Sectarian clashes erupt in Baghdad for second day

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Clashes persisted for a second day Tuesday in a Sunni district of Baghdad between Iraqi forces and what appeared to be local militiamen who feared that Shiite death squads had infiltrated the community.

U.S. and Iraqi troops sealed off streets to the Azamiyah district, and residents reported the area appeared quiet after clerics broadcast appeals for calm over loudspeakers from the main Sunni mosque. At least 13 people died in the two days of fighting, Iraqi officials said.

There were conflicting reports about what triggered the clashes, which underscored the rising tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities that threaten to plunge Iraq into civil war.

The U.S. military said trouble began before dawn Monday when gunmen fired on an Iraqi army patrol. Fighting escalated four hours later when 50 gunmen assaulted a U.S.-Iraqi police checkpoint, prompting U.S. and Iraqi reinforcements to rush to the scene, a U.S. statement said.

Although the clashes ended Monday afternoon, they broke out again before dawn Tuesday when rumors swept Azamiyah that paramilitary commandos from the Shiite-led Interior Ministry had entered the area.

Many Sunnis consider Interior Ministry commandos, many of them veterans of the Shiite Badr Brigade militia, as little more than sectarian death squads responsible for kidnapping and killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of Sunni civilians during the past year.

Just after 6 a.m., the mosques began calling "Allahu Akbar," which means "God is great," over and over, "which is the signal that there's trouble, that the neighborhood is under attack," one resident, Riyadh Zoheir, said by telephone from Azamiyah.

As the alarm sounded, masked gunmen took up positions on rooftops, firing at military vehicles. Gangs of armed men roamed from house to house, urging Sunni families to provide male members to help defend the neighborhood, residents said.

Neighborhood watch

Defenders included members of a neighborhood watch group formed after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. The bombing triggered reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques and clerics, raising the specter of sectarian war.

Several of the dead were members of the watch force, residents said.

"They came in wearing police clothes, but they weren't police," a watch group member said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. "We defended our neighborhood, our mosques and our honor."

Rumors spread that some of the outsiders included armed men "who did not speak Arabic well -- meaning they were Iranians or Iranian-Iraqis," Zoheir said, referring to young Shiites who grew up in Iran and returned after Saddam's fall.

Containing violence

Iraqi officials moved quickly to contain the violence. Local police commanders issued statements assuring Azamiyah residents of their safety. A leading Sunni cleric, Abdul-Salam al-Kubaisi, broadcast an appeal over a mosque loudspeaker, urging Sunnis to "resume normal lives."

Iraqi army units patrolled the streets. Sunni Arabs tend to favor the army, which is controlled by the Sunni defense minister, over forces of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry.

"For the past days, the situation was miserable," said Ziyad Younis, a university lecturer. "I didn't dare peek my head out of my house. Everybody said the Interior Ministry commandos had moved into the neighborhood."

Sunni Arab politicians expressed outrage over events in Azamiyah, which lies between heavily Shiite Sadr City and Shiite districts across the Tigris River to the west.

"We have evidence that some officials and militias are up to their necks in the killings and kidnappings that take place daily in Baghdad," Sunni politician Dhafir al-Ani said on Al-Arabiya television.

Another key Sunni politician, Adnan al-Dulaimi, accused the Shiite-led government of conducting "the ugliest form of ethnic cleansing" against Sunni communities around Baghdad, including Azamiyah.

Al-Dulaimi blamed the deteriorating security situation on "the existence of unleashed militia, including some militia backed by foreign powers who have only one goal -- that is to see Iraqis slaughtered in a sectarian war."

The Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, led by Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq, also demanded that government officials "stop their raiding, kidnapping and looting operations in Azamiyah."

Iraqi officials estimate tens of thousands have been displaced -- the majority of them Shiites but also Sunnis and Christians who have left mixed areas for the safety of communities dominated by their own sect.

Sunni anger has welled as a time of political instability as Iraq's ethnic and religious factions struggle to form a government of national unity. Talks have been stalled for months over the issue of who should be the next prime minister, with the Sunnis and Kurds steadfastly rejecting the Shiite nomination of incumbent Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Al-Jaafari has refused to give up the nomination that he narrowly won in a Shiite caucus. Shiite leaders met Tuesday to discuss the possibility of a new Shiite candidate, but prospects for a quick end to the stalemate were in doubt as al-Jaafari's Dawa party pledged to support him for a second term.

In other developments:

--Seven people were killed when a bomb exploded outside a cafe in eastern Baghdad, police reported.

--A policeman was shot dead near his home in Basra, officials said.

--Two bodies, both shot in the head, were found in southwestern Baghdad.