 Gunmen have shot dead 130 people in two days of sectarian violence in Iraq after the bombing of a revered Shia shrine, prompting renewed political paralysis and warnings of civil war. The spiralling violence threatens to derail negotiations on setting up a government of national unity, with the main Sunni political party declaring a boycott of talks with the Shia-led government over the reprisal attacks. The main Sunni alliance, the National Concord Front, also boycotted an emergency meeting of national leaders held by President Jalal Talabani in a bid to restore calm.
| If they boycotted that particular meeting, that means they don't want to restore calm. They think they're going to get concessions out of the violence, and they think they can stop it when they're ready. |
"To put out the fire is a holy duty and will be achieved through national unity," Talabani told reporters after the meeting.
| "National unity" isn't going to do it. Destroying the killers, and not innocent bystanders, will do it. |
The surge in sectarian violence follows the bombing Wednesday morning of a Shia shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and reprisals against Sunni mosques nationwide. Eighty bullet-riddled corpses were brought to the Baghdad morgue between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, the deputy director of the morgue, Doctor Kais Mohammed, told AFP. "I've only been able to carry out autopsies on 25 of them," he said, adding that all had been shot. Many of the bodies, which were dumped in Baghdad and its suburbs, could not immediately be identified, but they were widely believed to be those of Sunnis.
| The question I have is which Sunnis? Are they the local hard boyz, rounded up and offed even though there's no evidence that they did what everybody knows they did, or are they the nearest guys with the right colored turban? |
Another 47 bodies of men shot to death were discovered along with 10 burned out cars alongside a road near Nahrawan, southeast of Baghdad, police said. The corpses were found near a brick factory and it was not immediately known if the victims were workers from the factory.
| My guess would be that they were, and that they weren't bad guyz. There's nothing wrong with killing people that need killing, but just picking people out and slaughtering them at random is stoopid. It's a waste of ammunition, and it makes the underlying problem worse. |
One Sunni was also killed Thursday and two wounded in a drive by shooting outside a Sunni mosque in Baquba, northeast of the capital, and a Sunni sheikh was shot dead in Hillah, south of Baghdad, police said.
| My first guess would be that the drive-by killing targeted a bad guy — the murder rings are run from the mosques. My first guess on the sheikh would be Zark's guys, but he could also be another targeted killing. [Insufficient data! Bzdeep! Shutting down!] |
Iraq has placed its security forces on high alert and cancelled all leave. The night curfew in Baghdad was brought forward from 11:00 pm to 8:00 pm on Wednesday. The upsurge in killings came after suspected al-Qaeda linked militants bombed the 1,000-year-old Imam Ali al-Hadi mausoleum, one of the countries' main Shia shrines, in the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
| If all those 130 corpses belonged to suspected al-Qaeda militants, then they'd be accomplishing something. If most of them are brick makers they're being stoopid. I'm guessing that there's at least some thought going into the carnage, since they dragged a dozen or so foreigners out of jug in Basra and killed them. But it's also providing the excuse for the guys who didn't throw Sammy out of office to strut around waving guns and looking ferocious. |
Early Thursday police also reported finding the bodies of three Iraqi journalists working for Dubai-based Arabiya satellite television who were kidnapped near Samarra Wednesday evening while reporting on the shrine bombing. "The bodies of the presenter Atwar Bahjat, of cameraman Adnan Abdallah and of soundman Khaled Mohsen were found early this morning some 15km north of Samarra," police said.
| That one sound like it's probably murder most foul... |
In other violence, at least 12 people were killed in a powerful roadside bomb attack in Baquba, 60km northeast of Baghdad, of which eight were Iraqi army soldiers and four other civilians, police said, adding 20 others were wounded. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, renewed calls to his community to remain calm and forsake revenge for the bombing of the shrine.
| That's working well, isn't it? |
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