Iraqis do it again

Fed-up Iraqis fight insurgent patrol
Shopkeeper, kin kill 3 militants prepared for battle

Robert F. Worth, New York Times
Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Baghdad -- Ordinary Iraqis rarely strike back at the insurgents who terrorize their country. But just before noon Tuesday a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming toward his shop here and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their Kalashnikov rifles and opened fire, the police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's nephews and a bystander were wounded, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us," said Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, as he stood barefoot outside his home a few hours after the battle, a 9mm pistol in his hand. He would not give his last name.

"We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen," he said. "I am waiting for the rest of them to come, and we will show them."

It was the first time that private citizens are known to have retaliated successfully against insurgents. The gunbattle erupted in full view of at least a dozen witnesses, including a Justice Ministry official who lives nearby.

The battle was the latest sign that Iraqis may be willing to start standing up against the attacks that leave dozens dead here nearly every week.

After a suicide bombing in Hilla last month that killed 136 people, including a number of women and children, hundreds of residents demonstrated in front of the city hall every day for almost a week, chanting slogans against terrorism. Last week, a smaller but similar rally took place in Baghdad's al-Firdos Square. Another demonstration in the capital is scheduled for today.

Like many of the attacks in Iraq, Tuesday's fight had sectarian overtones. Dhia and his family are Shiite Arabs, and they cook for religious festivals at the Shiite Husseiniya mosque across from his shop. The insurgents are largely Sunni Arabs, and they have aimed dozens of attacks at Shiite figures, celebrations and even funerals.

Elsewhere in Iraq, insurgents continued their campaign of violence. In the northern city of Mosul, four civilians were killed Tuesday morning and 14 were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated near an American military convoy, health officials said. The bomb did not appear to harm the convoy, witnesses said.

Dhia's gunbattle Tuesday unfolded in Doura, a working-class neighborhood in southern Baghdad where much of the capital's violence is concentrated. Killings and bombings have taken place there in recent weeks, and the police acknowledge that they have little control. Before the fight, an Interior Ministry official was gunned down in Doura as he drove to work, officials said.

Witnesses saw the gunmen circling near the Husseiniya mosque in three cars just before the violence started, said Amjad Hamid, who works at the Justice Ministry. They stopped near Dhia's shop, across from the mosque. The men carried pistols and rifles, and one had a belt full of hand grenades, Hamid said.

When the shooting began, Hamid said, his mother ran outside shouting his name and was struck by bullets in the leg and the ear.

After the insurgents fled, one was left behind, the Doura police chief said. That gunman broke into a nearby house and hid there, holding the residents at gunpoint until his friends arrived and drove him away, the police chief said.