ISIS Finds New Frontier in Chaotic Libya | 11 presumed dead in military helicopter crash
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Kevin Robinson, Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal 12:01 p.m. EDT March 11, 2015
An Eglin Air Force Base spokesman confirmed that at least some of the 11 missing military members died when their helicopter crashed in the panhandle of Florida. VPC
Rangers make their way to a UH-60 Blackhawk during the 6th Ranger Training Battalion’s annual open house event at Eglin Air Force Base on May 12, 2012.(Photo: Samuel King Jr., U.S. Air Force)
NAVARRE BEACH, Fla. — Seven Marines and four crewmembers are missing and presumed deadWednesday after an Army helicopter crashed during a training exercise in waters off the Florida Panhandle.
The area was under a fog advisory when the crash occurred Tuesday night near Eglin Air Force Base about 50 miles east of Pensacola. The extreme fog still present Wednesday morning impeded the search, Eglin public affairs specialist Sara Vidoni said.
The Associated Press and CNN were among media outlets reporting that all 11 were presumed dead, citing military sources. However, others at Eglin will not confirm that.
"There's always hope," Eglin spokesman Mike Spaits said. "There's always hope. Search and recovery — that's the key."
An undisclosed number of human remains washed up on shore, Vidoni said.
About 60 searchers from multiple agencies, including the Coast Guard, are at the scene centered on a four-mile area of the Santa Rosa Sound between the barrier island and the mainland. A Coast Guard vessel recovered debris including the downed chopper's tail rotor overnight, officials told NBC News.
Fog, creating visibility of less than 2 miles, prevented searchers from becoming airborne and remained heavy in late morning. Airmen are searching the shoreline on foot.
An Army helicopter went down during a night training exercise at an Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle.
"There are search and rescue operations going on right now in the Navarre sound," Spaits said. "We have some casualties, and search and rescue is still going on."
The Marines are part of a Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based special operations group and the aircrew are from a Hammond, La.-based Louisiana National Guard unit, Eglin spokesman Andy Bourland said. The names of those involved have not been released.
Both crews were in Florida on temporary assignment.
"These soldiers represent the best of Louisiana, and we are praying for them and their families." Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a statement.
Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said he hopes later Wednesday to visit the crash site, about 7 miles from his Fort Walton office.
The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was reported missing around 8:30 p.m. CT Tuesday during a night training mission, and search and rescue crews who started around 1 a.m. Wednesday found debris from the crash around 2 a.m., Bourland said.
An ambulance sits in the fog March 11, 2015, at the Eglin Air Force entrance in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. (Photo: Devon Ravine, AP)
A second helicopter involved participating in the exercise returned to the base safely, the military said. Both aircraft were assigned to the 1-244th Assault Helicopter Battalion in Hammond.
Search and rescue efforts were focused on a remote swath of beach between Pensacola and Destin. The military has controlled this beach since World War II, and it is used for test missions.
The incident follows a helicopter crash Tuesday in Argentina where a number of French nationals, including several Olympic athletes, were killed.
Contributing: The Associated Press; Kim Hjelmgaard and Donovan Slack, USA TODAY
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An Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter has crashed in the Florida Panhandle, and seven Marines and four soldiers are missing.
Some confirmed human remains have washed ashore in the area where crews are searching for the missing, a spokesman for the Eglin Air Force Base told The Washington Post on Wednesday morning.
“We have confirmed that we have had some human remains wash ashore in the area where our search and rescue team have begun a larger scale operation,” Andrew Bourland said, adding that debris from the aircraft has also washed ashore.
The helicopter is believed to have gone down in the water and foggy conditions were reported in the area at the time of the crash, though it is too soon to say what might have caused the mishap.
According to a Pentagon official who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press, nearly 12 hours after the craft was reported missing, all 11 service members are presumed dead. However, the efforts are still considered a search and rescue operation at this time, Bourland said.
