Families Flee Iraqi River Towns On 4th Day of Sectarian Warfare

Ellen Knickmeyer and Muhanned Saif Aldin, Washington Post Foreign Service

Families fled in search of safety Monday as open warfare raged for a fourth day between Shiite militias and armed Sunni men in Tigris River towns north of Baghdad. Militias allied with Iraq's Shiite-led government held sway in Balad city, forcing out Sunni families and leaving the bodies of slain Sunni men to rot in the streets, according to police, residents and hospital officials (...) Local police officers accused Shiite-dominated government police forces of working alongside Shiite militias in executing Sunnis and appealed for more help. As the carnage mounted, President Bush called Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to reassure the Iraqi leader of his support and assure him he was under no time pressure from the United States to curb sectarian violence (...) Shiite elders of Balad said they called in the Baghdad militias of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr -- whose bloc is the largest in Iraq's Shiite-led government -- to take revenge. Most of the victims since then have been Sunni men in Duluiyah and neighboring Sunni towns. Hasanein al-Badawi, a physician at Balad's hospital, said almost all had been shot and some had been tortured with electric drills. Members of Sadr's Mahdi Army militia were blocking Sunni families from picking up more of their dead from the streets, he said...

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