2 Bombings Target Shiite Market in Iraq

Twin bombings killed nine Iraqi soldiers and a civilian Monday at a mostly Shiite market in the capital, a suicide bomber killed at least five people near the Syrian border and authorities discovered 13 more bodies of people shot in escalating violence.

An influential association of Sunni Muslim clerics accused the government’s Shiite Muslim-dominated security forces of participating in the carnage, but the Sunni defense minister and other government officials rejected the claim, vowing to punish the killers and charging that insurgents were trying to start open warfare between the country’s Shiite majority and Sunni minority.

“The new government will strike with an iron fist against any criminal who tries to harm a Sunni or a Shiite citizen,” Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari told reporters after visiting Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in the holy city of Najaf. “The death sentence will be implemented.”

The Sunni-based Muslim Scholars Assn. said two victims of a Sunday attack told their families before they died that security force members had seized them from mosques and shot them.

Defense Minister Saadoun Dulaimi denied the accusation, saying the killings were carried out by terrorists wearing military uniforms.

But in a gesture to the association, he said Iraqi security forces would be banned from entering places of worship and universities.

U.S. forces say they have repeatedly been attacked from inside mosques. They rely on their Iraqi counterparts to conduct searches there to avoid provoking Iraqis.

In the latest day of violence, two car bombs exploded within minutes at the mostly Shiite market, the second targeting Iraqi soldiers who had arrived to help victims of the first.

In the town of Rabia near the border, a bomber drove toward U.S. troops near a customs post and blew himself up, killing at least five Iraqis and wounding 30, said Nassar Rakaad, chief administrator of the town.

Police found 12 bodies of Iraqi men dumped on Baghdad’s outskirts, and the body of an Iraqi Kurd was found in a garbage dump in Kirkuk.

Another bomb targeting a western security convoy in Baghdad killed two Iraqis, police said, and a mortar shell hit Mustansiriya University, killing two people.