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Iraqis Rally for Help Against Insurgent Attacks NewsMax.com Wires BAGHDAD, Iraq -- About 200 Shiites rallied Monday outside the Green Zone to demand that U.S. and Iraqi forces do more to stop insurgent attacks in the capital and help Iraqis who are fleeing their homes because of sectarian violence.
Most of the protesters were women dressed in abayas, the full-length black robes worn by devout Muslim women. One weeping demonstrator held up the photo ID card of her husband, a truck driver, and said he had been killed in a drive-by shooting.
Other protesters waved large banners with slogans demanding that the Iraqi government provide better care for displaced families.
The rally took place outside the tall cement wall surrounding the Green Zone, where Iraq's government meets and the U.S. and British embassies are located. At one point, two Iraqi men - a soldier and a civilian - left the compound to meet with the protesters and briefly take notes about who they were and what they were demanding. Story Continues Below
The government offices were closed because May Day is a national holiday in Iraq, although many businesses and stores were open as usual.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have fled their homes in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas because of sectarian violence, some of it caused by militias allied with Iraqi political parties. A surge in such attacks began after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine.
In Washington, President Bush said a report from his two top foreign policy officials on their visit to Baghdad shows that Iraq's leadership is "more determined that ever to succeed" now that a new permanent government is in place.
"We believe we've got partners to help the Iraqi people realize their dreams," Bush said after meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "They need to know that we stand with them."
But Bush said that Rice and Rumsfeld didn't come back with all good news.
"There's going to be more tough days ahead," the president said, with Rice and Rumsfeld at his side. "It's a government that understands they've got serious challenges ahead of them."
Also Monday, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed that Iraq be divided into three separate regions _ Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni - with a central government in Baghdad.
In a column in The New York Times, Sen. Joseph Biden. D-Del., wrote that the idea "is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."
The new Iraqi constitution allows for establishment of self-governing regions. But that was one of the reasons the Sunnis opposed the constitution and why they demanded and won an agreement to review it this year.
The bullet-ridden, handcuffed and blindfolded bodies of three Iraqi men were found in Baghdad's southern Dora neighborhood, said police Capt. Jamil Hussein. A drive-by shooting also killed a Shiite grocer in his shop, Hussein said.
Elsewhere, three roadside bombs exploded in Baghdad, wounding two civilians, police said. The first bomb exploded at 8 a.m. in the Mashtal district of eastern Baghdad, wounding two civilians, said police Maj. Mahir Musa. The second blast, targeting an Iraqi police convoy, occurred at 9:45 a.m. on a highway in the nearby district of Kamsara, causing no casualties, said police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid.
About five minutes later, a fuel can being used as a roadside bomb exploded about 500 yards behind a U.S. military convoy in Al-Bayaa, a neighborhood of southern Baghdad, causing no injuries or damage, the U.S. military said.
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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