A WAVE OF RETALIATION SWEEPS IRAQ

BAGHDAD —  Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car bombings that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood the day before. A main Shiite political faction threatened to quit the government, a move that probably would cause its collapse and plunge the nation deeper into disarray.

The massacre Thursday in Sadr City -- a stronghold of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr and his Al Mahdi militia -- sparked attacks around the country, reinforced doubts about the effectiveness of the Iraqi government and U.S. military and emboldened Shiite vigilantes.

In a sermon Friday, Sadr, a strong opponent of the United States, said the Pentagon’s refusal to grant full control of Iraqi security forces to the Baghdad government was leaving the populace vulnerable to insurgent attacks.

And as Sadr’s militiamen took matters into their own hands in battles with Sunni Arabs, his political representatives demanded that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki signal his displeasure with the U.S. military occupation by canceling a meeting with President Bush next week in Jordan.

Sadr’s representatives said they would withdraw from Maliki’s government if the prime minister did not meet their demands.

In spite of an emergency curfew, gunfire crackled throughout the day and mortar rounds arced over Baghdad’s jagged skyline, smashing into houses of worship, residences and shops.

By Friday night, at least 65 deaths had been reported in the capital and elsewhere.

A dozen or more Sunni mosques around the country were hit by mortar rounds and gunfire or were burned down by Shiite mobs. Masked members of Sadr’s militia swept through Sunni areas, setting up checkpoints and threatening to execute families that didn’t leave their homes within 48 hours.

Hurriya, a mixed area of the capital, saw some of Friday’s fiercest fighting. Uniformed men in police vehicles roared through the streets launching rocket-propelled grenades into houses and raking Sunni mosques with gunfire, said an Iraqi police officer stationed in the area. The attackers killed three security guards at a mosque and injured 10 worshipers inside.

“They proceeded to bombard the building with rocket-propelled grenades and hand grenades, starting a fire that consumed the structure,” said the officer, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal.

Attackers ambushed

As the uniformed assailants advanced to another area, members of the Battawia tribe, a prominent Sunni clan in the area, fought back.

“They were ready for them and ... ambushed the attackers, countering them with RPGs and machine guns,” the officer said. The ensuing fight brought casualties on both sides. A nearby hospital reported that it had received 28 dead and 32 injured.

The policeman said he and fellow officers stood alongside Iraqi army units near the battle, watching the bloodshed.

“The army did not interfere,” he said. “And we [the police] didn’t receive any orders to interfere. We would not have interfered even in the event that we were ordered to do so, because this is the Iraqi army’s turf.”

By Friday night, police had discovered at least 11 bodies around Baghdad. But the reprisals were not limited to the capital.

In Baqubah, 25 miles to the northeast, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen exchanged ragged bursts of machine-gun fire in the streets and lobbed thunderous explosives as imams called out “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” from the city’s mosques.

Insurgents used bombs to destroy an office of the Sadr movement shortly after U.S. troops raided the building and detained six militiamen. Later in the day, militiamen responded by destroying a Sunni mosque and toppling its minaret.

In the far northern town of Tall Afar, a car bomb blast ripped through a crowded car dealership, killing at least 22 people and injuring 26.

In the northern oil hub of Kirkuk, police found the bulletriddled body of a pipeline security guard, and a bomb damaged the Wahab mosque, one of the largest Sunni mosques in the city.

In the southern port city of Basra, rocket-propelled grenades damaged a mosque, the headquarters of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and an apartment complex, injuring 15 people.

In Fallouja, a restive Sunni city in western Al Anbar province, a car bomb exploded at an Iraqi army checkpoint, killing at least six soldiers.

Meanwhile, a caravan of grieving Shiites drove casket-laden vehicles from Sadr City to Najaf’s ancient necropolis to bury victims of Thursday’s attack, the deadliest single incident in Iraq since U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Mourners carried the dead around the shrine of Imam Ali, the most important religious figure for Shiites after Muhammad, before burying them in the “martyr’s cemetery,” a series of plots festooned with Al Mahdi banners and posters of Muqtada Sadr on the edge of Najaf’s tombstone forest. Amid wailing relatives and chanting militiamen, mourners lowered the remains into the earth.

