Iraq's defence minister warned of the risk of an endless 'civil war' as sectarian violence flared again on Saturday, killing over 40 people, as Sunni and Shi'ite leaders made joint pleas for a halt to four days of bloodshed.
Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, flanked by Kurdish and Arab Sunni leaders, called on Iraqis to unite and fight terrorism in a news conference carried live to the nation on state television.
Earlier, as a traffic ban around the capital was extended to Monday following attacks on Sunni mosques and car bomb in a Shi'ite holy city.
Defence Minister Saadoun al-Dulaimi said: 'If there is a civil war in this country it will never end.
'We are ready to fill the streets with armoured vehicles.'
In Kerbala, bombers blew up a car killing five people and wounding 52 others.
The bombing targeted a busy shopping street in the west of the city as a police patrol passed by. Three policemen were among those killed.
The carnage prompted the government to extend the ban on road traffic in and around Baghdad to a third day.
The fresh Kerbala attack came after more than 119 people were killed nationwide in a surge of sectarian blood-letting since the bombing Wednesday of one of the holiest Shi'ite shrines in Samarra, north of Baghdad.
In another attempt to inflame the situation, attackers set a bomb off near a well-known Shiite tomb in Taz Khurmatu, in northern Iraq.
In other violence, 12 farm labourers including both Shiites and Sunnis were shot to death in an in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.
Two policemen and a soldier were killed and ten wounded in attacks on the funeral procession west of Baghdad of an Al-Arabiya journalist killed Wednesday in Samarra where she had gone to report on the destruction of the golden dome mosque.
US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has said that the country had avoided going to a civil war.
'I think the danger of civil war has diminished, although I
believe we are not completely out of danger,' the ambassador said.
Meanwhile, six people were arrested in connection with the
destruction of Samarra's golden-domed shrine, Iraq's interior minister Bayan Jabr Solagh told reporters.
