When I awoke this morning, it was to the more-than-ominous report that Sadr supporters had taken over the state television station in Sadr City and prompted Shias to avenge themselves on Sunnis once the curfew lifted.
In the past hour, another ominous report has come out of Sadr City - Maliki's motorcade was stoned as he went to pay his respects to those killed in Thursday's attack. This story was reported within minutes of reports that mortar fire out of (you guessed it) Sadr City set an East Baghdad U.S. base on fire (reported here, and diaried here).
As Reuters reports on the stoning of Maliki's motorcade:
The motorcade of Iraq's prime minister was pelted with stones on Sunday by fellow Shi'ites in a Baghdad slum when he paid respects to some of the 200 who died there last week in the deadliest attack since the U.S. invasion.
The anger in Sadr City, stronghold of the Medhi Army Shi'ite militia, boiled over on the third day of a curfew imposed on the capital by Nuri al-Maliki's U.S-backed national unity coalition as it scrambled desperately to stop popular passions exploding into all-out civil war between Shi'ites and the Sunni minority.
"It's all your fault!" one man shouted as, in unprecedented scenes, a hostile crowd began to surge around Maliki. Men and youths then jeered and jostled as his armored convoy edged through the throng away from a mourning ceremony for one of the 202 victims of Thursday's multiple car bomb attack in Sadr City.
Hostile crowds throwing stones, people blaming Maliki for the attack on Sadr City, Maliki's armored convoy forced to move away from the mourning ceremony.
People here on dKos have been talking since Thursday about helicopter evacuations like the ones we saw in Vietnam. But this story, possibly more than any of the others we've heard in the past few days, demonstrates to me that the helicopter scenario (or something like it) is becoming increasingly likely.
Just as a refresher course, here's a little timeline of events from the past few days. Let me know if I've missed anything or gotten events in the wrong order:
- Attacks in Sadr City kill more than 200 people.
- al-Maliki set to meet with Bush in Jordan. al-Sadr threatens to walk out of the government if the proposed meeting takes place.
- Shias attack Sunni mosques and set fire to several Sunni worshippers leaving a mosque.
- Sunnis round up 21 men in two homes and shoot them in front of their families.
- Washington Post (and MSNBC) report that the Sunni and Shia communities are making plans to defend themselves - complete with text and web messages targetting members of these communities and telling them how to defend themselves in the coming bloodletting.
- Followers of al-Sadr - including three members of the government - take over state television for two hours in Sadr City, urging Shias to kill Sunnis.
- Mortar blasts fired, apparently out of Sadr City, hit U.S. base in East Baghdad, setting fire.
- PM al-Maliki ventures into Sadr City to pay respects to those killed in (Thanksgiving Day) attacks. Hostile crowds blame him for Thursday's massacre and hit his motorcade with stones.
Maliki's government - whatever there ever was of it - is finished. The hostile crowd (of presumably Sadr supporters) may as well have pelted his motorcade with their shoes.