In an eastern neighborhood of Baghdad, gunmen in three cars pulled up to the Happiness Bakery early Friday, blocked traffic and opened fire at the store with automatic weapons. In a hail of bullets and window glass, 11 members of a family who owned and operated the bakery were killed, including a 10-year-old boy, according to police and witnesses.
Neighbors said the bakery was run by Shiites, and campaign ads for Shiite candidates were posted at the blue-tiled shop. Sunni insurgents have targeted Shiites in an attempt to inflame sectarian violence.
A man mourns near a bakery in Baghdad after masked gunmen blocked the street and gunned down 11 members of a family that owned the shop, where posters for Shiite candidates had been posted.
(Samir Mizban -- AP)
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"Why, just why?" said a distraught bystander, Kathim Hamid, 54. "Someone is trying to start civil war in Iraq. Can't they give up and let us live in peace?"
A few hours later, near a Shiite mosque in Balad Ruz, 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, a pickup truck loaded with vegetables exploded, killing at least 12 people.
Saghir, delivering the Friday sermon at the Baratha mosque in Baghdad, said the attacks were designed to undermine Shiite political progress. "We know they are going to reorganize their ranks and try to hit again. But whatever they do will not deter us from our march," he said in a sermon that, at times, drew impassioned cries from the crowd. "They are killers and thugs."
At the Um al-Qura mosque -- which serves as the headquarters of an influential Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars -- the prayer leader, Ahmed Samarrai, called for a nationwide conference of Sunni leaders to develop a unified stand.
For decades, Iraq's Sunni minority wielded the bulk of political power, particularly in Baghdad. Until Hussein's fall, Sunnis never had to organize explicitly along the sectarian or ethnic lines that have increasingly come to define Iraqi politics.
"We would like to unify our ranks, and this is our right, in order to extend brotherhood and unity, shoulder to shoulder, with all Iraq's people," Samarrai said.
Special correspondents Sahar Nageeb, Omar Fekeiki, Bassam Sebti, Naseer Nouri and Khalid Saffar contributed to this report.
