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July 10th, 2006 - Sectarian
Clashes - Baghdad Erupts in Mob Violence |
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Sectarian Clashes - Baghdad
Erupts in Mob Violence By Kirk Semple New York Times July 10, 2006 Baghdad, July 9 - A mob of
gunmen went on a brazen daytime rampage through a predominantly Sunni Arab
district of western Baghdad on Sunday, pulling people from their cars and
homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of
revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday.
Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad
neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation. While Baghdad has been
ravaged by Sunni-Shiite bloodletting in recent months, even by recent
standards the violence here on Sunday was frightening, delivered with
impunity by gun-wielding vigilantes on the street. In the culture of revenge
that has seized Iraq, residents all over the city braced for an escalation in
the cycle of retributive mayhem between the Shiites and Sunnis that has
threatened to expand into civil war. The violence coincided with
an announcement by American military officials that they had formally accused
four more American soldiers of rape and murder, and a fifth soldier of
"dereliction of duty" for failing to report the crimes, in
connection with the deaths of a teenage Iraqi girl and three members of her
family. With movement in Baghdad
difficult after a military cordon was established to suppress the violence,
facts were hard to ascertain. The death toll from the shootings alone ranged
from fewer than a dozen, according to the American military, to more than 40
reported by some news services. The bombing near the mosque later claimed at
least 19 lives and left 59 wounded, officials said. The military's announcement
about the soldiers brought to six the number implicated in the rape-murder,
one more than previously disclosed. The case has enraged Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki and led to apologies by the highest American military and
civilian officials in Iraq. A photograph of the girl's passport distributed
by news agencies on Sunday showed that she was 14. Only seven weeks old, Mr.
Maliki's government is facing increasingly difficult obstacles. Worsening
violence has undermined his intention to disarm the country's sectarian
militias. At the same time, the growing furor over criminal accusations
against American troops has tested Mr. Maliki's divided loyalties to his
American allies and to an Iraqi public that has grown weary of the American
presence. The killings on Sunday in
the western Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad began in late morning, near the
site of a car bomb explosion in front of a Shiite mosque on Saturday,
residents and officials said. Initial reports said the bombing had killed
three people, but the American military said Sunday that at least 12 people,
including 3 children, had died in the blast, and at least 18 had been
wounded. According to some residents
and Sunni Arab officials interviewed by telephone, the gunmen, whom they
accused of being members of a feared Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, set up checkpoints
around the neighborhood, indiscriminately pulled scores of Sunni Arabs from
their homes and cars and killed them on the street. Other bodies were found
with their hands bound behind their backs and gunshots in their heads,
residents said. But as often happens in
Iraq, accounts of the violence varied widely. Residents and some Iraqi
officials said in interviews that more than 35 people had been killed in the
attacks. The Associated Press quoted Lt. Maitham Abdul-Razzaq of the Iraqi
police as saying that 41 bodies had been taken to hospitals. And an official
at Yarmouk Hospital, the main medical center in western Baghdad, said in a
telephone interview that at least 23 bodies had been delivered from Jihad,
and 10 people had arrived wounded from the shootings. But American and some Iraqi
security officials said the casualty figures were far lower. Lt. Col.
