14 Killed Sadr Tries To Mediate

Juan Cole 05/23/2005

14 Killed
Sadr Tries to Mediate between Sunnis, Shiites

At least 14 persons were killed in Iraq on Sunday in separate incidents. There was a car bomb in Tikrit, which wounded US and Iraqi soldiers. The director general of the Ministry of Trade, Ali Musa Salman, was shot down in Baghdad. There were firefights at Qaim and Mahmudiyah and Yusufiyah.

Muqtada al-Sadr, the young Shiite nationalist, sent a delegation to Shaikh Hareth al-Dhari of the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars on Sunday in an attempt to mediate between them and the Badr paramilitary of the (Shiite) Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The Sadrist, Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, also met with Sunni cleric Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi.

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page