-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: June 18, 2007 9:36:52 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: "Hooded Gunmen" **Driving US TANKS** Bombing Sunni Mosques
in Iraq
US forces bomb Sunni mosque,
killing five Iraqis: report (Extra)
By DPA
Monsters and Critics (UK), Jun 18, 2007, 9:11 GMT
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/
article_1318960.php/
US_forces_bomb_Sunni_mosque_killing_five_Iraqis_report__Extra_
Baghdad -- US tanks bombed a Sunni mosque in Baquba Sunday, killing
five Iraqis, the Association of Muslim Scholars said in an online
statement Monday.
The US tank destroyed the Abdullah Ibn Mubarak mosque in Baquba, 60
kilometres north-east of Baghdad.
Headed by Harith al-Dhari, the Association of Muslim Scholars is
the most prominent Sunni group in Iraq.
It was formed April 14, 2003, only four days after the toppling of
Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad, by a group of Sunni clerics who
aimed to represent Iraq's Sunnis.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
----------------------------------------
Bombs destroy 2nd Sunni mosque in 2 days in Iraq
By Damien Cave
Sunday, June 17, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/17/africa/baghdad.1-76870.php
BAGHDAD: Hooded gunmen clad in black blew up another Sunni mosque
in the southern city of Basra after ordering police officers at the
mosque to flee and despite a curfew imposed by Iraq's central
government, witnesses and security officials said.
The blast at the Ashrah al-Mubashra in central Basra on Saturday
razed a second Sunni mosque in two days despite calls for restraint
from Shiite leaders after explosions Wednesday toppled two minarets
at a Shiite shrine in Samarra.
The latest attack heightened tensions between Sunni and Shiite
officials, and for some it seemed to confirm that Iraq's central
government had lost the ability to exert much influence, not just
on areas of the Kurdish north, but also majority-Shiite strongholds
in the south.
"The security situation is out of control in the city," said Wael
Abdul Latif, a Shiite who was once governor of Basra and is a
member of the Iraqi List, a moderate party headed by Ayad Allawi.
"The power of the state is weak, and the forces of the Interior
Ministry and Defense Ministry are confused and afraid, even though
handling such matters requires toughness."
The attack occurred around 8 a.m., witnesses and a Basra security
official said, when at least a half-dozen men approached the mosque
in four vehicles, including a minibus loaded with explosives. They
said the gunmen had told the Iraqi security forces guarding the
mosque to leave, which they did without resistance, and then the
gunmen packed the building with explosives.
After the blast collapsed the building into dust and rubble, the
gunmen celebrated and cheered, according to several witnesses who
refused to give their names for fear of reprisals. The police, they
said, did not immediately respond.
Sunni religious leaders and politicians said the attack reflected
the troubling militia infiltration of the Iraqi Army and police
departments and the risks of relying on a mostly Shiite force to
protect a country of many sects and ethnicities.
"This tells us that there is a huge penetration into the security
forces in Basra by militias, and this was admitted by the emergency
force commander there," said Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samaraie, head
of the Sunni Endowment, which oversees the country's Sunni mosques.
"If the army ignores the militia and lets them enter the mosques
and do what they want, then it is a catastrophe. And if the army
knows what they aim at doing, then it is a bigger catastrophe."
It was unclear Saturday whether the defiance would spread from
Basra, a city dominated by several rival Shiite groups who
periodically fight for control, yielding what officials and
residents describe as a high degree of disorder.
A government-imposed curfew that prohibited vehicles from traveling
on the city's roads has not been universally enforced, residents
said. Cars sped by police checkpoints Saturday without concern.
Meanwhile, in other cities like Baghdad, curfews since Wednesday's
attack in Samarra have largely minimized high-profile sectarian
reprisals. A handful of Sunni mosques have been shot at or bombed,
but there have been no reports of casualties -- far less violence
than what occurred after the first attack on the Samarra shrine
last year.
As Iraqi security forces north of Samarra conducted raids Saturday,
in which four people were killed and 20 insurgents were arrested,
two of Iraq's most powerful Shiite clerics issued statements
lamenting the loss of Muslim shrines rather than calling for
vengeance.
Hamid al-Khafaf, a spokesman for the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, said: "His eminence
strongly condemns and denounces the attacks on the mosques of Talha
Bin al-Zubair and Ashrah al-Mubashra in Basra. He calls on all
citizens to prevent, as much as they can, such attacks on all
shrines and mosques."
The populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi militia was blamed
for much of the violence that followed the attack last year on the
Samarra shrine, called on his supporters to hold a peaceful march
to the site next month.
His message was another example of Sadr's makeover from sectarian
rabble-rouser to nationalist demagogue. There were hints that some
Sunni and Shiite officials not typically aligned with Sadr would
follow the pattern.
Samaraie, of the Sunni Endowment, asked Iraqis to "be united and
love each other and block the road before those holding foreign
agendas."
Latif, the Shiite former governor of Basra, said those who had
attacked the mosques were playing into the hands of Al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia and other Sunni groups believed to be responsible for
the Samarra attacks. "Al Qaeda did not attack Talha or Al Ashrah
mosques, but those who did are following the ideas of Al Qaeda," he
said.
He added that Basra's separation from the central government's rule
of law would only hurt the area.
"Let's assume that one of the neighboring countries, Iran or Saudi
Arabia, invaded Basra," he said. "Would the militias be able to
stand up against them? They won't last for an hour."
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