Carter offers prayers for troops in chopper crash(0:38)
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter confirmed Wednesday in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that there were four soldiers and seven Marines on board a helicopter that crashed in Florida. (AP)
Foggy conditions in the search area have made the operation more difficult, Bourland told The Post. But with dawn breaking, efforts were expected to ramp up.
“We’ve got some daylight, but it is overcast and quite foggy,” Bourland said. “It is having an impact on getting the full-scale rescue moving now.”
Local authorities, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Coast Guard were involved in the search efforts, according to a news release.
The helicopter carrying highly trained Marines in a special operations unit, was on a night training mission outside the base, which is near Valparaiso, Fla. Crews were dispatched after the Eighth Coast Guard District Command Center got a report of a downed military aircraft late Tuesday evening, the release stated. A “debris field consistent with a military aircraft” was located early Wednesday morning, according to the Coast Guard release.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of the members involved in this incident,” Layne Carter, search and rescue mission coordinator, said in the release. “We are aggressively searching for possible survivors involved in the crash.”
The Marines are part of a Camp Lejeune-based special operations group and the soldiers are from an Army National Guard unit based out of Hammond, La.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Marines, soldiers and family members of those involved in this mishap. We are working closely with all parties involved to locate our Marines and the Army aircrew as soon as possible,” Major Gen. Joseph Osterman, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command said in a statement.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the crash reinforces the fact that military personnel are “at risk whether in training or in combat.”
“Our thoughts and prayers with them,” Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said, while speaking on Capitol Hill.
The downed helicopter was one of two on the mission. The base said the “second helicopter and its personnel on board have returned and are accounted for at this time.”
“Names of the aircrew and Marines on board are being withheld pending [next of kin] notification,” read the statement posted by the base. “The accident is under investigation. Additional details will be provided as they become available.”
[This post has been updated multiple times.]
Sarah Larimer is a general assignment reporter for the Washington Post.
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The 11 service members that include seven Marines and four soldiers who vanished after their Black Hawk helicopter crashed Tuesday night on the Florida Panhandle coastline are presumed dead, a military official told The Associated Press.
Search crews struggled with dense fog Wednesday morning but were able to locate debris believed to be from the Army National Guard helicopter-- a UH-60 Black Hawk-- that crashed during a routine exercise at about 8:20 p.m. Tuesday.
"At this time all are missing," Andy Bourland, a spokesman for Eglin Air Force Base, said.
Bourland told "Fox & Friends" that debris was found near the Navarre Bridge, which is located on a small strip of land between Choctawhatchee Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
A spokeswoman from the base said in an e-mail that human remains washed ashore but said it is still considered a search-and-rescue mission.
Dense fog created low visibility early Wednesday and the area was under a fog advisory, but it was unclear what conditions were like at the time of the crash.
The training area includes 20 miles of pristine beachfront that has been under the control of the military since before World War II. Military police keep a close watch on the area and have been known to run off private vendors who rent jet skis or paddle boards without permission.
Local law enforcement agencies vehicles were gathering Wednesday at the crash scene, near a remote swath of beach between Pensacola and Destin. The beach is owned by the military and is used for test missions.
Base officials said the Marines are part of a Camp Lejeune, North Carolina-based special operations group. The soldiers were from a Hammond, Louisiana-based National Guard unit. Names of those involved were not immediately released, pending notification of next of kin, Bourland said.
Bourland said the Army helicopter took off from a nearby airport in Destin and joined other aircraft in the training exercise.
Test range manager Glenn Barndollar told The Associated Press in August that the beach provides an ideal training area for special operations units from all branches of the military to practice over the water, on the beach and in the bay.
The military sometimes drops trainees over the water using boats or helicopters and the trainees must make their way onshore.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Story highlights
- The four National Guard members' next of kin have been notified, spokesman says
- Four aircrew members, seven Marines were on board the helicopter when it went down
(CNN)Seven Marines and four Army aircrew were presumed dead Wednesday, according to a U.S. Defense official, after their Black Hawk helicopter crashed into waters off the Florida Panhandle during a nighttime training mission.
