November 24, 2006 11:32 a.m. EST

Sectarian Violence Escalates
In Iraq After Sadr City Attack

Militiamen in Baghdad grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive as Iraqi soldiers stood by, and seven Sunni mosques came under attack as Shiites took revenge for the slaughter of 215 people in the Sadr City slum.

With the government trying to avert a civil war, two simultaneous bombings in Tal Afar, in northern Iraq, killed at least 23 people. On Thursday, Sunni-Arab insurgents unleashed bombings and mortar attacks in Sadr City, the deadliest assault since the U.S.-led invasion.

Members of the Mahdi Army militia burned four mosques and several homes while killing 12 other Sunni residents in the once-mixed Hurriyah neighborhood until American forces arrived, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. Gunmen loyal to radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began taking over the neighborhood this summer and a majority of its Sunni residents already had fled.

The gunmen attacked the four mosques with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and automatic rifles. Residents said the militiamen prevented them from entering the burned buildings to remove the dead, and they and Capt. Hussein said Shiite-dominated police and Iraqi military stood idly by.

Later Friday, militiamen raided al-Samarraie Sunni mosque in the el-Amel district and killed two guards, police 1st. Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razaq said. Two other Sunni mosques in west Baghad also were attacked, police said

Friday's explosions in Tal Afar , which is 93 miles east of the Syrian border and 260 miles northwest of Baghdad, occurred at about 11 a.m. outside a car dealership, said police Brig. Gen. Sabah Hamidi, who provided the casualty figures.

Followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr blamed the U.S. for Thursday's attacks and warned they will suspend their membership in Parliament and the cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush next week, a member of Parliament said. Messrs. Messrs. Bush and Maliki are scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Jordan.

Baghdad remained under a 24-hour curfew aimed at stopping widespread sectarian violence in the capital. Mr. Maliki, himself a Shiite, ordered police to guard the processions carrying victims of Thursday's attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents in Sadr City to Najaf, the holy Shiite city where they will be buried.

More Pressure on U.S.

Thursday's attacks -- a wave of car bombings in a Shiite Muslim area of Baghdad that were followed almost immediately by mortar attacks on Sunni Muslim neighborhoods -- seemed likely to push Iraq further into civil war and to complicate U.S. efforts to bring stability to the country. The attacks also reflected the increasing sophistication and coordination of combatants.

Sunni insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars in Sadr City, killing at least 215 people and wounding 252 in a dramatic attack that sent the U.S. ambassador racing to meet with Iraqi leaders in an effort to contain the growing sectarian war. Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells that badly damaged the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya neighborhood and killed one person.

Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organization in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire. Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said late Thursday.

"We condemn such acts of senseless violence that are clearly aimed at undermining the Iraqi people's hopes for a peaceful and stable Iraq," White House spokesman Jeanie Mamo said in Washington.

On Thursday night, Iraq's government imposed the curfew in the capital and also closed its international airport to all commercial flights. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country's main outlet to the vital shipping lanes in the Gulf.

Leaders from Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm after a hastily organized meeting with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Mr. Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.

In a TV statement read by an aide, Mr. Sadr urged unity among his followers to end the U.S. "occupation" that he said is causing Iraq's strife. The cleric said the attacks coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered Shiite religious leader. The anniversary reckoning was by the Islamic calendar.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shiite religious figure in Iraq, condemned the bombings and issued condolences to family members of those who were killed. He called for self-control among his followers.

With Iraqi security forces widely viewed as inefficient or tainted by sectarianism themselves, many Iraqis still look to the U.S. for protection. But despite stepped-up patrols and security sweeps in Baghdad in recent months, U.S. forces and their Iraqi counterparts have been unable to stem sectarian violence, raising questions of what kind of a security strategy can succeed in stopping what many Iraqis now openly call a civil war.

While the Bush administration has resisted using that term to describe the violence, military leaders have been steadily ringing alarm bells about the worsening sectarian strife. In early August, Gen. John Abizaid, top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, described the situation this way: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war." The situation has worsened since then.

Broadening Sectarian Warfare

U.S. forces didn't deploy to Sadr City yesterday, instead leaving the area to Iraqi security forces and armed Shiite militiamen. Top Iraqi politicians, including President Jalal Talabani, held an emergency meeting and issued a statement calling for "a revision of the government's existing security plans for Baghdad to better protect innocent civilians."

The carnage broadens the sectarian warfare between Sunnis, a minority population but one that dominated the ranks of Saddam Hussein's government, and Shiites, the majority of the population, who often were marginalized by the former regime.

Fighting between Shiite and Sunni militias broke out in earnest after insurgents -- presumed to be Sunnis -- destroyed a landmark Shiite shrine in Samarra in February. Afterward, Shiite militias, often operating from within Iraq's security forces, went on a spree of gruesome killings and torture of Sunnis. The Sunni insurgents ratcheted up attacks against Shiite civilians, alongside their older fight against the U.S. occupation.

The new Shiite-dominated government, which took office in May, has failed either to disarm the Shiite militias or defuse the Sunni insurgency. Both sides instead have grown more recalcitrant and brazen in the ferocity of their attacks.

On Wednesday, the United Nations said 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the single deadliest monthly toll since the U.S.-led invasion. "Hundreds of bodies continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad -- handcuffed, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture and execution-style killing," the U.N. said. It attributed much of the violence to sectarian warfare.

The main battleground of this war is Baghdad, a city of some five million where Sunnis and Shiites have long lived in mixed neighborhoods. "If the government doesn't control Baghdad, it will lose this war," says Mahmoud Mashadani, the Sunni speaker of Iraq's Parliament.

The Parliament itself -- dominated by Shiite political parties that were the big winners of last year's elections -- has grown increasingly polarized. Lawmakers trade insults and often divide along sectarian lines on key points of national policy. "The Parliament represents the streets," says Jalaladdin al-Sagheer, an influential Shiite lawmaker. "We have a conflict on the streets, so it's the same inside the Parliament."

After receiving word of the car bombings in Sadr City on his mobile phone, Mr. Sagheer had little doubt as to what would come next: "Of course the Mahdi army will take revenge." The Mahdi army, a powerful Shiite militia that follows Mr. Sadr, has been a constant fixture of the Iraq war, turning its weapons twice against the Americans and more recently focusing on sectarian attacks against Sunnis.

Despite its promises to crack down on the Mahdi army and other Shiite militias linked to powerful political parties, the Iraqi government has achieved little success. Ordinary Iraqis have largely despaired in their government, seen as weak and protected from the real Iraq by the fortified walls and checkpoints of the Green Zone, the large, U.S.-protected enclave in the center of the city.

As the violence deepens, one thing unites Iraqi politicians across the Sunni-Shia divide: Growing concern about increasing talk in Washington of a possible withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Mr. Mashadani, the outspoken Sunni Parliament speaker, suggests the U.S. should have some 500,000 troops in Iraq to truly make a difference. Mr. Sagheer, the Shiite lawmaker, also says the U.S. should stay and keep training Iraqi security forces.

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