Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi condemns the Basra killings, saying they were carried out by “terrorist gangs” who must be brought to justice
Agencies
Baghdad
Gunmen shot dead three Sunni clerics in the Shia-majority southern province of Basra, Iraqi officials said yesterday, an attack likely to increase already-significant sectarian tensions in the country.
Raikan Mahdi, the head of the security committee for Al Zubair district in Basra province, said “unknown gunmen” killed the clerics and wounded two more.
Mahdi said the attack took place as the clerics headed from provincial capital Basra to Al Zubair on Thursday night, after attending a meeting on preparations to celebrate Prophet Muhammad’s birthday.
It is still unclear who carried out the killings, which come at a time of heightened tensions between Iraq’s Shia majority and the Sunni minority.
Sunni militants from the Islamic State (IS) group spearheaded a sweeping offensive that overran major parts of Iraq and have repeatedly attacked Shias, whom they consider to be apostates.
Baghdad turned to Shia militias for support against IS, and while they have played a key role in the fighting, they have also carried out kidnappings and extrajudicial killings targeting Sunnis.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, a Shia, condemned the Basra killings, saying they were carried out by “terrorist gangs” who must be brought to justice.
Interior Minister Mohamed Ghabban—a member of the Badr bloc, which is affiliated with one of the country’s most powerful Shia militias—ordered an investigation into the attack, the ministry said, blaming it on “forces serving the (IS) project”.
But Basra is far from IS strongholds, which are located north and west of Baghdad, and parliament speaker Salim al-Juburi, a Sunni, implied that Shia militiamen were behind the attack.
“We will not allow the replacement of the civil state that we seek to build with a group of warlords and militia leaders,” Juburi said in remarks on the killings, according to a statement released by his office.
And the Iraqi Islamic Party, a main Sunni political party of which Juburi is a member, also said the attack was carried out by “criminal militias”.
Baghdad’s reliance on Shia militias has helped push back IS but also increased their power to the point that controlling them will be a major challenge for the government.
But the Iraqi government’s first priority is the fight against IS, and while pro-government forces have regained some ground, large areas are still outside Baghdad’s control.
Violence in Iraq in 2014 killed at least 12,282 civilians, making it the deadliest year since the sectarian bloodshed of 2006-07, the United Nations said in a statement.
The majority of the deaths - nearly 8,500 - occurred during the second half of the year following the expansion of the IS insurgency in June out of Anbar province leading to widespread clashes with security forces.
“Yet again, the Iraqi ordinary citizen continues to suffer from violence and terrorism ... This is a very sad state of affairs,” said Nickolay Mladenov, head of the UN political mission in Iraq, in a statement released on Thursday.
The figures show that violence has not abated since 2013 when 7,818 civilians were killed, the UN said. The bloodshed remains below the levels seen in 2006 and 2007 when sectarian Shia-Sunni killings reached their peak.
In December, the statement said, a total of 1,101 Iraqis were killed in acts of violence, including 651 civilians, 29 policemen and a further 421 members of the security forces.
Thousands of combatants have been killed in clashes involving Iraqi army forces, militia, Islamist militants, tribal forces and Kurdish peshmerga. Fighting in urban areas has taken a particular toll on civilian populations.
The bloodshed was worst in Baghdad in December, where 320 civilians were killed, followed by Anbar province to the west with 164 dead.
