Gunmen kill 27 in raids on west Iraq checkpoints
The attacks in Anbar, once Iraq's most violent province, raise concern that Iraq's branch of al Qaeda may regain a foothold there after the withdrawal of US troops in
Anbar was almost entirely under control of al Qaeda during the height of Iraq's insurgency from 2005-07, when the militants were defeated by local tribesmen and US forces.
Mohammed Fathi, spokesman for the governor of Anbar province, said the latest attack bore the "fingerprints of al Qaeda."
A police source, who had been ferrying victims to the hospital morgue, said gunmen dressed in uniforms of the security forces had driven from checkpoint to checkpoint slaughtering police in Haditha, a town 190 km (120 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
"The gunmen used security vehicles and from 2:00 am. (11:00 pm) until 3:30 a.m. they carried out attacks on checkpoints in central Haditha and the nearby town of Barwana," the police source, who did not give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told reporters in Fallujah.
Fathi, the governor's spokesman, said the attackers arrived at checkpoints with fake arrest warrants, confiscated the mobile phones of the police guards and executed them.
Another police source said one of the damaged vehicles left behind had fliers signed by an al Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, which threatened Iraqi police forces with death if they did not abandon their jobs.
The 27 dead included a lieutenant colonel and a captain who were dragged out of their homes in Haditha and killed, the police source said. A curfew was imposed on the town and its exits were sealed off.
One gunman was killed in the attacks, the source said. Three policemen survived the attacks with wounds and were being treated at Haditha hospital.
A medical source at Hadita hospital confirmed the hospital had received 27 bodies of slain victims and was treating three wounded.
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