Now try Shiite on Kurd violence

By Lee Russ

Friday, August 11, 2006 at 05:48 PM

It's beginning to look like Iraq will eventually display every possible permutation of sectarian violence.  The latest is this story about a Shiite attack on a Kurdish political party building.

About 50 gunmen in the northern city of Kut stormed the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by President Jalal Talabani, beat up the guards and set the building on fire, said police Lt. Othman al-Lami. The attackers accused the party's official newspaper of criticizing Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed al-Yacoubi.

The raid in Kut was another demonstration of Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divisions that have exploded into violence, mostly between Shiite and Sunni Arabs. It came a day after a suicide bomber killed 35 people in front of Iraq's most sacred Shiite shrine, the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.