Blast hits key Iraq Shia shrine

BAGHDAD – Suspected al Qaeda militants blew up two minarets of a revered Shi’ite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra yesterday, targeting a shrine bombed last year in an attack that sparked a wave of sectarian killing.

A senior Iraqi government official said the attack at Samarra’s Golden Mosque was ‘very bad news for Iraq’ while the country’s top Shi’ite religious leader urged Shi’ites not to carry out revenge attacks against minority Sunni Arabs. The US military expressed concern and said it was monitoring events after the attack, which destroyed the mosque’s two golden minarets.The bombing of the mosque last year, which wrecked the shrine’s famous golden dome but did not damage the minarets, was a turning point for Iraq, unleashing sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of people.Fearing bloodshed in Baghdad, the government said it would impose a total curfew in the city from 3 pm until further notice.Witnesses said large numbers of Iraqi army troops had poured into the streets of Baghdad.In the wake of the 2006 bombing at Samarra, Iraq’s leaders have often voiced fears that a similar attack could push the country over the edge into all-out sectarian civil war.Revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shi’ite religious figure, called for restraint.”He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis,” Sistani’s spokesman, Hamed Khafaf, told Reuters.Shi’ite officials blamed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda for the attack.It was unclear exactly how the minarets had been blown up, but residents said there had been clashes in the area between gunmen and police before the blast at around 9h00 am.”This is a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife,” Saleh al-Haidari, the head of the Shi’ite endowment in Iraq, a major religious body, told Reuters.The Shi’ite group loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged its supporters to remain calm and accused militants of planting explosives to bring down the minarets.After the bombing in 2006 gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia, loyal to Sadr, targeted members of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community in Baghdad in revenge attacks.In a statement, Sadr said: “I do not believe a Sunni or Muslim would do this”.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.Nampa-ReutersThe US military expressed concern and said it was monitoring events after the attack, which destroyed the mosque’s two golden minarets.The bombing of the mosque last year, which wrecked the shrine’s famous golden dome but did not damage the minarets, was a turning point for Iraq, unleashing sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands of people.Fearing bloodshed in Baghdad, the government said it would impose a total curfew in the city from 3 pm until further notice.Witnesses said large numbers of Iraqi army troops had poured into the streets of Baghdad.In the wake of the 2006 bombing at Samarra, Iraq’s leaders have often voiced fears that a similar attack could push the country over the edge into all-out sectarian civil war.Revered cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s top Shi’ite religious figure, called for restraint.”He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis,” Sistani’s spokesman, Hamed Khafaf, told Reuters.Shi’ite officials blamed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda for the attack.It was unclear exactly how the minarets had been blown up, but residents said there had been clashes in the area between gunmen and police before the blast at around 9h00 am.”This is a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife,” Saleh al-Haidari, the head of the Shi’ite endowment in Iraq, a major religious body, told Reuters.The Shi’ite group loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged its supporters to remain calm and accused militants of planting explosives to bring down the minarets.After the bombing in 2006 gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia, loyal to Sadr, targeted members of Iraq’s Sunni Arab community in Baghdad in revenge attacks.In a statement, Sadr said: “I do not believe a Sunni or Muslim would do this”.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.Nampa-Reuters