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Anger over Samarra bombing now fanning out to rest of Iraq
Bombs wrecked the dome of a major Shi'ite shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra on Wednesday in an apparent sectarian attack that sparked demonstrations and calls for revenge by angry crowds.The country's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for protests against the attack, and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shi'ite Islamist, went live on television to declare three days of mourning. Jaafari, under pressure from the United States to bring Sunni minority leaders into a coalition government to avert a sectarian civil war, called for unity, describing the blasts as an attack on all Muslims. But protesters gathering in the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf vowed revenge for the attack, and National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shi'ite, blamed the blast on Arab Sunni militants inspired by al Qaeda. Local officials said there were no reports of casualties after gunmen entered the Golden Mosque at dawn and set off charges that destroyed the celebrated dome of one of the four holiest Shi'ite sites in Iraq. The shrine is dedicated to the Imam Ali al-Hadi and his son Hassan al-Askari. Witnesses in the town and television footage showed the top of the dome blown off and shattered masonry framed by two slender minarets. A U.S. military spokeswoman described the damage to the roof as "catastrophic". Samarra, 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, has been a seat of the Sunni Arab insurgency against a U.S.-backed government dominated by Shi'ite parties. Few Shi'ites live in the Sunni city. Sectarian tensions are already running high in Iraq as Jaafari tries to form a unity government following Shi'ite Islamist successes in a parliamentary election in December. Rubaie blamed Arab Sunni militants inspired by al Qaeda for the explosion, but appealed for calm: "They will fail to draw the Iraqi people into civil war as they have failed in the past," he told the Al Arabiya Arabic television channel. He was later quoted by state television Iraqiya as saying 10 suspects had been arrested in Samarra. Police in the city said officers fired over the heads of hundreds of demonstrators who took to the streets after the explosion. The Sunni Endowment, which oversees religious activity for Sunni Muslims in Iraq, condemned the attack and called for calm. It demanded that the perpetrators be punished. In the holy city of Najaf, Sistani's office issued a statement in which he declared seven days of mourning and urged his followers to protest against the attack. The aged Sistani has been credited by many Shi'ite political leaders with restraining the religious majority, long oppressed under Saddam Hussein, from responding with violence to repeated attacks that have killed thousands of civilians. But about 2,000 Shi'ites who began demonstrating in the southern city of Najaf, the holiest site for Shi'ite Muslims, were thirsting for revenge. "Rise up Shi'ites. Shi'ites take revenge. Rise up Shi'ites. Rise up Shi'ites," they shouted. Abdullah al-Jubaara, the deputy governor of Salahaddin province which includes Samarra, told Reuters gunmen entered the shrine at dawn, planted bombs and then blew it up. "We demand that the Iraqi government takes the most extreme measures against these terrorists. Forgiving these people would be totally rejected," Salah al-Haidari, head of Shi'ite endowments in charge of Shi'ite mosques and shrines, told Iraqi television. About 1,000 protesters took to the streets in the mostly Shi'ite town of Kut, southeast of Baghdad, and protesters began to gather in Iraq's second city of Basra. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-22 |
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