24 April 2014

In the early hours of this morning, gunmen blew up a polling station - which is in fact a primary school - in the Al-Mhammadi township in Hit, killing 3 young men who were guarding the building. The attack took place a few days before the parliamentary elections scheduled for April 30th. Armed groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda have distributed leaflets in Hit, Kubaisa, Al-Mhammadi, and parts of Al-Rutba in western Anbar; the leaflets are warning residents against taking part in the elections.

The Al-Nukhaib township police chief was severely injured and lost an arm and a leg in the detonation of an explosive device near a police patrol. Another police officer was injured and 3 personnel were killed.

In Ramadi today, an attack by groups of gunmen in Al-Hamidhiya and adjacent districts was repelled, and intermittent clashes are still going on at this time.

In Fallujah, a medical source announced today that 6 residents were killed, among them a woman, and 11 others were injured by the indiscriminate shelling of the city's residential districts. The total casualty figures in Fallujah since the crisis erupted at the end of last year now stand at least 259 killed and at least 1,147 injured.

Large areas between Fallujah and Abu Ghraib are now under water to unprecedented levels, with hundreds of homes and thousands of acres of cultivated land being flooded. The situation cannot be resolved because gunmen are still controlling the Fallujah barrage, whose sluice gates they have once again closed.