Baghdad, Iraq – A groundswell of sectarian fury continued to roil Iraq after Wednesday’s bombing of a major Shiite shrine, leaving at least 138 Iraqis dead in the past two days and political negotiations over a new government in shambles.
The threat of full-scale civil war loomed over Iraq as Sunni politicians lashed out at Shiite leaders Thursday, accusing them of igniting anti-Sunni reprisals, and at the U.S. military, charging it with standing idly by as the violence erupted.
The most powerful Sunni Arab political group said it was suspending talks with Shiite and Kurdish politicians on forming a new government.
The killings and assaults across Iraq amounted to the worst sectarian violence since the American-led invasion.
They have provoked questions about the proper role of the U.S. military, its ability to control powerful Shiite militias, whom many Iraqis blamed for the attacks on Sunnis, and the Bush administration’s plans for drawing down troops.
Across the country, thousands of furious Shiites, some clad in black and wailing with grief, flooded the streets in a second day of protests against the bombing of the Askariya shrine, whose signature golden dome was reduced to rubble by explosives Wednesday morning in Samarra.
The demonstrations were mostly peaceful, and much of the violence seemed to be tapering off Thursday, though armed Shiites raided several Sunni mosques in Baghdad and set fire to at least two.
In the deadliest assault, 47 people returning from a protest were pulled off buses south of Baghdad on Wednesday and shot in the head, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday.
Three journalists from al-Arabiya, the Arab satellite network, were abducted and killed Wednesday in Samarra, near the ruined shrine.
Seven American soldiers were also killed Wednesday in unrelated attacks involving roadside bombs.
Political and religious leaders, including President Jalal Talabani and Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric whose followers are believed to be involved in much of the anti-Sunni violence, called for restraint.
The government set a curfew from 8 p.m. Thursday to 4 p.m. today in an extraordinary effort to keep people from attending Friday prayer.
The weekly worship services are seen as a potential flashpoint, where imams might urge more retaliatory attacks.
American military officials insisted Thursday that the Iraqi security forces were capable of restoring order and that putting American troops in the lead would only undermine the Iraqi government.
“We are seeing a confident Iraqi government using capable security forces to calm the storm,” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the American command.
The poisonous atmosphere created by the bombing of the Askariya shrine, which houses the tombs of two revered Shiite imams, and the retaliatory attacks that followed hung over every aspect of life Thursday, from conversations between neighbors to frenzied meetings among Iraq’s leaders.
The American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, spent the day talking to politicians, trying to urge calm and keep the political process on track despite the anger felt by both Sunnis and Shiites at each other and at the Americans.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadany, a senior official in the Iraqi Consensus Front, the main Sunni Arab political bloc, said in a telephone interview that the bloc had withdrawn from talks to form a four-year government with the main Shiite and Kurdish parties, accusing the Shiite- dominated transitional government of igniting the anti-Sunni violence.
Mashhadany said his group would not re-engage until the government had brought to justice those responsible for attacking Sunni Arabs, though other Iraqi politicians said the group was posturing and that it would return to the table soon.
“We’re not ready to negotiate with the killers,” Mashhadany said Thursday. “We think what happened yesterday was organized. It had all been organized the night before.”
Mashhadany also accused the American military of standing aside as Shiites slaughtered Sunnis: “The security portfolio is in the hands of the Americans, but yesterday we didn’t see any Humvees,” he said. “We didn’t see any military reaction.”
American commanders have said they hope to draw down a significant portion of the 130,000 American troops here by the end of this year, and that enough Iraqi soldiers and police officers could be trained by then to take over responsibility for security in many areas.
Yet Iraqi security forces did little to contain the violence. In at least one case in Baghdad, Iraqi witnesses said that policemen actually joined in attacking a mosque.
The shrine attack appears to have strengthened the hand of conservative Shiite officials such as Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent cleric, allowing them to justify the use of militias that the Americans had been trying to disband.
Reports of violence indicated that the bloodshed of the past two days had been vicious, even by the standards of this war.
The 47 Iraqis killed south of Baghdad were civilians who had been pulled off buses at a fake checkpoint in the farming area of Nahrawan, where Sunni Arab militants and al-Sadr loyalists have had violent clashes, an Interior Ministry official said.
The religious affiliation of the victims, who had been returning from a protest, was not immediately clear.