DEVELOPMENTS
• A series of car bomb attacks in Iraq’s capital killed 38 people in Shiite areas Saturday, authorities said, after Islamic militants killed a journalist working for a local television network in a Sunni province. Police officials said a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Baghdad’s northern district of Khazimiyah, killing 13 people, including three police officers, and wounding 28. A second car bombing, targeting a commercial street in Shula district in northwestern Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 18, police said. Also in Shula, police said a suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint killed 18 people and wounded dozens others.
• Kurdish militiamen are putting up a fierce fight to defend a Syrian town near the border with Turkey but are struggling to repel the Islamic State group, which is advancing and pushing in from two sides, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said Saturday. The battle for Kobani is still raging despite more than two weeks of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants in and around the town. The strikes, which are aimed at rolling back the militants’ gains, appear to have done little to blunt their onslaught on Kobani, which began in mid-September.
— From news services
Yet military experts say the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group, who now control a large territory along the border that Iraq and Syria share, won’t be able to fight through both government forces and Shiite militias now massed around the capital.
It does, however, put them in a position to wreak havoc in Iraq’s biggest city, with suicide attacks and other assaults further eroding confidence in Iraq’s federal government and its troops, who fled the Islamic State group’s initial lightning advance in June.
“It’s not plausible at this point to envision ISIL taking control of Baghdad, but they can make Baghdad so miserable that it would threaten the legitimacy of the central government,” said Richard Brennan, an Iraq expert with RAND Corporation and former Department of Defense policymaker, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
The siege fears in Baghdad stem from recent gains the militants made in the so-called Baghdad Belt — the final stretch between Anbar province, where they gained ground in Janaury, and Baghdad.
Last week, Islamic State fighters seized the towns of Hit and neighboring Kubaisa, sending Iraqi soldiers fleeing and leaving a nearby military base with its stockpile of weapons at risk of capture. The U.S.-led coalition recently launched two airstrikes northwest of Hit, U.S. Central Command said Saturday.
Perhaps most worrisome, Islamic State fighters are now battling Iraqi forces in Abu Ghraib, the town home to the infamous prison of the same name that is only 18 miles from the Green Zone, the fortified international sector protecting Baghdad-based embassies and government office.
To the south of Baghdad, security forces are fighting to hold onto the town of Jurf al-Sukr, and to the north, one Sunni tribe has held onto the town of Duluiyah despite an Islamic State onslaught. However, the militant have taken over a number of towns in Diyala province, east of Baghdad.
Yet authorities believe an assault to take Baghdad remains unlikely. An Iraqi military and intelligence official each said that as many as 60,000 government security personnel, including soldiers and police officers, are currently in position outside the city along the Baghdad Belt. A plot by the Islamic State group to enter Baghdad in September through the Shiite al-Kazimiyah neighborhood was foiled, the officials added.
Since that initial September assault, Baghdad largely has been spared and remained relatively calm. Still, many are worried.
“It’s scary,” said Maha Ismail, who recently visited one of Baghdad’s new shopping malls.
Yet analysts say capturing Baghdad remains beyond the Islamic State group's ability. Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said Saturday that the Iraqi military "continues to maintain firm control of the city and there is no imminent threat of an effective" offensive by the Islamic State group.
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