Iraq’s Najafi calls for emergency parliament session

Iraqi House Speaker Osama Najafi called on Saturday for an emergency session to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the country.                   

On another note, suspected Sunni Muslim militants killed four state-backed Sunni fighters in Iraq on Saturday, security sources said, apparently viewing them as collaborators with the Shi'ite-led government of a nation plagued by sectarian hatred.         

Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in Iraq have been amplified by the conflict between mostly Sunni rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite-dominated forces in neighbouring Syria.               

The four "Sahwa" militia fighters were killed in an attack on their headquarters on the outskirts of Garma, 9 km (six miles) east of Falluja, a city in the western province of Anbar.           

Gunmen also ambushed and kidnapped 10 Sunni policemen near  Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, a Sunni heartland bordering Syria.            

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni militant groups have been behind previous violence targeting security forces in a campaign to destabilize the Baghdad government, which they reject as illegitimate.   


REUTERS/LBCI