Iraq: Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, pleaded for Iraqis to "unite as brothers" yesterday as a fresh spasm of violence gripped Baghdad, where 60 people were killed at the weekend in a dramatic escalation of sectarian bloodletting.
Yesterday, two bomb blasts in a Shia neighbourhood killed 12 and wounded dozens, while gunmen ambushed a commuter bus in a Sunni district and shot dead seven people. Militiamen, believed to be Shia, fought gun battles in a southern Sunni district.
Heavy clashes between sectarian gunmen jolted one district of Baghdad after dark. Machinegun fire, augmented by blasts from rocket-propelled grenades, forced residents in Ghazaliya to cower indoors, fearing a repeat of bloodshed in neighbouring Jihad on Sunday, when Shi'ite militiamen killed over 40 people in broad daylight.
"Our destiny is to work together in brotherhood to defeat terrorism and insurgency," Mr Maliki, a Shia, told the Kurdish regional parliament in northern Iraq. "We have no choice but to defeat those who want to return us to the black days." Fearing Iraq is moving ever closer to all-out civil war, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, had appealed for calm, warning that the country was on "the edge of a slippery slope".
A new surge in violence between majority Shias, oppressed under Saddam Hussein but now politically empowered, and his once dominant fellow Sunni Arabs has laid bare a deepening schism, despite Mr Maliki's efforts to promote national reconciliation.
Two bombs blasted a Baghdad area that is a stronghold of Shia militia fighters early yesterday, a day after suspected Shia gunmen stormed through a Sunni area and killed over 40. Twelve people were killed and 62 wounded, police said, in the car bomb blasts near a telephone exchange in the eastern Talbiya district. It is a bastion of the Mehdi army militia of Moqtada al-Sadr.
Police in the notoriously violent Sunni district of Amriya found four bodies on a commuter bus. Three others, including a woman, lay in the street nearby, apparently dragged from the bus and shot. Their religious affiliation was not immediately clear.
In the mostly Shia western district of Ammil, unknown gunmen opened fire on an unmarked car carrying four policemen, killing three, police said.
There were conflicting reports about clashes involving suspected Shia militia fighters in the Sunni Dora district in southern Baghdad.