Iraqi premier and Sunni face off in parliament

Iraq’s Shiite prime minister exchanged heated words with a Sunni Arab lawmaker over the country’s new security plan, leading parliament to temporarily suspend a raucous debate and Iraqi television to halt its coverage.

The argument underscored the deep divides that have bedeviled attempts to quell Iraq’s deadly civil war.

As the legislators debated, the violence here continued, with at least 80 Iraqis and one U.S. soldier reported killed in a string of bombings, mortar fire and other bloodshed.

In the day’s worst attack, a suicide car bomber caused a massive explosion at a busy Baghdad intersection where shoppers waited in a long line to buy bread outside a bakery, killing at least 27 people and injuring 54, police and witnesses said.

“These terrorists are always one step ahead of the government security forces,” said Ridha Mustapha, a minibus driver who rushed into the bloody chaos after hearing the blast from his apartment. “It should be the other way around. All the government does is talk about the security plan, when the fact of the matter is that they should be taking the initiative in order to deter these attacks before they even occur.”

At least two rockets slammed into the Green Zone, setting off sirens and warnings to take cover in the heavily protected neighborhood that houses the U.S. and British embassies and the government’s headquarters. The blasts caused six injuries, most of them minor, the U.S. military said in a statement.

‘Plan targets all’

The parliamentary clash took place as Prime Minister Nouri Maliki presented his arguments in favor of the U.S.-backed security plan he called a “strategy to impose the law.” The plan would leave no havens for militants, regardless of religious or political affiliations, he told lawmakers.

“Some say this plan targets Sunnis or Shiites. The fact is this plan targets all who stand in the way of the law,” Maliki said.

Sheik Abdel Nasser Janabi, a Sunni Arab cleric and legislator from a region south of Baghdad notorious as the “triangle of death,” responded by protesting a major sweep by U.S. and Iraqi troops Wednesday through Haifa Street, a Sunni neighborhood near the Green Zone that is dominated by anti-government militants. Sporadic blasts continued Thursday in the area where more than 30 gunmen have been killed in fierce fighting, Iraqi officials said.

Janabi demanded that security forces lift their cordon around the area, insisting to loud protests from the Shiite-dominated chamber that “there are no terrorists in Haifa Street.”

“Aren’t there terrorists in Sadr City or Shula?” he said, referring to two Shiite militia strongholds.

Janabi accused Maliki’s administration of purging Sunni Arabs from the government, arresting pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia and imposing politically motivated death sentences, a possible reference to the execution last month of former President Saddam Hussein.

“We cannot trust this premiership,” Janabi said, as the shouting escalated around him.

Maliki retorted, “All I could tell our brother the sheik is that he will trust in this premiership once we present his file and hold him accountable for it.” As Shiite legislators loudly applauded, he said, “One hundred fifty kidnapped individuals in his area -- why doesn’t he talk about that?”

Mahmoud Mashadani, parliament speaker and a Sunni, interrupted the exchange, chiding Maliki for making “unacceptable” accusations and adding with heavy sarcasm that “the security plan will be very successful because you people are divided from this moment.”

He then called for an adjournment to avoid inflaming sectarian tensions. The session resumed soon after, but Al Iraqiya, the state-run television station, stopped airing it. The station later put out an edited version of events.

Iraq’s 275-member parliament has witnessed many angry exchanges between Shiite and Sunni legislators, but it was unusual for Maliki to enter the fray.

In his speech, Maliki said the government would hunt down militants wherever they were, in churches, homes and mosques.

“Don’t think for one moment that the Baghdad security plan will be limited to this city alone,” he told legislators. “We will pursue the criminals outside of Baghdad, on the outskirts and even farther, wherever they decide to flee.”

He promised to go after any political or community group that sheltered outlaws, saying that anyone using government vehicles for unauthorized purposes would also be arrested and punished.

The government concedes that Shiite militiamen linked to parliament’s two largest political blocs have infiltrated the security forces and that government vehicles have been used in a number of high-profile kidnappings and killings.

The first of a promised 21,500 U.S. troops have arrived in Iraq to help implement the security plan in Baghdad and Al Anbar province, center of the Sunni-driven insurgency. Maliki also has pledged to move troops to the capital, but has not said when the operation will kick off.

Police recovered at least 40 bullet-riddled bodies Thursday, apparent victims of the nightly killings by sectarian death squads. Four more bodies were pulled from the Tigris River south of the capital, near Suwayrah, a Baghdad morgue official said. Two of them had been beheaded and the others shot multiple times.

Upscale district is hit

The early evening explosion of the car bomb in Baghdad’s upscale, mostly Shiite Karada neighborhood set fire to dozens of shops and apartments and littered the streets with body parts and debris.

“I don’t know the fate of many of my friends and relatives.... There are numerous charred bodies,” said an anxious Maan Abid, who saw the blast from his plumbing store. “The only thing that saved me was the wall that I was standing next to, right outside my shop. Otherwise, the shop is destroyed, all the windows shattered.”

Witnesses said the suicide bomber tried to park his explosives-laden sport utility vehicle at the intersection, but blew himself up when traffic police ordered him to move on. At least two policemen were among those killed.

Police and other security forces shouted frantically and fired into the air to disperse onlookers for fear of a second blast. Another car bomb was found nearby and destroyed in a controlled detonation, police said.

“It’s chaotic,” said Mustapha, the minibus driver reached by cellphone at the scene. “Volunteers and rescue teams are carrying out bodies, and some remains, with blankets.”

Minutes later, mortar rounds exploded in northeast Baghdad, near Sadr City, killing at least one person and injuring four members of a family, police said.

Earlier Thursday, a bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded near one of Baghdad’s busiest wholesale markets, a frequent target of attacks. At least four people were killed and 18 injured, police said.

Another bomb exploded in a busy commercial street in Baya, a religiously mixed neighborhood in southwest Baghdad, killing at least three people and injuring 10, police said.

An Iraqi soldier was killed and three were injured in clashes with gunmen in Baghdad’s western Mansour neighborhood.

A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

At least 3,065 U.S. military personnel have been killed in the Iraq theater since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to the website icasualties.org.

zavis@latimes.com

Times staff writer Said Rifai and special correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.