Baghdad Hosting Nat’l Conference on Countering Extremism

The conference, which is attended by scholars and political figures from different parts of Iraq, will conclude on Monday.

Addressing the opening ceremony, Sheikh Abdul Latif al-Hamim, the head of Iraq’s Sunnis’ Awqaf Department, described the ISIL terrorist group as a deviated cult and underlined the need for strong stances against terrorism and extremism.

He also said a plan is needed for enhancing national unity in Iraq to resolve the country’s issues and better confront the terrorists, al-Sumaria news website reported.

Iraq has been facing the growing threat of terrorism, mainly posed by ISIL.
The ISIL militants made swift advances in much of northern and western Iraq over the last summer, after capturing large swaths of northern Syria.

However, a combination of concentrated attacks by the Iraqi military and the volunteer forces, who rushed to take arms after top Iraqi cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling for fight against the militants, have blunted the edge of the ISIL offensive.

/SR