Residents emerge after Baghdad clashes

Sporadic clashes broke out today between gunmen and Iraqi security forces in a Sunni Arab district of northern Baghdad as soldiers sealed off streets and manned checkpoints a day after a major gunbattle there.

Residents of Azamiyah began trickling out of their homes, where they had been holed up for practically two days.

Earlier, one had said that “nobody dares to even look out their window.”

Some shops started to reopen.

Today’s clashes left two gunmen dead and six people, including civilians, wounded.

The US military said at least five insurgents were killed and two Iraqi troops wounded in fighting yesterday.

Some residents said the gunmen were simply neighbourhood men who feared that the Iraqi troops were working with Shiite death squads.

Sunni lawmaker Adnan al-Dulaimi said in a statement that a campaign of intimidation was in full swing in the Baghdad areas of Azamiyah, Abu Ghraib and Dora, adding that this is “proof of the ugly cooperation between the government security bodies and the bloody militias against the citizens”.

Anger by the Sunnis comes at a time of acute political instability as the nation’s different ethnic and religious factions struggle to form a government of national unity.

Talks have been stalled for months over the issue of who should be the country’s next prime minister, with the Sunnis and Kurds steadfastly rejecting the Shiite nomination of Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Al-Jaafari has refused to give up the nomination that he won in a Shiite caucus last February.

Shiite leaders met today to hold discussions about a new Shiite candidate, but prospects for a quick end to the stalemate were in doubt as al-Jaafari’s Dawa party pledged to support him for another term as long as he wants the job.

Parliament had been set to meet yesterday to try to break the deadlock, but the session was postponed after Shiite politicians gave assurances they could reach a decision on al-Jaafari themselves without a bruising parliamentary fight.

In the capital, a bomb exploded at a café frequented by police in the eastern neighbourhood of Suleikh, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 20, police said.

The bomb was hidden underneath a couch at the entrance to the café, police Captain Ali al-Obeidi said. Tables and chairs were thrown from the building in the blast, and glass windows of nearby shops were broken. Those killed were three policemen and four civilians, he said.

In the Dora district of southern Baghdad, police discovered two bodies, both shot in the head.

Twelve other bodies were found in the same neighbourhood yesterday.

In a drive-by shooting, assailants gunned down a police officer walking near his home in the southern city of Basra, police said.

Two bombings targeted small Shiite mosques in northern and eastern Baghdad. There were no casualties, but one of the mosques was severely damaged, police said. Three other roadside bombings exploded in Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, leaving 10 wounded.