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Iraq | Kirkuk residents want their city back, and so does everyone else | Mindy Belz

Fighting in Kirkuk is bad enough; in just one day last week, April 5, roadside bombs killed one Iraqi and one U.S. soldier and wounded half a dozen. But at the northern Iraqi city's Republic Hospital the cure to the violence turns out to be worse than the disease. Last month a promising young doctor at this, one of the city's two main Iraqi hospitals, admitted to being a terror cell plant. His assignment: to kill wounded Iraqis, particularly soldiers and policemen, arriving for treatment after insurgent attacks.

Loai Omar al-Taii, 27, confessed to killing more than 40 Iraqi soldiers and policemen after his terror cell leader was arrested by Iraqi forces and fingered him. The doctor, who appeared to his overworked colleagues a devoted caregiver particularly willing to serve in the emergency room, administered lethal injections as he pretended to treat the arriving wounded. He also confessed to surreptitiously admitting and treating insurgents in Kirkuk. With over 1,000 Iraqis injured in insurgent attacks during that time period, no one noticed.