Iraqi militants seize university

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BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants stormed a university filled with hundreds of students in Iraq’s restive Anbar
province Saturday, briefly taking students hostage before withdrawing from the school amid gunfire,
officials and witnesses said. Meanwhile, fighting in a northern city killed 21 police officers and 38
militants, authorities said.
The attack on Anbar University comes as Islamic extremists and other anti-government militias have held
parts of the nearby provincial capital of Ramadi and the city of Fallujah since December amid rising
tensions between Sunni Muslims and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. While shelling and gunbattles
continue between the militants and government-allied forces, the school largely has been left alone
while civilians fled the violence.
That changed early Saturday morning as the gunmen killed three police officers on guard at the
university’s gate, a police and a military official said. The gunmen then detained dozens of students
inside a university dorm, the officials said. Sabah Karhout, the head of Anbar’s provincial council,
told reporters that hundreds of students were inside the university compound when the attack started.

Ahmed al-Mehamdi, a student who was taken hostage, said he awoke to the crackle of gunfire, looked out
the window and saw armed men dressed in black racing across the campus. Minutes later, the gunmen
entered the dormitory and ordered everybody to stay in their rooms while taking others away, he said.

The Shiite students at the school were terrified, al-Mehamdi said, as the gunmen identified themselves as
belonging to an al-Qaida splinter group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Sunni
terror group, fighting in Syria with other rebels trying to topple President Bashar Assad, is known for
massive, bloody attacks in Iraq as well often targeting Shiites that they view as heretics.
The Islamic State did not immediately claim the attack on the school, which says it has more than 10,000
students, making it one of the country’s largest.
Several hours later, gunmen left the university under unclear circumstances. Students then boarded buses
provided by the local government to flee the school, though gunfire erupted as security forces attacked
retreating militants, police said.
"We thank God that this crisis ended almost peacefully and no student was hurt as far as I
know," al-Mehamdi said by mobile phone from inside a bus that took him to safety.
Security officials said authorities wanted to wait for bomb disposal experts before entering any building
on campus out of fears that the fleeing gunmen planted explosives. Government forces also came under
sniper fire, officials said.
"Not a single student or a university staff member was hurt during the raid. All of them went home
and their ordeal is over," Karhout said.
Iraq is currently grappling with its worst surge in violence since the sectarian bloodletting of 2006 and
2007, when the country was pushed to the brink of civil war despite the presence of tens of thousands of
U.S. troops.
In the northern city of Mosul, clashes continued Saturday for a second day between security forces and
Sunni militants trying to seize neighborhoods there. Police and morgue officials said that fighting
since dawn Saturday killed 21 police officers and 38 militants.
The latest violence has been fueled by Sunni Muslim anger at the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, as
well as the civil war in neighboring Syria. The Islamic State has carried out scores of deadly attacks
on both sides of the border and imposed a brutal form of Islamic rule in territories under its control.

Those attacks include a coordinated assault April 21 on a private Shiite college in Baghdad that killed
four police officers and one teacher.
Al-Qaida-linked fighters and their allies seized Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in late December after
authorities dismantled a protest camp of Sunnis angry at what they consider their second-class treatment
by the Shiite-led government. Fearful of setting off violence, security forces withdrew from the area,
allowing militants to seize the cities. In April 2013, a similar dismantling of a Sunni protest camp in
Hawija sparked violent clashes and set off the current upsurge in killing.
The government and its tribal allies are besieging the rebel-held areas, with fighting reported daily.
Tens of thousands have fled the violence.

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