country taking part in the military intervention in Iraq.

"If you can, kill a disbelieving American or European -- especially the spiteful and filthy French -- or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that joined a coalition against the Islamic State," al-Adnani said in an audio statement released Sunday.

Late Monday, meanwhile, a car bomb exploded in a commercial district of eastern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding at least 28 others, police and hospital officials said.

The attack brought the day's death toll in and around Baghdad to 26. A bombing and a shooting earlier in the day killed seven, while a midday bomb in a commercial street in Baghdad's southwestern district of Bayaa killed four people and wounded 13, according to police officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Also, just north of Baghdad, gunmen broke into the house of an anti-militant Sunni fighter, killing his two sons and a daughter, police said. The Sunni fighter was wounded, along with his wife. He was a member of Sahwa, a Sunni militia that joined U.S. troops in the fight against Iraq's al-Qaida branch at the height of Iraq's insurgency in 2007 and 2008.

Sunni sheiks skeptical

Behind the Iraqi government's struggles on the battlefield is the absence or resistance of many of the Sunni Muslim tribes that all sides say will play the decisive role in the course of the fight -- presenting a slow start for the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's plan to drive out the militants.

The Sunni tribes of Anbar and the northwest drove al-Qaida-linked militants out of the area seven years ago with U.S. military help, in what became known as the Sunni Awakening. But the tribes' alienation from the subsequent authoritarian and Shiite-led government in Baghdad opened the door for the extremists of the Islamic State to return this year.

Although at least some Sunni Arabs are fighting alongside the Iraq army in places such as Haditha, influential Sunni sheiks who helped lead the Awakening say they remain unconvinced.

"The Sunnis in Anbar and other provinces are facing oppression and discrimination by the government," said Mohamed el-Bajjari, a tribal sheik and spokesman for a coalition of tribes. "This government must be changed to form a technocratic government of nonsectarian secular people, or the battles and the anger of the Sunni people will continue."

Sunni tribal leaders said they were already disappointed by al-Abadi, who has been praised by Obama as the face of a more inclusive government. They said the military had not lived up to a pledge by the prime minister to discontinue shelling civilian areas in the battle against the Islamic State -- an accusation that could not be confirmed. They also complained that the government had done nothing to reform abusive security forces and that it continued to give a free hand to Iranian-backed Shiite militias whom Sunnis accuse of arbitrary killings.

"Hundreds of poor people are in prison without being convicted, and today we have the militias as well killing our people, while the military is bombing our cities with barrel bombs and random missiles," el-Bajjari said. "If we ever put down our weapons, the militias would come over and kill us all."

"The Sunni tribes' role here is almost nonexistent," said Ali al-Jabouri, a local fighter. "There are many tribes in the villages near here, but they were not serious about joining us to combat the Islamic State, and until now none of them have joined us."

Other Sunni leaders, however, said that things would improve.

Wasfi al-Aasi, a Sunni Arab tribal leader who leads a pro-government council of sheiks, said the biggest tribes had signaled their support against the Islamic State, and "we are in the process of establishing national guards in the main six provinces."

"The next few days will bring good news," he said. As for tribal leaders who expressed disappointment in the government, "They are all with the Islamic State."

Information for this article was contributed by Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Bram Janssen, Sameer N. Yacoub and Vivian Salama of The Associated Press and by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/23/2014

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