Coordinates: 33°3′42″N 44°21′15″E / 33.06167°N 44.35417°E Mahmoudiyah (also transliterated Mahmudiyah, Mahmoudi, or Mahmoodiyah, prefixed usually with Al-) is a 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, a majority of whom are Shia Arabs, while the surrounding rural areas are entirely dominated by Sunni Arab tribes that include: Al Tmame, Dulaim, Al Ubaid, Qarghoul and Al Jubour (These are all Shia and Sunni Arab Tribes)
For full article see Mahmudiyah killings
During the Iraq War, a war crime took place in Mahmudiyah on March 12, 2006 in which five soldiers of the 502d Infantry Regiment, raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi (an Iraqi Sunni Arab girl) and then murdered her, after killing her father Qassim Hamza Raheem, her mother Fakhriya Taha Muhasen and her six-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. 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.