Six Katyusha rockets slammed into the Sunni-majority Adhamiya district, north of Baghdad, at two intervals Thursday evening, according to the Haqq Agency and eyewitness accounts. Two rockets struck at 6:30 p.m., one of which exploded at the commercial Omar bin Abdul Aziz Street, while the second hit the yard of the Abu Hanifa Mosque without exploding. About an hour later, during the call for sunset prayers, four other rockets hit several areas in the district but with no reports of injuries.
U.S. forces engaged with Mahdi Army militiamen in the Bayya’ district, south of Baghdad, reportedly after they were attacked by small-arms fire from the nearby Ali Al-Bayya’ mosque in the Shi’ite dominated district just before Friday prayers. Eyewitnesses reported that Mahdi Army militiamen had attacked and occupied two Sunni mosques, the Kawthar and Rahman, killing one guard and wounding several people as they were preparing to attend the Friday prayers. The militiamen came from the Sadr bureau in ‘Ishreen Street, residents said. U.S. troops then interfered and chased the militiamen to the area around the Ali Al-Bayya’ mosque and called for helicopter support, according to a U.S. military report. Helicopters opened fire during the clash outside the mosque and killed two militants.
Sheikh Abdul Mahdi Al-Karbala’i, the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, warned during his Friday prayers sermon in the holy city of Karbala from “bloody reprisals by citizens if bombings continue to harvest the lives of hundreds in Baghdad.” Sistani’s representative was commenting on the massive suicide bombings in the Shi’ite districts of Sadriya and Sadr City Thursday in which over 200 people were killed and over 250 wounded. Al-Karbala’i said that if “such atrocities by terrorists are continued without deterrents, then it could lead to uncontrolled reprisals by citizens, plunging the capital into another cycle of revenge attacks.
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