Iraq: Women and children shot dead in field
Gunmen attacked women picking vegetables in a field outside the Iraqi capital, killing six adults and two young girls and kidnapping two teenagers.
Police said they suspected the gunmen in yesterday’s attack were Sunnis seeking to intimidate Shiites into fleeing the area south of Baghdad. Previous major attacks in Iraq have killed many women and men together, and at times individual women have been shot or kidnapped but rarely have large groups of women been attacked.
In another sign of sectarian bloodshed, police in Duluiyah north of Baghdad found 14 beheaded bodies thought to be from a group of 17 workers kidnapped by gunmen on Thursday while travelling home to the mostly Shiite town of Balad.
The attack on the farm field took place outside Saifiya, an ethnically mixed village south of Baghdad. Most residents had already fled to escape violence, Sunnis going to the nearby town of Madain, Shiites to neighbouring Suwayrah.
The women were gathering vegetables when gunmen pulled up in two cars around and surrounded the field.
They opened fire, killing six women and two girls about four or five years old, Lieutenant Mohammed al-Shammari said.
The attackers forced two teenage girls into the cars and escaped.
Al-Shammari said the gunmen may have come from the nearby Baghdad district of Dora, a mixed neighbourhood long torn by bloodshed inflicted by both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen.
Baghdad has been the epicentre of violence for months. The city has averaged 36 attacks a day the past three weeks, an increase of nearly 30% over the preceding seven weeks and 60% higher than from mid-March to mid-June, according to US military figures.
The US military spokesman, Major General William Caldwell, attributed the rise to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, when he said attacks “historically” have increased. Some Islamic militants believe that dying in combat during Ramadan brings extra blessings in paradise.
US officials warned weeks ago that killings by Shiite and Sunni death squads have become the greatest threat in Iraq, although the Sunni-dominated insurgency continues bombing and shooting attacks on US and Iraqi troops as well as civilians.
In separate incidents, at least 10 other Iraqi civilians died in violence yesterday, and a US soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in northern Iraq, the 45th American death this month.
Bloodshed in Baghdad itself was kept down by a curfew – imposed every Friday, banning vehicle traffic to prevent car bomb attacks on weekly Muslim prayers.
The northern city of Mosul was also under curfew after US and Iraqi troops fought with gunmen on Thursday night. The fight was sparked by a mortar barrage on a US base that wounded 12 American soldiers. At least 12 suspected insurgents were reported killed in ensuing gun battles.
