Iraq Protest Draws Tens Of Thousands

Jesse Jackson, Cindy Sheehan Lead Thousands In New York City Rally

(CBS/AP) 
Sectarian violence has forced about 100,000 families across Iraq to flee their homes, a top Iraqi official said, as 14 more Iraqis were killed Saturday, including six who were tortured in captivity.

Adil Abdul-Mahdi, one of the country's two vice presidents, told reporters in the southern city of Najaf that 90 percent of the displaced were Shiites like himself and the rest were Sunnis, the minority that held sway under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Other estimates of the number of displaced families have been lower.

Dr. Salah Abdul-Razzaq, spokesman of the Shiite Endowment, a government body that runs Shiite religious institutions, put the number of displaced families at 13,750 nationwide, or about 90,000 people.

That includes 25,000 Iraqis who have fled their homes since an attack on a Shiite mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 triggered a wave of sectarian attacks on Sunni mosques and clerics.

Earlier this week, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters that U.S. forces had found no "widespread movement" of Shiites and Sunnis away from religiously mixed areas, despite reports to the contrary by Iraqi officials.

In the Sunni-dominated town of Jurf al-Sakhar, 43 miles south of Baghdad and near the mostly Shiite city of Musayyib, gunmen kidnapped a Sunni policeman and his brother from their home early Saturday and shot them to death outside, said police Capt. Muthana Khalid.

Six Iraqis were killed in other violence.

In a village about 90 miles north of Baghdad, gunmen attacked a minibus carrying female students from Diyala University, killing one woman and her father, who was driving the vehicle, police said in a statement.

In Ghazaliyah in west Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol killed one policeman and wounded two, said police Lt. Mohammed Hanoun. Elsewhere in the capital, a drive-by shooting killed two Iraqi brothers who worked for a foreign contracting company and were walking through the eastern neighborhood of New Baghdad, said police 1st Lt. Ali Abbas.

In western Iraq, one Iraqi civilian was killed and two children were wounded when a mortar round landed on a home in Tal Afar, 93 miles east of Iraq's border with Syria, said police Brig. Ibrahim al-Jibouri said.

In southern Iraq, Iranian forces detained four engineers from Iraq's ministry of water who were riding a boat on Shatt al-Arab, or the Arvand River, which runs along the Iran-Iraq border and into the Persian Gulf, said Iraqi police Capt. Mushtaq Kadhim said.

Iran and Iraq, which share a 900-mile border, have long argued about their line of control on the waterway.

On Friday night, a roadside bomb in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, hit a convoy carrying the city's police chief, Col. Sofian Mustafa, missing him but killing two of his bodyguards and wounding three others, said police Capt. Arkan Ali said.