“The reaction [to the bombings] will be huge,” said Tahseen Ali Shareef, 28, a Najaf resident who watched the funeral processions. “The families of the victims will not be silent. The streets will be haunted with fear.”

As Sunni and Shiite gunmen fought in the streets, Sadr and his followers lobbed rhetorical bombs into Iraq’s political arena.

From his pulpit in the southern city of Kufa, Sadr called on Iraq’s most prominent Sunni cleric, Harith Dhari -- who became a fugitive this month after the government issued a warrant for his arrest for his alleged support of terrorism -- to publicly forbid Sunnis to kill Shiites or to join Al Qaeda.

Sadr also demanded that Dhari, who is currently not in Iraq, issue an edict urging Sunnis to fund the reconstruction of a revered shrine in Samarra. Insurgents blew up the shrine in February, launching a similar storm of sectarian battles that left hundreds of people dead.

Sadr also reiterated his demand for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, whom he blamed for the violence.

“I denounce and condemn this incident which targeted the beloved Sadr City,” Sadr said. “From this pulpit ... I renew my demand for the withdrawal of occupation forces.”

Sadr’s political representatives in Baghdad, meanwhile, threatened to withdraw from the government if Maliki met with Bush as scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday in Jordan.

“If the situation does not improve, the government does not offer services and the prime minister doesn’t cancel his meeting with George Bush in Amman, we shall suspend our membership in the parliament and any participation in the government,” the Sadr bloc said in a statement.

White House officials said Maliki had confirmed that he would attend the meeting, and Iraqi officials discounted the Sadr group’s demands as empty threats.

“I think this is a red herring,” national security advisor Mowaffak Rubaie said. “It is more political posturing, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

But some observers say Sadr’s demands could pose a serious challenge to Maliki.

A potential vacuum

If the Sadr bloc carries out its threat of a political walkout, Maliki’s government will almost certainly collapse, leaving an even greater authority vacuum that militias and insurgents could exploit.

However, if Maliki backs out of his meeting with Bush, he could be severely weakened, losing any chance of reining in Sadr’s paramilitary forces.

Canceling would also signal to other factions that they might be able to run roughshod over Maliki.

“Sadr is basically challenging Maliki’s ability to govern,” said P.J. Crowley, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington. “He has to respond in a way that allows him to survive and actually strengthens his hand.”

Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department official and a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another Washington think tank, said Sadr’s challenge to Dhari might be even more dangerous than that to Maliki. If the Sunnis fail to satisfy Sadr, Cordesman argued, sectarian violence could grow even worse.

“It’s going to take a couple days to know how serious this is,” he said. “Will this lead to a large-scale civil war? The worse case is that this leads to enough misunderstanding and anger to drive the country into full-scale civil war. The more likely result is that it will take a week to 10 days to play out and depend on the Sunni response. A lot will also depend on what Maliki does.”

Despite frequent complaints about the Iraqi government and the U.S. military, most of Iraq’s political and religious leadership called for calm Friday.

In a display of unity, several members of Maliki’s Cabinet -- Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds among them -- held an emergency meeting to discuss the deteriorating situation.

And in mosques around Iraq, clerics preached about unity, intra-sectarian accord and blame for the United States.

“As we denounce the killings of the innocent in Sadr City yesterday, we must also hold the U.S. and British troops as well as the government responsible for what happened,” said Abdul Kareem Ghazi, a preacher and supporter of Sadr.

“It is true that the perpetrators of these operations are the terrorists and Saddamists, but their tactics are designed by the occupation forces, and they are the beneficiaries of what is happening.”

moore1@latimes.com

Times staff writers Said Rifai, Saad Khalaf, Raheem Salman, Suhail Ahmad and Mohammed Rasheed in Baghdad, Julian E. Barnes and Molly Hennessy- Fiske in Washington, and correspondents in Baghdad, Baqubah, Mosul, Kirkuk, Samarra and Basra contributed to this report.