Iraq Kurd region under pressure

BAGHDAD -- From south and north, Iraq's Kurdish region felt pressure from two sides yesterday, as saboteurs bombed a vital bridge link to Baghdad, and Turkish troops across the border massed for a possible strike.

"We won't allow it to be turned into a battleground," Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday of the relatively peaceful Iraqi north, a haven for anti-Turkish Kurdish guerrillas.

Sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims raged on in Iraq's center, meanwhile, as hours of mortar barrages killed eight people in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad that is surrounded by Shi'ites, and a prominent Sunni cleric was gunned down on the street.

The US casualty toll mounted for May, third-deadliest month for Americans in the four-year-old war: A soldier wounded in a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad last Wednesday was reported to have died of his wounds, raising the month's death toll to at least 127.

Tensions have heightened in recent weeks in northern Iraq as Turkey has built up its military forces on Iraq's border, a move clearly meant to pressure Iraq to rein in the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, separatists who launch raids into southeast Turkey's Kurdish region from hide-outs in Iraq.

Turkey's political and military leaders have been debating whether to try to root out those bases, and perhaps set up a buffer zone across the frontier as the Turkish Army has done in the past. Turkey's military chief said Thursday the army was ready and awaiting orders for a cross-border offensive.

In an interview taped for broadcast today on ABC's "This Week," Iraq's Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, said Iraqi leaders had persuaded the Iraq-based militants to cease their attacks, "and they did it."

Also yesterday, a bomb heavily damaged the Sarhat Bridge, a key crossing on a major road connecting Baghdad with Erbil, Sulaimaniya, and other Kurdish cities of the north, police reported.

Small cars could still cross the damaged Sarhat span with difficulty, but trucks were being rerouted to a dangerous detour through areas of Diyala Province.

In farm fields about 40 miles to the northwest late yesterday, gunmen killed two Arab farmers and wounded six others, police in nearby Kirkuk reported. The attack might have reflected tensions between Iraq's majority Arabs and minority Kurds over future control of the Kirkuk area.

In western Baghdad, a well-known Sunni cleric, Ali Khudir al-Zind, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he walked near his home, police said. Elsewhere in the city's western half, gunmen in two separate locations killed three people, and police found two bodies of people who had been bound, blindfolded, and shot, and showed signs of torture.

North of Baghdad, a Sunni tribal sheik and village mayor, Rokan Mutlak al-Jibouri, whose tribe is said to be opposed to the activities of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was fatally shot while leaving his home for work yesterday , Brigadier Qadir said.

In all, at least 57 people were killed or found dead, including 26 bodies with bullet wounds that turned up on the streets of Baghdad bearing signs of torture -- apparent victims of so-called sectarian death squads usually run by Shi'ite militias.