Shi'ites and Sunnis gather in Baghdad to reject revenge

8.40am - By SULEIMAN AL-KHALIDI

BAGHDAD - Sunni and Shi'ite leaders stood side by side in Baghdad on Wednesday to urge Iraqis to avoid a civil war after suicide attacks on a holy day killed scores of Shi'ite worshippers.

Thousands of Shi'ites converged on their holiest Baghdad shrine to mourn the more than 70 of their brethren killed in a bombing on Tuesday that occurred at nearly the same time as an attack killed dozens of others in the city Kerbala.

Hundreds of Shi'ites waved black flags of mourning and backed their clerics' plea for unity, chanting: "We are brothers, Sunnis and Shi'ites, and we will not sell our country to foreigners."

Witnesses recounted grisly tales of human flesh flying through the air after the blasts. Many watched as cleaners swept the remains of darkened dried blood stains.

Some turned their anger on the United States, which has occupied Iraq since toppling Saddam Hussein 11 months ago. Some assailed Washington's chief Middle East ally, Israel.

Shi'ites, who make up 60 per cent of Iraq's people, were suppressed for decades under Saddam, a Sunni.

"We are facing critical hours and dark days...so open your eyes against the plots of America and Israel to sow dissension," said Moayad Naimi, imam of the main Sunni shrine of Abu Hanifa in Aadhimiya across the Tigris River.

"Iraq will only rise with both Sunnis and Shi'ites," he said, adding his followers had rushed to donate blood for the Shi'ite victims.

Clerics told Iraqis not to be provoked into civil war.

"If the two sides fight it's the Americans who benefit to find an excuse to stay in Iraq," said Sheikh Raed al-Kazemi, a Shi'ite.

Supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, an outspoken opponent of the US-led occupation, flocked to the bombed Kadhimiya mosque to vent anti-American feelings.

"Yes, yes to Islam. No, no to the infidels. We will defeat America," they chanted near the gold-domed mosque.

Some blamed Wahabis, followers of an austere sect of Sunni Islam whom they said reviled Shi'ites as perceived heretics.

"Those who sanction the killing of Muslims have no faith. They cannot be true Muslims," said Rida Dabagh, a weeping mourner.

Some Shi'ites said they had been restrained from violent revenge by their clergy's call for calm.

"If only our clergy would give us the signal we would wipe out the Sunnis from Iraq," said an angry Mutaz al-Shamri, a traditional garments trader near the shrine.

The head of Iraq's Governing Council said on Wednesday that the death toll from the attacks in Baghdad and Kerbala had risen to 271.

"The number of martyrs from the two cities as of this afternoon is 271," Governing Council President Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum told a news conference in Baghdad.

But Iraq's Health Minister, Khudier Abbass, said 71 people had been killed in Baghdad and 98 in Kerbala, adding that establishing a conclusive toll was hard because many of those killed had been dismembered and their remains collected in bags.


- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq