Attacks on Sunni mosques fuel fears in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — A sharp rise in attacks on Sunni holy sites in Iraq is feeding fears that the country could spiral into a new round of sectarian violence similar to the bloodletting that brought Iraq to its knees in 2006 and 2007.

Majority Shiites control the levers of power in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Wishing to rebuild the nation rather than revert to open warfare, they have largely restrained their militias over the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have targeted them with occasional large-scale attacks.

That may now have changed.

If it turns out that Iranian-backed Shiite militias are responsible for the recent attacks on Sunnis, it could signal a turn toward cyclical retaliatory violence.

At least 29 Sunni mosques were attacked between mid-April and early May, according to Mahmoud al-Sumaidaie, the deputy head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment, which oversees the sect's holy sites. At least 65 Sunni worshippers were killed, according to a tally compiled by The Associated Press from police reports.

By contrast, two Shiite mosques were hit in bombings that killed one person over the same period, police and hospital officials said. Dozens of Shiites were killed in attacks by Sunni extremists at places other than holy sites during this time.

In all of 2012, there were only 10 recorded attacks on Sunni holy sites, al-Sumaidaie said.

In a sign of increasing fears by the Shiite-led government that the country might be descending into sectarian strife, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned last week that terrorists and extremist groups are taking advantage of the turmoil by targeting "certain areas and mosques."

"The attempts to stir sectarian strife again by warlords, terrorists, and militia leaders will not succeed and we will confront them with full force," he said, adding that the army and police would boost security around houses of worship.

Even if the will is there, al-Maliki's government is considered too weak to ensure security and control militias and other extremist Shiite groups that are allegedly linked to and partly financed by Iran.

And many contend that al-Maliki's government planted the seeds for more sectarian tension by becoming more aggressive toward Sunnis after the U.S. military withdrawal in December 2011.

For the past five months, Sunnis have been protesting against what they claim is second-class treatment by the government and to demand an end to some laws they believe unfairly target them. Violence has flared on occasion between security forces and protesters.

But the matter came to a head April 23 after government troops moved against a camp of Sunni demonstrators in the town of Hawija, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Baghdad. The clashes there sparked a wave of violence across Iraq that has killed more than 230 people, posing the most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in December 2011.

Al-Sumaidaie suggested the spate of recent attacks on Sunni mosques might be aimed at pressuring Sunni protesters to quit their anti-government rallies.

"These attacks aim to terrorize the worshippers and they might be a reaction on some issues such as the protesters," he said.

He also accused Shiite militias of being behind the recent attacks on Sunnis, but refused to specify which groups.

In February, Sunni households in mixed areas of Baghdad began receiving threatening leaflets signed by a militant faction known as the Mukhtar Army. The leaflets called Sunnis the enemy and warned them to leave the neighborhood. Their appearance raised new concerns among many Sunnis in the capital because overt threats like that had largely disappeared as widespread sectarian fighting waned in 2008.

The Mukhtar Army was formed by Wathiq al-Batat, a one-time senior official in Iraq's Hezbollah Brigades, which has no direct link to the better-known Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Batat has said the militia's aim is to confront Sunnis who might attempt to topple the Shiite-led government in Baghdad in the same manner that Syrian rebels are trying to overthrow Bashar Assad's Iranian-backed regime in neighboring Syria.

Last week, al-Batat was quoted by Iraqi media issuing new threats against "the centers of terrorism and the people with turbans who are calling for terrorism" — an apparent reference to extremist Sunni clerics.

"We will work to intensify the jihadist operations, by using all means, in order to hunt for these terrorists and strike their economic, social and political interests, and we will not exclude anybody who promotes or calls for terrorism," he said.

Under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni minority held a privileged position, while the Shiites were largely oppressed. But since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam, those dynamics have been flipped, and a Shiite-led government now holds power in Baghdad.

Attacks on Sunni mosques have become rare since the peak of the sectarian strife, which was ignited by the bombing of the Shiite al-Askari shrine in the city of Samarra in February 2006. That attack was blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq and set off retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists that left thousands of Iraqis dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

The new wave of unrest rolling across Iraq now is worrying in part because of the country's recent past.

Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, warned in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on April 30 that the situation in Iraq has taken "a very dangerous turn" since last month's crackdown in Hawija.

He described the recent violence as reminiscent of the dark days in 2006. Al-Qaida's Iraq arm, he wrote, is regrouping in areas that Iraqi and American forces "cleared at enormous cost," and its ally Jabhat al-Nusra is "attempting to hijack the secular resistance" to Syria's Assad.

"These developments threaten not only to unravel the gains made since 2007, but also to energize the forces of violent extremism in the heart of the Arab world, already burning in Syria," Crocker said.

Ahmed Hussein Saleh, a Sunni resident of Baghdad, said the current political tension has contributed to the deteriorating security situation and the comeback of sectarianism.

"The politicians, Shiite militia leaders, and even al-Qaida, want to restart the sectarian war because it is the only way to keep the people divided and thus rule the country the way they want," said Saleh, who has decided recently not to let his two kids go outside the house on their own, fearing for their safety.

Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Saad Maan Ibrahim said the ministry has taken extra precautions to try to secure mosques, including deploying more security forces and undercover policemen.

"The ministry is giving this issue top priority now because we are aware that this tactic has been used before in order to create a sectarian war among the Iraqi people, but they failed," Ibrahim told The Associated Press.

He said that an investigation is underway to determine which groups are behind the mosque attacks, and cautioned against jumping to any hasty conclusions.

"Basically, these attacks bear the hallmarks of al-Qaida, but we do not rule out the possibility that the militias from the other side might be behind this violence," he said.

At the Mohammed Fanadi al-Kubaisi mosque in western Baghdad, shards of glass litter the prayer hall nearly three weeks a bomb killed three people on April 26. At the front entrance, dozens of slippers and shoes are still neatly stored in the wooden shelves where worshippers left them before fleeing the in a panic.

The mosque's imam, Hussein Ali, who had just started into his Friday sermon when the bomb placed outside one of the windows blew up, said those who targeted the building "want to reignite the civil war among the people here."

"I am sure that God's revenge will fall upon them sooner or later," he said. "It is only a matter of time."

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Associated Press writer Adam Schreck contributed to this report.

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AP Interview: Sunni Iraq official criticizes force

BAGHDAD (AP) — The Sunni head of a committee established to investigate deadly clashes that erupted at a protest camp in Iraq last week said Wednesday that he believes excessive force was used by security forces as they tried to make arrests among anti-government demonstrators.

The April 23 clashes in the town of Hawija, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Baghdad, sparked a wave of violence across Iraq that has killed more than 230 people, posing the most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in December 2011.

Sectarian attacks and clashes have been on the upswing in Iraq, raising concerns of a return to the bloody fighting in the last decade that approached a state of civil war. Many from Iraq's Sunni minority say they are marginalized by and discriminated against by the Shiite-led government.

Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni, was named the head of a ministerial committee set up by Iraq's prime minister hours after the clashes broke out between government security forces and some of the protesters in Hawija.

"We have found that extra and extensive force was used, and it was not needed," he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Al-Mutlaq has in the past clashed with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led administration has been the target of more than four months of anti-government demonstrations. Al-Mutlaq continues to serve in the government, unlike several other senior Sunni officials who resigned in protest or were forced out of office.

The Defense Ministry said after the crackdown that 23 people, including three members of the security forces, were killed in the clashes.

Al-Mutlaq's office countered that investigators found evidence that 46 demonstrators, including minors, were killed. Several were shot in the chest or above, he said.

Al-Mutlaq said members of the military told investigators that Iraqi troops opened fire after one of their officers was killed. While he did not cast doubt on that account, he suggested that the military response was excessive.

"In any military, someone has to be responsible," he said. "To lose one soldier, or one officer, that does not mean that you kill such a huge amount of people," he added later.

Al-Mutlaq stopped short of assigning blame for the killings, saying it would likely be several weeks before his committee makes its full findings public, if at all.

