.Sectarian Discrimination in Iraq Provoked Again
"The tensions that began in Iraq after Shiites' blamed Sunnis for the stampede killing 1,030 people in Iraq on Wednesday are increasing.Looks like that by making the clergy the defacto next government, they have created a new front in this war, the new generals, and their troops are being spotted, targeted, and attacked. The last cleric left standing wins.
Two people died and four were injured in the armed attacks in two Sunni mosques in Bagdat (Baghdad).
A fight that took place between Sunnis and Shiites in Al-Aima bridge killed a child."
Zaman
posted by madtom at 3:06 PM
1 Comments:
Iraq's Civil War - any moment now
And so this is how it starts.
I just got a phone call from a source living in the Al Jami3a district of Baghdad. The area is home to a mixture of Shia and Sunni families.
He said that soon after dawn this morning, heavily armed members of the Al-Badr Brigades came knocking on his door and asked if there were weapons in the household. They demanded to know how many households had weapons. They also left a cryptic warning - that they knew which houses were Sunni, and which weren't.
This is how civil wars/purges/ethnic cleansing begin: first you know where the people you want to purge live, then you find out what defenses they have. Then you plan it all out. This is what the Serbs did to the Croats and Muslims in former Yugoslavia.
The problem here is that the Al-Badr Brigades are a rogue outfit of Iranian and Iraqi extremists, armed, funded and spiritually advised by their warlords in Iran. They do not answer to the Iraqi government. They are not part of the Iraqi National Guard or police force, but many of their members participate in the Guard and police.
The Badr Brigades answer to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - SCIRI for short. Transliterated, the word SCIRI also means secret in Arabic.
They have been accused by many Sunni politicians of being behind abductions and assassinations of prominent Sunni figures.
On Friday, several Sunnis were attacked throughout Baghdad as Shia and Sunni gunmen traded fire.
Reporting from Baghdad, Kim Sengupta of the Independent says:
A young girl was killed yesterday in a gun battle in Baghdad that followed a march by hundreds of Shias on the al-Aima bridge where most of the stampede deaths had taken place.
Soldiers guarding the bridge opened fire on the demonstrators. Sunnis on the other side of the River Tigris, believing they were under attack from the Shia marchers then opened fire themselves, in turn drawing fire from Shia gunmen.
Two separate blasts in a Sunni neighbourhood led to two deaths and Sunni residents said they had been subjected to sniper fire and petrol bomb attacks.
Gunmen opened fire on Sunni Muslim worshippers at Friday prayers in two mosques south of Baghdad, killing two people and injuring four, police said.
My heart is sinking. I really have a bad feeling about this.
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