5 soldiers among 10 dead in Iraq violence

Gunmen killed 10 people in Iraq Saturday, including five soldiers near the main Sunni protest camp west of Baghdad, the latest in a wave of violence that has raised fears the country faces a new round of sectarian bloodshed.

The attack on the army intelligence soldiers in the former insurgent stronghold of Ramadi drew a quick response from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led government has been the target of rising Sunni anger over perceived mistreatment.

The attackers stopped a vehicle carrying the soldiers near the protest camp, prompting a gunbattle that left the five soldiers dead and two of the attackers wounded, police officials said.

Al-Maliki vowed his government would not keep silent over the killing of the soldiers. Iraqi officials have repeatedly claimed that insurgent groups, such as al-Qaida in Iraq and supporters of former Iraqi leader Saddam regime, have infiltrated the Sunni demonstrations.

“I call upon the peaceful protesters to expel the criminals targeting military and police,” al-Maliki said in a statement posted on his official website.

Authorities announced a curfew in the whole province of Anbar. They also gave the protest organizers in Ramadi, the provincial capital, a 24-hours deadline to hand over the gunmen responsible for killing the soldiers or face a “firm response,” said Maj. Gen. Mardhi Mishhin al-Mahalawi, the army’s Anbar operations chief.

Members of Iraq’s Muslim Sunni minority have been rallying for the past four months in several Iraqi cities to protest what they describe as unfair treatment by al-Maliki’s government.

Tensions spiked earlier this week when fighting broke out in the northern town of Hawija during a security crackdown on a protest encampment. That provoked a series of clashes nationwide that left more than 170 people dead over the past five days.

In Cairo, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group, from which Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi hails, condemned the Iraqi government’s actions in the crackdown. The Sunni political and religious organization decried the Iraqi government’s “violence in dealing with the peaceful demonstrators and protesters that resulted in the killing and wounding of many innocent people, which is rejected by Islam and humanity.”

It added: “this is not the way people are governed or the way to achieve security and reform.” Morsi’s government has itself come under criticized as scores of Egyptian protesters have been killed or wounded in police crackdowns and street clashes since the Islamist leader was elected after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in 2011.

For many Iraqi Shiites, the months of protests coupled with the latest unrest raise worrying parallels to the civil war engulfing neighboring Syria.

There, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime is fighting largely Sunni rebels who draw support from Turkey and Sunni Gulf states.