The signs continue to show that Iraq is decending into civil war and the leaders of Iraq are now acknowledging this.
More below the fold:
London Times
IRAQ is slipping into all-out civil war, a Shia leader declared yesterday, as a devastating onslaught of suicide bombers slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them Shias, around the capital at the weekend.
One bomber killed almost 100 people when he blew up a fuel tanker south of Baghdad, an attack aimed at snapping Shia patience and triggering the full-blown sectarian war that al-Qaeda has been trying to foment for almost two years.
"What is truly happening, and what shall happen, is clear: a war against the Shias," Sheikh Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a prominent Shia cleric and MP, told the Iraqi parliament.
On the streets of Baghdad, al-Zarqawi's al-Qaeda organisation in Iraq unleashed one suicide bomber after another and promised no respite.
But the worst attack occurred in the mixed town of Musaib, in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death, when a fuel tanker blew up in a crowded market near a mosque on Saturday evening. The death toll rose to 98 yesterday, making it one the deadliest attacks yet.
Relatives searched the shattered market for the body parts of missing loved ones. "I saw a lot of burnt bodies after the explosion and many people throwing their children from the windows and balconies because the buildings were on fire," Ammar al-Qaragouli said.
A poll in the state-sponsored al-Sabah newspaper indicated that 51 per cent of Iraqis see the Government's performance as weak, while only 32 per cent approved. Fuelling the sectarian tension, leaflets are being distributed in southern Baghdad threatening named Shia "collaborators" with execution.
Increasingly hardline Shia militias, such as the outlawed Mahdi Army of the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, are patrolling large parts of Baghdad, often rounding up suspected Sunni insurgents and imprisoning or even killing them. With the country in turmoil, much of the Government, including Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Shia Prime Minister, was on a landmark trip to try to repair relations with Iran, where President Khatami hailed a "turning point" in relations between the neighbours. He promised that his country would do all in its power to rebuild Iraq.
Yahoo News
As Armando referred to on the front page Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani is now becoming vocal about the violence.
Iraq's most powerful Shiite clergyman, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is deeply upset by the upsurge in suicide attacks, said Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a top Shiite politician, after meeting with the cleric on Sunday.
The cleric urged the government to protect the people in "this genocidal war," Abdul-Mahdi said. At least 170 people have been killed in suicide bombings throughout Iraq in the past week.
In a BBC interview scheduled for broadcast Monday, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said the continuing violence in Iraq was based in part on the presence of U.S. and other foreign forces.
"The occupation in itself is a problem," said al-Sadr, who led an uprising against U.S. forces last year. "Iraq not being independent is the problem. And the other problems stem from that -- from sectarianism to civil war, the entire American presence causes this."
Clearly there are still major problems in Iraq; the presenting of the Constitution to the Iraqi people will be a telling event - it will be interesting to see what happens.