Militias Splintering Into Radicalized Cells
New Groups Appear More Ruthless In Use of Bombings and Death Squads
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 19, 2006
BAGHDAD -- The young Shiite men, some wearing black masks, glided from house to house in search of Sunni Muslim men. They arrived at the two-story dwelling of Mohammed Hussein clutching a bomb, neighbors said. As his mother stood at the front gate, they detonated it. Shrapnel and glass flew, sending her to the hospital. A wall fell on a neighbor, sending him to his grave.
Hussein, who is Sunni, arrived home an hour later and immediately blamed a man called Aziz Dinar. Residents in this western Baghdad neighborhood of Hurriyah -- in Arabic, it means freedom -- said Dinar heads the local office of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and elements of his militia, the Mahdi Army.
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