Perspective: Battle for Baghdad spurs 'sectarian' house market

Displaced Sunnis hold up posters of loved ones killed in neighborhood sectarian violence

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The fear of black-clad Shi'ite militia gunmen storming his Baghdad house haunted Abu Aya's nights for months.

After receiving a tip from a Shi'ite friend that he was "next on the list," the soft-spoken Sunni fine art lecturer and sculptor has finally moved out of his home of more than 20 years in a Shi'ite neighborhood and settled in a Sunni area across the Tigris river that divides the Iraqi capital.

"Every time a bomb or a suicide bomber struck Sadr City, I expected Shi'ite militiamen to break into my house and kidnap me or my sons and that we would end up being dead bodies dumped in the garbage," he said, referring to the Shi'ite slum and militia bastion that has been targeted many times by Sunni insurgents.

Fearful of sectarian reprisals that have killed thousands, families from the Shi'ite Muslim majority and the Sunni minority in Baghdad are quietly moving from their homes in mixed areas to relocate in religiously homogenous districts within the capital in a pattern that is consolidating a de facto division.

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