The Iraqi Prime Minister said today that Iraqi security forces had beaten off a concerted attempt by sectarian militias to take over western Baghdad.
Nouri al-Maliki told the Iraqi parliament that gun battles had raged in the streets of Baghdad west of the river Tigris for several days, and scores of civilians have been killed in the crossfire.
Mr al-Maliki said that his Government's national reconciliation plan was Iraq’s "last chance" to end the slide into sectarian civil war which was now the country's biggest threat.
"We all have the last chance to reconcile and agree among each others on avoiding conflict and blood," he said.
"If we fail, God forbid, I don’t know what the fate of Iraq will be."
The assembled MPs included representatives of the Sunni community, who have ended a week-long parliamentary boycott in protest at the kidnapping of a woman colleague.
Mr al-Maliki said that it was not possible to protect every woman and child in the face of the sectarian onslaught. "They have intentions to occupy Karkh (west Baghdad) but be sure that Iraqi forces are capable of repulsing them and have started striking them. Military forces will deter anyone who tries to occupy any area."
The Prime Minister added that the Government will work on cleaning up the security and armed forces in order "to make them far from political groups and sectarianism."
As he spoke, security forces were discovering the dead bodies of 20 bus drivers - believed to be Shias - who had been kidnapped earlier.
Mr al-Maliki's warning came as Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, arrived in Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi Government. Mr Rumsfeld was briefed by the top US military commander in Iraq that Shia death squads were fuelling the slide into civil war.
US commanders have often been careful not to label gunmen as Shias, although many of the recent attacks in Baghdad neighbourhoods have been blamed by Sunnis and police on the al-Mahdi army militia controlled by Hojetoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, a prominent Shia cleric with ties to Iran. Hojetoleslam al-Sadr and his followers deny the accusations.
General George Casey, the top US military chief in Iraq, said that Sunni militants too were stoking the tit-for-tat violence with a daily toll of atrocities against the Shia majority.
"What we are seeing now as a counter to that are death squads, primarily from Shia extremist groups that are retaliating against civilians," said General Casey. "So you have both sides now attacking civilians. And that is what has caused the recent spike in violence here in Baghdad."
A surge in sectarian violence began on Sunday, when Shia gunmen rampaged through a Baghdad neighbourhood hauling Sunni men from their homes and killing them. At least 60 people were killed across Iraq yesterday, most of them in the Baghdad area.
At 6am today gunmen stormed the bus station in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles northeast of Baghdad, separated Shias from Sunnis and took 24 people captive, driving them off to a nearby village in commandeered vehicles.
Major General Ahmed al-Awad, the commander of the Iraqi army’s 5th division, told government television that four people were rescued when 400 Iraqi troops raided the village, but 20 bodies were also found and the victims were Shias.
Major General al-Awad accused local police - in an area where Sunnis are in a slight majority, and tensions between Shias and Sunnis run high - of failing to intervene. The police said that the dead had not yet been identified and they didn’t know whether they were all Shias.
Muqdadiyah was the site of a recent Iraqi military operation aimed at stopping an increase in insurgent activity. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political group, complained last week that US and Iraqi troops had surrounded 15 mostly Sunni villages near the city, and called on them to allow the entry of food and medicine and to compensate farmers for damage to their crops.
In total, more than 1,607 Iraqis have been killed and nearly 2,500 wounded since Mr al-Maliki’s unity government took office less than two months ago on May 20, according to the Associated Press news agency.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, said that sectarian violence had now overtaken the three-year-old Sunni insurgency as Iraq's main source of instability.
"A year ago, terrorism and the insurgency against the coalition and the Iraqi security forces were the principal sources of instability," Mr Khalilzad said last night. "Violent sectarianism is now the main challenge."
The US military is adopting its tactics to focus more on sectarian violence, and in the last week has provided air back-up as Iraqi security forces seized two prominent al-Mehdi army commanders around Baghdad.
Today, however, Mr Rumsfeld warned that the solution was not a military one, but a process of reaching out to the angry and marginalised Sunni minority.
"We’re at a point now when the security situation depends as much on the reconciliation process and on the strengthening of (government) ministries," Mr Rumsfeld told reporters.
"Success in those areas will determine the success from a security standpoint. It’s as much a political task as anything."
Mr al-Maliki has offered talks with some Sunni rebels and a limited amnesty under his 24-point plan in a bid to draw Sunnis closer into the political process.
Mr Rumsfeld’s trip comes amid growing anti-war sentiment among the US public. Three years after the invasion there is still a 129,000-strong American force serving in Iraq, and more than 2,500 US troops have died.
The Defence Secretary said that the new Iraqi Government was not yet ready to decide on security issues that will determine the pace of US troop reductions this year, and it was thus too early to talk about troop levels. "We haven’t gotten to that point."
Mr Rumsfeld also declined to talk about the inquiries in which US soldiers are suspected of killing Iraqi civilians, saying they were a matter for the US military. Mr al-Maliki has called for independent Iraqi inquiries and a review of foreign soldiers’ immunity from Iraqi courts.
