Baghdad, Iraq – Unidentified gunmen attacked at least three mosques in Iraq over the weekend, killing four people and prolonging a nearly two-week spate of sectarian violence that has deepened animosity between the country’s Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
Politicians continued their efforts Sunday to form a national unity government that they hope can help heal the rifts and end an epidemic of attacks that has left more than 1,000 dead since the bombing of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad, on Feb. 22. But a key Shiite religious leader, firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, indicated he would not abandon his candidate for prime minister, interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as Sunni Muslim and Kurdish parties are demanding.
Officials offered confused accounts of an attack Sunday morning on al-Rahman Sunni mosque in Baghdad’s Jihad neighborhood. The Associated Press initially reported that police said the mosque was attacked by commandos from the country’s Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry. The news service later reported that police “changed their account” and that the mosque was attacked by “several masked gunmen.”
The later version quoted the mosque’s imam as saying that “a gang using 10 cars stormed the mosque.” He said the men were dressed in military uniforms and arrived in cars similar to those used by the Interior Ministry.
An official at the Interior Ministry, Maj. Mohammed Sultan, said the attackers were “insurgents.”
Residents who declined to be named said several SUVs arrived at the mosque shortly after midnight Sunday and that gunmen killed two men who were guarding the building. Six windows of the mosque were shattered, and its outside walls were riddled with bullet holes.
Police and Interior Ministry officials said a Shiite mosque and a Sunni mosque in Kirkuk, 140 miles north of Baghdad, were attacked Saturday night, killing two and wounding three.
