An armed Shiite militiaman in Baghdad, Iraq, June 16, 2014. Sunni insurgents took over the small city of Tal Afar, according to security officials and residents, sending both Shiites and Sunnis fleeing. They also killed more than two dozen Shiite voluntee
Baghdad:
As Sunni militants rampaged across northern Iraq last week, executing Iraqi soldiers and government workers and threatening to demolish Shiism's most sacred shrines, Iraq's Shiites suffered mostly in silence, maintaining a patience urged on them by their religious leaders through months of deadly bombings. (Militants Attack Iraq's Biggest Oil Refinery)
On Tuesday, though, there were signs that their patience had run out.
The bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners were found in a government-controlled police station in Baqouba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. They had all been shot Monday night in the head or chest. Then the remains of four young men who had been shot were found dumped Tuesday on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.
By evening, it was Shiites who were the victims again, as a suicide bombing in a crowded market in Sadr City killed at least 14 people, local hospital officials said. (Oil Majors Cut Staff in Iraq on Fears Violence Will Spread)
It is a darkly familiar cycle of violence, one that took hold in Iraq in 2006 and generated a vicious sectarian war over the next three years: Sunni extremists explode suicide bombs in Shiite neighborhoods, and Shiite militias retaliate by torturing and executing Sunnis. This time, though, without the presence of the U.S. military, it has the potential to grow much worse.
That bloodletting was stopped in 2008 only after Iraqi tribal leaders in the pay of the U.S. military rebelled against the Sunni extremists. With Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now encouraging what he says are hundreds of thousands of Shiites to rise to the defense of Iraq, and after years of sectarian government that has deeply alienated the tribes as well as the Sunnis, it is not clear that such a strategy, if tried, would meet with the same success.
"If there is no fast solution to what is happening, the situation will go back to daily attacks and will return to what happened back in 2006," said Masroor Aswad, a member of the Independent Human Rights Commission here. He said the minority Sunnis were terrified that they would be blamed for any violence against Shiites, leaving them vulnerable to brutal retaliatory attacks from the Shiite militias.
In Baqouba, the killings took place after an assault in which militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant overran several neighborhoods, security officials there said. A police source said the Sunni militants attacked the police station where the men, suspected of ties to the insurgents, were being held for questioning.
"Those people were detainees who were arrested in accordance with Article 4 terrorism offenses," he said, referring to Iraqi anti-terrorism legislation that gives security forces extraordinary arrest powers. "They were killed inside the jail by the policemen before they withdrew from the station last night."
Brig. Gen. Jameel Kamal al-Shimmari, the police commander in Baqouba, said that officers had repulsed the militants from the city after a 3-hour gun battle in the same area as the police station where the prisoners were subsequently killed.
"Everything in the city is now under control, and the groups of armed men are not seen in the city," Shimmari said Tuesday.
Officials at the morgue in Baqouba said that two police officers had been killed in the fighting.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed in a Twitter post that the prisoners had been executed by the police.
An Iraqi military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, blamed the deaths in Baqouba on the militants, saying the prisoners died when the station was struck with hand grenades and mortars. However, a source at the morgue in Baqouba said that many of the victims had been shot to death at close range. Like many of the official sources in Iraq, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The fighting in Baqouba was particularly worrying, because it represented the closest the rebel group and its allies have come to the capital. After capturing Mosul a week ago, the group has advanced more than 230 miles, mostly down the valley of the Tigris River. Baqouba, and the surrounding province of Diyala, is a volatile mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and was the scene of some of the worst sectarian violence in past years.
As the fighting creeps closer to Baghdad, the offensive is being led not just by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but by fighters drawn from other Sunni militant groups - the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Islamic Army, according to an Iraqi intelligence source. Both of those groups have long had a presence in Diyala province and were involved in some of the bloodiest fighting during the past sectarian battles. The 1920s Brigades was formed by disaffected Iraqi army officers who were left without jobs after the Americans dissolved the military in 2003. (Also Read: 40 Indians Stranded in Captured Mosul in Iraq, Can't Be Contacted)
Throughout Baghdad, residents expressed fears that the violence was finding its way back into their neighborhoods. "You see gunmen in the street, you don't know who is who," said Ahmad al-Kharabai, who has a small hardware store in Al-Adil, a mixed neighborhood in southern Baghdad where Sunnis live mainly on one side of the main road and Shiites live mainly on the other.