By late Wednesday morning, human remains had washed ashore in the area near Eglin Air Force Base, base spokeswoman Jasmine Porterfield said.
She didn't specify what was found, noting a search-and-rescue mission remained underway. Still, there was little hope for a miracle, with Gen. Martin Dempsey -- the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the U.S. military's highest-ranking member -- expressing his condolences "at the loss of the folks on that helicopter."
"(The crash is) a reminder to us that those who serve put themselves at risk, both in training and in combat," Dempsey said from Washington. "We will work with the services to ensure that ... their family members will be well cared for."
The Black Hawk was first reported missing during foggy conditions at about 8:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. ET) Tuesday. Hours later, at about 2 a.m. Wednesday, searchers found debris around Okaloosa Island near Eglin, base spokesman Andy Bourland said. This debris washed up on both the north and south sides of Santa Rosa Sound, which connects mainland northern Florida and a barrier island.
The Air Force, Coast Guard and civilian agencies participated in the intensive search focused on where they believe the aircraft went down, in waters east of the town of Navarre and the Navarre Bridge and near Eglin testing range site A-17.
Those efforts were helped Wednesday morning by the rising sun, but not the shrouding fog, according to Eglin spokeswoman Sara Vidoni.
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"We're working closely with all the parties involved to locate our Marines and the Army crew that were onboard," added Capt. Barry Morris, a spokesman for the U.S. Marines Corps Special Operations Command. "And really just our thoughts (and) prayers are with the Marines, the soldiers and the families of those involved in the mishap."
Second Black Hawk involved in mission got back safely
No one is saying what caused the accident, with Vidoni indicating only that there's no indication of anything suspicious.
There was heavy fog in the area when the aircraft went missing, though the Eglin spokeswoman said it's too early to tell whether that had anything to do with the crash.
"There is training in all conditions; that's part of the military mission," Vidoni said. "... They were out there doing what the military does."
The UH-60 helicopter wasn't alone when it went down. A second Black Hawk -- assigned to 1-244th Assault Helicopter Battalion based in Hammond, Louisiana -- safely returned to the base, some 40 miles east of Pensacola.
The aircraft were both assigned to the Louisiana Army National Guard out of Hammond and taking part in what the U.S. military called a "routine training mission involving the Marine Special Operations Regiment" out of Camp Lejeune.
"Whatever the trouble was with the one aircraft, it did not involve the second helicopter that was participating in the exercise," Bourland said.
Seven Marines based out of Camp Lejeune
The Army aircrew members belonged to the Army National Guard unit out of Louisiana, part of a unit that Gov. Bobby Jindal said "have fought courageously overseas in defense of our nation and here at home."
By 11:15 a.m., relatives of all four of those guardsmen had been notified, though their names won't be released publicly until the Coast Guard recovers their bodies or calls off the search, said Col. Pete Schneider, a Louisiana National Guard spokesman.
"They have protected what matters most during times of crisis," Jindal said. "These soldiers represent the best of Louisiana, and we are praying for them and their families."
Morris said the Marines involved in the crash were all "highly-trained" members of that service's special operations command. They were based out of Camp Lejuene, an expansive North Carolina base that is home to about 170,000 active deputy, dependent, retired and civilian personnel.
Black Hawk helicopters are regularly used in U.S. Army missions.
If they are confirmed dead, those involved in this week's crash would become the latest U.S. service members killed in noncombat crashes.
In January, two Marines died when their helicopter went down at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California.
And last March, an F/A-18C Hornet's pilot died after a crash about 70 miles east of Naval Air Station Fallon in western Nevada.
This week's crash involved a UH-60 Black Hawk, a twin-engine helicopter introduced into Army service in 1979 in place of the iconic UH-1 Huey. Other branches have modified the Black Hawk for their own uses, including the Navy's SH-60 (the Sea Hawk), the Air Force's MH-60 (the Pave Hawk) and the Coast Guard's HH-60 (the Jayhawk).
