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| Iraq |
| 21 Baghdad commuters killed |
| 2006-06-05 |
| Sectarian tensions escalated dangerously Sunday after gunmen north of Baghdad shot dead 21 Shiite commuters and police in Basra killed at least nine Sunnis, capping a bloody weekend in which more than 100 people died in a variety of shootings, bombings and assassinations around the country. The bloodshed came as Iraq's new legislature failed for a second consecutive week to come up with candidates for the Interior and Defense Ministries, posts left unfilled when Iraq's government was formed over two weeks ago, and which are considered crucial if the country's slide into sectarian violence is to be halted. The besieged U.S. military, battling allegations that vengeful Marines willfully shot dead 24 civilians in the western town of Haditha, announced that three Iraqi civilians were killed Friday when a mortar round fired during an exercise at a base near Baqouba landed in their village. The stalemate over the appointment of the ministers of Interior and Defense, promised respectively to a Shiite and a Sunni, is symptomatic of the power struggles threatening to tear Iraq apart despite the formation of what was hailed as a national unity government. A session of parliament was called Sunday for legislators to approve the candidates, but it was canceled after the factions failed to agree - and because not enough of the 275 legislators showed up to meet the 50 percent requirement for a quorum. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took office May 20 amid high hopes that a new government including Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds would be able to quell the violence and unite Iraqis. Promising tough action to defeat terrorism and disband militias, al-Maliki said he would name the security ministers "within days." Since then, hundreds of people have died while the squabbling continues. In the absence of leadership at the Interior and Defense Ministries, a promised plan to restore security to the capital has not materialized. In the worst incident Sunday, gunmen ambushed two minivans carrying commuters outside the village of Qara Tappah, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, and hauled out their passengers, many of them students traveling to Baqouba to take year-end exams. The shootings came two days after the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, urged Sunnis to take up arms against Shiites in a rambling audiotape that blamed Shiites for most of the region's woes over the past 1,400 years. In the Basra incident, which threatens to further inflame sectarian tensions in that troubled southern city, Iraqi police who shot dead nine people also detained six in a raid early Sunday at al-Arab Sunni mosque. Police said the men were gunmen who died in a shootout triggered when police raided the mosque, several hours after a suicide bomber killed 28 people Saturday in a busy marketplace in the mostly Shiite city. But Sunni politicians said that the nine people slain were ordinary civilians and that the bodies of the six who were detained later showed up at Basra's morgue. "What's happening now in Basra is an organized campaign of displacement and expulsion of Sunnis," said Sunni politician Nour Eddin al-Hayali. Last week, al-Maliki declared a state of emergency in oil-rich Basra in an attempt to curb the rampant lawlessness that has taken hold there over the past year. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 They can't count, so it's even. |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-06-05 15:20 |
| #1 gunmen north of Baghdad shot dead 21 Shiite commuters and police in Basra killed at least nine Sunnis Shia are 13 short. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-06-05 09:37 |