Explosions Topple Minarets at Shiite Shrine
BAGHDAD _ Iraq’s government on Wednesday imposed a three-day curfew throughout the country and braced for violence after two thunderous explosions collapsed the remaining minarets of a prominent Shiite shrine whose bombing 15 months ago triggered an orgy of sectarian reprisals that continue to this day.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki angrily summoned the ministers of defense and interior to his office and ordered the detention of the mixed group of Iraqi soldiers and police who were on guard at the time of the explosions.
Officials close to al-Maliki said that the prime minister had heard two weeks ago that an attack on the mosque might be imminent, but that the two ministers, who oversee the army and the police, had assured him that everything was under control. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to talk to reporters.
Police attributed the explosions that toppled the minarets to incoming mortar rounds, but witnesses said the blasts came from inside the mosque compound and al-Maliki aides said they did not believe the police account. A U.S. military official told CNN he believed the bombing was an inside job.
The shrine, known as the al Askariya Mosque, has held a special place in the iconography of Iraqi violence since its gold dome was destroyed in a huge explosion Feb. 22, 2006. That explosion fueled what was already a rising trend of reprisal killings between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
Hundreds of Iraqis were killed in the days after the bombing. More than a hundred Sunni mosques in Baghdad were attacked and burned, sending smoke throughout the city, and truckloads of militiamen waving Mahdi Army flags and rocket propelled grenade launchers took to the streets.
In comparison, the response to Wednesday’s blast was muted. Gunmen sprayed bullets at four Sunni mosques in the southern port city of Basra, and Shiite militiamen and Sunni guards battled at a fifth. In Iskandiriya, south of Baghdad, three Sunni mosques were bombed, witnesses said. Provincial police did not confirm or deny the reports.
In Baghdad, Sunni mosques were attacked in the Jihad and Zaiyuna neighborhoods, according to witnesses. Mahdi Army militiamen took up positions throughout the city whose streets grew empty as a 72-hour curfew went into effect at 6 p.m.
In Hurriyah, in northwest Baghdad, the local Shiite mosque ordered shopkeepers to close while Mahdi Army militiamen with AK-47s and machine guns watched the roads and set up checkpoints. In Amil, in west Baghdad, a young Mahdi Army member directed traffic, watching drivers and concealing a pistol.
A red Hyundai sped up the main road loaded with men carrying AK 47s and the roads were jammed as people rushed home before the curfew. A displaced family waited by stacks of boxes, furniture and garbage bags of clothes for someone to pick them up.
A Sunni mosque was set ablaze in south Baghdad and Mahdi Army fighters lurked in the side streets as U.S. tanks and Humvees drove down the main roads, residents said. Witnesses said at least one Humvee and a tank were attacked there.
With a curfew in place it was impossible to verify incidents. U.S. military spokesman in southern Baghdad indicated that attacks were ongoing against American forces there.
“We’ve seen increased combat activity in our operational area and are conducting standard operations in response to the attacks on our personnel,” said Maj. Kirk Luedeke, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, said in an e-mail. “As we are actively in the process of dealing with the events in our sector, I can’t provide much detail beyond that.”
Al-Maliki traveled to Samarra with Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, to survey the damage. He said the attack came two days before a contract was to be signed to rebuild the shrine.
“By God’s will we will rebuild the honorable shrine,” al-Maliki said in front of the rubble of the destroyed holy site. “I call upon all Iraqis, Sunnis and Shiites, to assume responsibility . . . and don’t allow space for those that want to start a war that no one will win.”
Al-Maliki’s calls for calm were joined by similar pleas from a variety of Iraqi and American officials. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite religious figure, called for “believers to be patient and control themselves and to avoid revenge attacks.”
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces here, issued a joint statement condemning the attack and blamed al-Qaida for the attack.
Fiery Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army was blamed for much of the violence after the shrine’s first bombing, urged his followers in a statement not to hold innocent Sunnis responsible for the blasts.
“There is no Sunni that would raise his hand against a shrine of two such infallible imams,” the statement said. “No Muslim would do such a thing.”
There was a notable difference in the way Iraqi state television treated Wednesday’s explosions from its treatment of last year’s destruction. State Iraqiya television waited two hours before reporting Wednesday’s attacks and followed the initial report with music videos of Iraqi choirs singing songs of national unity. Last year, the station broadcast Shiite chants that fueled anger among Iraqi Shiites.
Still, there were expectations of violence. Alaa Makki, a Sunni legislator, said parliament had asked al-Maliki to form a local police force of young Samarra men to protect the shrine and the area, but that al-Maliki never responded. He predicted that Wednesday’s relative calm would not last.
“There will definitely be more and more sectarian cleansing,” Makki said. “They (the Mahdi Army) want to push a change in Baghdad to a completely Shiite city.”
It was unclear how bombers might have bypassed the fortified force appointed to protect the shrine to place charges at the base of the two minarets.
Maj. General Benjamin Mixon, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in Samarra, told CNN he believed that bombers from al-Qaida in Iraq were aided by Iraqi Security Forces to place the explosives.
Sami al-Askari, an advisor to Maliki and a legislator, said that a battalion of national police and a brigade from the Iraqi army were being sent to Samarra. “The main issue now is to contain the reaction of the people,” he said.
There was little hard information about the explosions, which took place at about 9:30 a.m. At the time the mosque was being protected by a combination of Iraqi army and police forces, at least some of whom had arrived only Tuesday.
Witnesses reached by telephone said they heard two explosions and that when they emerged from their houses to investigate the two minarets were gone. The witnesses said they believe the explosions had come from inside the building and denied that there had been mortar fire in the area, contradicting police accounts.
The complete collapse of the minarets also indicated that the explosives had been placed exactingly to assure the towers’ destruction.
___
(Contributing to this report were McClatchy Newspapers special correspondents Hassan Jubouri in Tikrit and Laith Hammoudi, Sahar Issa and Hussein Kadhim in Baghdad.)
___
ROUNDUP OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ
A roundup of violence in Iraq is posted daily at the McClatchy Washington Bureau Web site, www.mcclatchydc.com. Click on “Iraq War Coverage.”
___
(c) 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
_____
GRAPHIC (from MCT Graphics, 202-383-6064):
NEWSCOM PHOTOS can be viewed at http://www.newscom.com/nc/visuals.html (Username: fpnews and Password: viewnc05 allow editors to view photos.) To purchase photos or to get your own Newscom username and password, U.S. and Canadian newspapers, please call Tribune Media (800) 637-4082 or (312) 222-2448 or email to tmssales@tribune.com. Others contact Newscom at (202) 383-6070 or email support@newscom.com. Use search terms: “USIRAQ SHRINE”
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. 1045217