Baghdad clashes point to rift in Sunni Arab insurgency

Fighters allied with Al Qaeda battled Iraqi civilians and a nationalist insurgent group in the Amariya neighborhood of west Baghdad this week, in the latest indication of growing internal strife in Iraq’s troubled Sunni Arab community.

The clashes in the suburb, home during Saddam Hussein’s rule to elite civil servants and military officers, appear to be a spillover from the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq in the neighboring province of Al Anbar and Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib.

In recent months, Sunni Arab tribal leaders have turned against the militant group, expressing disgust over the large number of civilian deaths at the hands of extremists.

The bloodshed began Wednesday, reportedly over an Al Qaeda-imposed ban on traffic that prevented children from taking their exams. Police said U.S. and Iraqi forces intervened, with ground forces and helicopter gunships.

Fearing new clashes, resident Abu Mohammed, 36, said he had stayed home Friday, slipping out once on the side streets to the bakery. His covert journey took three hours and broke a curfew. “Today, the fighting ceased, we didn’t hear a single gunshot. The U.S. forces are deployed in all Amariya.”

The neighborhood has become a stronghold for Al Qaeda in Iraq since late 2004, when militants fleeing a U.S. offensive in Fallouja turned the district into their enclave.

Under their reign, life had become unbearable, Abu Mohammed said. Barbers closed their shops, afraid they would be killed for giving “American-style” haircuts. People were terrified of ending up one of the bodies that lay on the street for days, the dogs eating them.

The tensions have risen since October, when Al Qaeda-affiliated fighters joined forces in an umbrella group called the Islamic State of Iraq in a bid to command the whole Sunni insurgency.

Abu Ibrahim, a 40-year-old commander with the nationalist insurgent group known as the Islamic Army, said Al Qaeda fighters had started to assassinate former Iraqi military officers. Abu Ibrahim accused the Sunni extremists of being bankrolled by Iran and killing former officers for them as well.

“We deduced that they are doing so on the behest of the Iranians in order to continue receiving funding and weapons while pursuing their own agenda,” he said.

“I could confidently say that we have the upper hand because the majority of people here want Al Qaeda out,” Abu Ibrahim said. “There has always been tension between our organization and Al Qaeda. We never agreed with their methods of operation, killing civilians and carrying out operations regardless of large collateral damage.”

Abu Ibrahim said the fighting started Wednesday when Al Qaeda killed an Islamic Army envoy sent to ask the group to leave the area.

At least two bystanders were killed in the running battles on Amariya’s Honey Street, which connects the neighborhood’s two main roads, Abu Ibrahim said. A cameraman for the U.S.-funded Arabic satellite news channel Al Hurra was killed Thursday during the fighting.

A representative of the Anbar Salvation Council, the organization of tribal leaders against Al Qaeda in western Iraq, said it had activists in Amariya who encouraged people to stand up against the radical Islamists.

Al Qaeda and rival insurgent groups appear nervous about the emerging schism, fearful the Americans and Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority will exploit it.

A Sunni militant group called the 1920 Revolution Brigade issued a statement Friday on the Internet condemning the Amariya clashes after some residents said the armed faction had joined the fight against Al Qaeda. The commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigade was assassinated by Al Qaeda militants in March.

“We have received information and are very pained due to the internal fighting between our brethren in Amariya. This is not supposed to be happening during these stressful times. Our rifles should be aimed at the occupation and sectarian militias,” the statement said.

The group said it had suffered from “internal strife” in the past but had learned from its mistakes.

Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told reporters Thursday that U.S. military commanders hoped to cut deals locally with insurgent groups as they try to stabilize Iraq.

Counter-terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University speculated that the death of Al Qaeda in Iraq founder Abu Musab Zarqawi a year ago had paved the way for the revolt against the group’s domination of the Sunni insurgency.

“I wonder if any would have been so brazen if Zarqawi was still alive,” Hoffman said.

The U.S. military reported the deaths of three U.S. soldiers in the last three days in the Baghdad region. The fatalities brought the number of American military personnel killed in the Iraq theater to 3,478, according to the icasualties.orgwebsite.

Three children were killed Friday when a U.S. tank opened fire on three men thought to be placing bombs on a highway southeast of Fallouja, the military said in a statement.

In other developments, Abdelaziz Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, returned to Baghdad after completing his first treatment for lung cancer in Iran, his party’s website reported Friday.

Hakim, who heads the ruling Shiite bloc in parliament, was diagnosed last month at a Houston medical center and headed to Tehran for a first round of chemotherapy. Hakim, a key ally of the U.S. who has a reputation as a hard-liner on issues such as reconciliation with those who served in Hussein’s Baathist regime, is essential to any U.S. plan to stabilize Iraq.

There was no news Friday on the fate of five British nationals who were abducted Tuesday from a Finance Ministry building. They are thought to be held by a Shiite militia in Baghdad’s Sadr City.

Iraqi police said a predawn U.S.-Iraqi military raid in Sadr City left an ambulance driver dead and his 7-year-old daughter wounded. A second man was also killed, police said. The U.S. military said it had no information about the incident.

Fifteen bodies were found around the northern oil city of Kirkuk, which has been roiled by ethnic tensions, police said. A Turkmen politician was shot to death Friday night outside the city, police said.

In a separate incident, five security guards were kidnapped at a key oil pipeline junction 40 miles south of Kirkuk, police said.

Two people died in bombings around Baghdad, and 15 corpses were found around the city. Ten Iraqis were killed and 30 wounded in a mortar strike on the mixed Sunni-Shiite southeast Baghdad neighborhood of Umm al Maalif.

ned.parker@latimes.com

Times staff writers Mohammed Rasheed, Suhail Ahmad and Raheem Salman contributed to this report.