Armed group arrested in western Kirkuk

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: Four gunmen were arrested in western Kirkuk on Tuesday, according to the spokesman for defense ministry. “A military force from the 12th division of the Iraqi army arrested four gunmen of al-Qaeda’s 1920 Revolution Brigades in al-Hayaziaaya village in Riyadh district, western Kirkuk,” Mohammad al-Askari told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The force seized during the operation an amount of explosives,” he added. The 1920 Revolution Brigades (the Kata’eb Thawrat al-Ishreen in Arabic) are armed factions that splintered from al-Qaeda network and joined the U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces to fight al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, a force from the Kirkuk Districts’ Police Department (KDPD) arrested a Saudi gunman in a house in al-Aamel neighborhood in Mosul, according to a police source. “The man, Mahmoud Mohammad Salama al-Shrefi, born in Tabouk in 1984, entered Iraq in 2004 through the Iraqi-Syrian borders,” he explained. SH (P) 3