Militiamen burn 6 Sunni worshippers alive as soldiers watch

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Shiite militiamen doused six Sunni Arabs with kerosene and burned them alive as Iraqi soldiers stood by, and killed 19 other Sunnis in attacks on their mosques today, taking revenge for the slaughter of at least 215 Shiites in the Sadr City slum the day before.

The mosque attacks came after the government, in a desperate attempt to avert civil war, imposed a sweeping curfew on the capital, shut down the international airport and closed the country's main outlet to the shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf.

The Mahdi Army militiamen, armed with machines guns and rocket-propelled grenades, swept through Hurriyah neighborhood near an Iraqi army post, burning four mosques and several homes, and attacking worshippers as they left today services, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. Gunmen loyal to the radical anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had begun to take over the mixed neighborhood this 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 Shiite militiamen who opened fire on it from the ground, residents said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

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 in Sadr City on Thursday, when Sunnis unleashed bombs and mortars that killed 215 people and wounded 257 in the deadliest assault since the U.S.-led invasion. The killings threatened to tip Iraq's widespread sectarian violence into full-scale civil war pitting majority Shiites against minority Sunnis.

In the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, 23 people 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, said police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri.

In Baghdad, al-Sadr followers 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. Bush and al-Maliki were scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday in Amman.

The al-Sadr bloc in parliament and government is the backbone of al-Maliki's political support, and its withdrawal, if only temporarily, would be a severe blow to the prime minister's already shaky hold on power.

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," Abdul-Wahab said.

Al-Sadr's followers hold six Cabinet seats and have 30 members in the 275-member parliament.

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 Shiites.

Leading about 5,000 worshippers in today prayers at a mosque in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad, the cleric said al-Dhari should ban Sunnis from joining al-Qaida in Iraq and organize the reconstruction of the Shiite Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, north of the capital.

Suspected al-Qaida bombers blew the shrine apart Feb. 22. Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and associated death squads are believed responsible for killing hundreds of Sunnis since suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants bombed the Golden Dome mosque. That attack set off a surge of retaliatory killings between Shiites and Sunnis that have raged all year.

In Sadr City today, 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 Shiite city of Najaf. Despite Baghdad's curfew, al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, 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.

In the well-coordinated Sadr City attack, Sunni insurgents blew up five car bombs and fired mortars, forcing Iraqi leaders into a meeting aimed at containing the growing sectarian war.

The attack surpassed coordinated blasts on March 2, 2004, that struck Shiite 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 Shiite police and National Guard recruits, killed 125 and wounded more than 140 in February 2004.

The bloodshed underlined the impotence of the Iraqi army and police to quell determined sectarian extremists at a time when the United States appears to be considering a move to accelerate the handover of security responsibilities.

"We condemn such acts of senseless violence that are clearly aimed at undermining the Iraqi people's hopes for a peaceful and stable Iraq," said White House spokesman Jeanie Mamo.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also condemned the violence and in a statement urged "the Iraqi people to heed the calls by political and religious leaders from all sides for calm and restraint to prevent an escalation of the situation."

The government imposed the curfew in the capital Thursday night and also closed its international airport. The transport ministry then took the highly unusual step of closing the airport and docks in the southern city of Basra, the country's main outlet to the Gulf.

Leaders from Iraq's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities issued a televised appeal for calm. Al-Maliki also went on state TV and blamed Sunni radicals and followers of Saddam Hussein for the attacks on Sadr City.

The car bombings — three by suicide drivers and two of parked cars — billowed black smoke up into clouds hanging low over blood-smeared streets jammed with twisted and charred cars and buses in the sprawling Shiite slum, which is a stronghold of al-Sadr's militia, a key al-Maliki backer.

Thursday's Sadr City slaughter occurred moments after an attack by 30 masked Sunni gunmen who tried to storm the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry in Baghdad. Seven ministry guards were wounded.