WP: Sunnis Close Mosques to Protest Killings

Sunnis Close Mosques to Protest Killings
Iraq's Shiite Politicians Condemn Attacks as an Attempt to Spark Sectarian War

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 21, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD, May 20 -- Weeping and raising open hands to the sky, a Sunni Arab clerical leader announced an extraordinary closing of Sunni mosques across Baghdad on Friday to protest killings that some have blamed on militias allied with Iraq's new Shiite-led government.

Ahmed Abdul Ghafur Samarrai said Sunni mosques in and around Baghdad would be closed for three days. "So when the muezzin finishes his call to prayer, he will say, 'Oh, worshipers, pray at your homes.' God bless you," Samarrai said.

In another part of Baghdad, Shiite worshipers pumped fists in the air in a show of resilience after two mortar rounds landed near their mosque, one of the capital's leading Shiite places of worship, during Friday prayers, wounding two people. Shiite political leaders, clerics and some worshipers urged restraint in the face of tit-for-tat killings, which they called an effort to draw Iraq's newly dominant Shiite majority and disgruntled Sunni minority into sectarian war.

"Let them express their hatred in the way they know best," Jalaledin Saghir, a cleric, said quietly after the mortar shells landed a few dozen feet from the thousands of Shiites gathered at the Buratha mosque. Mosque walls bore black fliers announcing the killings of three Shiites in recent days, including a relative of the cleric.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/20/AR2005052001568.html

From the BBC Online
Dated Saturday May 21 13:51 GMT (6:51 am PDT)

Angry Sunnis shut Baghdad mosques

Sunni mosques in Baghdad have been closed to worshippers as part of a three-day protest against a recent series of killings of Sunni Muslims.

Traditional calls to prayer came with an additional request that the faithful say their prayers wherever they were.

The action comes at a time of growing tension between the Sunni community and Iraq's Shia majority.

Sunni clerics have accused a Shia militia known as the Badr brigades of involvement in the killings.

Had Saddam passed the scene without foreign intervention, there most likely would have been a period of strife in Iraq featuring violence along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Foreign intervention to remove Saddam has clearly not prevented that.