 The murder of 14 Sunni Arabs from the same clan, in an apparent retaliation for a string of anti-Shiite attacks south of Baghdad, has heightened fears that Shiite militias could take up arms and precipitate a civil conflict in Iraq.
| The Sunnis are enthusiastically engaging in that very civil conflict, and have been for at least a year. Just ask the Association of Muslim Scholars. |
The past few days have seen an unprecedented series of tit for tat attacks between the two communities.
| It's also soon some pretty massive body counts... |
The latest anti-Shiite attack was a car bomb that targeted a vegetable market in the mixed town of Suwayrah, south of Baghdad, that left 16 people dead and 52 wounded. "The goal is to kill as many Shiites as possible. These were Salafists (Sunni fundamentalists), who live in the nearby village of Khomeirat, and want to spark a civil war," Suwayrah policeman Hussein Khudair told AFP. Extremist Sunni groups with ties to the insurgency have claimed responsibility for many anti-Shiite attacks, but Shiite clerics had so far kept a lid on calls for revenge. But on Friday, the bodies of 12 Sunni farmers, all belonging to the Dulaimi tribe, were discovered buried in a hastily dug pit on the edge of the radical Baghdad Shiite stronghold of Sadr City. According to police, the victims had their hands tied and were blindfolded, with a bullet each to the back of the head. A morgue employee said the bodies of two other people from the same group were brought to him yesterday. Relatives said the farmers, from the town of Madain on a lawless stretch between Baghdad and Suwayrah, had come to the capital to sell their produce |