Iraqis Call for Calm but Deploy Forces

Iraqi political and religious leaders struggled Friday to pull the nation back from the brink of sectarian civil war, calling for peace and extending through today a daytime curfew meant to reduce the level of violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims that has left more than 150 people dead this week.

Joint Sunni-Shiite prayer services were broadcast on television. Government security forces flooded the streets, beefing up protection of mosques and other religious sites. U.S. military forces stepped up patrols around volatile parts of the country, U.S. officials said. Leaders of the Muslim Scholars Assn., a Sunni clerical group, met with loyalists of militant Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. Politicians held a series of emergency meetings meant to stave off violence.

But the bloodshed continued, including a gun battle between Shiite militiamen and suspected Sunni insurgents in Baghdad that, with other attacks, left at least 30 dead. At least three Sunni mosques in southern Baghdad were attacked late Friday night, and mortar rounds landed near the Shiite shrine of Salman Farisi, a 7th century Persian convert to Islam in the town of Salman Pak, about 20 miles south of the capital, police and television reports said.

The curfew was largely ignored in parts of Baghdad and in southern cities controlled by Sadr loyalists.

Huge crowds gathered for Friday prayers in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, and prayer leader Salah Obeidi urged black-shirted followers to put down their arms.

“We are brothers in the religion of Islam and in peace,” he said. “I am calling on you to love each other and not attack each other.”

The surge in sectarian violence was sparked by Wednesday’s bombing of an important Shiite shrine in Samarra. Acts of retribution have resulted in more than 150 deaths and damage to dozens of mosques, deepening the divide between the country’s majority Shiites and minority Sunnis.

“Iraq has not experienced such attacks on the houses of God since the time of the Mongols and for a few days during the communist tide,” Ahmed Hassan Samaraie, Friday prayer leader at Baghdad’s Sunni Abu Hanifa shrine, told congregants. “This is chaotic, terrorist behavior and a loss of control that no one would be honored to attribute to himself.”

U.S. officials in the capital struggled to contain the damage, holding what one official called an “intense marathon” of meetings and public appearances, including a 35-minute live interview of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on state-owned Al Iraqiya television.

“This attack has had a major impact here, getting everyone’s attention that Iraq is in danger, that the terrorists are trying to provoke a civil war,” Khalilzad said in a telephone conference with Western reporters before his TV appearance.

The desperate flurry of activity highlighted the concern over the nation’s fragile security.

“There are meetings and meetings over and over again trying to put this crisis down,” said Basam Redha, an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. “We have a lot of heated and steamed and upset people. We are calming down what we call hot-blooded young men in the Shiite community.”

Jafari announced new security measures, including additional government forces in tense neighborhoods and along roads leading to religious sites, a prohibition of civilian vehicle traffic into and out of Baghdad, and a ban on public displays of unlicensed weapons.

“The presence of our armed forces is for the safeguarding of the citizens and the protection of their interests,” Jafari said in an address to the nation.

Sunni political parties have refused to meet with their Shiite counterparts, who control the government, blaming them for fueling tensions after the Samarra attack by unidentified men.

Friday’s daytime curfew was meant to blunt the impact of politically charged prayer sermons and prevent bands of armed youths from marauding through the streets. In large part, the lockdown of Baghdad and several neighboring religiously mixed provinces worked.

Yet intermittent mayhem continued. Authorities discovered at least 29 handcuffed bodies with bullet wounds to the head scattered around the capital, the latest in a series of killings attributed to sectarian militias with alleged ties to the Interior Ministry.

Late Friday night, a Sunni political party’s TV channel broadcast pleas for help from residents fending off attacks on Sunni mosques.

Police said a 30-minute gunfight between members of Shiite cleric Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia and suspected Sunni militants erupted after noon prayers in a southern Baghdad neighborhood. No casualties were reported.

Gunmen in the northern city of Kirkuk shot dead Khlail Ibrahim Mohammed, a leader of a Shiite militia.

In Samarra, two police officers were killed and two civilians were injured in street clashes, and a key oil pipeline was set on fire. Hundreds of worshipers tried to gather near the destroyed shrine for prayers but were turned back.

At mosques where prayer services were held, sermons calling for peace mingled with flashes of anger. Sunnis and Shiites blamed each other for strife.

Shiite leaders called for street protests Sunday in the southern provinces. Tens of thousands marched in Basra holding banners that simultaneously called for avoiding civil war and the death of Saddam Hussein.

“Why do they call demonstrations? What do they expect from demonstrators?” the Friday prayer leader at the Sunni Ibn Tamiya Mosque in Baghdad told followers in a speech broadcast throughout the neighborhood. “The Shiite clergy have to stop their foolish and silly people from attacking Sunni mosques.”

Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia demanded that it be given more authority on the streets and that Sunnis more vehemently denounce the bombing of the Samarra shrine.

“We are asking the government to give us the chance to protect the sacred symbols,” the group said in a statement released in the holy city of Najaf. “We are asking the Muslims for a united stance toward the [Sunni religious extremists]. The ones who keep silent will be considered the same.”

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Times staff writers Shamil Aziz and Raheem Salman and special correspondents in Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk and Samarra contributed to this report.