Sunni residents, insurgents battle in streets of capital

BAGHDAD – Sunni residents of a west Baghdad neighborhood used assault rifles and a roadside bomb to battle the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq this week, leaving at least 28 people dead and six injured, residents said Thursday.

The mayor of the Amiriyah neighborhood, Mohammed Abdul Khaliq, said in a telephone interview that residents were rising up to try to expel al-Qaida in Iraq, which has alienated more moderate Sunnis because of its indiscriminate violence and attacks on members of its own sect.

“I think this is going to be the end of the al-Qaida presence here,” Abdul Khaliq said of the fighting Wednesday and Thursday, which began over accusations that al-Qaida in Iraq had executed Sunnis without reason.

The Baghdad battle is evidence of a deepening split between some Sunni insurgent groups and al-Qaida in Iraq, which claims allegiance to Osama bin Laden. While similar rebellions occurred in Diyala province earlier this year, the fighting this week appears to be the first time the conflict has reached the streets of Baghdad.

Abdul Khaliq said he hoped U.S. forces would stay out of the fight. “But if the Americans interfere, it will blow up, because they are the enemy of us both, and we will unite against them and stop fighting each other,” he said.

In Anbar province, which is predominantly Sunni, tribal leaders have formed an umbrella group, the Anbar Salvation Council, to join with U.S. and Iraqi troops in a common fight against al-Qaida in Iraq, which used to dominate the province. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said in a press briefing Thursday that 12,000 Anbar residents have joined the Iraqi security forces in the first five months of this year, compared with 1,000 in all of last year.

Tribal leaders say they are signing up because they oppose al-Qaida in Iraq’s extremist ideologies and its attacks on local residents, but critics of the council say the U.S. effort in Anbar amounts to backing one private army against another.

In an attack that clearly was meant to intimidate the tribes, a suicide bomber wearing a hidden explosive vest blew himself up Thursday among 150 recruits waiting to enter a police compound in the Anbar city of Fallujah, killing 25 people and wounding at least 20 others, said Ayman Hussein Zaidan, an official at Fallujah General Hospital.

In a second attack Thursday in Anbar, six people were killed, including three policemen, when a suicide car bomb exploded at a telephone exchange in Ramadi, about 55 miles west of Baghdad, said Col. Tariq al-Dulaimi, a local police chief.