Violence Flares After Beheading Of Shiite Workers
By Ellen Knickmeyer and Muhanned Saif Aldin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 15, 2006
BAGHDAD, Oct. 14 -- Seeking revenge for the killing of 17 Shiite farmworkers, Shiite militiamen surged into a town north of Baghdad on Saturday to launch attacks that by nightfall killed at least 27 Sunni Arabs, many of them brought to a hospital bearing the marks of electric drills and other signs of torture, according to medical workers, residents, police and militia leaders.
Sounds of shooting suggested the killing in the city of Balad continued into the night Saturday, as reinforcements from the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry arrived and residents cowered in their homes. "You hear nothing but gunshots," Hasanein Ali, assistant director of Balad's hospital, said by telephone.
In addition to the dead counted at the hospital, one Balad resident who fled the city said he had seen more bodies burned in the streets.
The fierce outbreak of violence in the mostly Shiite city, surrounded by Sunni towns, was sparked in the mostly Sunni town of Duluiyah. The two communities are separated only by the Tigris River about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
On Friday, 17 Shiite laborers who had been hired to prune date palm trees in Duluiyah were kidnapped, police said. The workers' headless bodies were found outside the town later that day.
Shiite leaders in Balad said they responded to the farmworkers' killings by asking a Baghdad office of Moqtada al-Sadr, an influential Shiite cleric, to send militiamen and weapons.
"It is necessary to take a strong stand, so that such killings will not be repeated, and so we can take our revenge," said Taysser Musawi, a Shiite cleric in Balad.
Scores of militia fighters went to Balad in answer to the call, and residents said they targeted the city's Sunni minority.
"The armed men, using loudspeakers, ordered Sunnis to leave the city of Balad within 24 hours or they will face death," said Ali, the hospital official. "The city now is in the hands of the armed men and the militias."
Ali added that some police officers appeared to be fighting alongside the militiamen.
Ali said 27 dead Sunnis had been brought to the hospital, and said he believed more bodies had yet to be collected because of darkness and the fighting. A local Sunni resident, Muhannad Khalaf, interviewed outside Balad, said he had seen three burned bodies on the road as he fled north to safety in the Sunni city of Tikrit.
The attacks allegedly sparked fighting between townspeople of Duluiyah and Balad. In Balad, police Capt. Abdul Aziz Khazrajy said the Interior Ministry in Baghdad sent security forces to the scene.
Khalaf asserted that the Interior Ministry commandos had set up checkpoints and were screening travelers, seeking out Sunnis. Both Shiite and Sunni fighters in Iraq's growing sectarian violence often are accused of using traffic checks to find and kill members of the opposite sect.
A police major in Duluiyah, Hussein Alwan, said by telephone that residents "are in a state of alert and top readiness. They are carrying arms, while mosques are calling on the people through loudspeakers to take up arms in defense of the town. They expect an imminent attack" by Interior Ministry commandos.
Tensions in the area have been high for weeks, "but yesterday's killing of the 17 farmworkers was the spark that will set off total war" there, Alwan said.
The fighting in the Tigris River towns served as a microcosm of the Shiite-Sunni killing that has increased dramatically this year and is claiming scores of lives in the capital and around Iraq every day, according to monthly counts from Iraqi authorities.
Baghdad police said they had found 23 bodies between midnight Friday and noon Saturday. All of the victims were shot and most of them bore signs of torture.
Three separate attacks involving bombs or mortars killed three civilians and a policeman in Baghdad, police said.
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, gunmen attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint, triggering a clash that killed two gunmen, Lt. Col. Sadrudeen Aziz said.
The U.S. military reported that a bomb killed an American soldier southwest of Baghdad on Friday and, on Saturday, a U.S. airman was killed in action in Baghdad and a Marine died "due to enemy action" in the western province of Anbar. October is on track to be one of the deadliest months of the war for U.S. forces, with more than 40 killed so far.
Aldin reported from outside Balad. Other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
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