BAGHDAD, Iraq - Masked Shiite gunmen roamed through west Baghdad's Jihad
neighborhood Sunday, dragging Sunnis from their cars, picking them out on the
street and killing them in a rampage that police said killed 41 people in a
dramatic escalation of sectarian violence.
A mother cries over
her young boy wounded in crossfire during street fights, Sunday, July 9,
2006, in the Jihad area of western Baghdad, Iraq. Gunmen stopped cars in
western Baghdad, grabbing people from the street and separating Sunni
Arabs from the rest, killing at least 37 people, police said, in a
dramatic escalation of sectarian violence in the country.
[AP] |
Hours later, two car bombs exploded
near a Shiite mosque in the city's north, killing 17 people and wounding 38 in
what appeared to be a reprisal attack, police said.
Black-clad Shiite militiamen manned checkpoints on roads into most major
Shiite neighborhoods to guard against revenge attacks, as scattered clashes
occurred across the Iraqi capital.
Sunni leaders expressed outrage over the killings, and President Jalal
Talabani, a Kurd, appealed for calm, warning that the nation stood "in front of
a dangerous precipice."
Presidential security adviser Wafiq al-Samaraie told Al-Jazeera television
that "we are at the gates of civil war" unless "exceptional measures" are taken.
A senior government official, Haidar Majid, contested the police figures,
saying late Sunday that only nine people died in Jihad. Police Lt. Mohammed
Khayoun insisted the figure of 41 was correct - with 24 bodies taken to Yarmouk
hospital and 17 to the city morgue. There was no way to reconcile the
discrepancy.
Regardless, the brazen attack was likely to further enflame Shiite-Sunni
tensions and undermine public confidence in Iraq's new unity government. It also
raises new questions about the effectiveness of the Iraqi police and army to
curb sectarian violence in the capital.
The trouble started about 10 a.m. when several carloads of gunmen drove into
the Jihad area along the main road to Baghdad International Airport, police and
witnesses said. The gunmen stopped cars, checked passengers' identification
cards and shot dead those with Sunni names.
Masked gunmen wearing black clothes roamed the streets, abducting Sunnis
whose bodies were found later scattered throughout the religiously mixed
neighborhood, an Interior Ministry official said. He spoke on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.
U.S. and Iraqi forces sealed off the area, and residents said American troops
using loudspeakers announced a two-day curfew. Black smoke from burning tires
wafted through the streets.
Another policeman, Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq,
also said 41 bodies had been collected and taken to hospitals. Some Sunni
clerics put the death toll at more than 50 in Jihad, a once prosperous
neighborhood of handsome villas owned by officials of Saddam Hussein's security
services.
Residents contacted by telephone told of gunmen systematically rounding up
and massacring Sunni men.
