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Iraqi Shiite Militias Grow Brutal in Anti-IS Fight
(AP-Washington Post) The Shiite militias who have answered the call-to-arms by the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State are growing more brutal, stoked by a desire for revenge against the Sunni extremists who have butchered Shiites who fall into their hands. In a grisly video recently posted online, a Shiite fighter poses beside decapitated bodies. Another militiaman sits nearby, grinning as he maims a corpse. Sunnis, whom the government is trying to win over, accuse the militias of atrocities against their community, and there are concerns over the militias' links to Iran and Lebanon's Shiite Hizbullah group. Still, the tens of thousands of fighters in about half a dozen Shiite militias have been credited with many of the recent battlefield victories south and west of Baghdad.