Troops Try to Curb Warfare North of Baghdad

U.S. and Iraqi troops sought to restore order Tuesday to a lush farming district north of the capital where more than 100 Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims have disappeared or been brutally killed in sectarian fighting in recent days.

Thirteen carloads of Shiites from the town of Balad, about 50 miles north of Baghdad, were reported Tuesday to have been kidnapped the previous night. Their fate was unknown.

U.S. military officials tallied at least 63 killed in fighting between Shiite and Sunni villagers around Balad since Saturday. Witnesses and police gave higher estimates of fatalities. The violence has been notable for its character of open warfare and its overtly sectarian targeting.

In addition to the Iraqi dead, four U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday morning when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said, disclosing no further details. At least 63 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq this month.

In Balad, the sectarian fighting first broke out Friday, when at least 19 Shiites were kidnapped and beheaded. The next day, Shiite militiamen abducted and executed dozens of Sunni residents, occasionally pulling people from their cars and setting fire to their bodies. Sunnis then began firing rockets into the mostly Shiite town, killing at least half a dozen people.

Men in police uniforms seized unused Iraqi police checkpoints near Balad on Monday and Tuesday night, according to witnesses and security officials.

Witnesses also reported that large groups of men -- identified by locals as Sunni Arab insurgents -- carrying AK-47s were flooding Sunni Arab areas east of Balad, positioning rocket launchers and mortars in the villages outside the town. The men demanded identification from passing drivers.

“They stopped us,” one Shiite resident of the area said by telephone. “They asked me, ‘Are you Sunni or Shiite?’ I told them I’m a member of the [Sunni] Mashadani tribe, and showed them a fake identification card.”

Four mortar rounds landed in Balad on Monday night and early Tuesday, killing one person and injuring four, a hospital official said.

The provincial governor called Tuesday for an immediate tribal summit. Security forces also sealed off the nearby Shiite town of Dujayl in an effort to prevent a similar outbreak.

U.S. forces began providing assistance to Iraqi military units at the request of Iraqi civic and military leaders.

“We continue to conduct our normal patrols in the city and provide support for Iraqi security forces as they lead operations in stopping the sectarian violence in Balad,” said Army Lt. Col. Jeff Martindale, commander of the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. “We are also providing counter-fire support against terrorists conducting indirect fire attacks against innocent civilians in Balad.

“By coordinating all of our efforts, we have seen a marked decrease in violence in the past 24 hours,” Martindale said.

Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority and once-dominant Sunni Arabs have been locked in civil conflict across Iraq for months. Hundreds of corpses are found scattered throughout religiously mixed central provinces each week.

At least 50 Iraqis were killed and 44 injured in violence around the country Tuesday.

Balad and Dujayl are particularly vulnerable to sectarian strife. The Shiite towns, with strong ties to clerics in southern Iraq and in Iran, lie in the middle of a heavily Sunni Arab area sympathetic to the insurgency.

The Shiites’ vulnerability gives the militias popular support, and the government’s weakness gives the latter free rein.

The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has been unable to tame the violence or the Shiite militia groups that answer to powerful parties in his coalition.

Under pressure from U.S. officials and Iraqi politicians to show changes in a police force widely believed to be infiltrated by the militiamen, Iraq’s interior minister has reshuffled a pair of key positions under his control, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Mehdi Ghrawi and Rasheed Fleih, both generals commanding specialized police units in the field, have been reassigned as “part of a routine restructuring process,” Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Kareem Khalaf told reporters. Under the restructuring plan, the two generals’ posts will be combined and given to one as-yet-unnamed commander.

Khalaf insisted that neither man was implicated in death squad activity. He said Fleih will take over a post in the branch’s intelligence division while Ghrawi will become deputy police chief for the capital.

Amid rumors here that the U.S. might back a change in the government of Iraq, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a favorite of U.S. Embassy officials, returned this week to Iraq, where he rarely appears though he heads a 25-seat parliamentary bloc.

“His presence is important during this period because the country is passing a crucial stage, during which all leaders of political movements and the politicians must be present in the country,” said Wael Abdul Latif, a member of Allawi’s coalition.

Modest efforts to diminish the power of radical militias and their political allies often spark civil disturbances or violence. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s followers called for a massive demonstration in northern Baghdad today to protest the arrest of a leader of their movement.

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daragahi@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Raheem Salman in Baghdad and special correspondents in Baghdad, Dujayl and the Iraqi cities of Mosul, Basra, Samarra and Tikrit contributed to this report.