Iraqis fear sectarian flames will flare anew
‘We are living a horror movie’ under threat by Islamic State
Iraqis fear their country will descend into sectarian war again in the wake of the Islamic State’s suicide truck bombing in the capital Sunday, one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003.
“We are living a horror movie,” Al-Mujtaba Al-Waeli, 28, a musician in the Iraqi national orchestra, said Monday. “Our relatives and beloved ones die on daily basis in different ways. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, to see the day when my homeland is safe again.”
The truck bomb killed at least 157 people and wounded 190 in a crowded Baghdad shopping district during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan. The government said the death toll is likely to rise.
The horrific attack is the latest in a string of bombings in and around the capital by Islamic State militants. A string of smaller bombings elsewhere in Baghdad on Monday killed 16 people and wounded dozens more, the Associated Press reported.
“I lost my brother and his 5year-old son” in Sunday’s bomb-
ing, said Layal Hussain, who came to the shopping district Monday to search for them. “We have been looking since Sunday morning. I searched among the burned corpses in the morgue. He is not with them. The last time we talked, he was telling us he bought nice clothes for his son, and his little son was very happy.”
When Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi toured the site of the attack Sunday, an angry crowd upset with the government’s failure to deter Islamic State bombings threw rocks and shoes at his car and called him a thief.
The bombings raise the prospect of renewed fighting between Iraqi Shiites, the majority sect in the country, and minority Sunnis who ruled the country before the U.S. invasion. The Islamic State militants are Sunnis who have the backing of some Sunnis who feel threatened by the security forces and independent Shiite militias who help regular Iraqi troops battle the militants.
Fighting between Sunnis and Shiites erupted a decade ago, forcing the U.S. military to send in more troops to quell the violence and prevent all-out civil war.
Sarmad Ghaz, a shop owner who lost his son in a fire that followed Sunday’s bombing, blamed government officials’ incompetence for the high death toll from the attack.
“I saw people burning ( because) the civil defense officers were so slow to rescue them,” Ghaz said. “It is all the fault of the government.”
The crowded street bears black banners with names of victims. One banner had seven names from one family.
On the prime minister’s orders, Iraqi authorities arrested officials who were overseeing security in the area. Al-Abadi ordered an investigation into British-made ex- plosives detectors that have missed bombs.
The frequent bombings have fueled dissatisfaction with the Shiite-dominated government. In May, mobs made it through security cordons into the Iraqi parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone — created as a safe haven for the government by the U.S. military — to protest rampant corruption and incompetence.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who organized the protests, has recruited and trained his militias to provide their own security, if needed.
“There are real concerns of (sectarian) infighting,” said Riyadh Mohammed, an Iraqi journalist and former spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Justice. “They are all heavily armed, and the situation might explode.”
The growing criticism of the government follows several battlefield victories it has achieved against the Islamic State.
Iraqi forces — aided by Shiite militias, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes and Iranian military advisers — have retaken the cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Tikrit from the Islamic State in the past year.
Fallujah, less than 40 miles west of Baghdad, was recaptured last month, and the government said that victory would deter militants holed up there from carrying out terror bombings in the capital.
“I saw people burning (because) the civil defense officers were so slow to rescue them. It is all the fault of the government.” Sarmad Ghaz, Iraqi shop owner