Sectarian massacres shake Iraq

Baghdad - Violence swept Iraq yesterday as insurgents switched the focus of their attacks from the security forces to Shia civilians, killing at least 12 in a bombing outside a mosque and gunning down nine in a Baghdad bakery.

The massacres appeared designed to raise sectarian tension as the country prepared for the results from last month's election which will cement the ascendance of the Shia majority and the political marginalisation of the Arab Sunni minority.

In the bombing, a pick-up truck laden with vegetables parked in front of a Shia mosque in Balad Ruz, a town 45 miles north of Baghdad. As worshippers emerged on to the street, Iraqi troops approached the vehicle to investigate when it blew up. The police reported 13 dead and 40 wounded while the national guard reported 12 dead and 23 wounded.

In a brazen assault in the capital, several car-loads of gunmen sealed off a street in a predominantly Shia neighbourhood and opened fire at a crowd inside a bakery, killing at least nine. Witnesses said walls plastered with posters of Shia clerics were splattered with blood.

"I was just leaving my house which is facing the bakery when I saw them shooting. They were masked and shouting Allahu Akbar [God is Greatest] as they were shooting," one resident, Atheer Abdul Amir, told Reuters. However analysts did not rule out the possibility that the atrocity was a criminal, mafia-style hit under the guise of insurgency.

Would-be assassins shot a cleric on a Tuesday evening as he left a Baghdad mosque, hitting him seven times but not killing him. Sheik Ammar al-Hilali is an aide to Grand Aya tollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia leader.

The attacks appeared to be an attempt to provoke Shias, who make up 60% of the population, on the eve of their historic political ascendance over Sunnis, a minority which ruled Iraq for decades and enjoyed a privileged position under Saddam Hussein.

It also underlined the insurgents' versatility and determination to sabotage, or at least stain with blood, the formation of a new parliament, government and constitution. Election officials said they needed "only a few days maximum" to complete the count. Preliminary results show a landslide for a Shia coalition tacitly endorsed by Ayatollah Sistani. Threats of violence and a boycott call by leaders yielded a low Sunni turnout.

Despite numerous attacks on polling day, the insurgents, a disparate coalition of Ba'athist party supporters from Saddam's regime and Islamic radicals, failed to derail last month's election. But in the past week they have inten sified the violence. In a surprise visit to U.S. troops in the northern city of Mosul, the U.S. defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, praised his troops for making the election possible. "You have shown that America is in fact a land of liberators, not a land of occupiers."

He warned the Iraqi security forces that they must ultimately take responsibility for what he acknowledged would be a tough, long fight. "It is the Iraqis who have to over time defeat the insurgency."

As he spoke, the remains of Iraqi policemen still littered the town of Salman Pak, southeast of the capital, where a fierce battle on Thursday left 10 dead, 65 wounded and several vehicles burning. The police said they killed 20 insurgents and took several prisoner, including three Iranians and two Saudi Arabians.

The insurgents have also taken hostages this week. A videotape showed four young men who identified themselves as policemen being shot in the back of the head. An Is lamic extremist group headed by a Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for Wednesday's kidnapping of Riyadh Katei Aliwi, a colonel with the interior ministry.

"We will soon issue a tape of his confessions, so that he can serve as an example for all the enemies of God, who will be severely punished in the afterlife," the statement said. -- Guardian News

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