Ethnic civil war rages through Iraq

Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside.

Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a 'Taleban republic'. Officials in the strategically important, mixed Sunni and Shia province with a Kurdish minority, have no doubt about what is happening.

Lt Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."

At the moment the Sunni seem to be winning it. As the violence has escalated in Iraq over the past three years it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital.

The UN said last week that 5106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1493 in the provinces outside it.

Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the west and the north.

As I travelled through the provinces of this vast, war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.

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