BAGHDAD, July 19: The United States told Iraq’s leaders in stern language on Wednesday they must act swiftly to halt a surge in attacks by both Sunnis and Shias that the United Nations said risks pitching the nation into civil war.

On a day of more gun attacks, bombings and the kidnap of 19 mosque officials, the US ambassador and US commander in Iraq implicitly blamed Shia and Sunni groups respectively for two major attacks that killed some 120 people this week.

In a blunt statement, Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen George Casey condemned ‘terrorists’ and ‘death squads’ and said: “We call on Iraqi leaders to take responsibility and pursue reconciliation not just in words, but through deeds as well.”

With the casualty count climbing to some 100 civilian deaths a day by a UN estimate, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki goes to Washington next week, where officials hope he can help them convince American voters that Iraq is turning a corner.

But Iraqi politicians and diplomats increasingly question the resolve of the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds in the cabinet to set aside partisan aims to stop a bloody break-up of the nation.

Mr Maliki has called his two-month-old government’s national reconciliation plan a ‘last chance’ for peace and his foreign minister said on Wednesday that their coalition had just months to prove itself. He warned of ‘full sectarian war’ if it failed.

President George Bush’s administration is hoping for signs of political and economic progress in Iraq that might help the ruling Republicans in November’s congressional elections and raise hopes that it can start withdrawing American troops.

Though Mr Maliki announced a first meeting of a reconciliation panel on Saturday that he said would feature former opponents of the US-sponsored political process, there is little substance as yet to a programme of compromises he outlined a month ago.

The US statement was notable in sharing out blame. In familiar language, it accused Sunni groups like Al Qaeda of fomenting civil war with a suicide car bomb attack that killed nearly 60 in Kufa on Tuesday.

But it blamed ‘death squads’, a term officials have used for Shia militiamen, for a gun and grenade attack on a market at Mahmudiya, near Baghdad, on Monday that killed a similar number.

US-led forces have been cracking down this month on warlords, in line with Mr Maliki’s pledge to curb militias — a promise complicated by their links with his Shia allies.

The kidnapping of 19 employees of the agency that oversees Sunni mosques underlined the depth of religious hatred.

Daylight attacks by squads of gunmen are among new features of the violence this month. Two markets were hit on Wednesday, one in a Shia district of Baghdad, another in a village called Rasheed to the south. Gunmen killed seven people in all.

Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a Kurd, told Reuters: “If this is allowed to go out of control ... then you would have an all-out or a full sectarian war ... We are not there yet.”—Reuters