Over 100 killed as sectarian violence sweeps Iraq

[razrif]

Must be a living hell.......


By Lin Noueihed and Mussab Al-Khairalla 48 minutes ago

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - More than 130 people, including dozens who joined a demonstration against sectarian violence, were killed in bloodshed across
Iraq despite calls for calm on Thursday from leaders fearful of civil war.
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A day after a suspected al Qaeda bomb destroyed a major Shi'ite shrine, Iraq canceled all leave for the police and army and minority Sunni political leaders pulled out of U.S.-backed talks on forming a national unity government, accusing the ruling Shi'ites of fomenting dozens of attacks on Sunni mosques.

Washington, which wants stability in Iraq to help it extract around 130,000 U.S. troops, has also called for restraint, reflecting international fears that the oil-exporting country of 27 million may be slipping closer to all-out sectarian war.

But the main Sunni religious authority made an extraordinary public criticism of the Shi'ites' most revered clerical leader, accusing him of fuelling the violence by calling for protests.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, pressed ahead despite the Sunni boycott with a meeting that he had called to avert a descent toward a civil war. After discussions with Shi'ites, Kurds and leaders of a smaller Sunni group, he told a televised news conference that if all-out war came "no one will be safe."

Police and military sources tallied more than 130 deaths, mostly of Sunnis, around the two biggest cities Baghdad and Basra in the 24 hours since the bloodless but highly symbolic bombing of the Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra. Dozens of Sunni mosques have been attacked and several burned to the ground.

In the bloodiest single incident, officials said 47 people who had taken part in a joint Sunni and Shi'ite demonstration against the Samarra bombing were hauled from vehicles after they left and shot dead on the outskirts of the capital. The identities of the gunmen and the victims was not clear.

They were all dumped in a ditch beside the road, said Dhary Thoaban, deputy chairman of the Diyala regional council. Earlier, there had been conflicting accounts of the incident but police and military officials all confirmed Thaoban's version.

HIGH ALERT

The Interior Ministry said all police and army leave was canceled, curfews were extended as the country locks down for three days of national mourning. Universities postponed Saturday's start of the spring semester by nearly three weeks.

A bomb blasted an Iraqi army foot patrol in a market in the religiously divided city of Baquba, killing 16 people.

Three journalists working for Al Arabiya television were found shot dead after being attacked while filming in Samarra.

The Iraqi Accordance Front, which won most of the minority Sunni vote in December's parliamentary election, said it would need an apology from the ruling Shi'ites before it would consider rejoining talks on a national unity coalition.

"We are suspending our participation in negotiations on the government with the Shi'ite Alliance," Tareq al-Hashemi, a top official of the Accordance Front, told a news conference at which he accused Shi'ite leaders of fostering the violence.

U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who is visiting the Middle East, echoed calls from
President George W. Bush and the
United Nations for Iraqis to pull together and not be pushed into sectarian strife by a bloodless but highly symbolic attack blamed on al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"The only people that want a civil war in Iraq are the terrorists like Zarqawi," she told reporters. "The Iraqi people are working under extremely difficult circumstances to bridge sectarian differences."

QAEDA STATEMENT

An Internet statement from the Mujahideen Council, which includes al Qaeda in Iraq, blamed Shi'ite leaders for blowing up the shrine to justify attacks and vowed a "shocking response."

The United Nations Security Council, rarely able to find a common voice on Iraq since its bitter divisions over the U.S. invasion in 2003, sounded a note of alarm in calling on Iraqis to rally behind a non-sectarian government.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pinned the blame for the shrine bombing on "Zionists" and foreign forces in Iraq, warning Western powers like the United States and
Israel that they would face the wrath of Muslims.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'ites' reclusive and aging senior cleric, made a rare, if silent, television appearance that underlined the gravity of the crisis on Wednesday. He called for protests but also restraint.

The Sunni Muslim Clerics Association, without naming him, accused their Shi'ite counterparts of fostering violence, however -- an unusually blunt condemnation.

Since U.S. forces toppled Saddam's Sunni-dominated government, Sistani has helped hold in check anger many Shi'ites feel against al Qaeda and other Sunni militants as the Shi'ite majority tastes power after years of oppression.

Sunnis accuse police of running death squads against them and some powerful Shi'ites, buoyed by success in December's election, have said only Sistani has prevented more violence.

"The danger of civil war is extremely serious," said Joost Hilterman, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group think tank, listing Shi'ite clerics among those holding it back.

"There have been efforts by the insurgents to start civil war for a couple of years now, but they have not succeeded because of institutional restraints. Those restraints have begun to erode."

(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy, Lin Noueihed, Ahmed Rasheed, Aseel Kami, Waleed Ibrahim, Hiba Moussa, Faris al-Mehdawi, Nick Olivari, Lutfi Abu Oun and Salem al-Oreibi in Baghdad and Abdelrazzak Hameed in Basra)

[-thetruth_]

Anger is a satanic attributes