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Dozens killed in Iraqi violence
Associated Press Feb. 23, 2006 08:35 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen shot dead 47 civilians and left their bodies in a ditch near Baghdad Thursday as militia battles and sectarian reprisals followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine. Sunni Arabs suspended their participation in talks on a new government.
At least 47 other bodies were found scattered across Iraq, many of them shot execution-style and dumped in Shiite-dominated parts of Baghdad.
The hardline Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said 168 Sunni mosques had been attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 abducted since the shrine attack. The Interior Ministry said it could only confirm figures for Baghdad, where 90 mosques were attacked in Baghdad, one cleric was killed, and one abducted.
Officials said at least 110 people had been killed across the country in violence believed triggered by the mosque attack.
Three journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were found dead in Samarra, the site of Wednesday's Askariya mosque attack. Al-Arabiya is viewed in Iraq as favoring the United States.
The sectarian violence threatens to derail U.S. plans to form a new national unity government representing all factions, including Sunni Arabs, who form the backbone of the insurgency.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, summoned political leaders to a meeting Thursday. But the biggest Sunni faction in the new parliament, the Iraqi Accordance Front, refused to attend, citing the attacks on Sunni mosques.
"We want a clear condemnation from the government which didn't do enough yesterday to curb those angry mobs," said Dr. Salman al-Jumaili, a member of the Front. "There was even a kind of cooperation with the government security forces in some places in attacking the Sunni mosques."
As the country veered ominously toward sectarian war, the government extended a curfew in Baghdad and Salaheddin province for two days. All leaves for Iraqi soldiers and police were canceled and personnel ordered to report to their units.
Sixteen people, eight of them civilians, died in a bombing Thursday in the center of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
The bombing, which targeted soldiers, was not seen as part of the sectarian fighting.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr accused the Iraqi government and U.S. forces of failing to protect the Samarra shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, and ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq.
"If the government had real sovereignty, then nothing like this would have happened," al-Sadr said a statement. "Brothers in the Mahdi Army must protect all Shiite shrines and mosques, especially in Samara."
The destruction of the gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine in Samarra sent crowds of angry Shiites into the streets. The crowds included members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias that the United States wants abolished.
Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars spokesman Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi blamed the violence on the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and other Shiite religious leaders who called for demonstrations against the shrine attack.
"They are all fully aware that the Iraqi borders are open, and the streets are penetrated with those who want to create strife among Iraqis," al-Kubaisi said at a news briefing.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Thursday that he suspects Al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for the devastating explosion at the Golden Mosque.
"There is not yet information about what caused this terrorist outrage, but al-Zarqawi and al-Qaida have been linked as it has the hallmarks of their nihilism," Straw told a news conference in London. He called on leaders of Iraq's religious communities to defuse tensions caused by the attack.
Prime Minister Tony Blair said the attack was "an act of desperation as well as desecration."
Al-Kubaisi said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad enflamed the situation when he warned Monday that the United States would not continue to support institutions run by sectarian groups with links to armed militias.
"Without doubt, these statements mobilized all the Shiites," al-Kubaisi said. "It made them ready to go down to the street at any moment."
In Diyala, a religiously mixed province northeast of Baghdad, 47 bodies were found in a ditch. Officials said the victims appeared to have been stopped by gunmen, forced out of their cars and shot near Nahrawan, about 12 miles south of Baqouba. Most were aged between 20 and 50 and appeared to include both Sunnis and Shiites, police said.
Fighting broke out Thursday afternoon in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, between militiamen from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and Sunni gunmen. Two civilians were killed and five militiamen were injured, police Capt. Rashid al-Samaraie said.
Thousands of demonstrators carrying Shiite flags and banners marched Thursday through parts of Baghdad, Karbala, Kut, Tal Afar and the Shiite holy city of Najaf in protest against the shrine attack.
U.S. military units in the Baghdad area were told Thursday morning to halt all but essential travel. Commanders feared that convoys might be caught up in demonstrations or road blocks.
Also Thursday, gunmen fired automatic weapons and grenades at a Sunni mosque in Baqouba, killing one mosque employee and injuring two others, police said. Assailants also set fire to a Sunni mosque in eastern Baghdad, police said.
