TARMIYAH, IRAQ: Destroying a nondescript hut, made of mud and thatched straw, might have seemed a devastating overstatement. But according to US Army Captain Christopher Loftis, its destruction will show the local residents “Al Qaeda isn’t coming back.”
Loftis commands Alpha Company 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, based in Tarmiyah, Iraq, about 25 miles north of Baghdad. On June 7, members of the 66th Engineer Company, part of the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, used nearly 150 pounds of C-4 explosives to destroy the former al Qaeda cache house in the farmland area north of Tarmiyah.
Back in 2007, when al Qaeda in Iraq was dominant here, this was one of the worst areas for the insurgency.
Because of the houses’s bad reputation – when raided, chemicals used for kidnappings were discovered – rehabilitating it is not an option, Loftis said. “Local Iraqis didn’t come out this way unless they wanted to get kidnapped and beheaded,” he said.
Read the whole story by Nathan Webster at The Long War Journal
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