14 October 2014

There was a meeting yesterday between the Salahuddin tribal elders and the Provincial Council and a number of Salahuddin members of the Parliament. The Council called on all politicians and tribal leaders to work toward finding a way out of the crisis plaguing the province. The meeting tabled a number of demands, calling on the international coalition to work seriously toward ending the suffering of the Iraqi people, and calling on the government to shoulder its responsibilities and apologize to the Iraqi people for 'its failures in leading the country'. The tribal elders called for convening a gathering of central and southern tribal leaders and those from Salahuddin to study the issue of those missing from Camp Speicher, pointing out that the perpetrators do not represent their tribes, but rather represent the terrorist agenda. The Council also called on the government to hasten the formation of the National Guard.

The Peoples' Gathering forces clashed yesterday with ISIL gunmen in the Owaynat area south of Tikrit. There were unknown numbers of casualties on both sides.

Sources say that a car bomb was detonated near a security post in the vicinity of Samarra: 2 federal police personnel and 3 civilians were wounded by the blast. There were also clashes near Dhulu'iya that has been reported by its residents as being 80% in the gunmen's hands. Only the Jubur village has remained steadfast in the face of the ISIL forces that attempted yesterday to seize the village but were repelled by the Jubur tribal fighters and some Samarra security elements.