Iraq braced for more bombings
Suspected al-Qaida bombers have toppled the towering minarets of Samarra's revered Shiite shrine, dealing a bold blow to Iraqi hopes for peace and reopening old wounds a year after the mosque's Golden Dome was destroyed.
Yesterday's attack stoked fears of a surge in violence between Muslim sects.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government rushed to contain Shiite wrath against Sunnis. It clamped a curfew on Baghdad and asked for US troop reinforcements in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, and for a heightened American military alert in the capital.
Police told of at least four Sunni mosques in Baghdad and south of the capital attacked by arsonists and bombers however, and of a smaller Shiite shrine bombed in the North.
Today, police said a woman and child were wounded in a repeat bombing on one of the Sunni shrines attacked a day earlier.
The Samarra attack also threatened to deepen Iraq's political crisis, as the 30-member bloc of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr immediately suspended its participation in parliament in protest.
The Golden Dome bombing in February 2006, at one of Iraqi Shiism's holiest sites, was also blamed on Sunni militants linked to al-Qaida.
That attack unleashed a bloodbath of reprisals - of Shiite death-squad murders of Sunnis, and Sunni bombing attacks on Shiites. At least 34,000 civilians died in last year's violence, the United Nations reported.
Yesterday's stunning attack came in near-simultaneous explosions at about 9am local time, completely bringing down the two slender 100ft golden minarets that had flanked the dome's ruins. No casualties were reported.
How the attackers evaded the Askariya shrine's guard force, strengthened considerably after the 2006 bombing, was a mystery.
Mr Maliki said policemen at the shrine were detained for questioning - 15 of them, according to a senior US military official. The prime minister also said an unspecified number of other suspects were arrested in Samarra and were being interrogated in connection with the shrine attack.
An indefinite curfew was immediately imposed on Samarra, and, as Iraqi army and police reinforcements and US troops poured in, the streets emptied by mid-afternoon, witnesses said.
A few hundred US soldiers had been stationed around Samarra but had left shrine security to Iraqi forces.
In Baghdad, the prime minister ordered an indefinite curfew, beginning at 6pm local time yesterday, on vehicle traffic and large gatherings in the capital.
Mr Maliki, whose office said the curfew would be lifted on Saturday, then travelled to Samarra with US ground forces commander Lt Gen. Raymond Odierno and visited the mosque ruins.
An official close to the prime minister, citing intelligence reports, said Wednesday's bombing was likely the work of al-Qaida, whose militants have recently moved into Samarra from surrounding areas.
A US statement, from Ambassador Ryan Crocker and US Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus, unequivocally blamed al-Qaida, saying the terror group sought "to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife".
Such an attack by the Sunni extremist group al-Qaida in Iraq, increasingly at odds with more nationalist Iraqi insurgents, might have been intended to provoke Shiite retaliation that would help reunite various Sunni elements.
In Washington, presidential spokesman Tony Snow said there would be aggressive outreach on all sides to try to prevent reprisal attacks.
"What happened after the original bombing of the mosque in Samarra - I don't think the Iraqi government or the United States government quite understood what was going to happen, in terms of a sectarian reaction," Snow said.