Jonathan B. Withington, spokesman for the Fourth Infantry Division, which
oversees security around Baghdad, said the Iraqi police had reported finding
only 11 bodies. It was unclear whether that toll included victims delivered
to the morgue. American and Iraqi security
officials also said they could not confirm the accounts of the seemingly
arbitrary street killings, and Colonel Withington said the Iraqi security
forces were mobilized immediately after reports of "sporadic
gunfire" in Jihad. By early afternoon, Iraqi and American forces had
sealed off the neighborhood, officials said. Several prominent Sunni Arab
political and religious leaders criticized the Iraqi and American security
forces for their inability to control the violence. In comments broadcast on
Al Jazeera, Salam al-Zubaie, a deputy prime minister and a Sunni, called the
events in Jihad "a real massacre," and suggested that the country's
Shiite-led security forces were to blame because they had been infiltrated by
militiamen. The government forces, he said, "coordinate with these
filthy terror groups who are roaming the streets." Mr. Maliki's office, in a
statement, tried to distance itself from Mr. Zubaie's comments, saying
"they do not represent the government's point of view." Mr. Maliki,
a Shiite, has vowed to crack down on militias regardless of sectarian
affiliation and to eradicate militia influence from the government's security
forces. In recent days, American and
Iraqi troops have conducted several operations against the powerful Mahdi
Army militia, which is loosely under the control of the influential Shiite
cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and is regarded by Sunni Arab leaders as a main force
behind many sectarian reprisal killings. Iraqi and American forces captured
two Mahdi Army leaders on Friday and raided a suspected militia bastion on
Saturday. Some Jihad residents and
Sunni Arab leaders accused the Mahdi Army of committing the killings on
Sunday, but officials in Mr. Sadr's organization denied that. "The Mahdi
Army takes care of the national interest," Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, a
spokesman for Mr. Sadr, told Al Jazeera. Mr. Sadr joined other government
leaders in publicly calling for calm, and he requested an emergency session
of Parliament to discuss the crisis and "prevent a sea of blood,"
his office said in a statement. President Jalal Talabani
warned Iraqis against falling prey to "acts of violence that some want
to look sectarian." Militias of all stripes
appeared to be bracing for fallout from the morning's attacks. Mahdi Army
fighters interviewed by telephone said they were preparing for a wider
battle. Mahdi militiamen had set up checkpoints in the city's predominantly Shiite
neighborhoods and, according to residents, were preparing for Sunni
reprisals. A Mahdi Army platoon commander who identified himself only as
Sheik Faleh said, "If anything happens, we will attack." Later in the day, the deadly
double-car bombing next to a Shiite mosque in Kasra, a mixed neighborhood in
northeastern Baghdad, also seemed intended to stoke sectarian fury. Seven people were killed and
at least eight wounded in various insurgent attacks around Kirkuk, including
a bomb that exploded in a bus, killing one civilian and wounding seven, the
police said. In Samarra, gunmen assassinated a top official in the Iraqi
Islamic Party, a Sunni organization, and two of his guards, the police said,
while in Karbala, a police captain was killed. The American command here
said an American soldier was killed early on Sunday in the greater Baghdad
area in a "noncombat-related incident," but did not elaborate. In the rape-murder case, the
American military did not identify the five newly accused soldiers, who
remain on active duty in Iraq. The first to be implicated was Steven D.
Green, a recently discharged private first class arrested June 30 in North
Carolina on suspicion of participating in the crimes on March 12. A affidavit filed in the case
against Mr. Green implicated five soldiers: Mr. Green; three soldiers who
accompanied him to the farmhouse in the town of Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of
Baghdad, where investigators say the rape and murders took place; and another
soldier who remained at a checkpoint. But the new accusations,
made Saturday and disclosed Sunday, indicate that another soldier was also
inside the farmhouse at the time of the crimes, according to a military
official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly
discuss such details. The soldier who has been
accused of dereliction of duty is, according to the military statement on
Sunday, "not alleged to have been a direct participant in the rape and
killings," suggesting that it was the soldier who was aware of the plan
but stayed at the checkpoint. The formal accusations
against the five soldiers set in motion the military's court-martial process.
According to military officials, the soldiers will now face an investigation
under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a process similar
to a grand jury hearing, which will determine whether enough evidence exists
to put the men on trial. Reporting for this article
was contributed by Khalid al-Ansary, Khalid W. Hassan, Hosham Hussein, Mona
Mahmoud, Qais Mizher, Sahar Nageeb, Omar al-Neami and Iraqi employees of The
New York Times in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Tikrit. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html |