Monday, June 18, 2007
NYT: Despite Calls for Restraint, Sunni Mosque Is Bombed in Southern Iraq City
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| Atef Hassan/Reuters A boy walks in the rubble after a Sunni mosque was destroyed in Basra today. | |
Despite Calls for Restraint, Sunni Mosque Is Bombed in Southern Iraq City
BAGHDAD, June 16 — Hooded gunmen clad in black blew up another Sunni mosque in the southern city of Basra on Saturday after ordering the police at the mosque to flee, and despite a curfew imposed by Iraq's central government, witnesses and security officials said.
The blast at the Ashrah al-Mubashra mosque in central Basra — the second Sunni mosque razed in two days — suggested that Shiite militias south of the capital had rejected calls for restraint from Iraqi leaders after explosions Wednesday toppled two minarets at a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra.
The latest attack heightened tensions between Sunni and Shiite officials, and for some, seemed to confirm that Iraq's central government had lost the ability to exert much influence, not just on areas of the Kurdish north, but also on majority-Shiite strongholds in the south.
"The security situation is out of control in the city," said Wael Abdul Latif, a Shiite former governor of Basra and member of the Iraqi List, a moderate party headed by Ayad Allawi. "The power of the state is weak, and the forces of the Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry are confused and afraid even though handling such matters requires toughness."
The attack occurred around 8 a.m., witnesses and a Basra security official said, when at least a half-dozen men approached the mosque in four vehicles, including a minibus loaded with explosives. They said the gunmen told the Iraqi security forces guarding the mosque to leave, which they did. Then the gunmen packed the building with explosives.
After the blast collapsed the building into dust and rubble, the gunmen celebrated and cheered, according to several witnesses who refused to give their names for fear of reprisals. The police, they said, did not immediately respond.
Sunni religious leaders and politicians said the attack reflected the troubling militia infiltration of the Iraqi Army and police departments and the risks of relying on a mostly Shiite force to protect a country of many sects and ethnicities.
"This tells us that there is a huge penetration into the security forces in Basra by militias, and this was admitted by the emergency force commander there," said Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samaraie, who runs the Sunni Endowment, which oversees Iraq's Sunni mosques. "If the army ignores the militia and lets them enter the mosques and do what they want then it is a catastrophe, and if the army knows what they aim at doing then it is a bigger catastrophe."
It was unclear on Saturday whether the defiance in Basra would spread. The majority-Shiite city is dominated by several rival Shiite groups, who periodically fight for control, yielding what officials and residents describe as a high degree of disorder. A government-imposed curfew that prohibited vehicles from traveling on the city's roads has not been universally enforced, residents said. On Saturday, cars sped by police checkpoints without concern.
Meanwhile, in other cities like Baghdad, curfews since Wednesday's attack in Samarra have largely minimized high-profile sectarian reprisals. A handful of Sunni mosques have been shot at or bombed, but there have been no reports of casualties.
And on Saturday, as Iraqi security forces north of Samarra conducted raids, in which four people were killed and 20 insurgents were arrested, two of Iraq's most powerful Shiite clerics issued statements lamenting the loss of Muslim shrines rather than calling for vengeance.
Hamid al-Khafaf, a spokesman for the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, said: "His eminence strongly condemns and denounces the attacks on the mosques of Talha Bin al-Zubair and al-Ashrah al-Mubashra in Basra. He calls on all citizens to prevent, as much as they can, such attacks on all shrines and mosques."
The populist cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi militia was blamed for much of the violence that followed last year's attack on the Samarra shrine, called on his supporters to hold a peaceful march to the site next month. His latest message was another example of Mr. Sadr's makeover from sectarian rabble-rouser to nationalist demagogue. On Saturday, there were hints that some Sunni and Shiite officials not typically aligned with Mr. Sadr would follow the pattern.
Mr. Samaraie of the Sunni Endowment asked Iraqis to "be united and love each other and block the road before those holding foreign agendas."
Mr. Latif, the Shiite former Basra governor, said Shiites were playing into the hands of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other Sunni groups believed to be responsible for the Samarra attacks. "Al Qaeda did not attack Talha or al-Ashrah mosques but those who did are following the ideas of Al Qaeda," he said.
He added that Basra's separation from the central government's rule of law would only hurt the area.
"Let's assume that one of the neighboring countries, Iran or Saudi Arabia, invaded Basra," he said. "Would the militias be able to stand up against them? They won't last for an hour."
Elsewhere in Iraq, an American soldier died south of Baghdad Friday when a roadside bomb blew up near his patrol, the American military said in a statement. Three others were wounded.
The American military also announced Saturday that the military identification cards of two missing soldiers abducted last month were found on June 9 in a suspected insurgent safe house near Samarra.
