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Leaders urge calm in Iraq
23/02/2006 11:17 - (SA)
Baghdad - Sectarian violence in Iraq after
suspected al-Qaeda bombs devastated a major Shi'ite shrine left
religious and political leaders in Baghdad and abroad scrambling
on Thursday to halt a descent into all-out civil war.
In the bloodiest apparent reprisal for the bombing of the
Golden Mosque in Samarra, men in police uniform seized a dozen
Sunni rebel suspects, including two Egyptians, from a prison in
the mainly Shi'ite city of Basra and killed 11 of them. Gunmen
fired on dozens of Sunni mosques in Baghdad and elsewhere.
A total of 47 bullet-riddled bodies were recovered in Baghdad and its suburbs between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, an interior ministry official said.
The upsurge in killings came in the wake of the bombing of the shrine in Samarra.
President Jalal Talabani summoned leaders of all sides to a
summit early on Thursday after the bloodless but symbolic dawn
bombing provoked outrage among majority Shi'ites that surpassed
the anger caused by the thousands of killings by Sunni militants
since United States forces toppled Saddam Hussein three years ago.
Fuel civil strife
US President George W Bush, whose diplomats and military
commanders are pressing Shi'ite leaders to accept Sunnis in a
national unity government after they took part in an election in
December, urged Iraqis not to rise to the bait of what US and
Iraqi officials called an al-Qaeda attempt to fuel civil strife.
"Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists sought
to achieve," he said in a statement, as 130 000 US troops
stood by to back up Iraq's new security forces and keep order.
A policeman guarding a Sunni mosque in the southern Shi'ite
city of Diwaniya was killed in an attack by Shi'ite militants.
Three Sunni clerics were among six people killed elsewhere.
The United Nations Security Council, rarely able to find a
common voice on Iraq since its bitter divisions over the US
invasion in 2003, sounded a note of alarm in calling on Iraqis
to rally behind a non-sectarian government.
"We don't know what could happen in the next few days," said
Mohammed Tariq, standing in a long line outside a bread shop in
Baghdad as residents hurried home after the government declared
three days of mourning that will keep businesses closed. "I will
buy as much as I can because of the security situation."
Fears for civil war
Washington wants stability to help it extract its forces but
Shi'ite political leaders renewed sharp criticisms of its calls
for them to give Sunnis key posts in government, with one party
leader accusing the US ambassador of encouraging the bombers
by supporting Sunni demands for a share of power this week.
Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, accused the bombers, who dressed
as policemen, of trying to derail talks on a national unity
coalition: "We must...work together against...the danger of
civil war," he told Iraqis in a televised address. - Reuters/AFP
- News24
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