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MAHMOUDIYA, Iraq - A day after 30 people died in a suicide bombing here, the preacher at a major Sunni Arab mosque Friday condemned the horrific attack and called for unity between Iraq's rival Muslim communities.
Still, resentment of the country's Shiite political parties runs high in this troubled town 20 miles south of Baghdad - along with anti-American sentiment.
"The targeting of innocent civilians yesterday cannot be accepted," Sheik Murad al-Oujaili told the congregation at the 14th of Ramadan mosque, relating how a witness told him of an infant ripped from his mother's arm and hurled to his death by the force of the blast.
In the attack, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle at the entrance to a hospital compound as American soldiers were there inspecting the facility and handing out candy to children. Four U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded. The dead included three women and two children.
The bombing appeared part of the pattern of violence, including reprisal attacks between Sunnis and Shiites, which has given this once quiet farming area just south of Baghdad the nickname "Triangle of Death."
"This thing about Shiites and Sunnis is new to us in Iraq," the sheik told the worshipers, most of them bearded, robed men in their 20s and 30s. "We are all Iraqis, and we must stop blaming each other."
His message suggests that many Sunni Arabs, the disaffected minority that forms the backbone of the insurgency, may be growing weary of the increasingly sectarian character of the violence.
Banners condemning the suicide bombing appeared Friday in the main outdoor market, and residents say many people now routinely report suspicious individuals, cars and other objects to security forces.
"These attacks are genocide against the Iraqi people. They have nothing to do with resistance," said Abdel-Ilah Nijm, a 28-year-old house painter.
The Mahmoudiya area is home to some 300,000 people, slightly more than half of them Sunni Arabs and the rest Shiites. Residents say they will take part in the Dec. 15 national parliamentary election, and posters advertising the different political movements appear on the town's walls. The new interest in politics, however, has not been matched by a change of heart about the United States. Iraqis here and elsewhere blame the Americans for the country's problems including Shiite-Sunni tensions, fuel shortages and power outages.
"I still remember my fifth-grade lesson about the colonialist policy of divide and rule," Oujaili said in his sermon, suggesting that the Americans want to push Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites apart.
Also ...
HUSSEIN TRIAL: A prosecutor in Saddam Hussein's trial said Friday a key witness has died of cancer but his testimony already had been taped for the proceedings, which are set to resume Monday. Wadah Ismael al-Sheik died Oct. 27, four days after talking to court officials, said Jaafar al-Mousawi, the main prosecutor. Sheik was a senior Iraqi intelligence officer at the time of the Dujail massacre in 1982.
ATTACK VIDEO: A videotape posted Friday on the Internet claims to show how al-Qaida in Iraq carried out Oct. 24 suicide attacks on two Baghdad hotels that killed as many as 17 Iraqi pedestrians and security guards. A narrator said the Palestine - headquarters of the Associated Press, Fox News and others - was occupied "by foreign journalists and security companies" but indicated the Sheraton was the main target because it housed "assassination teams, intelligence groups" and U.S. soldiers. The video shows the bombings.