BAGHDAD, 8 July 2006 — Attacks on mosques after Friday prayers killed 11 people in Iraq and 40 were killed or wounded in a Baghdad raid on Shiite fighters that the US military said netted a top militant wanted for kidnap and murder. The sectarian attacks, three on Sunni mosques and a car bomb that killed at least six after Friday prayers, dealt new blows to Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s attempts to end communal bloodshed between fellow Shiites and the once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs that has pitched Iraq toward all-out civil war.
The overnight assault on a building in Baghdad’s Sadr City slum killed at least seven people, mostly fighters from the Mehdi Army Shiite militia, and wounded more than 30, police and witnesses said. The US military would not identify the group attacked but said the commander targeted had been captured. A source in one of the main Shiite Islamist political parties in Baghdad said the blast in the village of Tal Banat had killed at least 25 people.
Around the same time, a mortar attack and a car bomb killed five people and wounded nine near two Sunni mosques in Baghdad, and a roadside bomb near a Sunni mosque in Baquba north of the capital wounded seven people, police said.
The US military said the wanted man in Sadr City, whom it declined to name, was seized after a firefight in which Iraqi troops killed or wounded 30-40 gunmen. The bodies of at least seven people, including two women, were seen in hospital. The Interior Ministry said there were nine dead in total and 31 wounded and that four houses were destroyed.
Shiite political sources named the target of the raid as Abu Deraa, a locally famed - and feared — commander nominally attached to the Mehdi Army militia of Moqtada Sadr. They said it appeared Abu Deraa was still at large. Sources also said the raid was part of major efforts to find a Sunni woman lawmaker whose kidnap prompted the biggest Sunni parliamentary bloc to boycott the assembly this week, he had previously been disciplined by Sadr, the political sources said.
Japanese troops in Iraq began heading home yesterday as the first batch of 38 soldiers were flown out by British military choppers as part of the announced withdrawal, a military source said. “Thirty-eight Japanese soldiers left Iraq today. The actual troop withdrawal has started,” the source told AFP, adding the soldiers left for Kuwait. Japan ordered its 600 troops to leave Iraq on June 20, ending its first military mission since World War II to a country where fighting is under way. The withdrawal is expected to be completed by late July.
Meanwhile, Iran will this weekend host a regional conference on security in Iraq, with the Islamic republic likely to use the event to again call for a withdrawal of foreign troops from its neighbor. The meeting will gather officials from Iraq and its neighbors — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Turkey — plus Egypt, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
