Reuters reports: Iraqi tribal leader Sheikh Naeem al-Ga’oud and his men once helped U.S. Marines drive al Qaeda out of their Anbar Province stronghold. He doesn’t even put up a brave face when it comes to his current enemy the militants of Islamic State.

This week the al Qaeda offshoot massacred more than 200 members of his Albu Nimr tribe in retaliation for months of resistance.

Ga’oud says he has good reason to fear many more will be rounded up, shot at close range and dumped in mass graves, with little chance that the Iraqi government or United States will come to the rescue of his tribe or any other any time soon.

“A day before the attack we told them (the government) that we will be targeted by the Islamic State. I talked to the commander of the air force, with several commanders,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“We gave them the coordinates of the places where they were, but nobody listened to us,” he said. Asked why he believed the government had not helped, he nearly cried and said: “I don’t know.”

Islamic State fighters have made a practice of executing Shi’ite prisoners when they seize a town, but the shooting of members of the Albu Nimr tribe in the city of Hit on Wednesday appears to be their worst mass killing yet of fellow Sunnis. [Continue reading…]