The clashes in Hawija erupted four days after a checkpoint run by the police and army near the town came under attack. Militants seized a number of weapons before retreating into a crowd of protesters, according to the Defense Ministry.

The Defense Ministry said its forces tried to warn protesters to disperse before moving on the site, and they came under heavy fire as they tried to make arrests. It said some of the dead included militants tied to al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's outlawed Baath Party, and weapons were recovered from the scene.

Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, a Defense Ministry spokesman, denied that excessive force was used at the Hawija camp.

"We gave them three days in order to allow us to search for wanted suspects and weapons, but our request was turned down. When our security forces advanced, they were attacked," he said when asked for comment Wednesday evening.

While the circumstances of what exactly happened at Hawija remain murky, international observers also question how the incident was handled.

"This was clearly a major fight in which many people died — not all of them armed," said a Western diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly and agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity.

"Bottom line, it looks like excessive force was used and a lot of unarmed people were killed. There were more people killed than there were arms," the diplomat added in an interview this week.

In the wake of the Hawija incident, gunmen have battled security forces in a number of towns, and attackers have detonated bombs in both Sunni and Shiite areas.

The violence continued Wednesday. A series of attacks claimed 14 lives.

A parked car bomb went off early in the morning in the Shiite-dominated Baghdad suburb of Husseiniya, killing four civilians, police said. Twelve people were wounded.

Around noon, another parked car bomb exploded near a group of anti-al-Qaida Sunni fighters near the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of Baghdad.

The pro-government militiamen had gathered outside a military post to receive their salaries. The explosion killed three fighters and one civilian, wounding 15, police said.

In the evening, gunmen in five pickup trucks attacked Tarmiyah police station, sparking a half-hour gunbattle. Six policemen were killed, including the police station chief, and 10 other policemen were wounded, according to police. The gunmen withdrew after security reinforcements entered the town, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The violence that escalated after the Hawija clashes sharply raised Iraq's death toll last month. It hit 402 in April, according to an AP count, up from the previous month's toll of 254.

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Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin, Mohannad al-Saleh and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

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Iraqi soldiers retake control of Sunni town

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi soldiers backed by tanks retook control of a Sunni town north of Baghdad on Friday after gunmen withdrew without a fight, although violence continued in other parts of the country.

The Sunni gunmen had seized Suleiman Beg on Thursday after a firefight with security forces, one in a string of similar incidents that have killed more than 150 people in clashes in Sunni Muslim towns in western and northern Iraq over the past four days.

The fighting has raised concerns about the spread of sectarian clashes in Iraq, whose government is now dominated by the Shiite majority which Sunnis charge mistreats them.

Police and military officials said that army units entered the town after negotiations with local tribal leaders.

The recent unrest in the country followed a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest in the northern town of Hawija four days ago.

Meanwhile, police said a bomb blast hit Sunni worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in western Baghdad after the end of Friday prayers, killing 5 worshippers and wounding 22 others. Minutes later, a Sunni was killed and six others were wounded after bomb struck Sunnis near a mosque in the Rashidiyah area, 20 kilometers north of the capital.

Medics in nearby hospitals confirmed the death toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to media.

Last Friday, a pair of bombs struck outside a Sunni mosque north of Baghdad, killing at least 11 people. There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks against Sunni mosques, which have now happened for two Fridays in a row.

Al-Qaida's Iraqi branch, Known as the Islamic State of Iraq, frequently carries out attacks against civilian targets such as mosques, markets and restaurants.

The terrorist group mainly target Shiites, but it has in the past also struck Sunni targets in an attempt to reignite the sectarian strife that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in the years following the 2003 U.S. led-invasion.

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Clashes suggest Sunni anger boiling over in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — With Sunni gunmen beginning to confront the Shiite-led government's security forces head-on in northern and western Iraq, fears are growing fast of a return to full-scale sectarian fighting that could plunge the country into a broader battle merged with the Syrian civil war across the border.

With more than 100 people killed over the past two days, it's shaping up to be the most pivotal moment for Iraq since U.S. combat troops withdrew in December 2011.

