Sectarian violence has forced about 100,000 families across Iraq to flee
their homes, a top Iraqi official said, as six more Iraqis were killed in
scattered violence on Saturday.
Adil Abdul-Mahdi, one of the country's two vice presidents, told reporters in
the southern city of Najaf that 90 percent of the displaced were Shiites like
himself and the rest were Sunnis, the minority that held sway under former Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein.
Other estimates of the number of displaced families have been lower.
Dr. Salah Abdul-Razzaq, spokesman of the Shiite Endowment, a government body
that runs Shiite religious institutions, put the number of displaced families at
13,750 nationwide, or about 90,000 people.
That includes 25,000 Iraqis who have fled their homes since the bombing of a
Shiite mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 triggered a wave of attacks on Sunni mosques
and clerics.
Earlier this week, U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch told reporters that
U.S. forces had found no "widespread movement" of Shiites and Sunnis away from
religiously mixed areas, despite reports to the contrary by Iraqi officials.
In the Sunni-dominated town of Jurf al-Sakhar, 40 miles south of Baghdad and
near the mostly Shiite city of Musayyib, gunmen kidnapped a Sunni policeman and
his brother from their home early Saturday and shot them to death outside, said
police Capt. Muthana Khalid.
Four Iraqis were killed in other violence.
In Ghazaliyah in west Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi police
patrol killed one policeman and wounded two, said police Lt. Mohammed Hanoun.
Elsewhere in the capital, a drive-by shooting killed two Iraqi brothers who
worked for a foreign contracting company and were walking through the eastern
neighborhood of New Baghdad, said police 1st Lt. Ali Abbas.
In western Iraq, one Iraqi civilian was killed and two children were wounded
when a mortar round landed on a home in Tal Afar, 90 miles east of Iraq's border
with
Syria, said police Brig. Ibrahim al-Jibouri said.