Some of
the dead lie in the morgue of the hospital in the town of Kalar, after
gunmen killed 21 people including many high school students and wounded
one on Sunday after dragging passengers off buses in the town of Ain
Laila, inbetween Qara Tappah and Baqouba, in Iraq Sunday, June 4,
2006. [AP Photo] |
Masked gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students north of Baghdad Sunday,
ordered the passengers off, separated Shiites from Sunni Arabs, and killed the
21 Shiites "in the name of Islam," a witness said.
In predominantly Shiite southern Basra, police hunting for militants stormed
a Sunni Arab mosque early Sunday, just hours after a car bombing. The ensuing
fire fight killed nine.
The two attacks dealt a blow to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's pledge
to curb sectarian violence. He again failed to reach consensus Sunday among
Iraq's ethnic and sectarian parties on candidates for interior and defense
minister - posts he must fill to implement his ambitious plan to take
control of Iraq's security from US-led forces within 18 months.
Violence linked to Shiite and Sunni Arab animosity has grown increasingly
worse since Feb. 22, when bombs ravaged the golden dome of a revered Shiite
mosque in predominantly Sunni Arab Samarra.
Sectarian tensions have run particularly high in
Baghdad, Basra and Diyala province, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region. And Sunday's attacks came just days after terrorist mastermind Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi renewed his call for Sunni Arabs to take up arms against Shiites,
whom he often vilifies as infidels.
In the minibus ambush, a car and an SUV stopped the vehicles near the town of
Qara Tappah, about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad and near Diyala province,
electrician Haqi Ismail, 48, told The Associated Press.
Ismail said he had been driving his pickup truck behind the vans and was
stopped too. About 15 masked men wearing traditional robes known as a dishdashas
forced everyone out of the vehicles, he said.
"They asked us to show our IDs, and then instructed us to stand in a line,
separating the Sunni from the Shiite due to the IDs and also due to the faces,"
said Ismail, a Shiite Kurd.
He said the gunmen ordered the Shiites to lie down and before they opened
fire one shouted, "On behalf of Islam, today we will dig a mass grave for you.
You are traitors."
Ismail said he was injured but did not move.
"One of the gunmen kicked me to be sure that I was dead," he said, speaking
from his hospital bed in Sulaimaniyah, north of Qara Tappah.
Two of the victims were high school students, ages 17 and 18, and nine were
students at al-Yarmouk University in Baqouba, ages 21-22, said Qara Tappah's
mayor, Serwan Shokir. The rest were men in their mid-to-late 30s, who worked as
laborers or for the power company, the mayor said.
The Basra violence - the car bomb Saturday and mosque raid early
Sunday - came days after al-Maliki declared a state of emergency in the
city, vowing to crack down with an "iron fist" on gangs fighting for power.
Basra police surrounded the al-Arab mosque just after
midnight Saturday, tipped off that militants holed up inside had opened fire.
Also, Iraqi forces had found two vehicles packed with explosives near the
mosque, similar to the car bomb used to attack a crowded market, killing 28
people and wounding 62.
