Baghdad, Iraq – Two of Iraq’s most influential Shiite and Sunni organizations agreed Saturday to try to ease sectarian tensions pushing the country toward civil war as the government prepared to take its battle against the insurgency to Baghdad’s streets.
Officials from the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars, considered close to some insurgents, met with representatives of the Badr Brigades – the military wing of the largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
“We are all Muslims, and usually problems happen between one family. We want to solve them on the basis of Islamic brotherhood,” said one association official, Isam Al Rawi.
The new effort to make peace came as a U.S. Marine was killed when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle in northwestern Iraq, the military said today.
The bomb detonated Saturday near Haqlaniyah, 85 miles northwest of Baghdad, the Marines said in a statement.
Another U.S. soldier and at least 45 Iraqis have been killed in the past two days – including three suicide bombers and three men killed when their roadside bomb exploded prematurely.
An al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, also announced the death of a Japanese contractor it abducted this month. Another group, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq, purportedly claimed responsibility on the Internet for twin suicide car bombings in Sinjar.
The attacks 75 miles northwest of Mosul killed seven Iraqis and injured 38 at the entrance to an Iraqi military base, according to hospital officials.
In another Internet message, Al-Qaeda in Iraq accused Shiites on Saturday of targeting Islam and especially Sunnis in an apparent attempt to stoke sectarian violence.
“There’s no mosque or honor that has been violated or Muslim who has been insulted in Iraq without the help of the (Shiites),” the statement, posted on an Islamic website, said.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police and army units prepared to launch a crackdown today in Baghdad that will include helping cordon off the city and erecting hundreds of checkpoints in and around the capital, according to defense and security officials.
They hope to catch or flush out insurgents responsible for a wave of violence that has left more than 690 people dead since the Shiite-led government was announced April 28, according to an AP count.
