Attacks kill at least 68 in Baghdad

updated 8:16 p.m. ET Feb. 28, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A series of suicide attacks, car bombs and mortar barrages rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 68 people and wounding scores as Iraq teetered on the brink of civil war. President Bush decried the violence between rival Muslim Sunni and Shiite sects and said Iraqis must choose between “chaos or unity.”

Iraqis have suffered through days of reprisal killings and attacks on Sunni mosques since bombers blew apart the gold dome of the revered Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra on Wednesday. The Iraqi Cabinet said at least 379 people had been killed and 458 wounded in reprisal attacks.

In the latest attacks, two explosions hit Shiite targets in northern Baghdad after sundown, killing at least 15 people and wounding 72.

Police officials said either a car bomb or a mortar hit the Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood, killing 23 people and wounding 55.

Mortar fire at the Shiite Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kazimiyah neighborhood on the opposite side of the Tigris River killed one and wounded 10.

A Sunni mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood had been bombed before dawn Tuesday.

More sectarian violence from last week
The Tuesday night attacks were clearly a continuation of sectarian violence that erupted in the country after a Shiite shrine was bombed in the predominantly Sunni city of Samarra on Wednesday.

Earlier, five bomb attacks rattled the capital, killing at least 41 and wounding scores.

In Washington, Bush sidestepped a question about whether the surge in sectarian violence would affect his administration’s hopes to begin withdrawing U.S. troops.

“Obviously there are some who are trying to sow the seeds of sectarian violence,” Bush said. “And now, the people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice. The choice is chaos or unity, the choice is a free society, or a society dictated by evil people who would kill innocents.”

Separately, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged administration critics during a speech at an American Legion convention.

“Here in Washington, if any believe Americans should suddenly withdraw from Iraq and stop fighting al-Qaida in the very place they have gathered, let them say so clearly,” Cheney said. “If any believe that Americans should break our word and abandon our Iraqi allies, let them make it known.”

In Washington, Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said the sectarian violence stems from a core of Sunni Arab insurgents who can exploit “social, economic, historical and religious grievances.”

“Networks based on these relationships remain the greatest threat to long-term stability in Iraq,” Maples said.

Struggle to form new Iraqi government
Fears of civil war have been complicated by the continuing struggle to form a new Iraqi government. National security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie traveled to the Shiite holy city of Najaf to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the Shiite community’s most revered leader.

North of Baghdad, a blast badly damaged a Sunni mosque where the father of Saddam Hussein was buried in the family’s ancestral hometown, Tikrit.

The deposed leader’s trial resumed in Baghdad with prosecutors presenting a document they said was signed by Saddam approving the executions of more than 140 Shiites in southern Iraq after an assassination attempt in the 1980s.

The Iraqi Islamic Party said the Sunni Thou Nitaqain mosque in Baghdad’s northern al-Hurriyah neighborhood was destroyed Tuesday morning. Police said three people were killed and 11 wounded in the blast.

Lt. Gen. James Conway, operations director for the U.S. military, said Monday that Iraq may have averted an all-out civil war thanks to the Iraqi government's ability to work alongside the country's religious leaders to appeal for calm.  Speaking to the American Legion in Washington, D.C., Conway said, "We do not see any indications toward civil war at this point." Conway said the attack on the Samarra golden-domed shrine and the ensuing violence "gives us cause for concern." But he added, "The Iraqi people may have walked up to the abyss and peered over and said 'Nope we really don't want to go there, do we?' throughout all the sects and that's a very positive thing." --Scott Foster, NBC producer

The Sunni organization blamed the Shiite-dominated government that, it said, “cooperates with the criminal hands that sabotaged God’s houses and lighted the fires of sedition.”

At a gas station in the mostly Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood, a suicide attacker joined a line of people waiting to buy kerosene before detonating the explosives strapped to his body, police and witnesses said. The blast killed 23 people and injured 51, Interior Ministry official Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.

In the same region, a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed five people and wounded 15 — many of them construction workers gathering to look for work, authorities said.

Another car bomb hit a small market opposite the Shiite Timimi mosque in the mostly Shiite Karradah neighborhood, killing six people and wounding 16, al-Mohammedawi said.

A roadside bomb targeting the convoy of a defense ministry adviser killed five soldiers and wounded seven in the eastern Zaiyona neighborhood, ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said. The adviser, Lt. Gen. Daham Radhi al-Assal, was not injured.

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