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Gunmen ambush bus in Baghdad, kill 10: police

Posted on: Tuesday, 11 July 2006, 02:55 CDT

By Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sectarian violence rocked Baghdad again on Tuesday, as gunmen ambushed a minibus it drove through a Sunni neighborhood bringing Shiites from a funeral and killing 10 of those aboard, police said.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside the fortified Green Zone government compound, killing five people and wounding 10, as parliament prepared to meet a few hundred meters away.

The minibus attack in the violent southern Doura district comes a day after Iraq's prime minister pleaded for Iraqis to "unite as brothers" following a fresh spasm of violence over the weekend that pushed Iraq deeper into communal warfare.

Though bombings have claimed dozens of lives at a time, a wave of tit-for-killings between Shiites and Sunnis in Baghdad has raised the specter of all-out civil war, dealing a blow to Nuri al-Maliki's hopes for national reconciliation.

Police said gunmen in cars opened fire on the minibus, which was returning from a funeral in the holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad.

On Monday, gunmen ambushed a commuter bus in a Sunni district in western Baghdad and shot dead seven people. Earlier, two bombs in a Shiite neighborhood killed 12 and wounded dozens. Militiamen, believed to be Shiite, also fought gun battles in a southern Sunni district.

In a dramatic escalation of sectarian bloodletting, Shiite militiamen went on rampage in a Baghdad neighborhood on Sunday, setting up checkpoints and hauling people with Sunni-sounding names from cars. Dozens have been killed in recent days.

A tense calm returned to a Baghdad neighborhood on Tuesday where heavy clashes erupted overnight between sectarian gunmen.

Iraqi police set up checkpoints around the Ghazaliya district to prevent fighters from entering the area, where the sound of machinegun fire and blasts from rocket-propelled grenades boomed well into the night.

A Reuters journalist who lives in the western district, home to both Shiite and Sunni communities, said the gunmen withdrew after midnight and resident were venturing out of their homes.

A Shiite political source said local Shiites in Ghazaliya took up arms after Sunnis fired on them. U.S. troops moved into the area as the violence subsided, police said. The U.S. military has made no comment.

"SLIPPERY SLOPE"

Fearing Iraq is moving ever closer to all-out civil war, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, had appealed for calm, warning the country was on "the edge of a slippery slope."

A new surge in violence between majority Shiites, oppressed under Saddam Hussein but now politically empowered, and his once dominant fellow Sunni Arabs has laid bare a deepening schism, despite Maliki's efforts to promote reconciliation.

Militias loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rejected accusations by Sunni leaders and police that it was behind the rampage killings in the mainly Sunni Jihad district of west Baghdad on Sunday.

Those killings, the worst of their kind yet seen in the city, came after a car bomb attack on a Shiite mosque in Jihad on Saturday evening and were followed by a double car bombing at another Shiite 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.

In more violence on Tuesday, gunmen kidnapped an Iraqi consul who is posted in Iran from his house in Baghdad on Tuesday, police and Interior Ministry sources said.

Wissam Abdulla al-Awadi, Iraq's consul in the Iranian city of Kermanshah, was snatched in the predominantly Shiite Ammil district in southwestern Baghdad by gunmen in two cars, police said. Abdulla al-Awadi was in Baghdad visiting his family.

It was not clear which group was behind the kidnapping.

After fighting Shiite Iran in the 1980s under Saddam, the new Shiite-led government of Baghdad resumed diplomatic relations with Tehran. Many Sunni groups now leading the insurgency view Shiites as apostates and accuse the Iraqi government of being Iranian pawns.

Source: REUTERS

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