Wave of sectarian violence in Iraq leaves at least 56 dead

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A series of suicide attacks, car bombs and mortar barrages rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 56 people and wounding scores as fears of an Iraq civil war escalated. \nPresident Bush decried the violence and said Iraqis must choose between "chaos or unity."\nIraqis have suffered through days of reprisal killings and attacks on Sunni mosques since bombers blew apart the gold dome of the revered Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra on Wednesday. The Iraqi Cabinet said at least 379 people had been killed and 458 wounded in reprisal attacks since the mosque blast.\nIn the latest attacks, two explosions hit Shiite targets in northern Baghdad after sundown, killing at least 15 people and wounding 72.\nPolice officials said either a car bomb or a mortar hit the Abdel Hadi Chalabi mosque in the Hurriyah neighborhood, killing 14 people and wounding 62.\nMortar fire at the Imam Kadhim shrine in the Kazimiyah neighborhood on the opposite side of the Tigris River killed one and wounded 10.\nEarlier in the day, five separate bomb attacks rattled the capital, killing at least 41 and wounding several others.\nIn Washington, Bush sidestepped a question about whether the surge in sectarian violence would affect his administration's hopes to begin withdrawing U.S. troops.\n"Obviously there are some who are trying to sow the seeds of sectarian violence," Bush said. "And now, the people of Iraq and their leaders must make a choice. The choice is chaos or unity, the choice is a free society, or a society dictated by evil people who would kill innocents."\nSeparately, Vice President Dick Cheney challenged administration critics during a speech at an American Legion convention.\n"Here in Washington, if any believe Americans should suddenly withdraw from Iraq and stop fighting al-Qaida in the very place they have gathered, let them say so clearly," Cheney said. "If any believe that Americans should break our word and abandon our Iraqi allies, let them make it known."\nIn Washington, Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said the sectarian violence stems from a core of Sunni Arab insurgents who can exploit "social, economic, historical and religious grievances."\n"Networks based on these relationships remain the greatest threat to long-term stability in Iraq," Maples said.\nFears of civil war have been complicated by the continuing struggle to form a new Iraqi government. National security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie traveled to the Shiite holy city of Najaf to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the Shiite community's most revered leader.\nNorth of Baghdad, a blast badly damaged a Sunni mosque where the father of Saddam Hussein was buried in the family's ancestral hometown, Tikrit.\nThe deposed leader's trial resumed in Baghdad with prosecutors presenting a document they said was signed by Saddam approving the executions of more than 140 Shiites in southern Iraq after an assassination attempt in the 1980s.\nThe Iraqi Islamic Party said a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's northern al-Hurriyah neighborhood was destroyed in a pre-dawn explosion. The Sunni organization blamed the Shiite-dominated government that, it said, "cooperates with the criminal hands that sabotaged God's houses and lighted the fires of sedition."\nAt a gas station in the mostly Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood, a suicide attacker joined a line of people waiting to buy kerosene before detonating the explosives strapped to his body, witnesses said. The blast killed 23 people and injured 51, Interior Ministry official Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi said.\nIn the same region, a car bomb targeting a police patrol killed nine people and wounded 17 -- all civilians, authorities said.\nAnother car bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in the crowded southeastern Karada neighborhood, killing four and wounding 16, al-Mohammedawi said.\nPolice said the vehicle was parked next to a small market opposite the Timimi mosque, which was closed for repairs. But witnesses said the vehicle was driven by a suicide attacker.\nDistraught residents rushed to the scene, as firefighters fought back flames from burning cars.\nA roadside bomb targeting the convoy of a defense ministry adviser killed five soldiers and wounded seven in the eastern Zaiyona neighborhood, ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari said. The adviser, Lt. Gen. Daham Radhi al-Assal, was not injured.\nThe U.S. military reported a U.S. soldier was killed by small-arms fire west of Baghdad on Monday. At least 2,292 members of the U.S. military have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.\nIn the south Tuesday, two British soldiers were killed in Amarah, 180 miles from Baghdad, the Defense Ministry reported in London. A witness said a car bomb targeted a British patrol and helicopters were seen taking away casualties.