"You don't know who is with you, and who's against you," he said.
Many militiamen have come into the neighborhood, and although they do not visibly carry guns, no one doubts they have them. Still, Kharabai said he was hopeful that Iraq would not devolve into a cycle of revenge killings. "I think Iraqis know the mistake they made in 2006 and will not repeat it," he said.
Mohammed al-Gailani, who owns a grocery shop in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Dora, was more pessimistic.
"People are afraid, we are afraid of the militiamen around; I think things will go as badly as they did before," he said, adding that he was desperate to leave with his family for Turkey but that flights were booked for weeks. A travel agent refused even to estimate how long it would take to get him and his five children and wife on a plane.
Gailani's greatest fear is that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant will gain ground. "Any gain by ISIS will have a negative effect on Sunnis here," he said, using another version of the group's name.
In eastern Baghdad, the bodies of four young men were found without identity documents on a street in the Benuk neighborhood Tuesday morning. They were believed to have been Sunnis, because the area is controlled by Shiite militiamen. The area is largely Shiite but also includes Sunnis, and no one had initially claimed the young men's bodies, an Interior Ministry official said. The victims were 25-30 years old and had been shot multiple times, he said.
The killings fit the pattern of Shite death squads during the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, at the height of the U.S.-led invasion. At the peak of the violence, as many as 80 bodies a day were found in Baghdad and its immediate suburbs.
The situation was highly fluid Tuesday, with the Iraqi army focused on trying to win back some of the ground it had lost. By late Tuesday, government officials said they had regained the northern city of Tal Afar, which the militants had taken just a day earlier. The fight went on for 48 hours and was helped by an airdrop of reinforcements, said a local Turkmen leader, Fawzi Akram Terzi.
However, there had not yet been any official government announcement of the recapture of the city.
The Iraqi government issued a statement accusing Saudi Arabia of funding the Sunni extremists, as al-Maliki continued to offer explanations for the stunning success of the Sunni extremists that do not focus on his leadership. The statement drew almost immediate criticism from the United States, with Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, describing it as inaccurate and "offensive."
On Tuesday, though, there were signs that their patience had run out.
The bodies of 44 Sunni prisoners were found in a government-controlled police station in Baqouba, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. They had all been shot Monday night in the head or chest. Then the remains of four young men who had been shot were found dumped Tuesday on a street in a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by Shiite militiamen.
By evening, it was Shiites who were the victims again, as a suicide bombing in a crowded market in Sadr City killed at least 14 people, local hospital officials said. (Oil Majors Cut Staff in Iraq on Fears Violence Will Spread)
It is a darkly familiar cycle of violence, one that took hold in Iraq in 2006 and generated a vicious sectarian war over the next three years: Sunni extremists explode suicide bombs in Shiite neighborhoods, and Shiite militias retaliate by torturing and executing Sunnis. This time, though, without the presence of the U.S. military, it has the potential to grow much worse.
That bloodletting was stopped in 2008 only after Iraqi tribal leaders in the pay of the U.S. military rebelled against the Sunni extremists. With Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki now encouraging what he says are hundreds of thousands of Shiites to rise to the defense of Iraq, and after years of sectarian government that has deeply alienated the tribes as well as the Sunnis, it is not clear that such a strategy, if tried, would meet with the same success.
"If there is no fast solution to what is happening, the situation will go back to daily attacks and will return to what happened back in 2006," said Masroor Aswad, a member of the Independent Human Rights Commission here. He said the minority Sunnis were terrified that they would be blamed for any violence against Shiites, leaving them vulnerable to brutal retaliatory attacks from the Shiite militias.
In Baqouba, the killings took place after an assault in which militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant overran several neighborhoods, security officials there said. A police source said the Sunni militants attacked the police station where the men, suspected of ties to the insurgents, were being held for questioning.
