Baghdad residents stayed off the streets on Friday as the government put the capital under a last-minute daytime curfew to try to stop sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites on the Muslim day of prayer.

In a critical test for the Shi'ite-led government's authority and for its new, US-trained forces after two days of killings, police and Iraqi troops were out in force in Baghdad, turning back those few motorists unaware of the ban on traffic announced overnight. US forces kept a low profile.

Reprisal attacks on minority Sunni mosques and more than 130 deaths following Wednesday's suspected al-Qaida bombing of a Shi'ite shrine have seen the United States and United Nations joining efforts to avert an all-out civil war, which could wreck US hopes of withdrawing troops and inflame the entire Middle East.

Washington and the Shi'ite-led Iraqi Government have blamed al-Qaida's Sunni militants for the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra on Wednesday, saying they are seeking to spark just such a conflict.

A militant grouping led by al-Qaida has accused Shi'ites of conducting the bloodless bombing to justify attacks on Sunnis.

Residents reported fierce clashes in at least two areas in and around Baghdad overnight, and both were in areas where sectarian tensions are exacerbated by nearby communities.

Gunmen stormed a house and killed two Shi'ite men and a woman in Latifiya, just outside Baghdad, at dawn on Friday despite the curfew. Two children were wounded in the attack.

The streets of the capital were quiet at mid-morning, but residents feared the violence could boil over. A spokesman for radical young Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said his followers planned to march to mosques in his Baghdad stronghold despite the curfew to worship at the weekly midday prayers.

Fear flares up

"If the situation continues, there will be a civil war," said Mohammed, a Baghdad resident walking through Tahrir Square in the city centre. "It will get to the point that you have to sleep with a weapon by your side."

Ahmed Mohyie, a traffic policeman on duty on Friday, said: "How can there be a civil war? If there is a civil war, it will set husband against wife. I am a Shi'ite, and my wife is a Sunni."

In Basra and other cities in the heavily Shi'ite area south of Iraq, where the curfew does not apply, weekend activities looked normal, and religious leaders said they expected mosques to be full.

Even if the curfew calms passions on the Muslim holy day, Iraq's government will still have to demonstrate it can control Shi'ite militiamen, who have been attacking Sunni targets and setting up their own checkpoints in defiance of the state.

Sadr and other Shi'ite leaders involved in government have called publicly for calm, but their militia forces have been on the streets since the violence erupted on Wednesday.

US President George Bush called for calm, and the UN envoy invited all parties to talks on a way out of the gravest crisis Iraq has faced since the US invasion three years ago. Sunni political leaders pulled out of negotiations on forming a government from groups elected in a ballot in December.

Clerics try to rein in militants

Senior Iraqi officials said leading clerics, including the revered Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, were straining to rein in Shi'ite militants, but one said privately he feared even Sistani might be unable to control some gunmen, as evidenced by the dozens of attacks on Sunni mosques so far.

Competition among Shi'ite factions that are nominally united in the ruling Islamist Alliance may play a role in how events develop.

Seven US soldiers were killed in two attacks on Wednesday.

Many of the new Iraqi security forces are drawn from the very militia groups they may be ordered to control so the 130,000 more heavily armed Americans may yet have to step in.

Some see them as the only real force capable of stemming a full-scale assault by majority Shi'ites on Sunni neighbourhoods around the capital after years of restraint in the face of Sunni rebel attacks that have killed thousands since US forces overthrew Sunni leader Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A senior official in the Shi'ite Alliance said: "The question is: How long will the Shi'ite public keep on heeding Sistani and staying calm? ... Things could spin out of control, and then nothing will stop Shi'ite anger if attacks continue."

Extending an overnight shutdown, the curfew will last until 4 pm (1300 GMT), after midday prayers, in Baghdad and three surrounding provinces where Sunnis and Shi'ites live side by side. A curfew is also in force from 8 pm to 6 am.

Source: China Daily