18 More Killed In Iraqi Sectarian Violence
At least 18 people were killed in a mortar attack on an Iraqi market on Saturday, while rival Shiite militiamen battled near the ancient city of Babylon until American forces and helicopters rushed to separate the combatants.
At least 12 mortar rounds rained down at about 5:30 p.m., soon after a bomb attached to a bicycle ripped through the crowded open-air market in the central city of Mahmoudiyah, said army Capt. Oday Abdul Ridha.
Such dual attacks are frequently employed by armed groups to inflict additional damage on crowds that form after the initial bombing.
Three of the dead and 40 of the most seriously injured were taken to a hospital in Yarmouk in Baghdad's western suburbs, about 20 miles to the north, police said. Mahmoudiya is a primarily Shiite city surrounded by rival Sunni communities.
Lt. Hayder Satar of the Mahmoudiyah police said the death toll was likely to rise given the nature of some of the injuries. He said a total of 52 people had been wounded in the attack.
Earlier in the day, gunfights broke out in Hamza al-Gharbi, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, after a bomb exploded near the offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite political party that sponsors the Badr Brigades militia.
SCIRI supporters accused members of the Madhi Army headed by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of being behind the blast, Police Capt. Muthana Khalid Ali said. He said Iraqi army and police called for reinforcements and backup from American forces, who imposed a curfew on the city. There was no immediate confirmation of U.S. involvement from a military spokesman.
At least two people were killed and four injured in the fighting, said another police official, who asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisals.
The new bloodshed came after Iraqi security forces reasserted control over another southern city, Amarah, where rogue members of the Mahdi Army briefly seized control on Thursday. Twenty five people, gunmen and police, were killed in the fighting.
The incidents underscore alarm about the growing influence of the Shiite militias, who are linked to political blocs wielding strong influence over the shaky four-month-old government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Highlighting similar concerns on the other side of the sectarian fault line, Sunni insurgents on Friday staged audacious military-style parades in a pair of cities west of Baghdad that advertised their defiance of U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies.
Father south, Iraqi soldiers kept Mahdi Army fighters of a radical, anti-American Shiite cleric off the streets in Amarah, where they had briefly taken control in an audacious attack a day earlier.
The Iraqi military on Friday sent about 600 reinforcements to retake the city. British forces who turned over control of Amarah to Iraqi troops in August said they had 500 soldiers on standby if the government called for help.
By Saturday, shops and government offices had reopened while army units manned checkpoints around the city of 750,000 people, which sits at the head of Iraq's famous marshlands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers draw close together.
Haider Ali Abdullah, 35, said he rushed to reopen his tiny restaurant after hearing that fighting had ended.
"We were terrified," Abdullah said by phone. "The last two days had a major effect on our lives since we depend on this business to make a living."
Abdullah blamed both the local authorities and militiamen for allowing the situation to deteriorate.
"If I have a problem with anyone, I should face him and rely on my own wisdom to solve it without affecting the lives of others and killing dozens of people," Abdullah said.
In other developments:
Iraq's main Sunni Arab party on Saturday issued strong backing for a new agreement aimed at curbing violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Islam's holiest city, Mecca, on Friday evening.
"We praise this step and call upon all Iraqis and the government to respond to this blessed event and support it," said Adnan al-Dulaimi, the leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front which controls 44 seats in the 275-member parliament.
Al-Dulaimi also called for a ceasefire between American forces and insurgent groups during the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.
His endorsement of the accord was echoed by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who in a statement urged Iraqis to do "everything possible to stop the killing of the innocent."
The Shiite Fadhila party, a member of al-Maliki's ruling alliance, also organized a rally in support of the agreement, attended by about 2,000 people who chanted "no to terrorism, yes to the Mecca edict," and "stop the bloodshed."
Organizers of the Mecca meeting say they aim only to stop sectarian killings between rival Sunnis and Shiites, rather than impose a truce on attacks against U.S. forces in the country.
Differences between the two sides were exacerbated when parliament adopted a Shiite-backed law this week allowing provinces in the Shiite and oil-rich south to establish an autonomous region like the Kurdish one in the north.
Sunni Arabs and some Shiites opposed the law, arguing that federalism would lead to the eventual breakup of Iraq.
President George W. Bush was meeting Saturday with top military officials over refining tactics after commanders said the two-month-old campaign to stabilize Baghdad had largely failed.
"The last few weeks have been rough for our troops in Iraq, and for the Iraqi people," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "The fighting is difficult, but our nation has seen difficult fights before."