Iraq Watch: April 4, 2006

Sectarian Violence Plagues Capital City

BAGHDAD, Iraq - In yet another blatantly sectarian attack, aimed at stirring already boiling tensions, militants detonated a car bomb in a largely Shiite section of Baghdad.

The blast in the capital city's eastern Habibiyah district left at least 10 Iraqis dead and nearly 30 wounded.

A separate early-morning bombing in the capital's New Baghdad neighborhood killed three and wounded three more.

Meanwhile, a receptionist who worked for the United Arab Emirates Embassy was gunned down along with an acquaintance as they left the embassy compound located in the upscale Mansour district of Baghdad.

AFP reports that authorities discovered at least 18 executed bodies in or around the capital Tuesday. Scores of corpses, believed to be victims of sectarian tit-for-tat killings, have been found around religiously mixed areas of the country since the February 22 bombing of the sacred Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra.

In the predominately Shiite city of Basra, located about 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, gunmen assassinated Sunni cleric Nawaf Ahmed Aqrab according to the Los Angeles Times. Aqrab was a local leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), the largest Sunni political bloc in Iraq.