Sunnis Eye Reckoning With Head Iraq Shia

By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA

BAGHDAD, Iraq – A prominent Sunni Arab group charged Friday that some officials in the Shiite-led government have links with Shiite militias involved in sectarian violence and should be held responsible for any attacks by the armed groups.

The Association of Muslim Scholars said it had obtained information that militias were planning to attack neighborhoods in Baghdad, in line with bloody assaults this year pitting members of Iraq’s majority Shiites against Sunni Arabs who dominated the country under Saddam Hussein.

“We also have come to know that some officials in this government know of this criminal scheme, which raises suspicions that they are collaborating with these militias,” the association said.

“The Association of Muslim Scholars holds the current Iraqi government and the occupation forces responsible for any injustice against Iraqi people,” said the group, which is believed to have links to the Sunni Arab-led insurgency fighting government and U.S.-led forces.

A significant portion of the Iraqi national police is believed to be aligned with militias, and U.S. officials have said efforts are under way to weed out corrupt security agents.

The Iraqi government said the group’s claims were false and could incite rebellion.

“What has been written in the statement of the Association of Muslim Scholars is absolutely incorrect and it could provoke sedition,” the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said. “We hold the association responsible for anything that could happen as a result of this.”

A key al-Maliki adviser said Friday that Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. troops, will begin a neighborhood-by-neighborhood assault on militants in the capital this weekend as a first step in the new White House strategy to wipe out Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads.

Meanwhile, the body of an Associated Press employee was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving for work. Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, was the fourth AP staffer to die violently in the Iraq war and the second AP employee killed in less than a month. He had been a messenger and occasional cameraman for the AP for 2 1/2 years.

“All of us at AP share the pain and grief being felt by Ahmed’s family and friends,” said AP President and CEO Tom Curley.

The circumstances of Naji’s death were unclear. Dozens of Iraqis are found slain almost every day in Baghdad, many believed to be victims of sectarian death squads.

Elsewhere, police in the southern city of Basra reported that an American civilian and two Iraqis were abducted Friday, according to Voices of Iraq, an independent news agency. The U.S. Embassy said it was investigating the report.

Mortar rounds killed four civilians on Baghdad’s outskirts, and gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint north of the capital, killing four soldiers.

The mortar attack occurred in the Shiite neighborhood of Zaafaraniyah, nine miles southeast of the center of Baghdad, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media. The attack killed four civilians and injured 11, he said.

The Iraqi soldiers were killed at dawn at a checkpoint in Duluiyah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, according to the joint operations office of Salahuddin province. Three other soldiers were wounded.

Also Friday, clashes broke out between Sunni Arab and Shiite militants in Baghdad’s mixed western Amil district, minutes after a mortar round hit a house in a Sunni neighborhood, injuring five civilians, police said. One Shiite militiaman was killed and three others were wounded.

The fighting ended when U.S. and Iraqi forces arrived, police said.

Police agents from the Interior Ministry detained three Iraqi insurgents linked to al-Qaida during a raid in Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, police Capt. Muthana Khalid said.

Separately, Iraqi troops captured four suspects in an operation Wednesday in Sadr City, a poor Shiite area in eastern Baghdad where militias have a strong presence, the U.S. military said. The suspects were believed to be leaders of a cell responsible for kidnappings, slayings and mortar attacks linked to the sectarian conflict, the military said.

In Washington, President Bush was shaking up the team responsible for carrying out his military and diplomatic strategies in Iraq as he prepared to outline his new direction for the war that has raged for nearly four years.

Bush will replace Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Gen. George Casey, the chief general in Iraq, in the coming weeks, according to a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because formal announcements are still pending

Bush next week will unveil his strategy, which is expected to entail new political, military and economic steps to win the war. The military approach, which has attracted the most attention and skepticism from Congress, is expected to include an increase in U.S. forces, possibly 9,000 additional troops deployed to the Baghdad capital alone.

Lawmakers said Thursday in Washington they were skeptical of such a plan. But others see more value in a larger force. “No commander can have enough troops,” British Army Maj. Gen. Simon Mayall, second in command of coalition forces in Iraq, told reporters at the Pentagon Friday.

French President Jacques Chirac, meanwhile, said the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq destabilized the entire Middle East and caused terrorism to spread, adding that the problems in Iraq justified France’s strong opposition to the war.

“As France foresaw and feared, the war in Iraq caused upheavals whose effects have not yet finished unraveling,” Chirac said in a speech to French ambassadors.

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AP Military Writer Robert Burns in Washington and AP reporter Christine Ollivier in Paris contributed to this report.