"...An apparent campaign of sectarian killings is deepening the chasm between the country's Shiite majority and Sunni Arab minority.
A wave of bombings has killed at least 111 people in the last two days in predominantly Shiite areas. When a car bomb exploded near a vegetable market in Hilla south of Baghdad on Friday, at least eight people died and 41 were wounded, according to police.
In Balad, where three successive bombs struck merchants and shoppers Thursday evening, doctors worked nonstop to save the wounded, who numbered in the hundreds; by Friday, the death toll from that attack reached 103. Many residents say their town was targeted because they are Shiites.
But Sunnis, too, are complaining of abuses, including torture and assassinations, alleging that rogue Iraqi security forces, or people posing as them, routinely abduct and execute Sunni men. In the last couple of months, bodies have turned up in the Tigris River, a garbage dump, an abandoned truck and, this week, near a rail yard.
On Friday, in the capital's Umm Qura Mosque, Sheik Ahmed Abdel Ghafour called on Sunnis to defend themselves against suspicious Iraqi security troops. "It's better for the Iraqi to be killed in his house than tortured, killed and thrown in the streets," he said.
Baghdad has become a microcosm of Iraq, with sectarian lines hardening. Residents are being forced out of their neighborhoods in and around the capital.
On Monday, insurgents dragged five Shiite teachers and their driver into a classroom in the village of Muelha, 30 miles south of Baghdad, and shot them to death.
Tuesday night, men clad in police uniforms came for seven Sunnis in the Hurriya neighborhood. The following day, police discovered their bodies dumped near a railway line in Shula, a northwestern Baghdad district. The men had been blindfolded, handcuffed and shot execution-style.
In Dora, which stretches over 30 square miles, a systematic campaign of intimidation is forcing Shiites to flee, leaving rows of empty houses and changing the fabric of this once-diverse neighborhood on the southern rim of the capital, authorities say. At least 150 families have left within the last year.
When American and Iraqi security forces began a crackdown in other Baghdad neighborhoods this year, insurgents simply slipped into Dora, police said.
"A good number of Saddam's followers used to live in these places, and once the insurgents ... joined them, Dora started to witness such incidents," said Dora police Capt. Khudayir Muhammad.
What makes the neighborhood attractive to insurgents, police say, is its size, proximity to central Baghdad, a network of back roads leading south to the Sunni Triangle and an abundance of farms that can be used as rebel hide-outs. Families are fleeing, he said, "running away from the war zone that Dora has become."
As a consequence, house prices have plummeted as supply has outstripped demand."We, the brokers, have many more houses for rent or sale than we used to have," said Naji Salam, a Dora real estate agent. Salim, 55, had shopped at the bakery that was targeted Thursday. He also planned to move away.
In a residential area near the market, a taxi driver siphoned fuel from his car to his small generator. Shopkeepers who'd kept pictures of Shiite clerics in their stores had been killed recently, said the driver, who declined to give his name or religious affiliation because he feared retribution.
"Many residents of Dora have decided to move away," he said, adding that some went to safer Baghdad areas. Others, however, had taken even more drastic measures.. "Our neighbors, who live behind our house, have already left Iraq."http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq1oct01,0,1117873.story?coll=la-tot-promo&track=morenews |
