Bombers in Iraq destroyed two minarets on a revered Shiite mosque
Wednesday, mirroring a 2006 attack on the shrine that sparked a wave
of sectarian violence that left thousands of people dead and brought
the country to the brink of civil war.
The latest bombing of the al-Askariya in the northern Iraqi town
of Samarra has raised alarms that Iraq could again slide toward the
large scale religious bloodshed that last year brought the country to
the brink of full blown civil war.
'We have to be concerned, given what happened 15 months ago after
the mosque was bombed the first time,' US Defence Secretary Robert
Gates told reporters at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.
Gates, along with other US and Iraqi officials, blamed al-Qaeda
for carrying out the attack aimed at provoking violence between
Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis and destabilizing the delicate political
process within the Iraqi government.
'My hope is that their intentions are so clear that people will
refrain from violence because they understand that ... it would just
be carrying out what al-Qaeda wants,' Gates said.
The bombing drew condemnation from the international community,
including the United Nations and European Union. A spokesman for UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was 'deeply shocked' and urges
both religious groups to avoid an escalation of violence. Germany,
which holds the rotating EU presidency, offered similar remarks.
The Iraqi government quickly imposed a blanket curfew in Baghdad
following the attacks to curtail any eruptions of violence within the
Iraqi capital, heavily populated by Sunnis and Shiites. Prominent
Shiite and Sunni leaders in Iraq also urged their followers to remain
calm.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said that following last year's
violence, the US and Iraqi government are better prepared to respond
to a possible outbreak of sectarian strife and to ensure 'al-Qaeda
cannot have the same kind of twisted success they had the first
time.'
'We clearly want to do everything to avoid that kind of fate this
time,' he added.
The attack on the minarets prompted a bloc of Shiite Iraqi
lawmakers under the guidance of Muqtada al-Sadr, a powerful cleric
strongly opposed to the US presence, to declare they were suspending
their role in the coalition governing the country.
Al-Sadr issued a statement blaming the Americans for the bombing
of the mosque, which is home to the remains of 9th century imams
Hassan al-Askari and Ali al-Hadi.
'A Muslim would never dare to do such a thing,' al-Sadr said in
the Shiite city of Najaf, 180 kilometres south of Baghdad. The
perpetrators 'are the sly hands of occupation that want to do us
harm,' the statement signed by al-Sadr added.
A spokesman for the so-called Sadrist bloc, Nassar al-Rubaie,
announced that it would cease participation in the governing
coalition until the shrine was rebuilt.
'The Sadrist bloc decided to suspend its membership until the two
destroyed shrines are rebuilt, along with all other Sunni and Shiite
shrines and mosques all over Iraq,' al-Rubaie told the Voices of Iraq
news agency.
The bloc's 30 members in the 275-seat Iraqi parliament are part of
the United Iraqi Coalition led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Al-
Maliki called for calm and said he was launching an investigation to
determine how al-Qaeda extremists were able to penetrate Iraqi
security at the mosque.
An attack on the mosque in February 2006 brought the imposing
golden dome - for which the site is also often referred to as the
Golden Mosque - crashing to the ground. Subsequent clashes that did
not slow until the end of last year claimed tens of thousands of
lives and forced many more to flee their homes.
The sectarian fighting nearly crippled the Iraqi government and
left Iraq on the edge of a full blown civil war, badly undermining US
President George W Bush's domestic support for the war and renewing
calls for a US withdrawal from Iraq.
The 68-metre-tall golden dome was completed in 1905 at the site of
the mosque dating back to the 10th century.
Shiite clerics accused the government after the first attack of
taking too long to repair the golden dome on top of the mosque, an
accusation repeated by al-Sadr in his Wednesday statement. Al-Sadr
said the government was also to blame because it did not protect or
restructure the two shrines.
US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker and General David Petraeus, commander
of the multinational forces in Iraq, condemned the 'vicious' attack
on the minarets.
'It is an act of desperation by an increasingly beleaguered enemy
seeking to obstruct the peaceful political and economic development
of a democratic Iraq,' they said in a joint statement. 'We share the
outrage of the Iraqi people against the crime.'
Top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani urged Iraq's
religious groups against violence and to not view the bombing along
sectarian lines, his office said. The same position was taken by the
chairman of the religions foundation of Sunnis in Samarra, Sheik
Ahmed-al-Samarai.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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