Violence Subsides Across Iraq

At least 10 people were killed and 47 injured Sunday when mortar shells rained down on a largely Shiite area in southern Baghdad, but after days of widespread violence the country appeared to draw back from all-out sectarian conflict.

Throughout Iraq, passions aroused by Wednesday’s bombing of an important Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra and reprisals against Sunni Muslim clerics and houses of worship appeared to have subsided considerably. Curfews and a ban on vehicle traffic were lifted in several mixed Sunni-Shiite provinces but continued in the capital, where children took over empty streets to play soccer.

Authorities have arrested 10 people in connection with the bombing of Samarra’s Golden Mosque, national security advisor Mowaffak Rubaie said in an interview with CNN. Rubaie, who accused followers of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi of carrying out the attack, said four of the suspects were guards at the shrine. Six were outsiders who recently moved into rented flats in Samarra.

U.S. officials expressed optimism that the worst of the unrest had passed and that religious and political leaders had managed to gain control of the situation.

“They’ve stared into the abyss a bit,” U.S. national security advisor Stephen Hadley said in an interview with CBS television. “I think they’ve all concluded that further violence, further tension between the communities, is not in their interest.”

In the southern city of Basra, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose restless militiamen have been accused of fomenting sectarian violence, called for peace among Iraqis. Speaking before a large crowd of followers, he also condemned the United States.

“Iraq is experiencing a big crisis between two brothers,” Sadr said of the sectarian violence that erupted between the country’s Shiite majority and Sunni minority. “Burning and destroying mosques, is that a victory for Satan or the righteous? Do you want to make the unrighteous victorious?”

Despite the security measures, a roadside bomb killed two U.S. soldiers early Sunday on the capital’s largely Sunni west side. Another U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire in central Baghdad late Sunday, Associated Press reported.

U.S. soldiers have kept a relatively low profile since the bloodshed flared up. U.S. lawmakers said the American military should refrain from getting too heavily involved in the religious conflict.

“There’s in place today, I think, sufficient military under the control of the Iraqis with certain limited support from us,” Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with NBC.

“But I do not think we should get involved in the civil war other than to give support to the Iraqi forces as they begin to put it down,” he said.

Scattered attacks persisted. In Hillah, a Shiite provincial capital 60 miles south of Baghdad, an explosives-packed minibus killed two civilians. Three Sunni mosques were attacked overnight in western Baghdad, police said, and a mortar round struck a Shiite religious school in the Jamila neighborhood, the Shiite-controlled Furat TV reported.

At the capital’s Yarmouk Hospital, women screamed as bloodied mortar victims were brought in. At least 12 mortar rounds struck Shiite sections of the mixed Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad, one barrage as evening prayers ended shortly before 6 and another two hours later.

Political leaders continued talks aimed at calming the situation, but needled one another about the blame for the violence.

“Those who want to participate in the political process must denounce terrorism in theory and practice,” said Jawad Maliki, a leader of the Islamic Dawa Party, a Shiite political faction. “They cannot be with us during the day and with the terrorists at night.”

Shiites have long accused Sunni politicians of being apologists for the insurgency. But over the last week, Shiites were on the defensive, accused by Sunnis of allowing militias to attack Sunni mosques and neighborhoods.

Sadr’s black-clad Al Mahdi militia, which fought U.S. forces in eastern Baghdad and southern Iraq in 2004, has become the focus of Sunni criticism. But Sadr himself has been praised by Sunni leaders.

“We express our thanks to Muqtada Sadr, who quickly rejected the violence from the first moment,” Sheik Ibrahim Hassan, a Sunni cleric in Basra, said during a joint Sunni-Shiite prayer session at the city’s Great Mosque.

Sadr, returning from a tour of Middle East capitals including Tehran and Damascus, Syria; blamed the violence on other countries.

Speaking to a crowd of about 800 followers in a speech broadcast live on state-owned Al Iraqiya TV, he condemned the U.S. as a “snake.”

“Cut the snake’s head and all evil will be removed,” said Sadr, scion of a famous clerical family. “We got rid of Saddam [Hussein], and now we have another dictatorship of Britain, America and Israel.”

About 8,000 British troops are garrisoned in southern Iraq, and Israel is viewed by Sadr and his followers as a Western colonial outpost.

Insurgent violence directed at U.S. and Iraqi security forces also continued. An Iraqi police officer was killed in a roadside bombing in Madaen, an impoverished Sunni Arab enclave 20 miles south of Baghdad, the Iraqi police said.

In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, gunmen killed Saad Mansi Arrawi, an ex-Iraqi army officer who had been publicly negotiating with U.S. commanders on a troop withdrawal, said Mohammed Rashid, a city councilman.

In the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy killed one civilian, and clashes between police and gunmen in a Sunni neighborhood left three suspected insurgents dead, Iraqi police Capt. Saad Jabouri said.

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Times staff writers Zainab Hussein and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and special correspondents in Basra, Mosul and Ramadi contributed to this report.