Civil War Begins in Iraq

No one has officially called this a civil war yet, but let's be honest, that's what's taking shape. Now that Iraq's government is forming its constitution, there is the little matter of getting the Sunnis and Shiites to form an agreement on some major religious and ethnic divisive issues.

In the last few days, suicide bombers have tuned away from foreign armies (i.e. the U.S.) and are now targeting other Iraqis. The Associated Press reported today that a suicide car bomber struck as worshippers were leaving a Shiite mosque in a northern Iraqi town Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, killing at least 12 people. Militants killed 12 other people across the country as the Sunni-dominated insurgency pressed its "all-out war" to destabilize the country.

The 24 deaths came during a third day of mayhem in which nearly 200 people were killed in bombings, mostly in Baghdad. More than 600 have been wounded in the stunning rampage by insurgents, including al-Qaida in Iraq.

On Thursday, suicide bombers killed at least 31 people in three attacks targeting Iraqi police. A day earlier, at least 167 people were killed and 570 wounded in more than a dozen bombings in Baghdad. The largest single toll resulted from a suicide bombing against day laborers in the largely Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood in north aghdad...

Two days earlier, al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowed to wage an "all-out war" on the country's Shiite majority, calling its members collaborators of the "Jews and Crusaders."...

At Al-Kindi Teaching Hospital, where the laborers were taken after Friday's drive-by shooting, the wounded lined the corridors, while others lay on gurneys as doctors worked frantically to stanch bleeding and bandage wounds.

A car bomb also detonated near an Iraqi police patrol in Haswa, near Baghdad, killing three officers and wounding four, police Capt. Muthana Khalid said. And in the Iskandariya district, 30 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen broke into the local mayor's house and shot him to death after first killing his four bodyguards, police Capt. uthans Khalid said.

Iraqi and U.S. officials say the fighters sneak across the porous border and accuse the Damascus government of doing little to stop the influx. While Syria has repeatedly denied the charges, Iraqi officials have adopted an increasingly stronger one, and the country's defense minister has pledged that operations targeting the militants would be extended to other Euphrates River valley towns seen as militant afe havens.

"We will not retreat or be silent. There will be no room for you (insurgents) in all of Iraq. We will chase you wherever you go," Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi, a Sunni, told reporters.While the overwhelming violence in recent days appeared designed to further split the country along ethnic and religious lines, clerics from both Sunni and Shiite sects rejected the tactic in their Friday sermons.

Sheik Mahmud al-Sumadaei, an influential member of Sunni Scholars Association, said at western Baghdad's Um al-Qura Sunni mosque that Iraq denounced foreign fighters who "come across the border and kill us under the name of defending us."