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Death Toll Rises and Rises    [

    Bombing Onslaught on Shiite Enclave in Baghdad Kills 161, Stepping up Iraq's 0aSectarian War
    The Associated Press

    Friday 24 November 2006

    Baghdad, Iraq - Funeral processions began Friday for the more than 160 people who were killed by car bombs and mortars in Baghdad's largest Shiite district. Hundreds of men, women and children beat their chests, chanted and cried as they walked beside vehicles carrying the caskets of their loved ones.

    The rest of Baghdad remained under a 24-hour curfew aimed at stopping widespread sectarian violence in the capital. But Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, ordered police to guard the processions carrying victims of Thursday's attacks by Sunni Muslim insurgents in Sadr City to Najaf, the holy Shiite city where they will be buried.

    "God is great. There is no God but Allah. Mohammed is the messenger of Allah," about 300 mourners chanted as they beat their chests while walking through the Sadr City slum alongside slow moving the cars and minivans carrying 16 wooden caskets tied to the rooftops. Some of the men and women repeatedly touched the sides of the vehicles or the caskets in an effort to say a final farewell to their relatives or friends.

    Once the processions reached the edge of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, the cars and minivans left most of the mourners behind for the 160-kilometer (100-mile) drive south to Najaf, a treacherous journey that passes through many checkpoints and areas controlled by Sunni militants in Iraq's so-called "Triangle of Death."

    Three mortar rounds exploded near the Abu Hanifa mosque, Sunni Islam's most important shrine in Baghdad, at 9:45 a.m. Friday, wounding one guard, said its sheik, Samir al-Obaidi.

    But the rest of Baghdad remained mostly quiet Friday morning, police said. In addition to the curfew, Friday is a day of worship in mostly Muslim Iraq when many people have the day off work. For several months, the government has been imposing a 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. ban on vehicles on Fridays, forcing people to walk to their local mosques for services.

    In Thursday's well-coordinated attack, Sunni insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars in Sadr City, killing at least 161 people and wounding 257 in a dramatic attack that sent the U.S. ambassador racing to meet with Iraqi leaders in an effort to contain the growing sectarian war.

    Shiite mortar teams quickly retaliated, firing 10 shells that badly damaged the Abu Hanifa mosque in the Azamiya neighborhood and killed one person.

    Eight more rounds slammed down near the offices of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the top Sunni Muslim organization in Iraq, setting nearby houses on fire. Two other mortar barrages on Sunni neighborhoods in west Baghdad killed nine and wounded 21, police said late Thursday.

    The bloodshed underlined the impotence of the Iraqi army and police to quell determined sectarian extremists at a time when the United States appears to be considering a move to accelerate the hand-over of security responsibilities. U.S. President George W. Bush plans to visit the region next week to discuss the security situation with al-Maliki.

    "We condemn such acts of senseless violence that are clearly aimed at undermining the Iraqi people's hopes for a peaceful and stable Iraq," White House spokesman Jeanie Mamo said in Washington.

    On Thursday night, Iraq's government imposed the curfew in the capital and also closed its international airport to all commercial flights. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country's main outlet to the vital shipping lanes in the Gulf.

    Leaders from Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm after a hastily organized meeting with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Al-Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.

    The coordinated car bombings _ three by suicide drivers and two of parked cars _ billowed black smoke up into clouds hanging low over blood-smeared streets jammed with twisted and charred cars and buses.

    Hospital corridors and waiting rooms were awash in blood and mangled survivors of bombs that struck at 15-minute intervals in the sprawling Shiite slum, which is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, a key al-Maliki backer.

    The militia and associated death squads are believed responsible for the slayings of hundreds of Sunnis since suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants bombed a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra last February.

    That attack set off a surge of retaliatory killings between Shiites and Sunnis that have raged all year.

    Al-Sadr associates said the cleric feared that the Sadr City bombings would make it impossible for him to hold back his heavily armed fighters from a furious round of revenge attacks.

    In a TV statement read by an aide, al-Sadr urged unity among his followers to end the U.S. "occupation" that he said is causing Iraq's strife.

    Al-Sadr said the attacks coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of his father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered Shiite religious leader. The anniversary reckoning was by the Islamic calendar.

    "Had the late al-Sadr been among you he would have said preserve your unity," the statement said. "Don't carry out any act before you ask the Hawza (Shiite seminary in Najaf). Be the ones who are unjustly treated and not the ones who treat others unjustly."

    Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the pre-eminent Shiite religious figure in Iraq, condemned the bombings and issued condolences to family members of those who were killed. He called for self-control among his followers.

    Iraq is suffering through a period of unparalleled violence.

    The U.N. said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the most in any month since the war began 44 months ago, and a figure certain to be eclipsed in November. The U.N. said citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month, and that at least 1.6 million Iraqis have left since the war began in March 2003.

    The International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-associated group, said Tuesday the number of Iraqis displaced by violence since the Samarra bombing has now increased to almost 250,000 individuals in the 15 central and southern governorates, with more than 1,000 people on average being displaced a day in September, October and November.

    The Sadr City slaughter occurred just moments after U.S. helicopters and Iraqi armor had to intervene to stop an attack by 30 masked Sunni gunmen who tried to storm the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry, about 1.6 kilometers (a mile) west of the Shiite slum. Seven ministry guards were wounded.

    Residents also reported heavy mortar fire and gunbattles in Hurriyah, a now-largely Shiite neighborhood in northwest Baghdad. There were pitched battles between gunmen and the army on Haifa Street, a dangerous thoroughfare running north from the Green Zone, site of the American and British embassies as well as the Iraqi government and parliament.

    Heavy fighting was reported around the Jadriyah Bridge near Baghdad University and Associated Press personnel saw 12 pickup trucks loaded with men armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and heavy machine guns driving through the center of the city before the curfew was imposed.

    Counting those killed in Sadr City, at least 233 people died or were found dead across Iraq on Thursday.

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    Death Toll Rises and Rises
    By Mohammed A. Salih
    Inter Press Service

    Thursday 23 November 2006

    Arbil - More than 150 people died in the Shia Sadr area of Baghdad in a spate of car bombings and mortar attacks Thursday morning.

    The toll has been rising dramatically already. A United Nations report indicates that violence hit a new high during October. November looks certain to be worse, with preliminary figures indicating a higher toll in November even before the Thursday bombings.

    In its report released Nov. 22, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said that during September and October of this year 7,054 civilians were killed. Of this, 3,709 deaths came in October, marking the highest monthly death toll since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

    In July and August, 6,599 Iraqis were killed. Relative to that the violence in September and October showed significant increase.

    "Iraq's security situation is critically dangerous," Bassam Ali, a political analyst from Arbil told IPS. "There is a full-scale sectarian war in the country that the media has not been able to fully project to the world."

    He cited the increasing death toll in Iraq as "the best evidence that the U.S. has not been able to score victory in Iraq." He blamed neighbouring countries for inflaming bloodshed "aimed at expanding the sectarian problem."

    In the face of the unprecedented rise in violence, many Iraqis have lost hope that the situation will improve in the near future.

    Muhanad, 22, who refused to give his second name for security fears, fled to Kurdistan in the north two years ago after receiving death threats from armed people. He is one of an estimated 50,000 Internally Displaced Persons who have fled violence in the south to the calm of Kurdistan.

    "If it goes on like this, I don't have any hope that the situation will get better so that I can return," he said. "I wish the situation in Iraq will improve, but don't know if there is such a likelihood or it is going to be just a wish."

    The political arena does not seem to be coherent at a time when sectarian violence is ripping the country apart.

    Sunni politicians in the government have already threatened to quit government, because they believe Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has not done enough to curb Shia militias.

    After the Thursday bombings, many Shia leaders say the government has not done enough to check Sunni insurgents. Sectarian violence is now expected to be inflamed further.

    Several Shia leaders accuse Sunni leaders of taking an ambivalent position on terrorism, and of acting against government interests. The Shia-run interior ministry issued an arrest warrant for Harith al-Dhari, a Sunni religious leader, last week.

    Mistrust has grown also between the Shia-led government and its Kurdish partners. Kurds complain of lack of government action in resolving pending issues like the status of the ethnically mixed oil-rich city Kirkuk. Shias accuse Kurds of demanding too much at a time when the country is stuck in a security and political stalemate.

    Bassam Ali believes the strife in the country will not die down "since the violence produces victims, and victims instigate revenge killings - and the result is a continuous cycle of bloodshed that worsens day after day."

    Amidst the rising violence, Ali like a growing number of others, now thinks that the division of Iraq into ethnic enclaves can be a working solution, since it will keep the conflicting groups apart from each other.

    "I am convinced there is no room for a united Iraq," he said. "If there is not going to be a solution to this situation, then the wounds will be deepened and the whole thing will become more difficult to control."