Maliki: New Iraq Strife Comes from Elsewhere, Gunmen Kill 10 Security Soldiers

Local Editor

Sectarian strife returned to Iraq from elsewhere in the region, Prime Minister Nuri Maliki said on Saturday, a likely reference to neighboring Syria.

Sectarian strife "came back to Iraq because it began in another place in this region," Maliki said in televised remarks.
Five days of violence in Iraq have killed more than 200 people.

On Thursday, Maliki warned of the danger that Iraq was slipping into "sectarian civil war," and his latest remarks expanded on that.
"Sectarianism is evil, and the wind of sectarianism does not need a licence to cross from a country to another, because if it begins in a place, it will move to another place," he said on Saturday.

"Strife is knocking on the doors of everyone, and no one will survive if it enters, because there is a wind behind it, and money, and plans."
This comes as gunmen killed five army intelligence soldiers in two attacks west of Baghdad while others shot dead five anti-Qaeda militiamen north of the Iraqi capital on Saturday.
One group of soldiers were driving near the site of a long-running anti-government protest when they were stopped by gunmen.

They shot one of the gunmen, wounding him, and clashes broke out in which four of the soldiers were killed and another wounded, a police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said.
Gunmen also killed one soldier and wounded another in a similar incident involving a second vehicle in the same area, the same sources said.

And gunmen killed five Sahwa anti-Qaeda militiamen in an attack, on a checkpoint south of Tikrit, which lies north of the Iraqi capital, a second police lieutenant colonel and a doctor said.

Source: News agencies, Edited by moqawama.org