Remain calm

From the Daily Telegraph’s contents page:

Shias asked to flee

Sunni Arabs who seized control of a town near Baghdad threaten to kill hostages
unless the Shias in the area flee, Iraqi officials have said.

Asked?

The town, by the way, named Madaen, is only 20 miles from Baghdad, in case you were taken in by all the happy talk about the insurgency declining. It’s hard to tell how big a deal this particular event is, but given all the stories today in the NYT & elsewhere marking the 30th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge ordering everyone out of the cities, this tactic of the "Sunni Arabs" (!) is a little worrying.

Fortunately we have Iyad ("Comical") Allawi, who somehow is still interim prime minister, to reassure us. This sentence is from the Reuters report:

He said some people were trying to implement "wicked plans of extremist terror"
and urged Iraqis to remain calm.

Not exactly a lullabies and sweet dreams kind of guy.