Signs of reprisal killings emerge in Iraq

— The Turkish foreign minister says Turkey has evacuated staff from its consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra over a deteriorating security situation.

Associated Press

Nearly four dozen Sunni detainees were gunned down at a jail north of Baghdad, a car bomb struck a Shiite neighborhood of the capital and four young Sunnis were found slain, as ominous signs emerged Tuesday that open warfare between the two main Muslim sects has returned to Iraq.

The killings, following the capture by Sunni insurgents of a large swath of the country stretching to Syria, were the first hints of the beginnings of a return to sectarian bloodletting that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.

During the United States’ eight-year presence in Iraq, American forces acted as a buffer between the two Islamic sects, albeit with limited success.

The U.S. military is now being pulled back in — with a far more limited mission and far fewer troops, as President Barack Obama nears a decision on an array of options for combating the Islamic militants. Some 275 armed American forces are being positioned in and around Iraq to help secure U.S. assets.

In the latest sect-on-sect violence, at least 44 Sunni detainees were slaughtered by gun shots to the head and chest by pro-government Shiite militiamen after Sunni insurgents tried to storm the jail near Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, police said.

The Iraqi military gave a different account and put the death toll at 52, insisting the Sunni inmates were killed by mortar shells in the attack late Monday on the facility.

In Baghdad, the bullet-riddled bodies of four men in their late 20s or early 30s, presumably Sunnis, were found Tuesday at different locations in the Shiite neighborhood of Benouk, according to police and morgue officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the media.

Also Tuesday, a car bomb in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City district killed 12 people and wounded 30 in a crowded outdoor market, police and hospital officials said. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, but attacks targeting Shiite districts are routinely the work of Sunni militants.

The sectarian violence was a grim reminder of a dark chapter in Iraq’s history when nearly a decade ago the city woke up virtually every morning to find dozens of bodies dumped in the streets, trash heaps or in the Tigris river, bullet-riddled or with torture marks.

Obama has said he would not commit the U.S. to military action in Iraq unless the government in Baghdad moves to “set aside sectarian differences, to promote stability, and account for the legitimate interests of all of Iraq’s communities.” In the absence of that type of political effort, Obama has said any American military action would not succeed.

In a move apparently designed to satisfy Obama’s demand for political inclusion, Iraq’s Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders issued a joint statement late Tuesday stressing the importance of setting “national priorities” that adhere to democratic mechanisms in resolving divisions and condemning sectarian rhetoric.

In a move certain to exacerbate regional Shiite-Sunni tensions, the Iraqi government made a scathing attack on Saudi Arabia, accusing the Arab world’s Sunni powerhouse of meddling in its affairs and acquiescing to terrorism. The harsh words came in response to a Saudi Cabinet statement blaming what it called “the sectarian and exclusionist policies in Iraq in recent years” for the latest violence.