At Least 68 Dead As Baghdad Curfew Is Lifted

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Sunnis and Shiites traded bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets in Baghdad well into the night yesterday, killing at least 68 people a day after authorities lifted a curfew that had briefly calmed a series of sectarian reprisal attacks.At least six of yesterday’s attacks hit clearly religious targets, concluding with a car bombing after sundown at the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood that killed 23 and wounded 55. A separate suicide bombing killed 23 people at an east Baghdad gas station, where people had lined up to buy kerosine.In addition to those known to have been killed yesterday, police found nine more bullet-riddled bodies, including a Sunni Muslim tribal sheik, off a road southeast of Baghdad. It was unclear when they died.The surge of violence deepened the trauma of residents already shaken by fears the country was teetering on the brink of sectarian civil war, threatened talks among Iraqi politicians struggling to form a government and raised questions about American plans to begin drawing down troop strength this summer.Iraq began to tilt seriously toward outright civil war after the February 22 bombing of the important Shiite Askariya shrine in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad.President Bush decried the latest surge in sectarian violence yesterday and said that for Iraqis “the choice is chaos or unity.”In congressional testimony, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said a civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region’s Sunni and Shiite powers against one another.The Defense Intelligence Agency chief, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, said the sectarian violence stems from a core of Sunni Arab insurgents who can exploit “social, economic, historical, and religious grievances.” “Networks based on these relationships remain the greatest threat to long-term stability in Iraq,” General Maples said.The sectarian violence has hit Baghdad hardest because the population in the capital is about evenly divided between Shiites and Sunnis, more so than in any other region of the country.At about the same time as the attack on the Shiite Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque, a mortar round landed near the Shiite Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kazimiyah neighborhood on the opposite side of the Tigris River, killing one and wounding 10.

At Least 68 Dead As Baghdad Curfew Is Lifted

At Least 68 Dead As Baghdad Curfew Is Lifted

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