- BAQOUBA, Iraq (AP) -- An
apparently co-ordinated attack against two Shiite mosques in a town where
Muslim sects had lived peacefully has raised concerns about religious and
ethnic strife as Shiites and Sunnis jockey for power in postwar Iraq.
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- Five people were killed and dozens wounded when a gas
cylinder rigged with an explosive blew up at the Sadiq Mohammed mosque
as worshippers streamed out after prayers on Friday, Islam's holy day.
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- Ninety minutes earlier, police defused a car bomb outside
a nearby mosque. That bomb was packed with 150 kilograms of TNT and rigged
with four artillery shells and would have doubtless caused many more fatalities.
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- "We've been living peacefully. There has never been
a problem," said Hamid Jomoa, a 28-year-old Sunni preacher who rushed
to help at the scene in Baqouba, a town 55 kilometres northeast of Baghdad.
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- With sectarian tensions mounting, the U.S.-led occupation
force has been accused of stirring up trouble: some Iraqis at the scene
of the bombing even suggested U.S. forces had fired a rocket at the mosque.
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- Many Iraqis believe the United States and its allies
are trying to foment disorder as a pretext for their continued rule, despite
American assurances to the contrary. Others believe some countries in the
region could be financing attacks to keep Iraq, which has the world's second-largest
oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, divided and weak.
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- "This attack aims at igniting sectarian disputes,"
said Salah Hassan, another bystander in Baqouba. "This is a Jewish-American
scheme."
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- Wailing women tried to cover body parts as the wounded
walked in a daze. A man screamed in anguish as he knelt before two bodies.
Blood covered the street, where worshippers who couldn't fit into the small
Sadiq Mohammed mosque had set up prayer mats.
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- In other developments:
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- - The U.S. military for the first time Saturday acknowleged
that a medevac helicopter that crashed last week near Fallujah, killing
all nine soldiers aboard, was likely shot down.
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- - The U.S. military is investigating a report that American
soldiers last week opened fire with a machine-gun on a taxi in deposed
president Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, killing four Iraqi civilians,
including a seven-year-old boy, and wounding the driver.
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- - U.S troops captured five people and seized an assortment
of weapons after they were attacked late Friday about 15 kilometres northeast
of Baghdad, the U.S. command said.
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- - Ten Iraqis believed linked to the former regime were
arrested late Friday about 20 kilometres west of Baghdad, the command said.
They were believed to be part of an insurgent cell responsible for planting
bombs in the area.
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- Saddam's authoritarian rule gave the Sunnis dominance
and kept ethnic and religious divisions largely in check. That ended with
Saddam's ouster in April, giving Iraq's Shiites - a majority in the population
of 25 million - an opportunity to end decades of subjugation.
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- Since then, religious leaders on both sides have tried
to prevent an eruption of conflict between the two groups.
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- Also raising tensions are increasingly strident demands
by Kurds, who are ethnically different from Arabs and dominate in the north.
The Kurds want to expand the territory and power of the Switzerland-sized
area they have ruled autonomously under the protection of a U.S.-enforced
no-fly zone since the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991.
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- Demands that the oil-rich city of Kirkuk join the Kurdish
zone have roused Turkic and Arab residents to violent protests, and militants
have turned to assassination.
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- A Kurdish man walking in an Arab neighbourhood of Kirkuk
was gunned down and killed Friday, reported the city's police chief, Torhan
Youssef.
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- Earlier, Youssef said coalition soldiers mistakenly killed
two Iraqi police officers who were walking around carrying AK-47 assault
rifles after dark but not wearing identity badges.
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- U.S. spokeswoman Maj. Josslyn Aberle said the police
were killed by soldiers who saw two men firing at a house. Aberle said
the two, later identified as officers, were killed after they refused to
put down their arms even after soldiers fired warning shots.
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- Elsewhere in Iraq, U.S. soldiers kicked open doors and
dragged men out of their beds before dawn Friday in a raid aimed at Saddam
loyalists in Tikrit. The military said they detained 30 men - 14 suspected
of orchestrating, financing or carrying out attacks on American soldiers.
Among them was a man believed to have detonated a bomb that killed a female
soldier from Texas.
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- The raid came hours after the Black Hawk medevac helicopter
was shot down Thursday near Fallujah, a town west of Baghdad that is a
stronghold of resistance to the U.S. occupation.
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- Brig.-Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters Saturday that
the exact cause had not yet been determined, "but the preliminary
reports indicate that the medevac helicopter was brought down by ground
fire."
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- Iraqi witnesses had reported seeing a projectile strike
the second of two medevac helicopters as they flew south of the city of
Fallujah, a major centre of resistance to the U.S. occupation.
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- Copyright © 2004 Canadian Press
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- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1856&ncid=1
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