Five days before that, the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, released a video showing images of the cards that belong to Specialist Alex R. Jimenez, 25, and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19.
It was unclear if the two soldiers had ever been at the house; American troops found computers, video production equipment, rifles and ammunition, the military said in a statement. Two soldiers were wounded by sniper fire as the troops approached the house, but when the unit arrived, they found no one inside.
Blast Destroys Sunni Mosque in Iraq, Raising Fears of Reprisals
The Talha Bin al-Zubair mosque near Basra on Friday. Its destruction showed that revenge for the bombing of a Shiite shrine had not ended.
BAGHDAD, June 15 — A powerful explosion that reduced a large Sunni Arab mosque to rubble near the southern city of Basra on Friday morning appeared to signal that the cycle of revenge violence, following the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday, has not entirely unfolded.
Although there had been scattered reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques in the hours after the Samarra shrine's minarets were demolished Wednesday, strenuous calls for restraint by political and religious figures, and strict security measures, appeared to halt broader violence.
However, there were fears that violence could erupt once curfews were lifted in Baghdad and other areas over the weekend, and that, like last year, the cycle of reprisal killings would unwind over weeks and months. "We won't see so much right away," said an official in the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. "It will come later."
A United States Air Force F-16 crashed early Friday morning while flying a close air support mission. No information was available on whether the pilot, who was the only crew member, survived. It was one of several recent signs of an intensification in the use of air power to monitor insurgent activities and search for cars rigged as suicide bombs.
Five American soldiers died in three separate attacks on Thursday, the American military said in a statement. Three were killed by an explosion near their vehicle in Kirkuk Province. One died from small-arms fire in Diyala, and a fifth died from a noncombat injury, the military said.
While most of the country outside Basra was calm on Friday, clashes continued between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and local groups in troubled Diyala Province. Civilians in Diyala, many of whom are in mixed families, said they were deeply distressed by the cycle of bombings and reprisals.
"Although my family is Sunni, my parents were buried in Najaf, which is holy to Shiites," said Sheik Fadhil al-Shammeri, a farmer in Diyala.
"Samarra has always been in our hearts, but there are extremists who deviated from religion," he said. "Al Qaeda is the head of the snake, and it should be cut in order to keep Iraq safe from any rift."
He added that his wife was from a well-known Sunni tribe, but that "she was crying when she heard the news of the attack on the shrine in Samarra. Why would they want to kill everything inside us? We and the Shiite are brothers; two of my daughters are married to Shiites and I hope my third one will too."
The explosion at the Talha Bin al-Zubair mosque, which is in a suburb about 10 miles south of Basra, occurred at dawn, according to reports from residents. Talha Bin al-Zubair was a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, and the mosque was popular among local Sunni Arabs and pilgrims, but had been visited less in recent years because of the security troubles in Basra.
"We heard two big explosions at dawn," said Shaeema Fadel, who is from Zubair, the neighborhood where the mosque is located. "We didn't know where they were. Then, early in the morning, we discovered where."
He added, "I hold terror cells responsible because they want to divide us."
Accounts varied of how the bombers managed to enter the mosque. At about 1,200 square yards, the building would be difficult to destroy without a large explosive charge — or several of them.
"Photographers and cameramen entered the mosque asking to take photographs, and they put bombs inside it," said Gen. Ali Hamadi, a security official in Basra. However, local residents said they saw uniformed men enter the mosque just before the explosion.
The Basra area is controlled by several Shiite militias with links to the central government; some are tied to the Badr Organization, which is connected to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Others are allied with the Mahdi Army, the militia of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr.
Mr. Maliki condemned the Basra bombing, ordering a curfew there until further notice. A curfew in Baghdad that began Wednesday was extended until Sunday morning.
In Samarra, two civilians were shot to death and four were wounded by Iraqi and American military snipers who were on a joint patrol to enforce the curfew, the Iraqi police said. By nightfall, hundreds of troops from the Interior Ministry and the Iraqi Army had arrived in the city.
During Friday Prayer throughout the country, Shiite and Sunni clerics generally continued to try to tamp down passions. But leading imams loyal to Mr. Sadr attacked the government, even though members of Parliament loyal to Mr. Sadr have until recently been a crucial component of Mr. Maliki's coalition.
In Kufa, one of Mr. Sadr's strongholds, Sheik Salah al-Obaidi accused the Maliki government of being captive to the Americans. "They say, 'When things are quiet, we will rebuild the shrine,' and this is what the occupation wants them to say," the sheik said.
"These are elected governments," he said. "Why this silence? They kept silent to satisfy the occupier and America because the occupation has appointed them and it bans any party that seeks to rebuild the shrine."
