2ND LEADALL: Shiite mosque in Iraq bombed; more violence feared

By Deutsche Presse-Agentur Jun 14, 2007, 0:19 GMT

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.

US President George W Bush said in a statement Wednesday evening that at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki US troops had been sent to Samarra to help Iraqi forces guard the mosque and maintain security in the area.

'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.

Bush condemned the attack as a 'barbarous act' that 'was clearly aimed at inflaming sectarian tensions among the peoples of Iraq and defeating their aspirations for a secure, democratic, and prosperous country.'

He also urged Iraqis to refrain from 'acts of vengeance' and committed the US to helping Iraq rebuild the shrine.

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 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.