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<DIV style="MARGIN-LEFT: 1em; MARGIN-RIGHT: 1em"><A
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq12jul12,1,7470301,full.story?coll=la-headlines-world">http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq12jul12,1,7470301,full.story?coll=la-headlines-world</A><BR>
<DIV class=body><I>From the Los Angeles Times</I></DIV>
<H1>Dozens Killed in Baghdad as Sectarian Fighting Rages On</H1>
<DIV class=storysubhead>The upsurge in clashes angers lawmakers, who call for
answers. In one neighborhood, two families are pulled from their vehicles and
slain.</DIV>By Borzou Daragahi<BR>Times Staff Writer<BR><BR>July 12,
2006<BR><BR>BAGHDAD — Sectarian gunfights, mosque bombings and executions of
unarmed civilians continued to roil the country as night fell Tuesday, leaving
at least 58 Iraqis dead and dozens more wounded in the capital alone.
<BR><BR>The days-long upsurge in clashes between Iraq's majority Shiite Muslims
and once-dominant Sunni Arabs, despite a security clampdown in Baghdad, has
upended the city's 6 million residents. It also has outraged lawmakers, who have
summoned the civilian heads of the police and army to parliament Thursday for
answers. <BR><BR>"The security has deteriorated in a serious and unprecedented
way," Kurdish lawmaker Saadi Barzanji said in a televised session of parliament,
which convened Tuesday in Baghdad's heavily protected Green Zone. "The security
plan has proved to be a failure." <BR><BR>Much of Tuesday's violence was
centered in the poor, religiously mixed neighborhoods of south and southwest
Baghdad, including the troubled Dora district, already under extra security and
a dusk-to-dawn curfew. <BR><BR>At least 120 Iraqis have been killed in Baghdad
violence beginning with the Saturday night bombing of a Shiite mosque in the
Jihad district of southwest Baghdad.<BR><BR>Clashes between Shiites and Sunnis
also broke out Tuesday night in Baqubah, with authorities unable to stop the
fighting or determine the number of casualties among insurgents firing rockets
and Shiite militiamen guarding a small mosque.<BR><BR>In the most vicious
incidents Tuesday, gunmen in Dora stopped two Shiite families coming from or
going to funerals in the holy city of Najaf, pulled mourners out of their
minibuses and shot them to death, beheading one person, police and hospital
officials said. At least 18 people were killed and two injured. Police said they
later killed the gunmen in a shootout.<BR><BR>But chaos continued through much
of Baghdad's southern edge, which abuts the dangerous stretch of countryside
called the Triangle of Death, where three U.S. soldiers were ambushed and killed
last month. <BR><BR>Officials at the capital's Yarmouk Hospital reported 17
execution-style killings of men, both Sunnis and Shiites, with single bullet
shots to the head. All but three of the bodies were found in the streets of
south Baghdad. <BR><BR>In the nearby Sadiya neighborhood, three Iraqi soldiers
were killed and seven injured by an explosion, apparently a car bomb, near a
house being used to quarter members of an Iraqi army battalion. Another car bomb
at a market in the district killed two and injured 17. <BR><BR>Kidnappers in the
area also abducted an Iraqi diplomat who serves in Tehran. Wisam Jasim Abdullah
Awadi, a Shiite, had returned to vacation at his parents' home in south Baghdad,
where he was taken at gunpoint. <BR><BR>Elsewhere in the capital, armed men
stormed the office of a Sunni-owned company in west Baghdad, killing eight
employees and injuring three in execution-style shootings, hospital and police
officials said. <BR><BR>Two or three explosions outside the main entrance to the
Green Zone killed five people and injured 11, police and hospital officials
said. U.S. military officials gave a higher death toll, saying the explosions
killed 16 Iraqis, including a police officer, and injured four.<BR><BR>Police
said civilians had been chasing a suspicious man, who blew himself up in front
of a restaurant. U.S. military officials said there were two suicide bombers on
foot. Shortly afterward, a car bomb exploded nearby just as a Shiite lawmaker
passed through. <BR><BR>"I heard an explosion so I stepped down from the car
with my guards only to be startled with the second explosion," said Gufran
Saadi, the lawmaker, who was not injured. "And then, there was heavy shooting."
<BR><BR>Another car bomb exploded in the middle-class Shiite district of Karada,
killing three people and injuring seven, all civilians, along a busy street
lined with grocery stores and automotive supply shops. <BR><BR>A roadside bomb
exploded in southeast Baghdad, setting a fuel tanker ablaze and killing two and
injuring 15 passersby. <BR><BR>As night fell, police and witnesses said
militiamen continued to maraud through west Baghdad, clashing with armed men
near a Sunni mosque. Police said there were multiple casualties but ambulances
were unable to evacuate them. <BR><BR>The violence rose despite the deployment
of 50,000 Iraqi soldiers and 8,000 U.S. troops as part of a Baghdad security
plan implemented nearly a month ago by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
Lawmakers noted Tuesday that the violence had kept many of their colleagues from
reaching the parliament. <BR><BR>"The danger is that there are weapons in the
hands of many," said Safiya Suhail, a lawmaker serving in the coalition of
former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.<BR><BR>Maliki, speaking at a news conference
in the northern city of Irbil, denied assertions of other politicians that the
country was sliding into civil war. <BR><BR>"The security services are still in
control of the situation," he said. "We have the capacity to impose order and
suppress those who rebel against the state."<BR><BR>Sectarian clashes also
continued outside the capital. As dusk settled in Baqubah, a religiously mixed
city northeast of Baghdad, dozens of men armed with rockets attacked a small
Shiite mosque guarded by militiamen. Police officials said the fighting was
fierce, with at least 30 rockets turning the mosque into rubble. Two police
officers attempting to quell the violence were injured.<BR><BR>The mosque
continued to burn into the night as U.S. helicopters hovered above.<BR><BR>At
least nine Iraqi soldiers were killed in clashes with suspected Sunni insurgents
in a village near Hawija, a Sunni enclave in the ethnically contested province
surrounding Kirkuk. A suspected insurgent leader also was killed in the
fighting, an Iraqi army official said. <BR><BR>A suicide car bomber, apparently
targeting a passing U.S. convoy in the northern city of Mosul, killed at least
two Iraqi civilians, police said. <BR><BR>Early today, Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld arrived in Balad on an unannounced visit, wire services reported.
<BR><BR>In Baghdad, the trial of Saddam Hussein and seven codefendants on human
rights charges adjourned Tuesday until July 24, still without any sign of the
top defendants' lawyers, who have boycotted the proceedings for two days.
<BR><BR>Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel Rahman, presiding over the case, has named
substitute attorneys and warned that those court-appointed lawyers would make
the defendants' final arguments if the original lawyers didn't show
up.<BR><BR>"The absence of the defendant's original lawyer will hurt the
defendant himself," he said, addressing the minor defendants' lawyers, who did
show up. "You should tell your colleagues that they should appear here now, and
if they don't they will hurt their clients."<BR><BR>
<HR width="20%">
<I>Times staff writers Shamil Aziz and Saif Hameed in Baghdad and special
correspondents in Baghdad, Baqubah, Basra, Kirkuk and Mosul contributed to this
report.<BR><BR></I></DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>