Najaf, Iraq - Thousands of Shiites stomped on American flags painted on roads outside mosques in a show of anger over the U.S. presence in
Iraq, while Sunni leaders called Friday for a closure of places of worship to protest the sectarian violence many fear may erupt into civil war.
In an effort to curb the daily violence, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he will travel to Damascus to appeal in person for the government to take stronger steps to block insurgents from entering Iraq via Syria. Al-Jaafari and American officials blame foreign fighters for plotting many of the attacks.
Tensions spiraled throughout Iraq, particularly in its southern Shiite heartland, as more than 10,000 protesters heeded a call by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to step on and drive over American and Israeli flags painted on roads outside mosques. Many of the worshippers were chanting or waving the Quran, Islam's holy book.
Al-Sadr, a burly, black-bearded cleric, launched two uprisings against U.S. forces in Baghdad and Najaf in April and August last year, then went into hiding before surfacing Monday to demand that U.S.-led forces withdraw from Iraq.
His appeal came after U.S. and Iraqi forces detained 13 al-Sadr supporters during a raid this week on a Shiite mosque in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad.
Crowds attended angry services in the Shiite-dominated cities of Najaf, Kufa, and Nasiriyah, where a gunfight broke out between al-Sadr supporters and guards protecting a local provincial governor's office.
Four policemen and four civilians were wounded, a hospital official said. Another nine al-Sadr supporters were also wounded, said Sheik al-Khafaji, an official at al-Sadr's Nasiriyah office.
"We warn the government not to fight the al-Sadr movement because all the tyrants of the world could not beat it," Hazim al-Araji, the imam of a Kufa mosque, said during Friday's sermon. "We say to the government: Do not be a tyrant like Saddam or (former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi."
Another 5,000 al-Sadr supporters marched in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, the scene of fierce fighting last year between U.S. forces and fighters from his al-Mahdi Army.
Sunni clerics, meanwhile, delivered fiery sermons in Baghdad and Ramadi, in western Iraq's volatile Sunni Triangle, where 3,000 worshippers prayed under a baking sun and heeded a call from three of Iraq's most influential Sunni organizations for places of worship to be shut for three days to protest alleged Shiite violence against them.
In Baghdad's Sunni Um al-Qura mosque, cleric Sheik Ahmed al-Samaraei accused the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces of killing Sunni Muslims last week in the capital's eastern Shaab suburb.
"Blood of Muslims is cheap for them," al-Samaraei said. "I demand the government investigates what happened or the matters will worsen."
Shiites make up 60 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and were oppressed under Saddam, but emerged from January elections with the biggest voting bloc in parliament.