Iraqi PM sacks Basra police chief for incompetence

Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki fired the Basra police chief today over his force’s failure to stop weekend attacks on Sunni mosques.

At least two major mosques were attacked in the Basra area over the weekend, in retaliation for last Wednesday’s toppling of minarets at a prized Shiite shrine in Samarra.

A new police chief would replace Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hamadi al-Mousawi today, a Basra police officer said.

Al-Mousawi was “seen as incompetent, because he couldn’t stop attacks by Shiite extremists against two Sunni mosques in the wake of the Samara attacks,” the officer said.

An adviser to Mr Maliki confirmed the report but would not elaborate. An official in the office of Mr Maliki’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, confirmed it as well, saying only that the replacement came as part of the reconstruction of the Basra police department.

Basra is Iraq’s second-largest city, 340 miles south-east of Baghdad.