ISIS—itself a Sunni group that seeks the eradication of Shiite Islam—is said to have executed 12 members of another Sunni militant group in the Iraqi town of Saadiya, Reuters reports. The dead were affiliated with a group with links to Saddam Hussein:
Police in Muqdadiya, a town 80 km (50 miles) northeast of the capital, said residents from the nearby town of Saadiya found the 12 corpses on Monday after fighting overnight between Islamic State fighters and the Naqshbandi Army, a group led by Saddam allies…
Washington, which recruited other Sunni fighters to defeat al Qaeda during the U.S. surge offensive in 2006-2007, hopes other Sunnis will again turn against the Islamic State and can be lured back into a power-sharing government in Baghdad.
ISIS took control of the town from the Iraqi national government on June 10. A source told Reuters that ISIS and the Naqshbandi Army—which has strong local support but lacks ISIS’s resources—have been battling each other for the last week.
