IRAQ: Sectarian violence tears Baghdad into two parts

IRIN

For decades, Iraq's six million-strong capital was a city where people mixed freely and did not care whether their neighbour was a Sunni or a Shi'ite Muslim. But now, the years-old peaceful coexistence between members of different religions and sects in Baghdad is threatened with a battle underway between the two major Muslim sects to have their own territory in this war-torn city. "A new Baghdad is now emerging, a Sunni west and a Shi'ite east with the broad Tigris River in the middle as a sectarian boundary," said Dr Jamal al-Uraibi, a Baghdad-based analyst who lectures in political science at the University of Baghdad...

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