Senior Iraqi Shi'ite joins sectarian war of words
Source: Reuters
By Claudia Parsons BAGHDAD, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A powerful Iraqi Shi'ite leader said on Monday his majority community was a victim of "sectarian genocide", a new twist in a bitter exchange of accusations between Iraq's rival Muslim sects. Sectarian attacks, bombings and mortars are killing hundreds of people every week in Baghdad, the epicentre of violence in Iraq. Tens of thousands of both Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs have fled their homes amid threats and violence on both sides. Tension increased after the Shi'ite-led government hanged former president Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, on Dec. 30 and video emerged showing Shi'ite officials taunting him on the gallows. Last week, the government and the main Sunni clerical body traded accusations of fomenting sectarian violence. In a speech to followers in Baghdad celebrating a Shi'ite holy day, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim accused other groups of trying to kill Shi'ites in what he called "sectarian genocide". Though he did not use the word "Sunni", his use of terms describing non-Shi'ites made clear to listeners he was referring to militants from Saddam's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority. Hakim is the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the biggest party in Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's national unity cabinet. In the speech, broadcast on the state television channel Iraqiya, Hakim appeared to refer to an incident on Saturday when police said they found 27 bodies in a Sunni district of Baghdad. "You heard what happened the day before yesterday ... They took young men, women and children, killed them and hanged them on electricity poles," Hakim said, voicing a rumour in the city that has not been confirmed by police or the Interior Ministry. Asked about the rumoured "executions" on Monday, a Defence Ministry spokesman told a news conference gunmen had set up fake checkpoints and killed 27 people. He did not say how they died. Iraqi soldiers then launched a two-day operation in the area, killing 30 people on the first day and 23 on the second, including Sunni Arabs from Egypt and Sudan. In the latest bloodshed on Monday, gunmen in a Sunni Arab neighbourhood ambushed a bus carrying Shi'ites to work at Baghdad airport, killing 15, according to a hospital source. A leading Sunni clerics' group accused Shi'ite militias last week of trying to drive Sunnis out of Baghdad, prompting the government to accuse the group of fuelling sectarian tension. The Muslim Clerics' Association, an umbrella grouping of Sunni Arab religious leaders, had said in a statement on Thursday that militias linked to an unnamed political group were planning attacks. Hakim defended Maliki's decision to hang Saddam and criticised a fatwa issued recently by a group of Saudi Sunni clerics, who denounced Shi'ite Islam as a blasphemy.
| AlertNet news is provided by |  |
