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Shi'ite, Sunni fighters clash north of Baghdad

Posted on: Friday, 30 June 2006, 09:15 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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