The Army's UH-60 helicopter, which has a maximum speed of 173 mph, has an airframe "designed to progressively crush on impact to protect the crew and passengers," according to the service.
As Morris, the Marine spokesman, pointed out, those who get on such aircraft or take part in other military exercises aren't always out of danger just because they're off the battlefield.
"We have a requirement to conduct realistic military training," he said. "And unfortunately this mishap happened."
CNN's Jason Hanna, John Newsome, Victor Blackwell, Jamie Crawford and Brad Lendon contributed to this report.
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Three senators, two Democrats and a Republican, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would allow patients to use marijuana for medical purposes in states where it is legal, without fear of federal prosecution for violating narcotics laws.
The bill makes a number of important changes to federal marijuana policies — and it deserves to be passed by Congress and enacted into law. Though this legislation would not repeal the broad and destructive federal ban on marijuana, it is a big step in the right direction.
The most important change would reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, which is intended for drugs, like heroin, that have no accepted medical use in the United States, and place it instead in Schedule II, the classification for drugs that have a legitimate medical use but also have a “high potential for abuse.”
The Schedule I classification made no sense because there is a medical consensus that patients with AIDS, cancer, epilepsy and serious degenerative conditions can benefit from marijuana. And millions of patients have used marijuana to relieve pain, nausea, appetite loss, insomnia and seizures associated with various illnesses.
The bill, sponsored by Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, both Democrats, and Rand Paul, a Republican of Kentucky, would not legalize medical marijuana in all 50 states. But it would amend federal law to allow states to set their own medical marijuana policies and prevent federal law enforcement agencies from prosecuting patients, doctors and caregivers in those states. Currently 35 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of medical marijuana use. States would remain free to ban medical marijuana if they wished.
Other important provisions would allow banks and credit unions to provide financial services to marijuana-related businesses that operate in accord with state law and protect them from federal prosecution or investigation. That is a crucial improvement over the current situation where marijuana business that is legal under state law is conducted in cash because financial institutions fear to step in.
The bill would also allow doctors in the Department of Veterans Affairs to prescribe medical marijuana to veterans, which they are currently prohibited from doing. And it would ease the overly strict procedures for obtaining marijuana for medical research and require the Food and Drug Administration to more readily allow the manufacture of marijuana for research.
An encouraging development last year may bode well for enactment of the legislation this year. A surprisingly strong bipartisan majority in the House voted for a one-year provision barring the Justice Department from using its funds to prevent states from carrying out their own laws authorizing the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.
The provision was approved by a vote of 219 to 189, with 49 Republicans and 170 Democrats voting in favor. The Senate adopted the same provision and President Obama signed it into law.
Polls show a majority of Americans in favor of legalization of medical marijuana. It is long past time for Congress to recognize the need to change course.
Correction: March 11, 2015
An earlier version of this editorial misstated the day that a bill to allow patients to use marijuana for medical purposes was introduced. It was on Tuesday, not Monday.
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SURT, Libya — The Islamic State has established more than a foothold in this Mediterranean port. Its fighters dominate the city center so thoroughly that a Libyan brigade sent to dislodge the group remains camped on the outskirts, visibly afraid to enter and allowing the extremists to come and go as they please.
“We are going to allow them to slip out, because the less people we have to fight, the better,” said Mohamed Omar el-Hassan, a 28-year-old former crane operator who leads the brigade from a prefabricated shed on a highway ringing the city.
“Why make the city suffer?” he said, trying to explain his delay more than 16 days after the brigade arrived in Surt.
Nearly four years after the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s warring cities and towns have become so entangled in internal conflicts over money and power that they have opened a door for the Islamic State to expand into the country’s oil-rich deserts and sprawling coastline. Libya has become a new frontier for the radical group as it comes under increasing pressure from American-led airstrikes on its original strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
While other extremists organizations may have sought only to capitalize on the Islamic State’s fearsome name, the contingent here in Surt has not only taken over a major Libyan city but also demonstrated clear coordination with the parent organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL and based in Syria.
