Baghdad, Iraq – From south and north, Iraq’s Kurdish region felt pressure from two sides Saturday, as saboteurs bombed a vital bridge link to Baghdad, and Turkish troops across the border massed for a possible strike.
“We won’t allow it to be turned into a battleground,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday of the relatively peaceful Iraqi north, a haven for anti-Turkish Kurdish guerrillas.
Sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims raged on in Iraq’s center, meanwhile, as hours of mortar barrages killed eight people in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad surrounded by Shiites, and a prominent Sunni cleric was gunned down on the street.
A series of explosions were heard in Baghdad late Saturday, and state-run Iraq iya television reported that U.S. warplanes were bombarding Habibiyah, a Shiite area on the edge of the Mahdi Army militia stronghold of Sadr City. The U.S. military, which has been searching for five British citizens in the area, said it was looking into the report.
The U.S. casualty toll mounted for May, the third-deadliest month for Americans in the 4-year-old war: A soldier wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad on Wednesday was reported to have died of his wounds, raising the month’s death toll to at least 127.
In western Baghdad, a well-known Sunni cleric, Ali Khudir al-Zind, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he walked near his home, police said.
North of Baghdad, a Sunni tribal sheik and village mayor, Rokan Mutlak al-Jibouri, whose tribe is said to be opposed to the activities of al-Qaeda in Iraq, was shot to death while leaving for work Saturday morning, police Brig. Sarhat Qadir said.
In all, at least 57 people were killed or found dead, including 26 bullet-riddled bodies that turned up on the streets of Baghdad bearing signs of torture.
