Killing of Sunni clerics raises sectarian tensions in Iraq

No claims of responsibility for ambush near Basra city that left three clerics dead and two injured.

Iraqis carry the coffins of Sunni clerics assassinated near Basra city on January 2, 2015. EPA

BASRA, Iraq // Gunmen shot dead three Sunni clerics in the Shiite-majority southern province of Basra, an attack likely to increase already significant sectarian tensions in the country.

Gunmen ambushed the clerics’ car on Thursday night in the mostly Sunni district of Al Zubeir near Basra city.

Two clerics were wounded in the attack, said Raikan Mahdi, head of the district’s security committee.

He said the clerics were returning from Basra after attending a meeting on celebrations for the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday.

Prime minister Haider Al Abadi, a Shiite, condemned the killings, saying they were carried out by “terrorist gangs” who must be brought to justice.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which comes at a time of heightened tensions between Iraq’s Shiite majority and Sunnis, who mark the prophet’s birthday on Saturday.

The Sunni extremist group ISIL launched a sweeping offensive in June that overran major parts of Iraq and has repeatedly attacked Shiites, whom they consider to be apostates.

Baghdad turned to Shiite militias for support against ISIL, and while they have played a key role in the fighting, they have also carried out kidnappings and extrajudicial killings targeting Sunnis.

Interior minister Mohammed Ghabban, member of a political bloc affiliated with one of the most powerful Shiite militias – blamed the attack on “forces serving the [ISIL] project.”

But the parliament speaker Salim Al Juburi, a Sunni, implied that Shiite militiamen were responsible. “We will not allow the replacement of the civil state that we seek to build with a group of warlords and militia leaders,” he said.

The fighting triggered by ISIL’s offensive has led to Iraq’s highest annual civilian death toll since the height of sectarian violence in 2006-07.

There were at least 12,282 civilians in 2014, with the majority – nearly 8,500 – during the second half of the year following the expansion of ISIL in June out of western Anbar province, the United Nations said yesterday.

The extremist group has also seized large areas of Syria, where it is fighting against the Bashar Al Assad regime as well as other, moderate rebel groups.

Syria’s main western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, opened a three-day meeting in Istanbul on Friday to discuss a range of issues, including a Russian initiative to broker a resolution to the civil war, and elect a new president.

* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press