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Civil war looms with 68 killed in Baghdad
(AP)
Updated: 2006-03-01 06:52
Sunnis and Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious
targets in Baghdad well into the night Tuesday, killing at least 68 people a day
after authorities lifted a curfew that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian
reprisal attacks.
At least six of Tuesday's attacks hit clearly religious
targets, concluding with a car bombing after sundown at the Shiite Abdel Hadi
Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood that killed 23 and wounded 55. A
separate suicide bombing killed 23 people at an east Baghdad gas station, where
people had lined up to buy kerosine.
An Iraqi resident stands beside the wreckage
of a vehicle at the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's al-Gadeda
district February 28, 2006. At least 68 people were killed as Sunnis and
Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets
in Baghdad well into the night Tuesday.
[Reuters] |
In addition to those known to have been killed Tuesday, police found nine
more bullet-riddled bodies, including a Sunni Muslim tribal sheik, off a road
southeast of Baghdad. It was unclear when they died.
The surge of violence deepened the trauma of residents already shaken by
fears the country was teetering on the brink of sectarian civil war, threatened
talks among Iraqi politicians struggling to form a government and raised
questions about U.S. plans to begin drawing down troop strength this summer.
Iraq began to tilt seriously toward outright civil war after the Feb. 22
bombing of the important Shiite Askariya shrine in the mainly Sunni city of
Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.
US President Bush decried the latest surge in sectarian violence Tuesday and
said that for Iraqis "the choice is chaos or unity."
In congressional testimony, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte
said a civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East,
pitting the region's Sunni and Shiite powers against one another.
Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said the sectarian
violence stems from a core of Sunni Arab insurgents who can exploit "social,
economic, historical and religious grievances."
"Networks based on these relationships remain the greatest threat to
long-term stability in Iraq," Maples said.
The sectarian violence has hit Baghdad hardest because the population in the
capital is about evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis, more so than in any
other region of the country.
At about the same time as the attack on the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque,
a mortar round landed near the Shiite Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kazimiyah
neighborhood on the opposite side of the Tigris River, killing one and wounding
10.
Those attacks appeared to have been in retaliation for assaults on Sunni
places of worship earlier in the day.
North of Baghdad, a blast badly damaged a Sunni mosque where the father of
Saddam Hussein was buried in the family's ancestral hometown, Tikrit. The Iraqi
Islamic Party reported a bomb hit the Sunni Thou Nitaqain mosque in the Hurriyah
neighborhood at 8 a.m. Tuesday, killing three and wounding 11. Gunmen in two
speeding cars opened fire on the Sunni al-Salam mosque in the western Baghdad's
Mansour district, killing a guard.
Late Tuesday police reported finding the body of Shiite cleric Hani Hadi
handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head near a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's
notorious Dora neighborhood.
One of the day's bloodiest attacks came when a suicide bomber detonated an
explosives vest packed with ball bearings among people lined up to buy kerosine
at a crowded filling station in east Baghdad. The blast killed 23 people and
wounded 51, leaving behind the charred and twisted remains of wheeled carts that
customers had used to transport fuel canisters to the station.
A car bombing in the same neighborhood targeted a police patrol and killed
five people and wounded 17 锟斤拷 all civilians.
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