Possibility of Iraq Civil War Looms Large

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Fearing-the-Worst.html

Possibility of Iraq Civil War Looms Large
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 2:08 p.m. ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Sunni and Shiite clerics gunned down. Christian churches bombed. Hundreds of police killed, and Iraqi soldiers abducted and threatened with death.

Is Iraq heading to civil war?<snip>

``We are not yet in a civil war,'' said Mahmoud Othman, a senior Kurdish politician and member of the former Iraqi Governing Council. ``But if the ongoing violence is not contained, it will turn into an Iraqi-Iraqi war.''<snip>

<snip>Sunni and Shiite mosques have been bombed in tit-for-tat revenge attacks and Christian churches in Baghdad also have been targeted. Growing numbers of Shiites and Sunnis fear being caught in the wrong place. Arabs are treated with suspicion in Kurdish areas.

<snip>In a front-page editorial Monday on the U.S. intelligence report, Iraq's pro-government daily al-Sabah warned against ignoring the threat of a civil war.<snip>