Iraq Sunni clerics blame Shi’ites, US for violence

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s main Sunni Muslim religious
organization, accusing the Shi’ite-led government and U.S.
forces of involvement in attacks by Shi’ite militiamen, called
on Wednesday on the community to protect its mosques.

“Our brothers in all areas must protect their mosques as
the government has failed to do so,” Abdul Salam al-Qubaisi,
spokesman for the Muslim Clerics Association, told a news
conference broadcast live on Al-Jazeera television.

Since a bomb blamed on al Qaeda demolished the Golden
Mosque in Samarra, one of the holiest sites in Shi’ite Islam,
sectarian violence has killed more than 400 people by
government reckoning, pitching Iraq toward civil war.

Qubaisi angrily listed alleged attacks on Sunnis across
Iraq and accused Shi’ite police of attacking the Baghdad home
of the group’s head, Harith al-Dari, on Saturday, wounding some
of Dari’s nieces.

Qubaisi showed a group of children with bandages on their
legs and arms and lying on beds. He said they had been wounded
in the attack.

He said Shi’ite police had showed up at Dari’s house to
arrest him and that when the guards opposed them a shootout
erupted.

He also said reports of Shi’ite families fleeing homes in
the violent Baghdad Sunni suburb of Abu Ghraib were
exaggerated.

The Samarra bombing, although bloodless, has stalled
efforts by Iraq’s divided political leaders to forge a
government of national unity that Washington sees as the best
hope to stabilize the country and allow it to bring home U.S.
troops.

(IRAQ-SUNNIS, Baghdad bureau)