BAGHDAD — Shi’ite militiamen yesterday doused six Sunni Arabs with kerosene and burned them alive as Iraqi soldiers stood by, amid attacks on mosques that left 19 other Sunnis dead.
The violence was seen as revenge for the slaughter of at least 215 Shi’ites in the Sadr City slum the day before.
The mosque attacks took place after the Iraqi government, attempting to stop the nation’s slide into civil war, imposed a sweeping curfew in the capital. Officials shut down the international airport and closed Iraq’s main outlet to shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf.
Shi’ite militiamen of the Mahdi’s Army, armed with machines guns and rocket-propelled grenades, swept through the Hurriyah neighborhood near an Iraqi army post. The militiamen burned four mosques and several homes, and attacked worshippers as they left services, police Capt. Jamil Hussein said.
Followers of radical anti-American Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr warned they would suspend their membership in parliament and the Cabinet if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki meets with President Bush in Jordan next week, a member of parliament said.
Legislator Qusai Abdul-Wahab, an al-Sadr follower, blamed U.S. forces for Thursday’s bombings in Sadr City because they failed to provide security.
“We say occupation forces are fully responsible for these acts, and we call for the withdrawal of occupation forces or setting a timetable for their withdrawal,” Mr. Abdul-Wahab said.
Mr. Bush, who was spending the Thanksgiving holiday at Camp David, said through a spokesman that he would stick to his plans for the summit.
Mahdi’s Army gunmen loyal to Sheik al-Sadr had begun to take over the mixed neighborhood of Hurriyah during the summer and a majority of its Sunni residents had fled.
Three Sunni mosques elsewhere in Baghdad came under attack later in the day, and in Sadr City, a U.S. helicopter shot back at Shi’ite militiamen who opened fire on it from the ground, residents said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
At least 87 persons were killed or found dead yesterday in sectarian violence across Iraq.
Capt. Hussein said at least 25 Sunnis were killed and 14 wounded in the mosque attacks in Hurriyah, despite a 24-hour curfew that the government imposed to try to prevent reprisal killings in the capital.
The Baghdad attacks appeared to have been a reaction to the deaths Thursday in Sadr City, when Sunnis unleashed bombs and mortars that killed at least 215 persons and wounded 257 in the deadliest single assault since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The killings threatened to tip Iraq’s widespread sectarian violence into full-scale civil war pitting majority Shi’ites against minority Sunnis.
In the northern city of Tal Afar, 23 persons were killed and 43 wounded when explosives hidden in a parked car and in a suicide belt worn by a pedestrian detonated simultaneously outside a car dealership, police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri said.
Mr. Bush and Mr. al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman.
The al-Sadr bloc in parliament and in the government is the backbone of Mr. al-Maliki’s political support. Its withdrawal, if only temporarily, would be a severe blow to the prime minister’s already shaky hold on power.
Sheik al-Sadr’s followers hold six Cabinet seats and have 30 members in the 275-member parliament.
Sheik al-Sadr also challenged Sheik Harith al-Dhari, the Sunnis’ most influential leader, who heads the Association of Muslim Scholars, to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, that condemned Sunni attacks on Shi’ites.
Leading about 5,000 worshippers in Friday prayers at a mosque in the Shi’ite holy city of Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, the Shi’ite cleric said Sheik al-Dhari should ban Sunnis from joining al Qaeda in Iraq and organize the reconstruction of the Shi’ite Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, north of the capital.
Suspected al Qaeda bombers blew the shrine apart Feb. 22. Sheik al-Sadr’s Mahdi’s Army militia and associated death squads are thought to be responsible for killing hundreds of Sunnis since suspected al Qaeda in Iraq militants bombed the Golden Dome mosque. That attack set off a surge of retaliatory killings between Shi’ites and Sunnis that have raged all year.
In Sadr City yesterday, hundreds of men, women and children beat their chests, chanted and cried as they walked beside vehicles carrying the caskets of their loved ones to the holy Shi’ite city of Najaf. Despite Baghdad’s curfew, Mr. al-Maliki, himself a Shi’ite, ordered police to guard the processions.
Once the processions reached the edge of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad, the cars and minivans left most of the mourners behind and began the 100-mile drive south to Najaf, a treacherous journey that passes through many checkpoints and areas controlled by Sunni militants in Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death.
As cleanup crews continued removing remains of the dead from wreckage of the car bombs, tents were erected where relatives could receive condolences.
Thursday’s attack surpassed coordinated blasts on March 2, 2004, that struck Shi’ite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad, killing a total of at least 181 Iraqis and wounding 573. A bombing in the southern city of Hillah that targeted mostly Shi’ite police and national guard recruits, killed 125 and wounded more than 140 in February 2004.
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