Mahmoudiyah (also transliterated Mahmudiyah, Mahmoudi, or Mahmoodiyah, prefixed usually with Al-) is a Sunni Arab Iraqi rural city south of Baghdad. Known as the “Gateway to Baghdad,” the city's proximity to Baghdad made it central to the counterinsurgency campaign.
Mahmudiya District has approximately 550,000 inhabitants, about 92 percent of them Sunni Arabs and the rest mostly Shias.
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For full article see Mahmudiyah killings
During the Iraq War, a war crime took place in Mahmudiyah in March 2006 in which five soldiers of the 502d Infantry Regiment, raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qasim Hamza, and then murdered her, her father, her mother Fakhriya Taha Muhasen and her six-year-old sister. The soldiers then burned the bodies to conceal evidence of the crime. Four of the soldiers were convicted of rape and murder, and the fifth was convicted of lesser crimes.
Earlier, in late 2003, The Observer and Human Rights Watch reported a less volatile incident in Al-Mahmudiyah associated with the soldiers from the 82nd Airborne’s 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
Efforts have been conducted into rebuilding the city.[1] The current mayor (as of January 2007) is Muayid Fadil Hussein Habib.[2]