Reprisals Are Limited After Blasts at Shrine Attacks Hit Handful of Sunni Mosques

Jun 15, 10:04 AM

Current Headlines: By Alissa Johannsen Rubin

Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad.

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With curfews imposed in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities and heightened security across the country, Thursday passed with only a few violent incidents despite the explosions a day earlier that destroyed the minarets of a holy shrine in Samarra, a place sacred to Shiites. The shrine's golden dome had already been demolished in a massive Al Qaeda bombing in February 2006, setting off months of brutal sectarian killings.

While the destruction of the minarets Wednesday sparked several attempts to burn and damage Sunni mosques in a turbulent area just south of Baghdad and in Basra, it appeared that strenuous efforts by political and religious leaders to discourage reprisal violence were successful.

There were four attacks on Sunni mosques south of Baghdad, three in Iskandariya and one in nearby Mahaweel, which brought down most of the building. In Basra, several attempts to damage Sunni Arab mosques in the wake of the attacks were halted, and on Thursday the city residents held unity demonstrations led by Shiite and Sunni clerics.

In sharp contrast to the aftermath of the attack last year in which Shiite mobs gathered and began firing rocket propelled grenades at Sunni Arab mosques, destroying 27 in Baghdad alone over the next 24 hours, the repercussions Thursday were mild.

During the day, five unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad, far less than the police have found daily for several weeks, said an Interior Ministry official who asked not to be named.

But there were several mortar attacks in Baghdad. The most damaging occurred in the Green Zone in mid-afternoon when seven mortars landed in the area. One of them exploded near the gate to the Al Rashid hotel, across the street from the Convention Center where Parliament meets.

The blast occurred just 50 minutes before a news conference that was attended by the deputy secretary of state, John Negroponte; the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker; and the secretary of state's coordinator for Iraq, David Satterfield.

The explosion killed one person and wounded two, the Interior Ministry official said. A U.S. military official said that American soldiers and civilians in the area were unharmed. Georgian soldiers man the checkpoint at the hotel gates; Iraqi employees and guards in the hotel are constantly coming and going.

The other mortars hit near the Convention Center, where Parliament meets and the monument to unknown soldiers, the Interior Ministry official said.

Iraqi and U.S. officials said that the minarets' destruction appeared again to be the work of Al Qaeda and that the explosives that destroyed them were placed inside each tower. The attackers used the same kind of explosives and the same technology that they used last year to destroy the Samarra shrine's golden dome, Crocker said.

An official in the governor's office in Samarra said that the explosives consisted of "two improvised explosive devices planted under each minaret."

The shrine's security has been a sensitive issue since the explosion that destroyed the dome last year.

Shiites have called for its reconstruction, but security problems and worries about clashes between the two sects have delayed efforts to start repairs.

In the days before the explosion, a new police force sent from the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry had arrived in Samarra as a prelude to an effort finally to begin reconstruction.

The guards around the outer cordon ceded to the new police, but the guards inside the shrine resisted. Almost immediately after the explosion, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered all those guards arrested.

They had been appointed by the Sunni Endowment, a religious organization that oversees Sunni mosques. But an official in Samarra said that just 13 were detained, those who were on the morning shift.

Negroponte went out of his way to praise the efforts of Maliki and his government, including Sunni and Kurdish leaders, to handle the situation in Samarra and to bring about a broader reconciliation, which will entail changes in the Constitution.

Previous visits by high-ranking U.S. officials have sounded a more negative note, saying that America will be forced to start withdrawing troops unless the Iraqi Parliament completes changes in key laws, including ones to share oil revenues, set provincial elections and rollback draconian measures that all but bar Iraqis who were members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party from holding government jobs.

"Success in Iraq will depend on the commitment and actions of Iraq's leaders, who have all made clear to me their commitment to success and who, I believe, are prepared to work even harder to achieve it," Negroponte said.

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