Iraqi gunmen ambush vans, kill 21

BAGHDAD -- Masked gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students north of Baghdad yesterday, ordered the passengers off, separated Shi'ites from Sunni Arabs, and killed the 21 Shi'ites ``in the name of Islam," a witness said.

In predominantly Shi'ite southern Basra, police searching for militants stormed a Sunni Arab mosque early yesterday, hours after a car bombing. The ensuing firefight killed nine.

The two attacks dealt a blow to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's pledge to curb sectarian violence. He again failed to reach consensus yesterday among Iraq's ethnic and sectarian parties on candidates for interior and defense minister -- posts he must fill to implement his plan to take control of Iraq's security from US-led forces within 18 months.

Violence linked to Shi'ite and Sunni Arab animosity has grown increasingly worse since Feb. 22, when bombs ravaged the golden dome of a Shi'ite mosque in predominantly Sunni Arab Samarra.

Sectarian tensions have run particularly high in Baghdad, Basra, and Diyala Province, a mixed Sunni Arab-Shi'ite region. And yesterday's attacks occurred days after terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi renewed his call for Sunni Arabs to take up arms against Shi'ites, whom he has vilified as infidels.

In the minibus ambush, a car and a sport utility vehicle stopped the vehicles near the town of Qara Tappah, about 75 miles northeast of Baghdad and near Diyala Province, said Haqi Ismail, 48, a witness.

Ismail said he had been driving his pickup behind the vans and was stopped, too. About 15 masked men wearing traditional robes known as a dishdashas forced everyone out of the vehicles, he said.

``They asked us to show our IDs, and then instructed us to stand in a line, separating the Sunni from the Shi'ite due to the IDs and also due to the faces," said Ismail, a Shi'ite Kurd.

He said the gunmen ordered the Shi'ites to lie down and before they opened fire one shouted, ``On behalf of Islam, today we will dig a mass grave for you. You are traitors."

Ismail said he was injured but did not move.

``One of the gunmen kicked me to be sure that I was dead," he said, speaking from his hospital bed in Sulaimaniyah, north of Qara Tappah.

Two of the victims were high school students, ages 17 and 18, and nine were students at al-Yarmouk University, ages 21 to 22, said Qara Tappah's mayor, Serwan Shokir. The rest were men in their mid- to late 30s, who worked as laborers or for the power company, the mayor said.

The Basra violence -- the car bomb Saturday and mosque raid early yesterday -- occurred days after Maliki declared a state of emergency in the city, vowing to crack down on gangs.

Basra police surrounded the al-Arab mosque just after midnight Saturday, tipped off that militants holed up inside had opened fire. Also, Iraqi forces had found two vehicles packed with explosives near the mosque, similar to the car bomb used to attack a crowded market, leaving 28 dead and 62 wounded.

Police and gunmen exchanged fire, killing nine people. Police said they arrested six terrorist suspects, adding that part of the mosque was damaged and burned.

A hard-line Sunni organization in Basra, the influential Sunni Arab Association of Muslim Scholars, said the nine people killed had come to the mosque to protect it.

Parliament was postponed yesterday after Maliki again failed to find agreement on who should run Iraq's security forces. The Shi'ite prime minister had promised to present candidates for the defense and interior posts, as well as minister of state for national security, yesterday for approval by the 275-member parliament.

The political parties decided ``to give the prime minister another chance to have more negotiations," said the deputy parliament speaker, Khalid al-Atiya, who is a Shi'ite.

In an effort to provide balance on security matters, the Interior Ministry will go to a Shi'ite and the Defense Ministry post will go to a Sunni Arab. Much of the problems focused on Shi'ite objections to some Sunni Arab candidates for the defense ministry because they served in the military under Saddam Hussein. There also was dissent in Shi'ite ranks over the Interior Ministry.

Iraqi security forces were searching Baghdad for four Russian diplomats kidnapped Saturday. Another Russian diplomat was killed in the attack that took place near the embassy in west Baghdad's Mansour district. US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad condemned the attack and promised to help seek the release of the hostages.

The US military said an American soldier was killed Saturday in Anbar Province.

In other violence yesterday, according to police:

Gunmen in a car opened fire on a minibus carrying telecommunications workers to an area near the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, killing four and wounding two.

Police found 16 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad and four in the city of Tikrit, north of the capital.

Gunmen in Tikrit killed three police officers and wounded two others at a checkpoint.

Gunmen broke into the home of an Iraqi soldier, killing him, his two brothers, and father, and wounding his mother.

Two gunmen on a motorcycle killed Muntaha Ali and her husband, Helmi Yaseen, in Basra, believed to be employees of a US government agency.