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30 killed but pleas, curfew curb Iraq violence
 Mortar fire killed 15 people and shooting erupted around two Baghdad mosques on Sunday but pleas for unity and a third day of curfew in the city seemed to dampen sectarian violence that has pitched Iraq towards civil war. Five killed in a minibus, teenagers gunned down playing football and two US soldiers were among 30 deaths, a lower toll than other days since a suspected Al Qaeda bomb at a Shiite shrine sparked reprisals on minority Sunnis and the biggest test of Iraq's survival as a unified state since the US invasion. Well over 200 people have been killed since Wednesday and the defence minister has warned of an "endless civil war." After taking calls from President George W. Bush, who hopes stability can let him start bringing 136,000 US troops home, Iraqi leaders met late on Saturday to issue a televised midnight appeal for calm and renew pledges to form a unity government. Religious leaders, including the fiery young cleric and Shiite militia leader Moqtada Sadr, joined the calls. Sadr, a rising force in the ruling but fractious Shiite alliance, told a rally in the second city of Basra his followers would hold joint prayer services at Sunni mosques damaged in violence. A bomb later caused damage at a Shiite mosque in Basra and gunfire rattled around two Sunni mosques in Baghdad after dark. "We have passed the danger period. The security situation is now 80 per cent stable," said Ridha Jawad Taqi, a senior official in SCIRI, the biggest of the Shiite Islamist parties, which also runs a 20,000-strong armed wing, the Badr movement. "The situation pushed the different groups to get together." The curfew should end as planned at 6:00am, officials said. "The violence seems to be diminishing," Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley told CBS television. "They've stared into the abyss a bit. I think they've all concluded that further violence ... is not in their interests." Posted by: Fred 2006-02-27 |
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