Sistani has told Shi’ites not to kill Sunnis. But Sunnis don’t seem to have returned the favor. Sunni/Shi’ite Jihad Update: “Insurgents kill sleeping Iraqi villagers,” by Tina Susman for the Los Angeles Times (thanks to Twostellas):
BAGHDAD “” Heavily armed insurgents ambushed sleeping residents of a Shiite village north of Baghdad early Saturday and killed at least 13 people, including a child, police and a Shiite official said.
In Baghdad, political tensions heightened between Sunni Arab lawmakers and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s Shiite-led government after raids a day earlier on a leading Sunni politician’s home and office. Members of the 44-member Sunni bloc walked out of the parliament session Saturday to protest what they called the house arrest of Adnan Dulaimi. They pledged to boycott legislative sessions until Dulaimi was free to leave his Baghdad home.
Dulaimi said that Iraqi soldiers outside his home had prevented him from going to parliament Saturday and prevented his sister from entering when she came to visit.
The lawmaker is a vocal critic of the government and has accused it of using the raids, and house detention, to try to quiet him.
Security forces detained dozens of Dulaimi’s associates and his son Makki on Friday after a car bomb was found outside Dulaimi’s compound. They have said he is being kept inside for his own safety and have not accused him of being involved with the bomb. They have not announced charges against any of those detained.
The village attack occurred in Dwelah, in volatile Diyala province. An official from a nearby office of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who identified himself as Abu Ali, said the dead included a Shiite sheik, Adnan Bawi, three of Bawi’s sons and a 2 1/2 -year-old girl.
Police said the attack began about 6:30 a.m. and involved dozens of suspected Sunni insurgents loyal to the group Al Qaeda in Iraq, which once held large parts of Diyala. A combination of U.S. military offensives and the banding together of Iraqi volunteers opposed to insurgents has weakened militants’ grip on the province, but attacks continue.