Reply #75: Oh bloody hell. Civil war. BBC and al Jazeera links here too

[uppityperson]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4741762.stm

'Sunni militants' killed in Basra

Gunmen have killed at least 11 people after entering a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, police have said. They said all of the victims were believed to be Sunni militants, including several foreigners.

The attack in the largely Shia city comes amid a wave of anger among Iraq's Shias over a bomb attack on one of their holiest shrines in Samarra.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has appealed for calm, and urged Iraqis to work together to avert a civil war.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6B989359-6D61-4A50-B4C8-ECCFFA49B0E6.htm

Armed men have detonated bombs inside one of Iraq's holiest Shia shrines, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 90 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. In the latest incident, armed men in police uniforms seized 11 Sunni men from a prison in the mainly Shia city of Basra in southern Iraq on Wednesday and later killed them, police said. ....

(clipping)
In Washington, a senior US official said the al-Qaeda was suspected of being behind the attack on the Shia shrine. "We believe this can be traced back to the Zarqawi al-Qaeda movement," said the State Department's coordinator for Iraq policy, Ambassador James Jeffrey, on Wednesday adding the United States would do all it could to track down the perpetrators.

Asked what evidence the US had to link the attack to al Qaeda, Jeffrey said Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, had often called for attacks on Shia
targets and said they were aimed at sparking civil war.

"We are trying to connect the dots," he told reporters at the State Department. "We certainly think it would be in line with what they have been saying and doing

More at both links. Hell.