Death Toll Surges in Iraq Killings

CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, AP

...A police officer in the nearby Sunni-dominated town of Duluiyah said members of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had moved into the area and were killing Sunni men and boys. Local police were aiding the militias, said the officer, repeating a common claim made against the Shiite-dominated security forces. Balad is a predominantly Shiite city, ringed by Sunni-dominated villages, towns and farmland. Bodies of victims of Balad's Sunni minority lay in the streets, while elderly people and women were being forced to leave the city, said the officer, who spoke on condition on anonymity for fear of reprisals. Scores of terrified Sunnis had fled to Duluiyah and other neighboring towns, the policeman said. Ahmed Ali, a 32-year-old Sunni truck driver who was trying to reach his wife's family in Balad, said Sunni families in neighboring towns have armed themselves to fight-off militia raids. He said he'd been told his in-laws were killed on Friday. "Militiamen gave them just two hours to leave the house. But after half an hour, they broke into the house and killed four of them," Ali said. An army officer at provincial headquarters said authorities have counted 74 Sunnis killed since Friday. The latest deaths came when Sunni houses were attacked with mortars late Sunday, killing five people, including a child, and injuring five others, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to media...

continua / continued

This is ethnic cleansing

Born at the Crest of the Empire

As the death toll passes 100 around Balad, I want to point out again that Sadr's militia was called in by local politicians and leaders specifically to do this: Sunni Muslims were fleeing across the Tigris River on Monday, trying to escape a four-day rampage of sectarian fighting in their Shiite-dominated home city north of Baghdad. At least 91 people have died — all but 17 of them Sunnis. Sunnis, a minority in the city of Balad, said militiamen had been going door to door, giving them two hours to clear out of their homes, and one police officer said the bodies of the city's Sunni minority lay unclaimed in the streets. The government and its police and armed forces appeared unable or unwilling to stop the bloodshed in Balad.....

continua / continued