Suspected al-Qaeda members on Wednesday destroyed the two minarets of the Askariya Shiite shrine in Samarra, authorities confirmed, in a repeat of a 2006 bombing that shattered its famous Golden Dome and led to a wave of retaliatory sectarian violence in the country.
According to the AP, police said the attack at about 9 a.m. involved explosives and brought down the two minarets, which had flanked the dome's ruins. No casualties were reported.
The attack immediately stirred fears of a new explosion in Sunni-Shiite relations. State television said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quickly imposed an indefinite curfew on vehicle traffic and large gatherings in Baghdad as of 3 p.m. Wednesday.
The Iraqi leader also met with the American commander in Iraq to ask that reinforcements be sent into Samarra to help head off new violence in the city 60 miles north of Baghdad, al-Maliki's office said. Al-Maliki's Dawa Party issued a statement blaming al-Qaeda for attempting to "burn Iraq with the fire of sectarian strife" and calling for an immediate investigation. "We call upon our Iraqi people to exercise self-restraint and not be dragged into reactions like those planned by the killers," it said.
Later, the U.S. military released a statement saying "the Iraqi police on site described hearing two near-simultaneous explosions coming from inside of the mosque compound, but they did not see any attackers in the vicinity."
The Askariya shrine's dome was destroyed on Feb. 22, 2006, in a bombing blamed on al-Qaeda. The mosque compound and minarets had remained intact but closed after that bombing.
In the aftermath of Wednesday's explosions, police in the shrine area started firing into the air to keep people away, witnesses said, and Iraqi army and police reinforcements poured in.
Prominent Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held a news conference to call for a three-day mourning period to mark the minarets' destruction and criticized the government for not doing enough to protect the site. Additionally, he called for peaceful demonstrations following the explosions "to show that the only enemy of Iraq is the occupation and that's why everyone must demand its departure or scheduling its presence."
Meanwhile, some 200 protesters marched to the house of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, denouncing Wednesday's bombing.
In neighboring Iran, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed American forces for failing to prevent the mosque attack, and threatened to halt regional cooperation to stop Iraq's spiraling violence. "You, by supporting theses activities, will be cornered," Iranian state television quoted Ahmadinejad as addressing the "occupiers of Iraq."
