Ruling Shi’ites demand Iraq regain security control

By Omar al-Ibadi

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite alliance on
Monday urged U.S. forces to return control of security to
Iraqis after what it called the cold-blooded killing of unarmed
people in a Baghdad mosque during a U.S.-Iraqi raid.

It made the demand as angry Shi’ites buried those killed in
Sunday’s operation by Iraqi special forces backed by U.S.
advisers. The U.S. military has denied targeting a mosque.

In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber killed 40 army recruits
after walking into an Iraqi base near the restive city of
Mosul.

“The Alliance calls for a rapid restoration of (control of)
security matters to the Iraqi government,” Jawad al-Maliki, a
senior spokesman of the United Iraqi Alliance and ally of Prime
Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, told a news conference.

Some Shi’ite government officials have joined aides to
radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in accusing U.S. troops
of massacring worshippers at the Mustafa mosque near Sadr City,
a poor district that is home to about two million Shi’ites.

The group led by Sadr, whose power base is in Sadr City,
also forms part of the powerful Shi’ite alliance.

The U.S. military said Iraqi troops, with U.S. advisers,
only returned fire during a raid against militants, killing 16
people, and that no mosque was entered or damaged.

But government-run Iraqi media have portrayed the operation
as a U.S. raid on unarmed worshippers in a holy place.

The building was not a traditional mosque but a former
Baath party compound used by Shi’ites for prayers and other
religious events and was known locally as the Mustafa mosque.

The bombing in the north occurred between Mosul and Tal
Afar, a town U.S. President George W. Bush has recently held up
as an example of security progress in Iraq.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry said a suicide bomber wearing an
explosive belt killed 40 men and wounded 30 among a crowd of
would-be army recruits. The base has been attacked in the past.

MILITIA CALLS

At the burials of the mosque victims in Baghdad, men wailed
and hugged each other as some coffins were loaded onto vans.

Furious mourners said only Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia, not
Iraqi security forces, could save them from sectarian
bloodshed.

“No one is protecting us,” shouted Hamid Taayab, his voice
high-pitched with anger, waving his arms wildly. “If it wasn’t
for the Mehdi Army we would be slaughtered in our homes.”

Violence between Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs, who
were favored under Saddam Hussein’s rule, has been rising. Many
Iraqis fear the bloodshed could spiral into all-out civil war.

Police said they found the strangled, tortured bodies of 12
more apparent victims of sectarian feuding in Baghdad on
Monday.

Scores of such corpses turn up in Iraq every day in
killings so commonplace that local media barely noted Sunday’s
discovery of 30 bodies, many beheaded, in a village northeast
of Baghdad.

Baghdad provincial governor Hussein al-Tahan said he would
halt all cooperation with U.S. forces until there was a
U.S.-Iraqi inquiry that excluded the U.S. military. It was not
clear what practical impact such a ban would have.

Although the facts of Sunday night’s raid are in dispute,
analysts say it has been damaging for the United States and a
propaganda windfall for Sadr as the country’s Shi’ite, Kurdish
and Sunni leaders struggle to form a government of unity to
head off civil war three months after parliamentary elections.

Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said
Sadr could stir up trouble at a time when the United States and
Iran are preparing for talks on stabilizing Iraq.

“The mosque incident will definitely boost his cause,”
Hiltermann said of the cleric, who like other Shi’ite leaders
in the alliance, has links with Tehran.

“The Shi’ites now believe the Americans, who brought them
to power, are engaged in what they call the second betrayal.
First the Americans abandoned them in the first Gulf War and
now they believe the Americans are turning their backs on
them,” he said.

Hiltermann was referring to Shi’ite and Kurdish revolts in
1991 which Washington let Saddam Hussein crush, and to growing
Shi’ite suspicion of recent U.S. attempts to calm a Sunni Arab
insurgency by pushing for a Sunni role in a unity government.

Saddam’s former lieutenant, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, called
on Arab leaders to support the insurgency and boycott the
government, in an audio tape aired by Al Jazeera TV on Monday.

Al Jazeera identified the voice on the tape as that of
Ibrahim, but it was not immediately possible to confirm this.

The speaker urged an Arab summit in Sudan this week to
recognize the “Iraqi resistance as the sole legitimate
representative of the Iraqi people” and to “boycott the regime
of agents and traitors.”

Ibrahim is the most senior member of Saddam’s government
not captured or killed. It was not clear when the tape was
recorded.