Pakistani, Indian pilgrims slain in Iraq

Fourteen Pakistani and Indian Shi'ite pilgrims were abducted and killed in Iraq's western desert, police said yesterday, victims of sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shi'ites that threatens civil war.

In his weekly radio address, US President George W. Bush told Americans that Iraq was not in civil war, despite a bloody week in which hundreds more died and a grim Pentagon report said spreading violence may turn into just such an all-out conflict.

"Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war," Bush said. "They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country."

The top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a new call for restraint after meeting Shi'ite Islamist Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in the holy city of Najaf and warned the government to act quickly to avoid disaster.

Key to Washington's strategy of averting all-out sectarian conflict has been the build-up of Iraqi security forces to help enforce the authority of Maliki's three-month-old national unity government, which has so far failed to quell the violence.

A ceremony in which Iraq was to assume operational command of its new armed forces from US generals was postponed at the last minute amid confusion. The US military insisted it was just poor planning, not a sign of deeper disagreement.

The slain pilgrims, 11 Pakistanis and three Indians, had been travelling to holy Shi'ite sites in Iraq on Thursday when they were attacked in Anbar province, the desert heartland of the Sunni insurgency, Iraqi and Indian officials said.

An official at the al-Hussein hospital in the Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, where the bodies were taken on Friday, said the 14 men had their hands bound and had been shot in the head. Some had been tortured and one was partially decapitated.

An attack on a revered Shi'ite shrine in February has unleashed bloodletting between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Muslims who were politically dominant under Saddam Hussein and now form the backbone of the three-year-old insurgency.

"If the state is unable to ensure security for the people then this will open the way for some groups to do this and this would be very risky," Sistani said in a statement, referring to militias blamed for violence and which Maliki vows to disband.