Bombs and clashes as Iraq govt warns of “civil war”

By Michael Georgy and Lin Noueihed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car bomb in a Shi’ite holy city and
bloody battles around Sunni mosques in Baghdad that breached a
second day’s curfew on the capital heightened fears on Saturday
that Iraq was heading for civil war.

Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi called for calm
and told a live televised news conference on state television:
“If there is a civil war in this country it will never end.”

Extending the curfew to Monday morning, Iraqi leaders are
scrambling to break the round of tit-for-tat reprisals, sparked
by a suspected al Qaeda bombing of a major Shi’ite shrine in
Samarra on Wednesday. The gravest crisis since the U.S.
invasion in 2003 threatens U.S. plans to withdraw its 136,000
troops.

The biggest political bloc from the once-dominant Sunni
Muslim minority said it might end a boycott of U.S.-backed
negotiations on forming a national unity government that
Washington hopes can stifle sectarian strife that has killed
more than 200 people in Baghdad in three days.

But Iraq’s most prominent Sunni cleric, blaming Shi’ite
police for attacking his home, said live on pan-Arab television
during the gunbattle: “This is civil war declared by one side.”

It seemed that shooting may have been linked, however, to a
gun attack on the passing funeral cortege of a journalist
killed as she reported from Samarra on Wednesday. The same
mourners were hit by a roadside bomb on their return from the
burial in western Baghdad. The two attacks left three security
men dead.

Thousands of untried, U.S.-trained police and Iraqi troops
kept traffic off the roads around Baghdad. The U.S. military
said it had a rapid reaction force standing by in the city.

CAR BOMB

South of the capital, a remote-controlled car bomb killed
eight people and wounded 31 in the Shi’ite holy city of
Kerbala.

Overnight gunbattles around Sunni mosques in two parts of
Baghdad were followed by the discovery of the bodies of 14
police commandos near one of the sites. Police said it was not
immediately clear how or when their colleagues were killed.

Gunmen wearing the black clothing preferred by some Shi’ite
militias attacked two mosques in the south of the city with
rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, police said. Residents
said local Sunnis defending one of the mosques appeared to fire
both on the militiamen and on police commandos who intervened.

Near Baquba, northeast of the capital, where religious
tensions run high, police said gunmen killed 12 members of one
family in their home in what they said was a sectarian attack
on Shi’ites. Relatives said three of the dead were Sunnis —
not uncommon in the region because of mixed marriages.

Rockets and mortars fell on the sprawling Shi’ite slum of
Sadr City in eastern Baghdad. One destroyed a house and killed
two women and a man and wounded a child, said a spokesman for
the Shi’ite movement led by fiery cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Near the northern city of Kirkuk, a Katyusha rocket damaged
a Shi’ite shrine overnight, police sources said.

Near Baquba, military sources said Iraqi troops killed four
suspected Sunni insurgents and arrested 17.

The main Sunni political bloc, which raised hopes for
stability by standing in a parliamentary election in December,
pulled out of negotiations on a unity coalition with Shi’ites
and Kurds after accusing Shi’ite leaders of fomenting violence.

But on Saturday, after Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari
issued a statement promising state aid to repair dozens of
damaged mosques and a possible special guard force for
religious sites, the Iraq Accordance Front said it could rejoin
the process.

“It will not hesitate to reconsider its position and return
to the negotiating table on the formation of the new government
if our legitimate demands are met,” it said in a statement. The
main party in the Front also condemned the Kerbala bomb.

The Front has demanded, among other things, a formal
apology for the reprisals from the ruling Shi’ite Alliance.

BUSH PLEA

“This is a moment of choosing for the Iraqi people,” U.S.
President George W. Bush said on Friday.

“The coming days will be intense.”

Rival Shi’ite leaders, all involved in government, deny
sending their respective militia forces against Sunni targets;
but the shows of force may have strengthened their hands in the
U.S.-sponsored negotiations on a national unity coalition.

The Shi’ite fury that has stalled the talks by prompting a
Sunni boycott is greater than any provoked by al Qaeda and
other Sunni rebel attacks that have killed thousands since U.S.
forces toppled Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led regime three years
ago.

Calls for Muslim unity from preachers at Friday prayers had
seemed to calm tensions but senior government officials told
Reuters they were still concerned tempers could get out of
hand, especially if Shi’ite clerics were unable to contain the
anger of their majority community against Sunni insurgents.

Iraqi and U.S. officials blamed the bloodless but symbolic
attack on Samarra’s Golden Mosque on al Qaeda, saying it wants
to wreck the project for democracy in Iraq; al Qaeda accused
Shi’ites of carrying it out as an excuse for attacks on Sunnis.

Abroad, there has been concern that Iraqi sectarian
violence could inflame the entire Middle East if it gets out of
hand.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald, Mussab Al-
Khairalla and Nick Olivari in Baghdad, Sami al-Jumaili in
Kerbala and Faris al-Mehdawi in Baquba)