Mosques bombed, tense Baghdad under curfew

By Ahmed Rasheed and Mariam Karouny

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Bombs killed two worshippers at mosques
in Iraq during Friday prayers and the authorities extended a
daytime curfew on Baghdad after one of the bloodiest weeks this
year.

On the eve of a high-profile meeting intended to
demonstrate reconciliation among sectarian and ethnic factions
ahead of a White House visit by the prime minister, senior
leaders admitted to despair about the chances of averting
all-out civil war.

“Iraq as a political project is finished,” a top government
official told Reuters — anonymously because the coalition of
Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki remains committed in
public to a U.S.-sponsored constitution preserving Iraq’s
unity.

“The parties have moved to Plan B,” the official said,
saying Sunni, ethnic Kurdish and majority Shi’ite blocs were
looking at ways to divide power and resources and to solve the
conundrum of Baghdad’s mixed population of seven million.

“There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into east
and west,” said the official, who has long been a proponent of
the present government’s objectives. “We are extremely
worried.”

Officials and delegates from a range of political, tribal,
regional and religious groups will meet in Baghdad’s fortified
Green Zone government compound on Saturday for the inaugural
meeting of the National Reconciliation Commission.

Maliki, who meets President Bush on Tuesday, has described
a 24-point reconciliation plan outlined a month ago as a “last
chance” for peace.

So far, however, it is unclear what substance it has beyond
vague promises of amnesty for former rebels and a call for
political parties’ militias to disarm.

U.S. Republicans hope better news from Iraq will help the
ruling party at congressional elections in November and
maintain hopes that American soldiers can start coming home
soon.

MOSQUES BOMBED

Bombs outside Sunni mosques in Khalis, north of the
capital, and in the mainly Shi’ite east of Baghdad, each killed
one man and wounded two during weekly prayers, police said.

There were also new clashes in Mahmudiya, a violent town
just south of the city where nearly 60 people were killed in a
mass assault by gunmen on Monday. Three police and three Iraqi
soldiers were killed in Friday’s fighting, police said.

U.S. troops killed two women and a three-year-old girl
during a raid that, they said, also killed two suspected al
Qaeda militants in violent Diyala province northwest of
Baghdad.

State television announced a four-hour traffic ban in force
in the city every Friday would be extended until 7 p.m. A
nightly nine-hour curfew from 9 p.m. also remains in effect.

U.S. commanders see a looming fight to the finish in
Baghdad between the two-month-old unity government and Sunni
Arab rebels with links to al Qaeda and ousted president Saddam
Hussein.

The U.S. ambassador has warned that a greater threat may be
the mounting sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites.

That has brought a risk that millions of ordinary but
almost universally armed Iraqis may be dragged into all-out
civil war.

U.S., Iraqi and international leaders have sounded alarms
this week as new data showed tens of thousands of people have
fled their homes in fear of death squads and that some 6,000
civilians may have been killed in just two months.

U.S. data showed attacks on security forces in Baghdad
averaged 34 a day over several days, compared to 24 in recent
months. Baghdad morgue has taken in 1,000 bodies this month.

Describing the capital as a “must-win” for both the rebels
and the government, U.S. military spokesman Major General
William Caldwell conceded on Thursday that a month-old
clampdown in Baghdad had achieved only a “slight downtick” in
violence.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald, Hiba Moussa
and Michael Georgy)