Reuters
Saturday, November 25, 2006

A U.N. envoy urged Iraq's government on Saturday to halt a slide into civil war and stop the "cancer" of sectarianism from destroying the country, warning that the carnage of this week could tear Iraq apart.

The U.N.'s special representative for Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, said car bombs on Thursday that killed more than 200 people in a Shi'ite area of Baghdad and "blind acts of revenge"

were part of a vicious cycle of sectarian violence "tearing apart the very political and social fabric of Iraq".
"No country could tolerate such a cancer in its body politic," Qazi said in a statement.

The Shi'ite-led government has called for calm, desperate to avert the sort of sharp escalation in violence that followed an attack on a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra in February. This time, many fear, such revenge attacks could push Iraq over the edge.

Fearful Iraqis spent sleepless nights guarding their homes and asking who would be next after gunmen attacked mosques and burnt homes in a Sunni enclave on Friday following the worst bomb attack since Saddam Hussein's overthrow in April 2003.

Abu Marwah, who lives in the Jamia area of mainly Sunni west Baghdad, said: "All the men in the area were on alert ... we received information that militias were expected to attack. Of course we all had our Kalashnikovs."

The city of 7 million was under a tight curfew imposed after 202 were killed in Sadr City, stronghold of the Mehdi Army, a militia loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that Sunni Arabs blame for thousands of death squad killings in recent months.

"Everybody is tense, everybody is expecting something may happen at any moment," said Abu Marwah, 40, a Sunni Arab translator who spent much of Friday night on the roof of his home, Kalashnikov in hand, keeping watch for militia attacks.

A dozen mortar rounds hit Sadr City on Saturday evening, but there were no casualties, residents said.

VIOLENCE SWIRLS

In apparent revenge for the Sadr City bombings, four mosques and homes were attacked in a Sunni enclave in northwest Baghdad on Friday, Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Salem al-Zobaie said.

Residents said the mosques were burnt, but the U.S. military said an Iraqi army patrol found only one mosque burnt.

Police found the bodies of 21 men and boys from an extended Shi'ite family on Saturday in a mainly Sunni Arab village in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, security sources said.

Despite centuries of harmony between Shi'ite Muslims and the Sunni minority, three years of bigotry and bloodshed have turned Baghdad's rich mix of communities into a patchwork of fearful, heavily armed and mutually hostile, sectarian redoubts.

Sectarian bitterness is boiling over, too, in the six-month -old Shi'ite-led government, particularly since a mass kidnap at a Sunni-run ministry and attacks on Shi'ite politicians.

President Jalal Talabani, an ethic Kurd, convened senior government leaders on Friday. "For the first time we exchanged views openly," he said. Another meeting was set for Saturday.

Sunni Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi said all sides should work together, but a top Sunni cleric, Harith al-Dari, wanted on an arrest warrant for inciting violence, told a news conference in Cairo: "This government ... exploits sectarianism".

Aides of Sadr have threatened to pull out of the government if Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki goes ahead with a planned meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in Jordan next week.

Maliki and Bush are expected to discuss how to give Iraqi forces more control, to speed the prospect of America's 140,000 troops going home. But Iraq's police and army command little trust and are suspected of links to a string of attacks.

Talabani, due to hold talks with Iran's president this weekend, said he would leave for Iran on Sunday, a day later than originally planned because Baghdad airport was closed. He will seek help stabilising Iraq, though analysts question how much Iran or Syria can do at this point.