Baghdad Residents Protest at Wall Dividing Shia and Sunni

By Ali Yussef, Agence France-Presse

Hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis marched on Wednesday in protest at the building by US troops of a tall concrete wall separating their northwest Baghdad neighbourhoods, an AFP photographer said.

The protesters complained that the wall would promote sectarianism and demanded its removal.

Residents said that US forces last week began building the two-kilometre (1.25 mile) wall along the border of the mainly Shiite al-Shuala and adjoining Sunni-majority al-Ghazaliyah neighbourhoods without consulting them.

The demonstrators – tribal leaders, clerics and local residents – marched from one neighbourhood to the other carrying banners reading “No to the dividing wall” and “The wall is US terrorism.”

(Original Article)