"Those people were detainees who were arrested in accordance with Article 4 terrorism offenses," he said, referring to Iraqi anti-terrorism legislation that gives security forces extraordinary arrest powers. "They were killed inside the jail by the policemen before they withdrew from the station last night."
Brig. Gen. Jameel Kamal al-Shimmari, the police commander in Baqouba, said that officers had repulsed the militants from the city after a 3-hour gun battle in the same area as the police station where the prisoners were subsequently killed.
"Everything in the city is now under control, and the groups of armed men are not seen in the city," Shimmari said Tuesday.
Officials at the morgue in Baqouba said that two police officers had been killed in the fighting.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed in a Twitter post that the prisoners had been executed by the police.
An Iraqi military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, blamed the deaths in Baqouba on the militants, saying the prisoners died when the station was struck with hand grenades and mortars. However, a source at the morgue in Baqouba said that many of the victims had been shot to death at close range. Like many of the official sources in Iraq, he spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The fighting in Baqouba was particularly worrying, because it represented the closest the rebel group and its allies have come to the capital. After capturing Mosul a week ago, the group has advanced more than 230 miles, mostly down the valley of the Tigris River. Baqouba, and the surrounding province of Diyala, is a volatile mix of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, and was the scene of some of the worst sectarian violence in past years.
As the fighting creeps closer to Baghdad, the offensive is being led not just by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but by fighters drawn from other Sunni militant groups - the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Islamic Army, according to an Iraqi intelligence source. Both of those groups have long had a presence in Diyala province and were involved in some of the bloodiest fighting during the past sectarian battles. The 1920s Brigades was formed by disaffected Iraqi army officers who were left without jobs after the Americans dissolved the military in 2003. (Also Read: 40 Indians Stranded in Captured Mosul in Iraq, Can't Be Contacted)
Throughout Baghdad, residents expressed fears that the violence was finding its way back into their neighborhoods. "You see gunmen in the street, you don't know who is who," said Ahmad al-Kharabai, who has a small hardware store in Al-Adil, a mixed neighborhood in southern Baghdad where Sunnis live mainly on one side of the main road and Shiites live mainly on the other.
"You don't know who is with you, and who's against you," he said.
Many militiamen have come into the neighborhood, and although they do not visibly carry guns, no one doubts they have them. Still, Kharabai said he was hopeful that Iraq would not devolve into a cycle of revenge killings. "I think Iraqis know the mistake they made in 2006 and will not repeat it," he said.
Mohammed al-Gailani, who owns a grocery shop in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Dora, was more pessimistic.
"People are afraid, we are afraid of the militiamen around; I think things will go as badly as they did before," he said, adding that he was desperate to leave with his family for Turkey but that flights were booked for weeks. A travel agent refused even to estimate how long it would take to get him and his five children and wife on a plane.
Gailani's greatest fear is that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant will gain ground. "Any gain by ISIS will have a negative effect on Sunnis here," he said, using another version of the group's name.
In eastern Baghdad, the bodies of four young men were found without identity documents on a street in the Benuk neighborhood Tuesday morning. They were believed to have been Sunnis, because the area is controlled by Shiite militiamen. The area is largely Shiite but also includes Sunnis, and no one had initially claimed the young men's bodies, an Interior Ministry official said. The victims were 25-30 years old and had been shot multiple times, he said.
The killings fit the pattern of Shite death squads during the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, at the height of the U.S.-led invasion. At the peak of the violence, as many as 80 bodies a day were found in Baghdad and its immediate suburbs.
The situation was highly fluid Tuesday, with the Iraqi army focused on trying to win back some of the ground it had lost. By late Tuesday, government officials said they had regained the northern city of Tal Afar, which the militants had taken just a day earlier. The fight went on for 48 hours and was helped by an airdrop of reinforcements, said a local Turkmen leader, Fawzi Akram Terzi.
However, there had not yet been any official government announcement of the recapture of the city.
The Iraqi government issued a statement accusing Saudi Arabia of funding the Sunni extremists, as al-Maliki continued to offer explanations for the stunning success of the Sunni extremists that do not focus on his leadership. The statement drew almost immediate criticism from the United States, with Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, describing it as inaccurate and "offensive."
© 2014, The New York Times News Service