A recent video depicting the beheadings of Egyptian Christians kidnapped from Surt appeared to have been taped on the Libyan shoreline, but it also featured the parent group’s signature audiovisual sophistication, orange jumpsuits and ceremonial knives. It was publicized in the main group’s online magazine, then released under its media logo.
That close cooperation so far sets the Islamic State group in Surt apart from the wave of other militants who have pledged allegiance to ISIS from Afghanistan, Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt, or even in Libya’s southern and eastern provinces.
But even after the international uproar over the video, no Libyan authority has been able to take any effective action against the group. Two warring coalitions of militias have divided the country, and each — including the one that sent Mr. Hassan and his fighters, known as Brigade 166 — appears more intent on fighting the other than on thwarting the Islamic State. What is more, the battles have crippled Libya’s oil exports so severely that there is now a risk that the country’s currency and economy will soon collapse.
“A currency collapse is less than two years away,” Musbah Alkari, manager of the reserves department at the Central Bank of Libya, said in an interview at the bank’s headquarters in Tripoli.
Western governments are keeping a watchful eye. Fighters with Mr. Hassan’s brigade at the edge of Surt pointed to what appeared to be a white surveillance drone or airplane circling overhead — a daily visitor, they said.
His fighters used extreme caution when circling the city. Escorting a Western journalist on a brief visit, they were careful not to enter the city itself. To reach one point on the outskirts, Mr. Hassan brought a half-dozen trucks for protection, some mounted with artillery, and his fighters kept their guns elevated on constant alert.
His brigade had established control of the airport, Mr. Hassan said. But there were no signs that the fighters had set up checkpoints, even at critical spots like the coastal road entering the city or the main road to the airport. “See the jihad,” read graffiti on a wall along the main road outside the city.
The Islamic State controls the local radio station; during the recent visit, all four stations on the dial were transmitting Islamic sermons. “They use the radio stations to broadcast, and they are attracting a lot of people to join them,” Mr. Hassan said wearily.
He and other local militia leaders, citing informants inside Surt, said they believed that the Islamic State fighters in the city numbered about 200 or fewer, while Mr. Hassan’s brigade can command hundreds. He insisted he needed no reinforcements. But the Islamic State fighters were deeply entrenched and stronger than expected, Mr. Hassan said.
“We came here with orders to go in and take over the city, but we were surprised by the numbers that joined them,” he said.
Since arriving, his brigade had found time to apprehend some foreign workers without visas trying to move through the area, Mr. Hassan said.
But militants suspected of links to the Islamic State had nonetheless carried out several successful attacks on nonoperational oil fields south of the city, reportedly killing several Libyan guards andabducting nine foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility for those attacks.
The rival militia coalition, based in the eastern cities of Tobruk and Bayda and under the loose command of Gen. Khalifa Hifter, describes itself as fighting to rescue Libya from Islamic extremists, including the Islamic State fighters. “Libya was becoming the funding house, and they were going to export terrorism around the world,” said Saqr al-Jaroushi, the air force chief under General Hifter.
But the coalition’s leaders often characterize all of its opponents as extremists, including regional militias like Mr. Hassan’s. Brigade 166 fighters displayed some evidence that General Hifter’s coalition had been bombing their positions outside the city, even though in this case Mr. Hassan’s brigade is on a mission against the same extremists.
In a pasture near the coast, the brigade fighters showed a journalist an unexploded cluster bomb, identified from photographs as a Soviet-made RBK series, near one of their positions. Similar munitions had evidently exploded nearby in recent days and left fragments of shrapnel in cup-size holes blasted into the dirt. Such weapons are banned under international law because of their indiscriminate nature.
Frederic Wehrey, a researcher for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has said he saw evidence that General Hifter’s planes had dropped cluster bombs on a bank and other civilian targets during fighting in the coastal town of Bin Jawad as well.
