Armed group leader captured in Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: The Kurdish asayesh forces captured an amir (leader) of an armed organization in central Kirkuk city on Sunday, a spokesman for the forces said. “Personnel from the Kirkuk Asayesh Department captured a leader of the al-Tawheed Wa al-Jihad (Monotheism & Jihad) group in a neighborhood in central Kikruk today (Nov. 14),” Firhad Hama told IraqiNews.com news agency. Meanwhile, a source from the Kirkuk-based Joint Coordination Center (JCC) said a patrol from the al-Muqdad police station seized a Katyusha rocket, a battery, wires and a timer on al-Korneish street, close to an amusement park in the southern part of the city. “The rocket was detonated without incident,” he added. Asayesh or asayish (Kurdish for security) is a Kurdish organization, created in September 1993. It is referred to as an “intelligence agency”, Kurdistan’s intelligence agency, “security force”, “security service”, “security police”, “secret service”, “secret police”, or just “Kurdish police”. It is related to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barazani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The oil-rich Kirkuk, a city of mixed Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab population, lies 250 km northeast of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (S) 1