Iraq shrine bombing fuels Shi'ite protests

SAMARRA, Iraq - A dawn bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra yesterday, sparking street protests and forcing the government to issue an urgent appeal to avoid sectarian reprisals.

At least one Sunni mosque in Baghdad was attacked, Shi'ite militiamen posted themselves on streets and Iraq's senior Shi'ite cleric urged restraint.

The Iraqi president said the attackers wanted to derail US-sponsored efforts to form a national unity government that leaders hope can avert civil war.

Gunmen burst into the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of four key Shi'ite holy sites in Iraq, and planted explosives to bring down its 100-year-old, gilded dome, one of the biggest in the Muslim world, senior officials said. It seemed no one was hurt.

An aerial photograph released by the US military showed the 20-meter wide dome reduced to a hollow shell of brown masonry and twisted iron framework, with surrounding buildings also wrecked.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the attackers wore police uniforms, tied up the mosque's guards and set their charges.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari declared three days of national mourning and called for Muslim unity.

The interim government had despatched officials to Samarra, 100 km north of Baghdad, he said; the mainly Sunni city was sealed off to outsiders by security forces, residents said. Police said they fired over demonstrators' heads at one point as they chanted religious and anti-American slogans.

The leading Sunni religious body also condemned the attack, for which no group had yet claimed responsibility, as did Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Muslim ethnic Kurd, who called it a "shameful crime" committed in a Shi'ite holy month.

Gunmen fired on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Ghazaliya district and burned down its gate, police said. They were checking reports of attacks on other Sunni mosques in the city.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shi'ite, blamed Arab Sunni militants inspired by al Qaeda for the explosion in Samarra, but appealed for calm: "They will fail to draw the Iraqi people into civil war as they have failed in the past."

He was later quoted by state television Iraqiya as saying 10 suspects had been arrested in Samarra.

Thousands of people marched in Shi'ite towns across the country and through the capital, condemning the attack.

Black-clad militiamen of the Mehdi Army, loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, were out in forces in Shi'ite strongholds like Sadr City in Baghdad and the city of Samawa.

US officials are pressing Jaafari to form a cabinet with support across the nation to avert the threat of a civil war that could thwart Washington's efforts to withdraw its 130,000 troops.

Sunni rebels are strong in Samarra and there have been attacks recently on Shi'ite pilgrims visiting the shrine to the revered 9th-century Imam Ali al-Hadi and his son Imam Hassan al-Askari. Shi'ite websites said relics of the buried imams, including a helmet and shield, were damaged in the explosions.

In the holy city of Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered authority for millions and a key force for Shi'ite restraint in the face of Sunni insurgent attacks, made a rare call for protests and declared seven days of mourning.

He insisted in a statement, however, that there must be no violence and in particular no reprisals against Sunni mosques.

Outside his office, where Sistani was meeting his most senior colleagues, two thousand demonstrators chanted: "Rise up Shi'ites! Shi'ites take revenge! Rise up Shi'ites!"

"For the Shi'ites ... this is a major assault comparable to an attack on Mecca for all Muslims," said Hazim al-Naimi, a political science professor at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University.

"We will definitely see more sectarianism after this attack ... It could push the country closer to civil war."  

There were smaller protests elsewhere and shopkeepers in some Shi'ite areas had closed their stores for the mourning period.

Sectarian attacks by the likes of al Qaeda, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Shi'ite gatherings including suicide bombings that killed 170 people at a Shi'ite festival in 2004 have failed to spark all-out reprisals, although Sunnis accuse the Shi'ite-led government of condoning police death squads.

Ordinary Shi'ites were dismayed by the violence: "Whoever did this are not human beings. They are less than animals," said Wuroud Kathim, 29, a computer specialist, in central Baghdad.

Wednesday's attack followed bombings in Baghdad on the two previous days that killed some 40 people and broke a relative lull over the past month,