Blast Rocks Shiite Shrine in Samarra

02/22/2006

By Bassam Sebti
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, February 23, 2006; 5:56 AM

BAGHDAD, Feb. 11—One of the most revered shrines in Shiite Islam was bombed early this morning, causing the collapse of its dome, police and eyewitnesses said. There was no immediate estimate of casualties in the latest in a series of sectarian attacks in the country.

The shrine in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad, contains the remains of two of Shiite Islam’s most prominent Imams. The bomb is believed to have been planted a day earlier, said Capt. Basheer Qadoori, of the city’s police force.

“Last night, five armed men wearing ski masks broke into the shrine, kidnapped 5 guards of the shrine and planted two bombs inside,” Qadoori said.

Iraq’s most notable Shiite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, announced a week long mourning and urged people to go to the streets in “peaceful demonstrations to denounce this criminal act.” Sistani’s office said a detailed statement would be released later today.

Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari announced a three-day mourning in a televised appearance. “I call on my people to express their condemnation,” Jaafari said. He asked Iraqis to “close the door to all those who are fishing in the troubled water.”

The attack, which sparked immediate and widespread protests among Shiites across Iraq, appeared designed to further inflame sectarian tension between Iraq’s Shiite majority and the Sunni Arab population from whose ranks the bulk of the country’s insurgency is drawn.

In Samarra, witnesses said that interior ministry commandos and Iraqi police were cordoning the shrine before the explosions took place. Ahmed Abdul Ghafour, 30, lives near the shrine said, “I was leaving my house to go to work at 6 a.m. but the commandoes did not allow me and said curfew is imposed. About an hour later, we heard the explosions.”

“The main aim of these terrorist groups is to drag Iraq into a civil war,” said Iraq’s national security advisor Mowaffak al-Rubaie in an interview on Al-Arabiya, a Dubai based Arabic news channel.

Residents and clerics in Samarra expressed their anger and took to the streets in protest. Sunni Imams--religious leaders-- used loudspeakers to urge people to demonstrate in front of the holy Shrine peacefully. But Sunni demonstrators were dispersed by Iraqi police who shot in the air. Two people were wounded during the protests.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Dhaye, a Sunni cleric and a member of the Muslim Scholars Association in Samarra denounced the act and said, “We blame the interior ministry and the US forces for failing to protect this holy shrine. We and all the people in Samarra are very enraged against this crime as we never expected this to happen.”

Protests were also reported in Baghdad, and the southern cities of Najaf, Hilla and Karbala, where Shiites predominate.

The shrine in Samarra contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams, Ali al-Hadi who died in 868 A.D. and his son Hassan al-Askari who died in 874 A.D and was the father of Imam Al-Mahdi, the “hidden imam” whom the Shiites believe is still alive. The golden dome was completed in 1905.