BAGHDAD, 25 November 2006 — Gunmen attacked a Sunni Arab neighborhood of Baghdad and burned mosques yesterday in apparent retaliation for the bloodiest bombing in more than three years of war that killed 202 in a Shiite area.
Two suicide bombs ripped through a Shiite market in northern Iraq killing 22 people earlier yesterday and mortars crashed on rival Baghdad neighborhoods, ramping up sectarian tension that threatens to push Iraq into all-out civil war.
As political leaders on all sides pleaded for restraint and imposed a curfew on the capital, gunmen stormed a Sunni enclave in a largely Shiite area, burning four mosques and homes, an Interior Ministry official said.
The official said the number of casualties was not known, but a resident of Hurriya district, Imad Al-Din Al-Hashemi, said at least 18 people had been killed and 24 wounded.
“They attacked four mosques with rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire. The attacks began at midday,” said Hashemi, a university academic, who was helping evacuate people.
Among the dead were two women and a child who died of smoke inhalation in burning houses, he said. The Interior Ministry official said at least two of the mosques had been attacked by rocket-propelled grenades. Residents were appealing for firefighters and ambulances but the area was too dangerous for police to send reinforcements.
Defense Ministry Spokesman Mohammed Al-Askari said there were clashes around midday and the army had intervened, and he denied mosques had been attacked.
Many see a bleak future. “The situation is now moving to some sort of open civil war,” said Iraqi security analyst Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.
The Shiite faction that controls Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, target of Thursday’s bombing, demanded the prime minister cancel a summit next week with US President George W. Bush.
Moqtada Al-Sadr, the young leader whose Mehdi Army militia dominates Sadr City, told chanting supporters in a Friday sermon that the most prominent religious figure from the Sunni minority must issue a fatwa demanding an end to the killing of Shiites.
One of Sadr’s top political aides in Parliament told Reuters it would pull out of the US-backed national unity government and from Parliament if Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki went ahead with next week’s meeting with Bush in Jordan.
