Suspected al-Qaeda militants blew up two minarets of a revered Shi’ite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday, targeting a shrine bombed last year in an attack that unleashed a wave of sectarian killing.
Fearing renewed bloodshed, Iraq’s government imposed an indefinite curfew in Baghdad as Shi’ite and Sunni political and religious leaders called on their followers to remain calm.
A grim mood descended on the capital as people hurried home before the start of the curfew. Police said gunmen set fire to a Sunni mosque in Baghdad’s south-western Bayaa district.
In a joint statement, the top United States military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker called on Iraqis to ”reject this call to violence”.
”This brutal action on one of Iraq’s holiest shrines is a deliberate attempt by al-Qaeda to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq. It is an act of desperation,” the statement said.
Addressing the nation hours after the attack, Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also blamed al-Qaeda for the attack. He said he had ordered the arrest of security personnel who had been guarding the mosque, closed after the February 22 2006 bombing that destroyed its famed golden dome.
Al-Qaeda has sought to trigger civil war between majority Shi’ites and minority Sunni Arabs, dominant under Saddam Hussein, with a campaign of large-scale bombings that have killed tens of thousands.
The attack comes at a critical time in Iraqi politics. Maliki’s government is under growing pressure to move faster in passing key laws US officials hope will draw Sunni Arabs closer into the political process and undermine the insurgency.
But there has been little progress thus far and there are signs that a major US-Iraqi crackdown in Baghdad aimed at buying time for Maliki’s government is losing traction. The number of sectarian killings are on the rise again.
There were no injuries reported in Wednesday’s attack on the Golden Mosque, details of which were not immediately clear.
The Iraqi government’s spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, said it appeared the mosque’s golden minarets had been hit by missiles, but the US military, quoting police at the scene, said they were destroyed in near simultaneous explosions heard coming from inside the mosque compound.
Appeals for calm
The country’s top Shi’ite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, urged Shi’ites not to carry out revenge attacks against Sunni Arabs.
”He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis,” said his spokesman, Hamed Khafaf.
A similar call made by Sistani after militants blew up the mosque’s golden dome in February 2006 was ignored as Shi’ite militiamen took to the streets to take revenge on Sunnis, fuelling tit-for-tat attacks.
That bombing was a turning point for Iraq, lifting the lid on simmering tensions between Shi’ites and Sunni Arabs. Iraq’s leaders have often voiced fears that a similar attack could trigger all-out sectarian civil war.
Iraq’s Sunni vice-president, Tareq al-Hashemi, said Wednesday’s attack was a ”desperate attempt to attack the unity of the Iraqi people and bring back the black events that Iraq witnessed last year”.
The political bloc of fiery anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr also urged its supporters to remain calm but said it was suspending its participation in Parliament in protest. Sadr withdrew his six ministers from the Cabinet in April.
The Golden Mosque is one of the four major Shi’ite shrines in Iraq. Samarra, north of Baghdad, is a predominantly Sunni city. Other major sites are in the holy Shi’ite cities of Najaf and Kerbala and the Baghdad district of Kadhimiya, also mainly home to Shi’ites.
Two of the 12 revered Shi’ite imams are buried in the Samarra shrine — Imam Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868 and his son, the 11th imam, Hasan al-Askari, who died in 874. — Reuters