Sunnis in Iraq Often See Their Government as the Bigger Threat - NYTimes.com →

"Worse, a growing list of indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes by the Iraqi military has widened the gap between Sunnis and the government, while making the country’s violence seem ever more inescapable.

Khalid Abduljabar Ahmed, who arrived at the school in Alam last week minutes after the airstrike at the abandoned school, said he saw “horrible scenes.”

“Burning children. Half bodies, and blood everywhere,” he said. (...)

The fatalities from the bombing threatened to alienate Sunnis in an area “that had been a pocket of local resistance to ISIS,” said Zaid al-Ali, the author of “The Struggle for Iraq’s Future.”

One of the district’s prominent tribes, Al Jabour, had been openly fighting with ISIS in the area, he said. Mr. Ali, who has extensive contacts in Iraq, said that residents of Tikrit, one of Iraq’s most important Sunni cities, had been clamoring for the army to rid the city of the militants.

The airstrikes at the school sent a “terrible message,” he said: “If you resist ISIS, you can still be attacked. You suffer at the hands of ISIS, and at the hands of the government.”"