Sectarian massacres shake Iraq

The massacres appeared designed to raise sectarian tension as the country prepared for the results from last month's election which will cement the ascendance of the Shia majority and the political marginalisation of the Arab Sunni minority.

In the bombing, a pick-up truck laden with vegetables parked in front of a Shia mosque in Balad Ruz, a town 45 miles north of Baghdad. As worshippers emerged on to the street, Iraqi troops approached the vehicle to investigate when it blew up. The police reported 13 dead and 40 wounded while the national guard reported 12 dead and 23 wounded.

In a brazen assault in the capital, several car-loads of gunmen sealed off a street in a predominantly Shia neighbourhood and opened fire at a crowd inside a bakery, killing at least nine. Witnesses said walls plastered with posters of Shia clerics were splattered with blood.

"I was just leaving my house which is facing the bakery when I saw them shooting. They were masked and shouting Allahu Akbar [God is Greatest] as they were shooting," one resident, Atheer Abdul Amir, told Reuters. However analysts did not rule out the possibility that the atrocity was a criminal, mafia-style hit under the guise of insurgency.

Would-be assassins shot a cleric on a Tuesday evening as he left a Baghdad mosque, hitting him seven times but not killing him. Sheik Ammar al-Hilali is an aide to Grand Aya tollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia leader.

The attacks appeared to be an attempt to provoke Shias, who make up 60% of the population, on the eve of their historic political ascendance over Sunnis, a minority which ruled Iraq for decades and enjoyed a privileged position under Saddam Hussein.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1411418,00.html