Sunnis Close Mosques to Protest Killings

Iraq's Shiite Politicians Condemn Attacks as an Attempt to Spark Sectarian War

BAGHDAD, May 20 -- Weeping and raising open hands to the sky, a Sunni Arab clerical leader announced an extraordinary closing of Sunni mosques across Baghdad on Friday to protest killings that some have blamed on militias allied with Iraq's new Shiite-led government.

Ahmed Abdul Ghafur Samarrai said Sunni mosques in and around Baghdad would be closed for three days. "So when the muezzin finishes his call to prayer, he will say, 'Oh, worshipers, pray at your homes.' God bless you," Samarrai said.

In another part of Baghdad, Shiite worshipers pumped fists in the air in a show of resilience after two mortar rounds landed near their mosque, one of the capital's leading Shiite places of worship, during Friday prayers, wounding two people. Shiite political leaders, clerics and some worshipers urged restraint in the face of tit-for-tat killings, which they called an effort to draw Iraq's newly dominant Shiite majority and disgruntled Sunni minority into sectarian war.

"Let them express their hatred in the way they know best," Jalaledin Saghir, a cleric, said quietly after the mortar shells landed a few dozen feet from the thousands of Shiites gathered at the Buratha mosque. Mosque walls bore black fliers announcing the killings of three Shiites in recent days, including a relative of the cleric.

The fortunes of Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities have changed drastically since the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government two years ago. The Shiite majority controls the country's new legislature and cabinet, while Sunnis have been at the core of the insurgency. In recent days, even as insurgent bombings and other attacks have subsided without explanation, killings of clerics and their aides have escalated.

The killings of two Sunni clerics -- whose bodies were found Tuesday -- helped spark the Sunni protests. Sunnis also complained that security forces had raided their mosques. On Friday, in the central city of Baqubah, three Shiites who owned stationery stores were shot to death, provincial spokesman Ahmed Karim Hasan said. Gunmen asked to see posters of Shiite religious leaders, then killed the store owners when they produced them, Hasan said.

Also on Friday, a car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in Baghdad, killing at least two people and wounding five, police said, according to the Reuters news agency.

A leading Shiite cleric, Abdul Aziz Hakim, met Friday with newly appointed Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni, and urged "unity against any attempts at discord that aim to divide Iraqis." Hakim is head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's dominant Shiite political party.

Mosques, meanwhile, became forums for the tensions.

"Some will ask, 'How could you do something like this?' and I will say that Muslim blood has greater sanctity than the holiness of this mosque," said Samarrai, the Sunni cleric who announced the closure of Sunni mosques.

Holding his hands high in prayer, the cleric wept as he recalled clerics slain in the past week, by killers he said included men in the uniforms of Iraq's security forces. Many wept with him, calling, " Allahu akbar ," or "God is great," when he was overcome with tears.

"This is the first step, a peaceful protest," Samarrai said, calling for "calm, self-control and stability."