Saleh lived on the banks of the River Tigris, opposite Camp Speicher, an airbase that had formerly been used by the United States Army during the US occupation of Iraq and was by 2014 being used as a training centre for the Iraqi Army. As ISIL approached Tikrit, soldiers and cadets fled the camp. Many were captured by ISIL, with at least a thousand of them killed in the subsequent Camp Speicher massacre.
