While the media and many news sites cover the violence in Mali and Syria, it bears mentioning that there are still al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist groups operating within Iraq itself. Violence increased with the withdrawal of US troops last year, and the al-Qaeda involvement in the Syrian civil war has highlighted the fact that the organization we fought for almost nine years is far from dead.
On March 11, a suicide bomber in Dibis, northwest of Kirkuk, killed three people and wounded 165, mostly school children at a nearby girls’ school. On the 7th, two gunmen and an Iraqi policeman were killed in a firefight in Ramadi. A third gunman, suspected to be al-Qaeda, was arrested. The three had planted an IED on the road to Anbar University, and had two more in their possession.