Another day in Iraq
Suspected Sunni Arab gunmen killed 23 policemen Sunday, including 17 in one attack in the predominantly Shiite southern city of Basra, signaling the possible start an insurgent campaign against Iraq’s predominantly Shiite Muslim security forces.
Political tension deepened in Baghdad when Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the country’s highest-ranking Sunni politician, threatened to resign if Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki did not act quickly to eradicate two feared Shiite militias.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, depends heavily on the backing of the two Shiite political parties that run the militias and has resisted American pressure to eradicate the private armies - the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Badr Brigade, the military wing of Iraq’s biggest Shiite political bloc, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
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