In Balad, Age-Old Ties Were 'Destroyed in a Second' Sectarian Battles Drive Out Sunnis, Create State of Siege

Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service

Over the weekend, workers at a hospital morgue in Tikrit unloaded bodies of people killed over the four days of sectarian violence in and around Balad.Photo Credit: By Bassim Daham -- Associated Press

At midweek, Shiite Interior Ministry commandos and their Shiite militia allies cruised the four-lane hardtop outside the besieged city of Balad, trying to stave off retaliation for a deadly four-day rampage in which they had all but emptied Balad of Sunnis (...) And all that was left holding Balad, and Iraq, together -- the desire for peace and normality still held by the great majority of Iraqis, and the generations of intermarriage and neighborliness between ordinary Shiite and Sunni Muslims -- was ripping apart. "The people of Balad should not kill the Sunnis who are among them," said one slightly built Shiite man, fleeing his home on the outskirts of Balad. He and 13 women and children of his family were crammed into a single, battered Toyota sedan, stranded by a flat tire near the highway turnoff to the city. "Our relations are not of months or years. It's since the beginning of time," he said. "This relationship has been destroyed in a second."

continua / continued