The coalition that sent Mr. Hassan, which is known as Libya Dawn and opposes General Hifter, includes some Islamic extremist groups in the eastern cities of Benghazi, Darnah and possibly elsewhere. Its supporters often try to argue that the Islamic State fighters in Surt are merely a front for Qaddafi loyalists or supporters of General Hifter.
“A lot of people who have joined this group we call the Islamic State are actually remnants of the previous regime we fought in 2011,” Omar al-Hassi, prime minister of a provisional government set up by the Libya Dawn coalition in Tripoli, said in an interview here. Mr. Hassi dismissed the images of beheadings in Surt as “a fabricated Hollywood-like video” concocted to stir trouble with Egypt.
Like many in his coalition, he mentioned a television interview with an influential Qaddafi cousin outside Libya, Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam, who at times applauded the Islamic State from an Arab nationalist perspective for seeking to erase the border between Syria and Iraq. But Mr. Dam also denounced the group’s medieval Islamist ideology, saying it “shows the psychological state they are in and that they need mental health treatment.”
Surt, near Colonel Qaddafi’s birthplace, was the site of his last stand in 2011, when rebels from the city of Misurata joined a battle that destroyed much of the city. They ultimately captured Colonel Qaddafi and killed him.
Mr. Hassan of Brigade 166, which comes primarily from Misurata, said that history was one reason that his forces hesitated to move in. He said he feared that aggressive military action against the Islamic State could increase its support from local tribes who still resent Misurata’s militias for the destruction of their city in 2011.
“If we went in with both guns blazing, we would have a backlash,” Mr. Hassan said.
He and other militia leaders also acknowledged, though, that the core of the Islamic State in Surt was from Misurata — a connection that could test the loyalties of other Misuratan militiamen, who are typically reluctant to fight against their neighbors or cousins.
After Misuratan brigades moved into Surt in 2011, Mr. Hassan and others acknowledged, some continued to occupy the city and eventually turned into an extremist group, Ansar al-Shariah of Surt, a parallel to organizations of the same name in Benghazi and Derna.
More than two months ago, Mr. Hassan and others said, Ansar al-Shariah of Surt split up in a dispute over pledging allegiance to the Islamic State, and those who chose to ally with it emerged as the dominant faction. “They are the nucleus,” Mr. Hassan said.
“You can say that the leaders are from Misurata,” Mr. Hassan said, although he insisted that would not deter his brigade. “I am not here as a Misuratan.”
A fighter named Suliman Ali Mousa, 58, raised the theory that the Islamic State had become merely a “banner” for criminals or Qaddafi loyalists.
But Mr. Hassan said that hardly mattered. “If they are raising the black flag of the Islamic State and preaching Islamic State ideas,” he said, “then they are the Islamic State.”
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BAGHDAD — Militant fighters of the Islamic State mounted one of their fiercest assaults in months on Wednesday, setting off 21 car bombs in the city of Ramadi, even as the group lost ground in an Iraqi government offensive in Tikrit, security officials said.
Security forces fought Islamic State holdouts in two remaining neighborhoods on the west side of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, where militants massacred more than 1,000 Shiite Iraqi soldiers last year.
The city has been the focus of a weeklong assault by Iraqi forces, the largest operation against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, since it swept into control of much of the country last year. Iraqi government troops and their Shiite militia allies appeared to be close to recapturing the city on Wednesday and scoring a strategically and emotionally significant victory.
To the west, in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, the militants aimed to show that they could still inflict pain even as they lost ground in Tikrit.
Hikmat Suleiman, the political adviser to the governor of Anbar, said that because of fortified defenses, growing battle experience and improved intelligence, the Iraqi forces in Ramadi were able to keep casualties in the car bombings to a minimum by attacking and thwarting the vehicles as they approached, blowing up most of them before they reached their apparent targets.
A senior military official at the Anbar Province operations command said five people were killed in the bombings and scores were wounded.
