Maliki appeals for unity as blasts hit Baghdad

By Lutfi Abu Oun and Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s prime minister pleaded for
Iraqis to “unite as brothers” on Monday as a fresh spasm of
violence gripped Baghdad, where 60 people were killed at the
weekend in a dramatic escalation of sectarian bloodletting.

Two bomb blasts in a Shi’ite neighborhood killed 12 and
wounded dozens, while gunmen ambushed a commuter bus in a Sunni
neighborhood and shot dead seven people. Militiamen, believed
to be Shi’ite, fought gunbattles in a southern Sunni district.

“Our destiny is to work together in brotherhood to defeat
terrorism and insurgency,” Maliki, a Shi’ite, told the Kurdish
regional parliament in northern Iraq. “We have no choice but to
defeat those who want to return us to the black days.”

A surge in violence in recent days between Shi’ites and
minority Sunni Arabs has raised new fears of a slide to all-out
civil war and damaged Maliki’s efforts to encourage Sunnis to
end their support for the Sunni-dominated insurgency.

Two bombs blasted a Baghdad area that is a stronghold of
Shi’ite militia fighters early on Monday, a day after suspected
Shi’ite gunmen stormed through a Sunni area and killed over 40.

Twelve people were killed and 62 wounded, police said, in
the car bomb blasts near a telephone exchange in the eastern
Talbiya district. It is a bastion of the Mehdi Army militia of
radical young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Shortly afterwards a bomb planted outside a restaurant near
the central bank in downtown Baghdad’s Rasheed Street, a busy
commercial area, killed six and wounded 28, police said.

Toward late afternoon police in the notoriously violent
Sunni neighborhood of Amriya found four bodies on a commuter
bus. Three others, including a woman, lay in the street nearby.
The religious affiliation of the dead was not immediately
clear.

In the mostly Shi’ite western district of Aamil, unknown
gunmen opened fire on an unmarked car carrying four policemen,
killing three, police said.

There were conflicting reports about clashes involving
suspected Shi’ite militia fighters in the Sunni Dora
neighborhood in southern Baghdad, where the Interior Ministry
imposed a curfew until 8 a.m. (0400 GMT) on Tuesday.

One police source said six militiamen lay dead on Dora
bridge and seven were wounded after a shootout with residents
defending the district. Another said the gunbattles involved
militias on one side and the Iraqi police and army on the
other, and that five soldiers were wounded.

NATIONAL RECONCILIATION

The violence came despite a security crackdown in the
capital, raising new questions about the effectiveness of the
police and Iraqi army, which the United States is slowly
building to enable it to begin withdrawing its 127,000 troops.

Sadr’s group rejected accusations by minority Sunni leaders
and police that it was behind killings in the mainly Sunni
Jihad district of west Baghdad on Sunday, when bands of gunmen
set up roadblocks and hauled people with Sunni-sounding names
from cars to shoot them. They also killed others in streets and
homes.

Those killings, the worst of their kind yet seen in the
city, came after a car bomb attack on a Shi’ite mosque in Jihad
on Saturday evening and were followed by a double car bombing
at another Shi’ite mosque late on Sunday that killed 19.

Maliki has vowed to disband militias, some tied to parties
in his government, that are carving Baghdad into sectarian
no-go areas. But he faces an uphill struggle as most, including
the Mehdi Army, have powerful allies inside the ruling
coalition.

He has also promoted a national reconciliation plan to end
the three-year-old insurgency and communal violence that surged
after the bombing of a revered Shi’ite mosque on February 22,
but critics, including some Sunni leaders, say it is too vague.

Nevertheless, British ambassador William Patey, expressing
concern over the increase in sectarian attacks, said “now more
than ever” Iraqis needed to back the plan.

The trial of Saddam Hussein and seven co-accused resumed to
hear final defense arguments, but Saddam’s lawyers said they
would boycott it until authorities met a series of demands,
including an inquiry into the killing of a colleague last
month.

(Additional reporting by Mussab Al-Khairalla, Aseel Kami,
Hiba Moussa, Alastair Macdonald, Ibon Villelabeitia and Ahmed
Rasheed)