"Everybody has the feeling that Iraq is becoming a new Syria," Talal Younis, the 55-year-old owner of a currency exchange in the northern city of Mosul, said Wednesday. "We are heading into the unknown. ... I think that civil war is making a comeback."

A crackdown by government forces at a protest site in the northern town of Hawija on Tuesday triggered the latest unrest. It has enraged much of the country's restive Sunni Arab minority, adding fuel to an already smoldering opposition movement and spawning a wave of bold follow-up clashes.

It is too soon to say whether the rage will lead to widespread insurrection in the largely Sunni cities of Mosul and Ramadi or, more significantly, spiral into open sectarian warfare in the streets of Baghdad.

The Iraqi capital is far more tightly controlled by security forces than the remote towns hit by the latest unrest, but insurgents continue to launch regular, well-coordinated waves of attacks inside Baghdad. Outright threats that all but disappeared as the last bout of sectarian fighting waned in 2008 are making a comeback too, like the leaflets signed by a Shiite militant group that began turning up on the doorsteps of Sunni households in Baghdad earlier this year.

The exact circumstances of the Hawija bloodshed remain murky, but there is outrage over the government's handling of the unrest and the fact that most of the 23 killed at the site were among the Sunni demonstrators.

Talal al-Zobaie, a Sunni lawmaker from the opposition Iraqiya bloc, described this week's events as a pivotal moment for the country.

"The crime in Hawija clearly shows that people have lost faith in their armed forces, which have been turned into a tool in the hands of the prime minister," he said. "Some people now think that the only way to protect themselves is to take up arms."

The raid in Hawija sparked clashes and a spate of other attacks, mostly targeting Sunni mosques, that killed at least 56 people on Tuesday. Raids by Sunni gunmen on army checkpoints broke out in the hours following the protest camp raid and continued into Wednesday.

In the most dramatic incident, armed tribesmen sealed off approaches to the Sunni town of Qara Tappah, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Baghdad. When Iraqi troops backed by helicopters arrived to try to clear the makeshift roadblocks, fierce clashes erupted. Police say 15 gunmen and seven soldiers were killed.

Sunni tribesmen also battled soldiers throughout Wednesday in the town of Suleiman Beg, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) north of Baghdad. Four soldiers and 12 others, including gunmen, were killed.

The sense that violence could be spreading from a local dispute to other parts of the country is particularly worrying to many Iraqis.

"This could open the door for broader clashes if things are not contained soon," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker. "Hawija is a small town and it can be controlled, but the real problem will arise if Mosul or Ramadi decide to enter the armed struggle," he said.

Three gunmen were killed Wednesday when they attacked a security checkpoint near the former al-Qaida stronghold of Mosul, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad.

Later, a car bomb struck a police patrol north of Baghdad, killing a policeman and two civilians. Another car bomb exploded after sunset near a bus stop in Baghdad's mostly Shiite neighborhood of Husseiniyah, killing seven people and wounding 23.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to reporters.

Human Rights Watch urged Iraqi authorities to ensure that any investigation into the Hawija killings Tuesday take into account allegations that security forces used excessive force. The rights group noted that there have been reports that security forces attacked demonstrators without provocation.

Iraq's Defense Ministry said it entered the protest area to try to make arrests over an attack on a nearby checkpoint several days earlier, and its forces came under heavy fire from several types of weapons, as well as from snipers.

"This is one of those cases where ... a singular spark escalates tensions and mobilizes the population for renewed conflict," said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Beirut-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies.

"War fatigue in Iraq is losing its pacifying effects and the rationale to pick up arms and fight again is finding fertile ground in Sunni land(s)."

The increasingly sectarian lines drawn in the Syrian civil war and the rise of Sunni Islamists in the region in the wake of the Arab Spring is also having an effect on the Sunni protest movement playing out in Iraq, he noted.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime is fighting against largely Sunni rebels who draw support from Turkey and Sunni Gulf states. Assad's Alawite sect is a branch of Shiite Islam, and his regime is backed by Shiite powerhouse Iran.