With so much attention focused on Tikrit, the fighting in Anbar has raged largely out of the spotlight, but it has been fierce. Two top commanders on the government side were killed as the security forces came close to retaking the town of Garma from militant control.
Iraqi leaders attending an annual forum in Sulaimaniya, in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region, followed the news of the battles with great interest on Wednesday, declaring in speech after speech that the highest stakes and biggest challenges would come after the Islamic State was defeated in Tikrit and elsewhere, and the time came to unify Iraq.
Much rides on the outcome of the battles and what happens afterward. The bulk of the government forces are made up of Shiite militias, and there have been fears that they would engage in revenge attacks in Tikrit and Anbar, as they have been accused of doing in Diyala Province.
Even so, some Sunni residents in areas held by the Islamic State have said that they would welcome the Shiite militias if they rid them of the militants’ harsh rule. Community leaders said that a victory without abuses in its wake could help reduce tensions between the sects.
A video circulating on social media appeared to have been taken by government-allied militiamen as they drove through Albu Ajeel, a town south of Tikrit. Rows of burning buildings are seen, and a uniformed man by the side of the road is heard to say, “Burn them, burn them.” The person who is apparently doing the filming is heard saying that the Asa’ab Ahl al-Haq militia is in control of the town.
Many Shiite militiamen believe that the residents of Albu Ajeel took part in the massacre of the soldiers last year, and some Iraqi commentators said on Wednesday that the video was evidence that the militias were carrying out revenge attacks.
But in Alam, another town near Tikrit were buildings were set on fire on Wednesday, the mayor, Laith Hameed al-Jabouri, said the Islamic State militants were responsible. He said in a telephone interview that he had entered the town along with local Sunni fighters and Shiite militia forces, and found that the buildings, including his house, were already on fire.
“Would I burn my own house?” he said.
At least 4,000 Sunni tribal fighters have taken part in the battle for Tikrit on the government side, and another 4,000 have been mobilized in Anbar, according to security and provincial officials.
In Anbar, Shiite militias have only a minimal presence, according to Mr. Suleiman, the political adviser. He said most of the fighting there was being carried out by the official Iraqi armed forces and local fighters, including what is known as an Awakening brigade, composed of Sunni Arabs who oppose the Islamic State.
Awaad Sami al-Laghawa, the leader of the brigade, was killed in battle on Tuesday, officials said, along with the assistant commander of an Iraqi army division, Brig. Gen. Wadha Mahmood Al-Azzawi.
Northeast of Tikrit, security forces, local Shiite militias and Sunni tribal fighters took over an Islamic State camp in the Hamrin hills and freed 34 hostages from the Obadi and Masari tribes, officials said.
The security forces also retook a police station, a gypsum factory and the oil fields at Ajeel and Aas, while militant fighters retreated toward the town of Hawija.
“We will not stop until we liberate Hawija and raise the flags over it,” said Sheikh Hatim Al-Assi, a spokesman for the local fighters, adding that the tribal force would also help in the larger battle for Mosul.
“We will take revenge on the killers and the criminals,” he said. “ISIS has no place in our society, and we are one hand with the army and the mobilization fighters and the peshmerga to eliminate them.” Mobilization fighters refers to the Shiite militias, and the peshmerga are Kurds.
Mr. Al-Assi said residents in Hawija had reported that the militants were preparing to abandon the town and evacuate their families to Mosul or across the border into Syria.
“They are leaving everything behind them, and stealing everything, and they are being defeated, so their staying here means their death,” he said. “We will not have mercy on those who killed and stole and displaced and abused our people.”
In Tikrit, security officials said government troops were still trying on Wednesday afternoon to take control of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces on the Tigris riverbank, the scene of the massacre. There was no more shooting coming from the palaces, they said, but the troops were proceeding cautiously in securing the grounds because of the risk of roadside bombs and booby traps.
Correction: March 11, 2015
An earlier version of a reporting credit with this article misidentified one of the contributors. He is Ahmed Salah, not Ahmed Maher.
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