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Gunmen screen victims' religion

Two attacks Sunday dealt a blow to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's pledge to curb sectarian violence.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 5, 2006

BAGHDAD - Masked gunmen stopped two minibuses carrying students north of Baghdad on Sunday, ordered the passengers off, and separated the Sunnis. Then they killed everyone else, 21 people in all, a witness said.

In predominantly Shiite southern Basra, police hunting for militants stormed a Sunni Arab mosque early Sunday, just hours after a car bombing. The ensuing firefight killed nine.

The two attacks dealt a blow to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's pledge to curb sectarian violence. He failed to reach consensus Sunday among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian parties on candidates for interior and defense minister - posts he must fill to implement his ambitious plan to take control of Iraq's security from U.S.-led forces within 18 months.

In the minibus ambush, a car and a sport utility vehicle stopped the vehicles near the town of Qara Tappah, about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad and near Diyala province, said electrician Haqi Ismail, 48.

Ismail said he had been driving his pickup behind the minibuses and was stopped too. About 15 masked men forced everyone out of the vehicles, he said.

"They asked us to show our IDs, and then instructed us to stand in a line, separating the Sunni from the Shiite due to the IDs and also due to the faces," said Ismail, a Shiite Kurd.

Then the gunmen opened fire on those who weren't Sunni.

Ismail said he was injured but did not move.

"One of the gunmen kicked me to be sure that I was dead," he said, speaking from his hospital bed in Sulaimaniyah, north of Qara Tappah.

Two of the victims were high school students, ages 17 and 18, and nine were students in their early twenties at al-Yarmouk University in Baqubah, said Qara Tappah Mayor Serwan Shokir. The rest were men in their mid to late 30s who worked as laborers or for the power company, the mayor said.

The Basra violence - the car bomb Saturday and mosque raid early Sunday - came days after Maliki declared a state of emergency in the city, vowing to crack down with an "iron fist" on gangs fighting for power.

Basra police surrounded the al-Arab mosque just after midnight Saturday, tipped off that militants holed up inside had opened fire. Also, Iraqi forces had found two vehicles packed with explosives near the mosque, similar to the car bomb used to attack a crowded market, killing 28 people and wounding 62.

Police and gunmen exchanged fire, killing nine people. Police arrested six terror suspects, adding that part of the mosque was damaged and burned.

A hard-line Sunni organization in Basra, the influential Sunni Arab Association of Muslim Scholars, said the nine people killed had come to the mosque to protect it.

The U.S. military said an American soldier was killed Saturday in the volatile Anbar province.

In other violence Sunday, according to police:

nGunmen in a car opened fire on a minibus carrying telecommunications workers to an area near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, killing four and wounding two.

nPolice found 16 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad and four in the city of Tikrit, north of the capital.

nGunmen in Tikrit killed three police officers at a checkpoint.

Mass graves may be cited in another Hussein trial

BAGHDAD - Two recently excavated mass graves containing the bodies of at least 28 people allegedly killed by Saddam Hussein's regime will likely provide key evidence for a third war crimes trial against the deposed Iraqi president. The victims were mostly men age 20 to 35, according to forensic archaeologist Michael "Sonny" Trimble, 53, of St. Louis.

Evidence at the site is expected to be used in a yet-to-be scheduled trial. Hussein is currently on trial for his alleged involvement in the killing of 148 Shiite residents of Dujail. He is then due to be tried for the gassing deaths of thousands of Kurds.

Details of the mass grave were provided to news agencies by pool reporters from the New York Times and Agence-France Press, who visited the site at the arrangement of U.S. and Iraqi officials investigating the estimated 100,000 to 180,000 victims of a 1991 government crackdown.

Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified June 5, 2006, 05:15:48]