Raid On Town Split By Kidnappers
Iraqi security forces raided a town in central Iraq on Sunday where Sunni militants were holding dozens of Shiite Muslims hostage and threatening to kill them unless all Shiites left the area, an Iraqi official said.
Security forces surrounded the town of Madain and began raiding sites Saturday in search of those abducted, said Qassim Dawoud, the minister in charge of national security.
Early Sunday, Iraqi forces freed about 15 Shiite families, said Haidar Khayon, an official at the Defense Ministry in Baghdad. He said five hostage-takers were captured in a skirmish with light gunfire, but no casualties were reported.
Security forces continued to comb through the town of about 1,000 families, which is located 14 miles southeast of Baghdad, Khayon said.
Witnesses said road blocks were set up, and no one was allow to leave or enter Madain. But shops opened and the town was calm.
In other developments:
In Baghdad, Sabah Khadum, an adviser to the interior ministry, said officials didn't know how many hostages there were in Madain, or whether it was a sectarian crisis or merely a tribal dispute. He said the interior and defense ministries hoped to resolve it peacefully.
"The military presence near the city is to control any developments and to protect innocent people," he said in a telephone interview.
Dawoud told Iraqi legislators in Baghdad on Sunday that Iraqi soldiers, police and U.S. forces were sent to Madain on Saturday afternoon. "Our plan is by the end of this week we are going to launch a military operation in this area." The U.S. military said it had no information about a U.S. role in the deployment.
Other retaliatory kidnappings by Sunni and Shiite groups have occurred in the violent area, but the abductions appeared to be the first attempt by militants since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to forcibly evacuate a town along sectarian lines.
The area around Madain is home to several Sunni Arab tribes that follow the radical Wahabi brand of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia. Some Iraqis blame growing Islamic extremism in the area on Saddam Hussein's policy of settling Sunnis in several towns just south of Baghdad after a 1991 Shiite uprising against the former regime.
Sunnis make up about 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million population, but were dominant under Saddam Hussein. Since coalition forces drove him from power two years ago, the disempowered Sunnis are believed to form the backbone of the ongoing insurgency.
The insurgents repeatedly have sparred with Iraq's security forces in Madain and its outlying districts, which are populated by a near-equal mix of Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
On Sunday, the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq posted a statement on an Islamic Web site known for its militant content, saying that the "enemies of God" had fabricated the story of the hostage crisis to justify a military attack on Madain aimed at Sunnis. It claimed Iraqi security forces have removed some Sunnis from their homes and taken them from the town.
In Baghdad, lawmakers in Iraq's new parliament met Sunday morning and agreed that a five-member committee, including Dawoud, will look into the crisis and make recommendations. In a speech to the assembly, Dawoud said: "We have to acknowledge the truth that there is an attempt to draw the country into a sectarian war."
In an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, Jouwad al-Maliky, a member of parliament's Shiite alliance, sharply criticized the hostage taking in Madain.
"This area witnessed terrorist acts that cannot be believed. These terrorists and infidels tried to evict residents and kidnapped many people" in Madain, he said. Al-Maliky praised Iraqi security forces for racing to the town, but he said the legislators must form a Cabinet quickly so it can handle the Madain crisis properly.
Shiite legislator Shirwan Al-Waili told parliament the kidnappers must be stopped.
"There are people who want the Iraqi project to fail. What is going on in Madain is targeting the unity of the Iraqi people. Some kidnapped families could be killed if all Shiites don't leave the village. We can't just denounce this. We must intervene," he said.
Legislator Jala Aldin al-Saghir, a senior Shiite cleric, said: "We have warned repeatedly that sectarian cleansing was going in this area, but the security forces took no action."
The crisis in Madain began Thursday when Sunni militants attacked a Shiite mosque with explosives. Haitham Husseini, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite group, said the mosque was badly damaged. The next day, Husseini said about 100 masked militants drove through Madain, capturing Shiites. Shiite leaders and government officials estimated 35 to 100 people were taken hostage.
A resident reached by telephone said the militants had returned early Saturday, shouting through loudspeakers that all Shiites must leave or the hostages would be killed. Later, residents said the town appeared calm and there was no sign of insurgents. Some said they had seen no evidence any hostages had been taken. The conflicting accounts could not be reconciled.