Baghdad, Iraq – In the aftermath of one of the deadliest spasms of violence, a new level of fear and foreboding has gripped Baghdad, fueled in part by sectarian text messages and Internet sites, that is deepening tensions in an already divided capital.
In interviews across Baghdad on Saturday, Sunnis and Shiites said they were preparing themselves for upheaval, both violent and psychological. They viewed the bombings that killed more than 200 people Thursday in the heart of Baghdad’s Shiite community in Sadr City as a trigger for more reprisal killings.
“We feel our world has become narrow, and we are being squeezed,” said Karar al-Zuheari, 31, a Shiite taxi driver. “We have no place to run.”
Since those attacks, in mixed and majority-Sunni neighborhoods, quasi- armies of residents have formed to protect their streets. Sunni websites offer advice on how to kill Shiite militiamen.
College students and executives pace their homes clutching rifles and handguns round the clock. Iraqis are posting pleas on Internet message boards to buy extra ammunition and weapons.
Meanwhile, at least 47 Sunni insurgents were killed Saturday during long gunbattles with Iraqi security forces in and around Baqubah, the capital of Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, a police spokesman said.
In the largest and deadliest fight, scores of insurgents, using assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, laid siege to several government buildings in the center of the city, according to the spokesman. At least 36 of the Sunni Arab insurgents were killed in that clash, which raged for about four hours, according to the official, who said he did not know if any Iraqi security forces had been wounded.
Gunbattles also broke out in Buhruz, a predominantly Sunni village just south of Baqubah, when gunmen assaulted the main police station from three directions using mortars, rocket- propelled grenades and assault rifles, the Baqubah police spokesman reported.
No immediate word of casualties on either side was available.
After nightfall, clashes broke out between gunmen and Iraqi army troops in a neighborhood of Baqubah, according to the police spokesman. At least 11 insurgents were killed, he said.
Diyala has been an increasingly bloody battleground between Sunni and Shiite death squads.
Shiite militiamen have mobilized there in large numbers in defense of its Shiite inhabitants against the Sunni-led insurgency, which has long made the province a redoubt in its campaign to topple the Iraqi government and drive American forces out of the country. U.S. officials have accused the province’s police and military forces of siding with the Shiite militias.
Despite a government- imposed curfew, Iraqis in Baghdad described Shiite militiamen murdering Sunnis at checkpoints, controlling neighborhoods with impunity and conspiring with Iraq’s majority Shiite police force, which the Interior Ministry controls. Other Iraqis spoke of mortars raining on their mosques and gunbattles outside their houses, deepening their mistrust of Iraqi security forces.
Yet amid the fear gripping the city of 7 million, there was cohesiveness, even as the sectarian divide widened. In mixed neighborhoods, Shiites provided shelter to Sunnis targeted by Shiite militiamen, even though they risked being branded as collaborators. Others took care of Sunni children or bought groceries for Sunni neighbors who feared walking to the local market.
But elsewhere, the revenge attacks raged on. Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms rounded up 21 men, including a 12-year-old boy, from two Shiite homes in the village of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad. On Saturday morning, their bodies were found, all handcuffed, blindfolded and shot to death, said Bahaa al-Sodani, a provincial police official. The attacks were in apparent retaliation for assaults by Shiite militiamen on Sunni mosques in Baghdad and Baqubah the day before.
“This is taking a turn for the worse,” Hussam Sammaraie, a Sunni Muslim cellphone company executive, said Saturday.
Since the bombings Thursday, he said, he stays inside his Baghdad home. He carries his AK-47 and 60 bullets everywhere, even to bed. “I hug my AK-47 more than my wife,” Sammaraie said.
His two daughters don’t understand. His 14-year-old asked him why he carried a gun all the time. He replied: “Do you want your dad to get killed?” At night, he heads to the roof, a cup of coffee in one hand, his AK-47 in the other. From there, he scans the streets for militiamen.
But if his house gets attacked, he will turn to a Shiite neighbor to hide his family. Sammaraie’s relatives offered shelter to the neighbor’s family during the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Now, the neighbor may get a chance to return the favor.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
Update
Some of the deadly incidents Saturday in Iraq, according to police, military and morgue officials:
Gunbattles with Iraqi security forces left at least 47 Sunni insurgents dead Saturday in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad.
Gunmen broke into two houses of families from the al-Sawed Shiite tribe in Balad Ruz, northeast of Baghdad. They killed 21 men as the women and children watched.
A suicide car bomber rammed into a joint checkpoint near Fallujah, killing three Iraqi civilians and a U.S. service member.
Mortar rounds were fired at a small Shiite area of Baghdad’s mostly Sunni neighborhood of Abu Dshir, killing one civilian.
U.S. and Iraqi raids north of Baghdad killed 22 insurgents.
