No let up in
Iraq violence as 26 killed
Middle East Desk Report
BAGHDAD—At least 26 people have been killed in Iraq, including nine
Shiites in sectarian attacks on two Baghdad families, a security
official said. Another 17 corpses, three of them headless, were
recovered by police in nothern Baghdad’s Al-Hurriyah neighbourhood, the
official added Sunday.
In the attack on the families, gunmen broke into a home in the
southwestern Jihad neighbourhood and killed five Shiite brothers, one of
them a policeman, after separating them from their sisters, the official
said. The women were unharmed.
In another similar attack, gunmen entered a house of another Shiite
family in the same area and killed a man and his three sons. “Both were
Shiite families,” the official said, suggesting the attack was sectarian
in nature and carried out by Sunni extremists.
The two families were unrelated, the official added, and it was not
known whether the gunmen were from the same group. Five people were
killed and six wounded in clashes between Shiite militiamen and members
of the Sunni Janabat tribe in the nearby Al-Amil neighbourhood on
Sunday.
The official added that the area had now been secured by Iraqi police.
Southwestern Baghdad is a mixture of affluent Sunnis, poor Shiites and
then farther to the south, Sunni tribesmen — resulting in constant
clashes between Sunni and Shiite gunmen.
In the restive province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, nine people
were killed on Sunday, police said. Seven of those, including a
policeman, were shot in a series of attacks in the provincial capital of
Baquba, while in Abu Saida gunmen killed two children.
Five other people, three of them children, were wounded in the Abu Saida
attack, police said, adding that they were all in the same car. Police
Colonel Yarub Khazal from the security team of former deputy prime
minister Ahmed Chalabi was shot dead by gunmen as he was driving his car
in west Baghdad’s Yarmuk neighbourhood, the security official added.
In the same area a roadside bomb exploded as an Iraqi army patrol
passed, wounding three soldiers. In the central city of Tikrit police
said gunmen shot dead a security guard from a local hospital while he
was on his way to work, while in the northern oil city of Kirkuk gunmen
shot dead a barber.
The US military said joint US and Iraqi forces launched an operation in
Baghdad’s restive northern Sunni district of Adhamiyah on Sunday to try
to “reduce sectarian violence and insurgency activities.” Adhamiyah in
eastern Baghdad is a regular site of clashes between insurgents and
security forces. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which
occurred at about 11 p.m. Saturday in the mostly Sunni Arab al-Jihad
neighborhood, two policemen said. The attack appeared to have been
conducted by Sunni Arabs in retaliation for earlier attacks on Sunnis in
the capital. The policemen spoke on condition of anonymity out of
concern for their own safety.
Baghdad has been suffering from a series of attacks aimed at driving
Sunnis or Shiites out of neighborhoods of the capital where they form a
minority. On Sunday morning, clashes erupted between Sunni and Shiite
militants in Baghdad’s mixed western Amil district, a policeman said.
One Shiite militiaman was killed and six people — five Sunnis and one
Shiite — were wounded, the officer said on condition of anonymity
because he is not authorized to talk to the media. The clashes broke out
at 8:45 a.m. when about 50 Shiite militiamen raided a Sunni neighborhood
of the Janabat tribe, the officer said. The fighting ended with U.S. and
Iraqi forces rushed to the area to contain it, he said. The area is near
a Sunni pocket of Hurriyah, another mixed neighborhood where fighting
occurred Saturday. Witnesses said Shiite militiamen entered Hurriyah
after Sunnis warned the few Shiites living there to leave or be killed.
Heavy machine gun fire was heard and three columns of black smoke rose
into the sky, the witnesses said on condition of anonymity, also out of
concern for their own safety.
On Sunday, hundreds of Sunnis who said that sectarian violence has
driven them from their homes to seek refuge in schools, mosques and
other dwellings held a demonstration in the al-Adil area of western
Baghdad, demanding better protection from Iraqi security forces. |
