Iraq's Sunni Arabs begin religious holiday

A three-day holiday began for Sunni Arabs in Iraq today, ending a month of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, and unusual signs of celebration emerged in war-torn cities such as Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Children could be seen wearing new clothes on the streets of neighbourhoods of Tikrit to mark the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday.

The city’s amusement park was crowded with families.

But long-standing animosity to US forces also was apparent in the mostly Sunni city, 80 miles north of Baghdad.

“The real Eid for Iraqis will be the day that occupation forces get out of our country,” said Aqel Omar, 48, a retired government employee, as he gathered with about 30 relatives at the home of their local tribesman.

“I hope that next year our country is liberated and stable and that we can rebuild it again,” he said in an interview.

Several attacks by Sunni-led insurgents had made yesterday a deadly day in Iraq.

A suicide bomber detonated a minibus packed with explosives in an outdoor market packed with shoppers of ahead of Eid, killing about 20 people and wounding more than 60 in Musayyib, a Shiite Muslim town on Euphrates River, about 40 miles south of Baghdad. Today, local Dr. Ali Abbas said the wounded included nine children and four women.

On July 16, nearly 100 people had died in Musayyib in a suicide bombing in front of a Shiite mosque near the same site in the town.

Six US troops also were killed, four of them during fighting in and around Ramadi that involved a roadside bomb and a helicopter crash. Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, is 70 miles west of Baghdad.

But little violence had been reported by midday local time in Iraq today.

In Tikrit, the day began for many Sunnis with early morning services at their mosques. At one, a preacher called for the withdrawal of all US forces from the country. But his sermon also urged Sunnis to vote in Iraq’s December 15 parliamentary election.

Most Sunnis had boycotted the January 30 vote that elected the current interim parliament, but many turned up for the constitutional referendum on October 15, and plan to cast ballots in the December election in an effort to get more Sunnis into Iraq’s next government.

As Eid began in Tikrit, no American patrols were seen on the streets for the first time in weeks. Iraqi police and soldiers were on duty instead, in an apparent effort to reduce the chance of violence ruining the holiday.

Eid celebrations also were taking place in Baghdad’s mostly Sunni neighbourhood of Azamiyah.

Children flocked to the local amusement in a small park, as Iraqi troops and US patrols were stepped up in the area to maintain security. Boys and girls could be seen taking rides on a small Ferris wheel, a swing set and a horse-drawn carriage.

But Zuhair Shihab, 45, the owner of a stall selling food there, said he felt sad, having just heard that the body of one of his friends had been found on a street of Baghdad, 10 days after he had been kidnapped.

Such killings are fairly common in Baghdad, some the result of fighting between Sunnis and Shiites, others the result of criminals seeking ransoms for hostages.

Shihab also was angered by the presence of the coalition forces.

“What kind of Eid we can we celebrate in the presence of US troops?” he said in an interview. “They brought all this misery to us.”

Before the Iraq war, the Eid al-Fitr holiday often brought a windfall for shop and restaurant owners, and a time of relaxation and celebration for many Iraqis and their families and friends.

But two and a half years after the US-led invasion, that isn’t always the case.

Fighting between coalition forces and insurgents, and the militants’ use of suicide bombers and roadside bombs often make security a top priority for Iraqi families, many of whom also suffer from power outages and water shortages at their homes. Some feel they have to closely guard their homes, day and night.

The timing of this year’s Eid holiday also is another sign of the deep divisions that developed between minority Sunnis and majority Shiites under Saddam, a Sunni who persecuted many Shiites during his rule.

The months of the Muslim calendar are lunar. Therefore, they start when the new moon is spotted in the sky by a trustworthy members of the community. Based on that procedure, Sunni clerics decided that Eid would begin today, while Shiites chose tomorrow.