Eight Iraqi soldiers and eight civilians were killed when a soup vendor's cart packed with explosives detonated as a patrol passed in the center of Baqouba, police Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said. At least 20 people were injured in the blast.
The bullet-riddled bodies of a prominent Al-Arabyia TV female correspondent and two other Iraqi journalists, who had been covering Wednesday's explosion in Samarra, were found on the outskirts of the mostly Sunni Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad.
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Civil war in Iraq feared after blast Bomb destroys mosque's dome, enrages Shiites, fuels violence
Ziad Khalaf Associated Press Feb. 23, 2006 12:00 AM
SAMARRA, Iraq - The golden dome is in ruins, its glory shattered by bombs.
Around Iraq, Shiites were enraged at Wednesday's strike against one of their holiest sites, and with an unprecedented spasm of militia violence, Iraq veered closer to open civil war than at any point in the past three years.
Distraught faithful formed a human chain to remove copies of the Muslim holy book from the rubble, while Shiites elsewhere retaliated with more than 90 attacks on Sunni mosques and mass protests.
"This is designed to bring about a civil war," said Barham Saleh, a top Kurdish leader.
"This criminal act aims at igniting civil strife," said Mahmoud al-Samarie, a 28-year-old construction worker. "We demand an investigation so that the criminals who did this be punished. If the government fails to do so, then we will take up arms and chase the people behind this attack."
Leaders on both sides called for calm, and many Shiites lashed out at the United States as partly to blame.
"We are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq's unity," said President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. "We should all stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of a civil war."
President Bush pledged American help to restore the mosque after the bombing north of Baghdad, which dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to keep Iraq from falling deeper into sectarian violence.
"The terrorists in Iraq have again proven that they are enemies of all faiths and of all humanity," Bush said. "The world must stand united against them and steadfast behind the people of Iraq."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair also condemned the bombing and pledged money for the shrine's reconstruction.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, called the attack a deliberate attempt to foment sectarian strife and warned it is a "critical moment for Iraq."
No one was reported injured in the bombing of the shrine in Samarra.
But at least 19 people, including three Sunni clerics, were killed in the reprisal attacks that followed, mainly in Baghdad and predominantly Shiite provinces to the south, according to the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni political group.
"This could be a tipping point," said Juan Cole, a historian of Shiite Islam at the University of Michigan. "At some point, the Shiite street is going to be so fed up that they're not going to listen any more to calls for restraint."
In the southern city of Basra, police said militiamen broke into a prison, hauled out 12 inmates, including seven foreigners, and shot them dead in reprisal for Samarra. They included two Egyptians, two Tunisians, a Libyan, a Saudi and a Turk.
Major Sunni groups joined in condemning the attack, and a leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation "before it spins out of control."
The country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, sent instructions to his followers forbidding attacks on Sunni mosques and called for seven days of mourning.
But in a rare move, he also called for public protests. Sistani has typically called for even peaceful protesters to stay off the streets, fearing a downward spiral into violence.
"(Sistani) has the coolest and wisest head in Iraq, but this has chaos written all over it," Cole said. "He must know the likelihood of these protests being completely peaceful is low, so he's got to be absolutely furious to call for people to come out on the streets."
In Najaf, Sistani's home, thousands of protesters lined the streets, their voices booming, "Just order us, Sistani, and we will turn the world dark."
Many of the attacks appeared to have been carried out by Shiite militias that the United States wants to see disbanded.
Both Sunnis and the United States fear the rise of Shiite militias, which the disaffected Sunni minority views as little more than death squads. American commanders believe they undercut efforts to create a professional Iraqi army and police force, a key step toward the eventual drawdown of U.S. forces.
The new tensions came as Iraq's various factions have been struggling to assemble a government after the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
Large protests erupted in Shiite parts of Baghdad and in cities throughout the Shiite heartland to the south.
Shiite protesters later set fire to a Sunni shrine containing the seventh-century tomb of Talha bin Obeid-Allah, a companion of the Prophet Mohammed, on the outskirts of Basra.
Less than a block away, no one stirred at the local police station to halt the violence.
Christian Science Monitor and Knight Ridder Newspapers contributed to this article.