Perspective: Mortar wars terrorise weary Baghdad residents

A child in the rubble following a mortar attack on Baghdad's Kazemiya neighborhood last week

BAGHDAD, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Retired Iraqi army officer Abdul-Rahman al-Nuami, 60, can clearly remember the evening in mid-June when he first heard the dull boom of a mortar round slamming into his mainly Sunni district in western Baghdad.

"I was shocked. I thought the U.S. army had fired it by mistake. But an Iraqi translator with a U.S. patrol told me it was fired by unknown gunmen," he told Reuters.

Since then his Ghazaliya neighbourhood has been hit almost daily and is now one of the worst affected in the "mortar wars" that have erupted between gunmen in some Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim districts of the Iraqi capital, whose 7 million residents already face the threat of sectarian death squads.

Baghdad's population has been religiously mixed for most of its history but the death squads are now forcing many to flee their homes to seek sanctuary in areas where their sect is in the majority.

This has reshaped the face of the city into one with a mostly Sunni west and mainly Shi'ite east, divided by the Tigris River.

"Groups on both sides of the river have been firing back and forth into (areas) that are predominantly Shi'ite and Sunni," said U.S. military spokesman Major General William Caldwell, noting a recent surge in mortar and rocket attacks.

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