Iraqi Army admits committing “mistakes” in attack in North Iraq’s Talaarfar town:

NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Army‘s 10th Division’s Third Brigade has admitted having committed “mistakes,” following an offensive by one of its patrols in north Iraq’s Talaafar town on Wednesday, whilst a Turkoman Legislature described the offensive and its aftermath as an “attempt to foil the national reconciliation among the town’s inhabitants,” calling for cooperation with the security forces. “Seven Iraqi Army 3rd Division’s 10th Brigade soldiers, among them an officer, “have comiited a mistake towards civilians during their search for armed men, who attacked an Army patrol in Al-Salam District of Talaafar town, 60 kms to the north of Mosul, and the operation took place according to an official order to look for the offenders,” Brigadier Abdul-Rahman Handhal Abu-Rughif, told a mass meeting, attended by IraqiNews.com news agency. Brigadier Abu-Rughif, who expressed apologies for the said “erroneous acts” by some of his soldiers, promised to take “serious measures against the soldiers that may reach to their dismissal from the Army,” adding that “the Army insists to discover the offenders, who committed the attack.” An official of Ninewa Police told IraqiNews.com that a “soldier had been killed and another was seriously injured in an armed attack against an Army patrol in al-Salam District, north of Talaafar town last Monday, whilst the town’s Mayor charged the Iraqi Army with having comitted “an aggression against his town’s citizens and torturing them after the attack.” On his part, the Legislature in al-Iraqiya Coalition and the leader in the Iraqi Turkomen Front, Nabil Harbo, who attended the said meeting, called on his fellow citizens to “cooperate with the security forces and help them to find the offenders,” pointing out that the attack and its aftermath events had been part of “a planned process aimed at undermining trust between the citizens and the security forces, in order to destroy the national-partnership reached among the town’s tribes.” Harbo warned from what he termed as “attempts by certain parties to create tension in Talaafar,” demanding the masses who attended the meeting, some of whom had been target for the said attack, to “accept the apology of the Commander of the 10th Brigade, and to foil the plans of those parties who try to plant tension in the town.” The Iraqi Turkomen Front had issued a statement on Wednesday, calling for investigations regarding what it termed as “random detentions,” that included some Talaafar citizens, charging the Army forces with having detained a number of young and old men, without any right, along withexposing them for torture and humiliation! Mosul, the center of north Iraq’s Ninewa Province, is 405 kms to the north of Baghdad. JT (A) / SKH 6