Sunni-Shi’ite jihad update from AP:
In Sunni Arab areas of western Baghdad, gunmen in passing automobiles killed three Shiite Muslim pilgrims and wounded five others. To the south, bombs in a minibus and along the pilgrimage road killed two people and wounded nine….
At about 7:30 a.m., a BMW sedan driving alongside pilgrims in the western district of Adil opened fire, killing three young men and wounding two other people, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said. Police later reported a second incident, also in western Baghdad, in which armed men riding in a car fired on pilgrims near Um al-Tuboul Square, wounding three.
About midday, a bomb left in a plastic bag of vegetables on a minibus exploded and killed two passengers and wounded four in a Shiite district of Baghdad, said police Lt. Bilal Ali. Later Friday, a roadside bomb exploded as a crowd of pilgrims passed in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, and wounded five people, police Lt. Thair Mahmoud said.
Elsewhere, police in a Shiite area of east Baghdad late Thursday found the bodies of four Sunni men who had been seized from a taxi by masked gunmen the day before in western Baghdad. Police also reported that six mortar rounds landed on six houses Friday in a mixed Sunni-Shiite area of Khan Bani Saad, 10 miles north of Baghdad, killing one person and wounding three.
To help guard against violence in Shiite holy cities, the U.S. military earlier this week announced it was dispatching a fresh battalion of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, about 700 troops, to Iraq from its base in Kuwait to provide extra security.