Prometheus 6

"This is a new step. A red line has been crossed," said Alaa Makky, a Sunni member of parliament. "People have been killed in the streets; now they are killed inside their homes."

Attackers retaliated by detonating two bombs in cars parked at al-Timim Shiite mosque in central Baghdad. At least 12 people were killed, including five policemen, and 18 were wounded, according to Lt. Col. Memduh Abdulla of the Rusafa police district. The Associated Press reported that 17 people were killed and 38 hurt.

"We've said it several times that there are people who want to create civil war," Wafiq al-Samarrae, an adviser to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said on al-Jazeera television. "Today, this country is on the edge of civil war, not sectarian strife."

Scores Of Sunnis Killed in Baghdad
Neighborhood Residents Describe Signs of Torture
By Joshua Partlow and Saad al-Izzi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 10, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, July 9 -- Shiite Muslim militiamen rampaged through a Sunni Arab neighborhood in Baghdad early Sunday morning, killing more than 50 people and discarding bodies in the streets, according to Iraqi officials and witnesses. Hours later, attackers struck back, detonating two car bombs near a Shiite mosque.

Sunni politicians described the violence against the Sunni residents of the al-Jihad neighborhood in western Baghdad as one of the deadliest waves of murder since the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The killings occurred on a day when the U.S. military announced charges against four soldiers in the alleged rape and murder of a girl and the killing of three members of her family in the southern Iraqi town of Mahmudiyah.

Sectarian killings escalated sharply across Iraq after a bomb destroyed a revered golden-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22. The bombing prompted reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques and pushed the country further toward all-out civil war.