Iraq Faction Leaders Condemn Violence
Attacks Kill 40, Renewing Fears of Civil War

By Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 26, 2006

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 -- Leaders of Iraq's rival factions held an emergency meeting Saturday and agreed to condemn the sectarian violence that has gripped the country over the past four days. But despite a two-day-old curfew in Baghdad and three neighboring provinces, at least 40 Iraqis were killed in scattered attacks.

After a largely quiet Friday, attacks on a Shiite family in Baqubah, a funeral procession in Baghdad and a busy street in Karbala on Saturday renewed fears that Iraq was headed toward civil war. Soldiers and police in Baghdad will maintain a ban on vehicle traffic through Sunday, authorities said. Baghdad International Airport was closed and so were roads in and out of the capital.

Meanwhile, political leaders tried to reach a rapprochement before it was too late to stop the slide toward open warfare. Sunni Arab leaders had pulled out of negotiations on Thursday, but had rejoined talks with Shiites and ethnic Kurds by Saturday evening. With the encouragement of President Bush, who called seven politicians from the three sides to encourage them to seek peace, the faction leaders met for three hours.

When the Iraqi leaders came out of the meeting for a news conference broadcast on Iraqi television, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari solemnly removed his glasses and announced unequivocally that there would not be a civil war in Iraq.

The crisis erupted on Wednesday, when unidentified attackers bombed the golden-domed Askariya shrine in Samarra, a site sacred to Shiites about 65 miles north of Baghdad. In the three days since, militias affiliated with Shiite political parties have sought revenge by attacking or occupying Sunni mosques and detaining or killing worshipers. Sunni Arabs have responded by hastily forming local defense forces and conducting their own attacks.

A U.S. military spokesman disputed the media's account of the crisis to date, saying that 22 mosques had been attacked since the Samarra bombing, a considerably smaller number than the 120 reported by al-Iraqiya television on Friday.

U.S. and Iraqi officials also said 119 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the fighting, but that number -- also smaller than previous reports of up to 200 dead -- did not include Saturday's deaths.

The attacks were carried out despite an extraordinary daytime curfew that went into effect in Baghdad, Diyala, Babil and Salahuddin provinces on Friday. The curfew will be lifted in all four provinces on Sunday morning, although Baghdad will continue to ban vehicle traffic.

On Saturday morning, near the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, gunmen burst into the house of a Shiite family and killed 12 people. The victims, all men, represented three generations of the family, the Associated Press reported.

In Karbala, a Shiite holy city about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad that is not covered by the curfew, a car bomb killed at least seven people and injured 52, police and hospital officials said. Karbala's governor said on television that a suspect, who witnesses said detonated the bomb by remote control, was caught as he tried to flee the scene.

In Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on the funeral procession for an al-Arabiya television reporter killed along with two colleagues while covering the bombing in Samarra. One security guard was killed in the firefight, the network said. As mourners returned from the cemetery, a car bomb ripped through an Iraqi military patrol that was escorting them, killing two soldiers and a police officer, news agencies reported.

Police in the capital said they found the bodies of 14 police commandos near a Sunni mosque that police said was attacked overnight by gunmen wearing black, the Reuters news agency reported. Six others were killed in two mortar attacks in the capital.

The attacks provoked a warning from the Iraqi defense minister that "if there is civil war in this country, it will never end." Defense Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said that the government was prepared to "fill the streets with armored vehicles" if the violence did not stop.

U.S. officials said that American forces had stepped up patrols in the capital. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a military spokesman, said that U.S. troops had carried out 268 patrols in Baghdad in the space of 24 hours. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said the average number of patrols before the crisis was about 60.

U.S. officials have stressed that the Iraqi government will lead the response to the crisis. Iraqi leaders have publicly condemned the Samarra attacks and their aftermath, but Sunnis and Shiites have also accused each other of carrying out reprisals. Before the meeting on Saturday, Sunnis had declared that they would no longer take part in negotiations and threatened to form their own militias to defend their neighborhoods.

But in a glimmer of political progress Saturday, Sunni and Shiite clerics prayed together at two mosques in Baghdad and jointly condemned the violence, and leaders from every important political group in the country drew up a list of issues to be negotiated.

Among the thorniest of those addressed at the talks was the role of the Iraqi security forces. Sunnis have accused the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry, which controls the police, of allowing Shiite militias such as the Mahdi Army to rampage through Sunni areas. The Sunnis said they would prefer to have their neighborhoods patrolled by army soldiers under the control of the Defense Ministry.

A representative of popular Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls the Mahdi Army, said at the meeting that he wanted an honor code stating that those involved in attacking a mosque or killing a fellow citizen would forfeit their Muslim faith.

Among the other demands was an edict that anyone killed in the latest violence would be considered a martyr and orders that no one would be arrested without a proper judicial order.

It remained unclear whether there would be an enduring agreement on these issues. But Khalilzad, who attended the meeting, said he believed the worst of the crisis was over.

"I don't believe we are completely out of danger yet, but I think the risk of a civil war has diminished," he said in a conference call to news organizations Saturday night.

Correspondent Jonathan Finer and special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and K.I. Ibrahim in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Karbala and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.