Masked gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students north of Baghdad Sunday,
ordered the passengers to get off, separated Shiites from Sunni Arabs and killed
the former "in the name of Islam," a witness said.
Haqi Ismail, one of
the survivors of the attack, lies injured at a hospital in Sulaimaniyah,
accompanied by his brother-in-law, left, after gunmen killed 21 people,
including 3 high-school students and 9 college students, and wounded
Ismail, after they dragged them off buses inbetween Qara Tappah and
Baqouba, in Iraq Sunday, June 4, 2006. The gunmen spared four Sunni Arabs,
in one of the worst sectarian atrocities in recent weeks and Ismail only
survived because the gunmen thought he was dead.
[AP] |
In predominantly Shiite southern Basra, police hunting for militants stormed
a Sunni Arab mosque early Sunday, just hours after a car bombing. The ensuing
fire fight killed nine.
The two attacks dealt a blow to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's pledge
to curb sectarian violence. He again failed to reach consensus Sunday among
Iraq's ethnic and sectarian parties on candidates for interior and defense
minister posts he must fill to implement his ambitious plan to take control of
Iraq's security from U.S.-led forces within 18 months.
Violence linked to Shiite and Sunni Arab animosity has grown increasingly
worse since Feb. 22, when bombs ravaged the golden dome of a revered Shiite
mosque in predominantly Sunni Arab Samarra.
Sectarian tensions have run particularly high in Baghdad, Basra and Diyala
province, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shiite region. And Sunday's attacks came just days
after terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi renewed his call for Sunni Arabs
to take up arms against Shiites, whom he often vilifies as infidels.
In the minibus ambush, a car and an SUV stopped the vehicles near the town of
Qara Tappah, about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad and near Diyala province,
electrician Haqi Ismail, 48, told The Associated Press.
Ismail said he had been driving his pickup truck behind the vans and was
stopped too. About 15 masked men wearing traditional robes known as a dishdashas
forced everyone out of the vehicles, he said.
"They asked us to show our IDs, and then instructed us to stand in a line,
separating the Sunni from the Shiite due to the IDs and also due to the faces,"
said Ismail, a Shiite Kurd.
He said the gunmen ordered the Shiites to lie down and before they opened
fire one shouted, "On behalf of Islam, today we will dig a mass grave for you.
You are traitors."
Ismail said he was injured but did not move.
"One of the gunmen kicked me to be sure that I was dead," he said, speaking
from his hospital bed in Sulaimaniyah, north of Qara Tappah.
Two of the victims were high school students, ages 17 and 18, and nine were
students at al-Yarmouk University in Baqouba, ages 21-22, said Qara Tappah's
mayor, Serwan Shokir. The rest were men in their mid-to-late 30s, who worked as
laborers or for the power company, the mayor said.
The Basra violence, the car bomb Saturday and mosque raid early Sunday came
days after al-Maliki declared a state of emergency in the city, vowing to crack
down with an "iron fist" on gangs fighting for power.
Basra police surrounded the al-Arab mosque just after midnight Saturday,
tipped off that militants holed up inside had opened fire. Also, Iraqi forces
had found two vehicles packed with explosives near the mosque, similar to the
car bomb used to attack a crowded market, killing 28 people and wounding 62.
Police and gunmen exchanged fire, killing nine people. Police they arrested
six terror suspects, adding that part of the mosque was damaged and burned.
A hard-line Sunni organization in Basra, the influential Sunni Arab
Association of Muslim Scholars, said the nine people killed had come to the
mosque to protect it.
Parliament was postponed Sunday after al-Maliki again failed to find
agreement on who should run Iraq's security forces. The Shiite prime minister
had promised to present candidates for the defense and interior posts, as well
as minister of state for national security, on Sunday for approval by the
275-member parliament.
The political parties decided "to give the prime minister another chance to
have more negotiations," said Deputy Parliament Speaker Khalid al-Atiya, a
Shiite.
In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed confidence that
Iraqi leaders would agree on candidates in the next few days.
"Of course, they need to get this settled, but they will get it settled. I
really do believe that they'll get it settled in the next few days. But the
important thing here is that they get it right," she told Fox News on Sunday.
The Interior Ministry will go to a Shiite, the Defense to a Sunni Arab, in an
effort to provide balance on security matters. Much of the problems focused on
Shiite objections to some Sunni Arab candidates for the defense ministry because
they served in the military under ousted President Saddam Hussein.
"The names which were presented for the Defense Ministry were all rejected
because some of them are famous military officers during the Saddam era," said
Haider al-Ebadi, a Shiite legislator and senior official from al-Maliki's Dawa
party.
There also was dissent in Shiite ranks over the interior ministry.
Iraqi security forces were searching Baghdad for four Russian diplomats
kidnapped Saturday. Another Russian diplomat was killed in the attack that took
place near the embassy in west Baghdad's Mansour district. U.S. Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad condemned the attack and promised to help seek the release of
the hostages.
The U.S. military said an American soldier was killed Saturday in the
volatile Anbar province.
In other violence Sunday, according to police:
- Gunmen in a car opened fire on a minibus carrying telecommunications
workers to an area near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, killing four and wounding
two.
- Police found 16 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad and four in the city of
Tikrit, north of the capital.
- Gunmen in Tikrit killed three police officers and wounded two others at a
checkpoint.
- Gunmen broke into the home of an Iraqi army soldier, killing him, his two
brothers and father and wounding his mother.
- Two gunmen on a motorcycle killed Muntaha Ali and her husband Helmi Yaseen
in Basra, believed to be employees of a U.S. government agency.