"Given what's happening at the regional level, there's a dangerous mixture of Sunni hubris and Shiite fear. These emotions coupled with political volatility and uncertainty renders an environment where miscalculations are most likely to occur," Mardini said.

At the same time, recent local elections — which have not yet been held in two largely Sunni provinces — have put Iraqi politicians of all stripes in campaign mode, and playing up their sectarian credentials is a way to rouse voters.

"You're not going to find Sunnis urging for calm," Mardini said. "Most ... are still in the mode of rabble-rousing and throwing the reddest of meats to a discontent and frustrated electorate."

Tuesday's bloodshed followed four months of largely peaceful protests staged by Iraq's Sunni minority against the government.

Many Sunnis are angered over what they see as an effort by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to sideline members of their sect within the power-sharing government. They say they face discrimination, particularly in the application of a tough anti-terrorism law that they believe unfairly targets them. The government frequently carries out arrests in Sunni areas on charges of ties to al-Qaida or the deposed Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni.

Emma Sky, a key civilian policy advisor for U.S. Army Gen. Ray Odierno when he was the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said the events in Hawija exacerbate concerns that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq are merging.

"The fear is that the post-World War I settlement is unraveling," she said, referring to the agreement between Britain and France that divided up the heart of the Middle East and drew the modern borders of Syria and Iraq.

"The way to inoculate Iraq against all of this is national unity," she said. "If Iraq had wise politicians who actually came together for the good of the country, it could go in a different direction."

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AP writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Sinan Salaheddin contributed reporting.

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Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

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Syria: Bombing kills top pro-Assad Sunni preacher

BEIRUT (AP) — A suicide bombing tore through a mosque in the Syrian capital Thursday, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad along with at least 13 other people.

The assassination of Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti removes one of the few remaining pillars of support for the Alawite leader among the majority sect that has risen up against him.

The powerful explosion struck as al-Buti, an 84-year-old cleric and religious scholar who appeared often on TV, was giving a religious lesson in the Eman Mosque in the central Mazraa district of Damascus, according to state TV.

Suicide bombings blamed on Islamic extremists fighting with the rebels have become common in Syria's 2-year-old civil war. But Thursday's explosion marked the first time a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a mosque.

Syrian TV footage showed wounded people and bodies with severed limbs on the blood-stained floor and later, bodies covered in white body bags lined up in rows. Sirens wailed through the capital as ambulances rushed to the scene of the explosion, which was sealed off by the military.

Al-Buti's death was a big blow to Syria's embattled leader, who is fighting mainly Sunni rebels seeking his ouster. Al-Buti has been a vocal supporter of his regime since the early days of Assad's father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad. Sunnis are the majority sect in Syria while Assad is from the minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

He was the regular preacher of the eighth century Omayyad Mosque, but Syrian TV said he was giving a religious sermon to students at Eman Mosque when the explosion occurred.

In recent months, Syrian TV has carried his sermon from mosques in Damascus live every week. He also has a regular religious TV program.

Syrian TV began its evening newscast with a phone announcement from the religious endowments minister, Mohammad Abdelsattar al-Sayyed, declaring al-Buti's "martyrdom" as his voice choked up. It then showed parts of his sermon last Friday in which he praised the military for battling the "mercenaries" and said Syria was being subjected to a "universal conspiracy."

Assad's regime refers to the rebels fighting against it as "terrorists" and "mercenaries" who are backed by foreign powers trying to destabilize the country. The war, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people, has become increasingly chaotic as rebels press closer to Assad's seat of power in Damascus after seizing large swaths of territory in the northern and eastern parts of the country.

The rebels also captured a village and other territory on the edge of the Golan Heights Thursday as fighting closed in on the strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed, activists and officials said.

The battles near the town of Quneitra in southwest Syria sent many residents fleeing, including dozens who crossed into neighboring Lebanon. The fighting in the sensitive area began Wednesday near the cease-fire line between Syrian and Israeli troops.

One of the worst-case scenarios for Syria's civil war is that it could draw in neighboring countries such as Israel or Lebanon.

