Allawi Says Iraq Is in Civil War;
U.S. Forces Clash With Gunmen
Associated Press
March 20, 2006 2:11 a.m.
Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, Iraq's former prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. aired on Sunday.
Mr. Allawi, who heads the Iraqi National List, a secular alliance of Shiite and Sunni politicians, said there was no other way to describe the increasing violence across the country.
"It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more," Mr. Allawi told the BBC. "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
Mr. Allawi said playing down the current problems in Iraq would be a mistake, telling the BBC he had warned against a power vacuum and the prevalence of militias. Mr. Allawi said the formation of a national unity government was what Iraq needed to achieve peace.
Iraq's newly elected parliament was seated Thursday, and representatives of its Shiite Arab, Sunni Arab and Kurdish blocs have been meeting in an effort to overcome deep divisions and agree on the makeup of a new government. The minority factions want to block broad Shiite control of powerful ministries.
British Defense Secretary John Reid, who is visiting Iraq, expressed concern about "a greater degree of sectarian violence," but said he didn't believe civil war was imminent. "The most urgent need at the moment is the speedy formation of a government of national unity," he said.
Meanwhile, on the eve of the third anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, American troops clashed with gunmen north and west of Baghdad Sunday and insurgents lobbed a mortar round into Karbala, the holy city south of Baghdad where a million Shiite pilgrims assembled for a major religious commemoration.
U.S. Troops to Remain in Iraq for Years
Separately, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said Sunday that U.S. troops likely will remain there for the next few years though the numbers will be scaled back as Iraqi forces gain strength. "I see a couple of more years of this with a gradually reducing coalition presence here in Iraq .. as the Iraqi security forces step forward," Gen. George W. Casey said.
Mr. Casey said he did not think at the time the war began that the insurgency in Iraq would have been as robust as it has been. Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," he said didn't believe Iraq was in danger of falling into civil war, although he said it remained a possibility because of increased sectarian tensions and violence. "The situation here is fragile," he said. "I suspect it will remain fragile here until we get a new government, a government of national unity, formed."
Continuing Violence
Iraqi police said eight civilians, including a child, were killed in clashes between U.S. troops and gunmen in Duluiyah, 45 miles (75 kilometers) north of Baghdad. The town is located in Iraq's Sunni heartland where the Iraqi army and U.S. forces opened an airborne campaign last week to hunt down insurgents.
The Americans said it was the largest "air assault" operation since the 2003 invasion.
During operations in Duluiyah, police said, U.S. troops arrested Col. Farouq Khalil, an Iraqi interior ministry official, after raiding his house. The American military didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier it said scores of suspected insurgents had been detained.
Elsewhere, two civilians were killed and 10 wounded when gunmen attacked U.S. troops stationed at the governor's office in Ramadi, 70 miles west of Baghdad.
In the capital, police found the bullet-riddled bodies of three men bound hand and foot and dumped in a sewage treatment plant in the southeast neighborhood of Rustamiyah. The victims appeared to be the latest in the wave of revenge killings after the bombing Feb. 22 of a Shiite shrine in Samarra.
The mortar round fired at the holy city of Karbala landed in a parking lot a half mile from the shrine that is the destination of the pilgrims marking the 40th and final day of mourning for Imam Hussein, the Prophet Muhammad's grandson. No one was hurt.
In violence against police, gunmen killed four guards at archaeological sites in the northern city of Mosul. A fifth policeman and a bystander were wounded. A roadside bomb exploded on a police patrol in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing one officer and injuring 10 others, the Iraqi military said.
A Baghdad policeman driving on a rural road in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of the Iraqi capital, was also killed by gunmen, police said. Four men riding in the car were wounded in the attack.
Near the southern city of Basra, two officials of the Iraqi Islamic Party were gunned down by four assassins. On Saturday, a dozen bodies were found in Baghdad in the shadowy war of Shiite-Sunni reprisals.
In a U.S. radio address, President Bush said the violence in Iraq "has created a new sense of urgency" among Iraqi leaders to form such a government.
Those leaders -- representatives of the squabbling Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs in Iraq's new parliament -- were taking a break from negotiations to observe Monday's Shiite holiday and Tuesday's Kurdish New Year. They are deadlocked over how to apportion the most powerful jobs in the new government, as minority factions seek to limit domination by Iraq's Shiite majority.
The U.S. military reported that two 101st Airborne soldiers were killed Thursday by indirect fire, usually meaning mortars, at the Speicher operating base, north of where the joint Iraqi-U.S. operation was in progress.
At least 2,314 American military personnel have died since the Iraq war began in the early hours of March 20, 2003.
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