30 Iraqi Police, Civilians Killed

Scattered attacks targeting police and civilians killed 30 Iraqis on Monday as populist cleric Muqtada Sadr lashed out at Iraqi politicians and U.S. officials for failing to stop the violence.

The attacks followed a bloody Sunday in which 52 people were killed and close to 300 injured by bombs and mortars in Sadr City, a vast Shiite slum in northeastern Baghdad.

“When things reach a certain point, then nobody can control the reins,” said Abdulsattar Nasri, a 47-year-old lawyer who was among the many people gathered at a nearby hospital Monday to receive the bodies of their relatives.

In what appeared to be retribution by locals for the previous night’s attacks, four men were found Monday hanged near the Jolan athletic club in Sadr City, each with a note pinned to the chest spelling out “traitor,” police said. Witnesses told authorities that two of the men had been captured wearing explosive belts and the other two had been caught firing mortar rounds against targets in Sadr City, police said.

Eleven more bodies were found throughout the capital.

Amid rising impatience at daily attacks, Sadr vowed to respond to attacks on Shiites “militarily, religiously and ideologically,” during a speech in the holy city of Najaf south of the capital.

“We’re not weak,” Sadr said. “But I don’t want to be dragged into a civil war.”

Speaking to reporters, Sadr criticized the Bush administration for interfering in Iraqi affairs, and the Iraqi government for being weak and self-involved.

The politicians “are busy. ‘I want to be president, I want to be minister.’ They forget the people and they are busy with their [own] interests,” he said.

In a retort to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s statement last week that the U.S. would rely on Iraqi forces in case of an all-out civil war, Sadr added: “Whether there is or isn’t a civil war, we don’t want you to interfere in Iraqi affairs whatsoever.”

In his speech, the young cleric did not blame Sunni Arabs for the attacks of the last two days, but urged them to distance themselves publicly from the insurgency.

Throughout the day, Sadr’s militiamen set up checkpoints and patrolled the debris-filled streets, many of which were still bloodied and littered with victims’ shoes and bits of clothing.

Ali Eqabi, a 32-year-old firefighter, said Shiites had withstood many provocations over time, but he added, “There is an end to everything [including] patience.”

Interim President Jalal Talabani condemned the attacks on Sadr City.

“The way that this criminal, bloody act was done leaves no doubt that terrorists targeted a peaceful, civilian area to arouse sectarian sedition and civil war,” he said in a statement.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, the main Sunni political party, also denounced the bombings, encouraging all the political groups to cooperate and “stop the bloodshed that is reaching all Iraqis regardless of religion and sect.”

On Monday, British officials announced a 10% reduction of British forces in the country, saying Iraqi security forces are becoming more capable of handling security.

Britain has nearly 8,000 troops in the country, concentrated in four predominantly Shiite provinces of the south. That area has experienced less violence than the mainly Sunni provinces north and west of Baghdad.

British Defense Minister John Reid told the House of Commons that “our analysis is that civil war is neither imminent nor inevitable.”

But he also stressed that the reductions were not part of a handover of “security responsibility to the Iraqis themselves.”

Reid said that 800 British troops in Iraq would be withdrawn in May, leaving about 7,000 stationed in the country.

Monday’s attacks occurred in the north and in the capital. In addition to the bodies found elsewhere, roadside bombs killed three people, including a policeman. And two guards belonging to interim Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi’s security detail were killed in a confrontation with another security detail in the upscale Mansour neighborhood.

Mortar fire killed a child in the Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northwestern Baghdad, and wounded two people near the major Sunni shrine of Abu Hanifa in a central part of the city.

During the early evening Monday, gunmen killed the editor of Alif Ba, which had been a state-run magazine during the regime of Saddam Hussein, as he was standing in front of his house with his friends. An intelligence officer working in the Interior Ministry was also assassinated near his house in a western Sunni neighborhood.

In the city of Baqubah, northeast of the capital, gunmen ambushed and killed a police officer as he walked through a market in the city center. Farther north in Tikrit, a roadside bomb went off near a police convoy, killing five officers and one civilian. In Taji, also north of the capital, a roadside bomb killed one civilian.

Also on Monday, the U.S. military confirmed the death of a soldier who died Monday in eastern Baghdad, and a Marine assigned to 2-28 Brigade Combat Team on Sunday in Al Anbar province.

Times staff writers Janet Stobart in London and Shamil Aziz in Baghdad contributed to this report.