Shi’ite, Sunni fighters clash north of Baghdad

BAQUBA, Iraq (Reuters) – The governor of the Iraqi province
where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed this month called in the
army after clashes between Sunni and Shi’ite fighters north of
Baghdad on Friday, police and his office said.

But Defense Ministry spokesman denied receiving a request
to dispatch army units to Muqdadiya in Diyala province, an
ethnically mixed area where sectarian violence has deepened in
recent weeks.

The U.S. military said U.S.-led forces killed three
insurgents and captured four in clashes that began on Thursday
in the nearby village of Khairnabat, where police and witnesses
said Shi’ite militias had attacked Sunnis fleeing the town.

The large, mixed region northeast of Baghdad has seen some
of the worst bloodletting since a U.S.-led invasion toppled
Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime in 2003.

Recent bloodshed and tit-for-tat sectarian killings and
attacks against mosques in Baquba and elsewhere have raised
fears the Diyala violence could spark all-out sectarian war in
Iraq despite the formation of a national unity government.

Police told Reuters suspected Shi’ite militias on Friday
fired three rocket-propelled grenades at a Sunni mosque in
Muqdadiya, 90 km (50 miles) northeast of Baghdad, damaging the
mosque’s minaret but causing no casualties.

Sunni insurgents fired mortar rounds at a Shi’ite mosque in
Muqdadiya to retaliate for the first attack, police said, also
leaving no casualties. Both attacks took place when the mosques
were crowded during Friday’s prayers, police said.

The violence follows fighting in nearby Khairnabat that
police said erupted after Shi’ite militias on Thursday attacked
Sunni residents in revenge for a motorcycle bomb last week that
killed 18 people in Khairnabat’s market.

The U.S. military said fighting began when Iraqi police
trying to enter the village came under small arms fire and
rocket-propelled grenades fired by terrorists.

RUSSIAN BOUNTY

It said U.S. and Iraqi forces chased the militants to a
house where they had barricaded themselves and that air support
was called in to end the fighting. Police and witnesses told
Reuters U.S. helicopters had bombed orchards where militiamen
were believed to be hiding under the cover of date palms.

After the fighting died down, U.S. forces searched the
village, it said in the statement sent early on Friday.

Muqdadiya and Khairnabat lie north of Baquba, a mixed Sunni
and Shi’ite city 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad.

Both al Qaeda and militias loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr are present in Diyala, which has a mix of sects
and ethnic groups, including Shi’ite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Sunni
Kurds, Turkmen, Shi’ite Turkmen and Shi’ite Kurds.

Zarqawi, who headed al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed on June 7
in a U.S. airstike in the village of Hibhib, near Baquba.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden lauded Zarqawi as a “lion
of Jihad” in an Internet audio tape on Friday.

The al Qaeda-led Mujahideen Shura Council has vowed revenge
for Zarqawi’s death. It posted video footage on the Internet on
Sunday showing the killing of three men it said were Russian
hostages. Russia has confirmed all four were killed.

Russia on Friday offered a $10 million reward for help
finding the killers. President Vladimir Putin has ordered state
security agents to hunt down and kill those responsible.