There have already been clashes with Turkey, Syria's neighbor to the north. And Israel recently bombed targets inside Syria said to include a weapons convoy headed for Hezbollah in Lebanon, a key ally of the regime in Damascus and an arch foe of the Jewish state.

If the rebels take over the Quneitra region, it will bring radical Islamic militants to a front-line with Israeli troops. Syrian rebels are made of dozens of groups including the powerful, al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, which the Obama administration labels a terrorist organization.

Israel has said its policy is not to get involved in the Syrian civil war, but it has retaliated for sporadic Syrian fire that spilled over into Israeli communities on the Golan Heights.

The Golan front has been mostly quiet since 1974, a year after Syria and Israel fought a war.

The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels seized control of parts of villages a few kilometers (miles) from the cease-fire line with Israel after fierce fighting with regime forces.

The Local Coordination Committees, another anti-regime activist group, reported heavy fighting in the nearby village of Sahm al-Golan and said rebels are attacking an army post.

The Observatory said seven people, including three children, were killed Wednesday by government shelling of villages in the area.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said the fighting around the town of Arnabeh intensified Thursday, a day after rebels captured it. He added that the rebels captured two nearby army posts.

In Lebanon, security officials said 150 people, mostly women and children, walked for six hours in rugged mountains covered with snow to reach safety in the Lebanese border town of Chebaa.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the Syrians fled from the town of Beit Jan, near the Golan Heights.

The Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, a rebel group active in southern Syria, said in a statement on its Facebook page that its fighters stormed an army post between the villages of Sahm al-Golan and Shajara.

Activists on Facebook pages affiliated with rebels in Quneitra announced the start of the operation to "break the siege on Quneitra and Damascus' western suburbs."

The fighting moved closer to Israel as President Barack Obama was visiting the country for the first time since taking office more than four years ago.

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Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus contributed to this report.

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Police clash with Sunni worshippers in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi officials say several Sunni worshippers were injured when police tried to prevent them from reaching a prominent mosque in northern Baghdad.

Police officials said anti-riot police used batons and water hoses in order to prevent worshippers from crossing a bridge leading to the Abu Hanifa mosque, located in the primarily Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah.

The officials say said several worshippers sustained bruises and minor injuries in the skirmishes. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

Last Friday, security forces prevented worshippers from holding Friday prayers at Abu Hanifa mosque.

Minority Sunnis frustrated over what they claim is second-class treatment have taken to the streets across Iraq since late December.

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Iraqi Sunni official announces resignation

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's Sunni finance minister announced Friday during a protest in the western city of Ramadi that he will resign from the government, heightening the country's political crisis nearly a decade after the U.S.-led invasion.

The arrest of bodyguards assigned to Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi in late December was the spark that set off a more than two month-long wave of Sunni protests against the Shiite-led government.

Al-Issawi's announcement marks the first resignation of a senior Sunni member of government since the protests began.

"I am presenting my resignation in front of you. I do not care about a government that does not respect the Iraqi blood and its people," al-Issawi told thousands gathered to protest against what they see as unfair treatment and discrimination against their sect by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.

The protesters cheered in approval of al-Issawi's decision.

However, the resignation has to be formally endorsed by al-Maliki, leaving al-Issawi's status in government unclear for now.

Earlier Friday, two car bombs struck a livestock market south of the Iraqi capital on Friday, killing five and wounding dozens, the second such attack in as many days.

The twin bombing targeted the market in the Shiite city of Diawaniyah, 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Baghdad, at the height of trading when many people pour to the market at the start of the weekend.

The head of the provincial council, Jubair al-Jabouri, said five people were killed and 70 were wounded in the attack. He blamed the blasts on al-Qaida, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A day earlier, a similar attack tore a crowded livestock market in the town of Aziziyah, also south of Baghdad, killing three and wounding eight people.

Violence in Iraq has fallen since the height of sectarian fighting in 2006 and 2007, but deadly attacks are still frequent. On Thursday, bombings in Baghdad, Aziziyah and another town south of the Iraqi capital killed at least 22 people.

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