BAGHDAD (AP) — Nearly four dozen Sunni detainees were
gunned down at a jail north of Baghdad, a car bomb struck a Shiite
neighborhood of the capital and four young Sunnis were found slain, as
ominous signs emerged Tuesday that open warfare between the two main
Muslim sects has returned to Iraq.
The killings, following the
capture by Sunni insurgents of a large swath of the country stretching
to Syria, were the first hints of the beginnings of a return to
sectarian bloodletting that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and
2007.
During the United States’ eight-year presence in Iraq,
American forces acted as a buffer between the two Islamic sects, albeit
with limited success. The U.S. military is now being pulled back in —
with a far more limited mission and far fewer troops, as President
Barack Obama nears a decision on an array of options for combating the
Islamic militants.
In the latest sect-on-sect violence, at least
44 Sunni detainees were slaughtered by gun shots to the head and chest
by pro-government Shiite militiamen after Sunni insurgents tried to
storm the jail near Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.
The
Iraqi military gave a different account and put the death toll at 52,
insisting the Sunni inmates were killed by mortar shells in the attack
late Monday on the facility.
In Baghdad, the bullet-riddled bodies
of four men in their late 20s or early 30s, presumably Sunnis, were
found Tuesday at different locations in the Shiite neighborhood of
Benouk, according to police and morgue officials who spoke on condition
of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the media.
Also
Tuesday, a car bomb in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City district killed 12
people and wounded 30 in a crowded outdoor market, police and hospital
officials said. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but
attacks targeting Shiite districts are routinely the work of Sunni
militants.
The sectarian violence was a grim reminder of a dark
chapter in Iraq’s history when nearly a decade ago the city woke up
virtually every morning to find dozens of bodies dumped in the streets,
trash heaps or in the Tigris river, bullet-riddled or with torture
marks.
Obama has said he would not commit the U.S. to military
action in Iraq unless the government in Baghdad moves to "set aside
sectarian differences, to promote stability, and account for the
legitimate interests of all of Iraq’s communities." In the absence of
that type of political effort, Obama has said any American military
action would not succeed.
A U.N. commission, meanwhile, warned
Tuesday that "a regional war in the Middle East draws ever closer" as
Sunni insurgents advance across Iraq to control areas bridging the
Iraq-Syria frontier. It said Iraq’s turmoil will have "violent
repercussions," most dangerously the rise of sectarian violence as "a
direct consequence of the dominance of extremist groups."
In a
move certain to exacerbate regional Shiite-Sunni tensions, the Iraqi
government made a scathing attack on Saudi Arabia, accusing the Arab
world’s Sunni powerhouse of meddling in its affairs and acquiescing to
terrorism. The harsh words came in response to a Saudi Cabinet statement
blaming what it called "the sectarian and exclusionist policies in Iraq
in recent years" for the latest violence.
There were conflicting
details about the clashes at the jail in the al-Kattoun district near
Baqouba, the capital of Diyala province, which was one of the bloodiest
battlefields of the U.S.-led war.
The fighting, some 40 miles
northeast of Baghdad, was the closest to the Iraqi capital since the
al-Qaida breakaway group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant began
its lightning advance, seizing key northern cities in the Sunni
heartland last week.
Officers said the local police station came
under attack by Sunni militants who fired rocket-propelled grenades
before opening fire with assault rifles in an attempt to free the
detainees.
A SWAT team accompanied by Shiite militiamen rushed to
the scene and ordered the policemen to leave, according to the officers.
When the police later returned to the station, they found 44 detainees
dead.
The bodies were taken to the Baqouba morgue, where an
official said most had gunshot wounds to the head and chest. One
detainee, however, survived and was taken to the hospital.
Police
later arrived at the hospital and took the wounded man away, a hospital
official said. The police officers and morgue and hospital officials all
spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety.
A
different account was provided to The Associated Press by Iraq’s chief
military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, who said the detainees
died when the attackers from the Islamic State shelled the station with
mortars. Nine attackers also were killed, he said.
The Islamic
State is known to be active in Diyala, a volatile province with a mix of
Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and where Shiite militiamen are deployed
alongside government forces. Sunni militants have for years targeted
security forces and Shiite civilians in the province, which abuts the
Iranian border.
The Sunni militants of the Islamic State have
vowed to march to Baghdad and the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and
Najaf in the worst threat to Iraq’s stability since U.S. troops left.
The three cities are home to some of the most revered Shiite shrines.
The Islamic State has also tried to capture Samarra north of Baghdad,
home to another major Shiite shrine.
Some 275 armed American
forces are being positioned in and around Iraq to help secure U.S.
assets as Obama considers an array of options for combating the Islamic
militants, including airstrikes or a contingent of special forces.
The
White House has continued to emphasize that any military engagement
remains contingent on the government in Baghdad enacting political
reforms and ending sectarian tensions, which had been on the rise even
before the Islamic State’s incursion last week, with thousands killed
since late last year.
In a move apparently designed to satisfy
Obama’s demand for political inclusion, Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish
leaders issued a joint statement late Tuesday stressing the importance
of setting "national priorities" that adhere to democratic mechanisms in
resolving divisions and condemning sectarian rhetoric.
Republicans
have been critical of Obama’s handling of Iraq, but Congress remains
deeply divided over what steps the U.S. can take militarily. Even
lawmakers who voted in 2002 to give President George W. Bush the
authority to use military force to oust Saddam Hussein have expressed
doubts about the effectiveness of drone airstrikes and worry about
Americans returning to the fight in a country split by sectarian
violence.
That Sunni-Shiite divide was on stark display in the
accounts given by Iraqi Shiites fleeing the strategic city of Tal Afar,
near the Syrian border, which was captured by Sunni militants of the
Islamic State Monday.
The advancing militants set Shiite homes
ablaze and killed at least six Shiite men who were unable to leave, said
Adek, a 26-year-old Shiite who fled to the Germawa camp in the
largely-autonomous Kurdish area of Dohuk.
"If the (Sunni
militants) stay in Tel Afar, the Shiites can’t go back home, but the
Sunnis can," said another Shiite resident, 37-year-old Maitham. Both men
gave only their first names for fear of reprisals by the militants.
___
Associated
Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad, Diaa
Hadid In Germawa, Iraq, and Julie Pace and Donna Cassata in Washington
contributed to this report.