Suicide bombers, one dressed as a woman, blasted worshippers as
they left a Shiite mosque after Friday prayers, killing at least 79
people and wounding more than 160 in the deadliest attack in Iraq
this year.
The horrific explosions at the Buratha mosque are likely to
stoke the already raw tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
The US ambassador warned in an interview published Friday that
sectarian civil war in Iraq could enflame the entire Middle
East.
Rescuers raced to and from the mosque, ferrying bodies from the
walled compound on blood-soaked wooden pushcarts and loading them
on the beds of pickup trucks. City officials urged Iraqis to donate
blood for the wounded.
Inside the mosque, blood stained the chipped and crumbling floor
next to a red prayer rug and spattered the dingy white walls of a
nearby corridor, where a cupboard and plates lay shattered. A
firefighter wearing a yellow helmet and yellow gloves kneeled down
to inspect the scene in the main prayer room.
Police said there were two suicide bombings at the mosque, and
an Associated Press photographer saw evidence of two blasts. One at
the outer wall surrounding the compound and another at the entrance
to the mosque building. The blast in the entrance likely killed
some worshippers inside.
But Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, the preacher at the mosque and one
of the country's leading politicians, said there were three
bombings. One assailant came through the women's security
checkpoint and blew up first, he said.
The preacher, who was not injured, said another raced into the
mosque's courtyard while a third tried to enter his office before
they both detonated their explosives.
Al-Sagheer accused Sunni politicians and clerics of waging "a
campaign of distortions and lies against the Buratha mosque,
claiming that it has Sunni prisoners and mass graves of
Sunnis."
"Shiites are the ones who are targeted as part of this dirty
sectarian war waged against them as the world watches silently," he
told Al-Arabiya television.
Mainstream Sunni Arab politicians condemned the bombings,
calling on all religious and political leaders to come together in
the interest of national unity.
"Bloodshed is forbidden," Sunni lawmaker Adnan al-Dulaimi told
Iraqi television.
Also Friday, the US military reported the deaths of four more
American service members, including one who died from wounds
suffered in Baghdad. Two Marines and a soldier were killed
Thursday.
An Iraqi soldier allegedly shot and killed one of the Marines at
a base near the Syrian border, and the Iraqi was then wounded by
another Marine, a US statement said. At least 2,349 members of the
US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March
2003, according to an AP count.
The mosque attack occurred as worshippers left Friday prayers,
the main weekly religious service. Several hours earlier, the
Interior Ministry warned the public to avoid crowds near mosques
and markets because of a car bomb threat.
"I heard an explosion after we finished praying," said Jamal
Hussein, a 40-year-old teacher who was one of the wounded
worshippers. "Next thing, I found myself in the hospital," he said
from his hospital bed, his left arm wrapped in bandages.
Also hospitalized was Haidar Mohammed, 25, who suffered shrapnel
wounds to the leg.
"When I heard the second explosion, I felt like everything went
black," he said. "I think I passed out."
Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi, who gave the casualty
figures, said one of the suicide attackers wore a black abaya, the
full-length robe worn by devout Muslim women. He said police were
unsure whether the attacker was a man wearing a woman's robe to
conceal explosives.
At the compound's entrance, the AP photographer saw a leg and
most of the head of what appeared to be one of the bombers. The
skull had long hair and the leg was thin, and the photographer
thought it was the remains of a woman.
Women have carried out suicide bombings on Israeli targets and
last year on a hotel in Jordan, but only rarely in Iraq.
On November 9, 2005, Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian
woman, blew herself up near an American military patrol after
entering Iraq from Syria a month earlier. She was the only person
killed in the bombing.
The attack on the mosque was the second in as many days against
a Shiite religious site. On Thursday, a car bomb exploded about 300
yards from the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf, killing 10 people. Najaf,
100 miles south of Baghdad, is the most sacred city in Iraq for
Shiite Muslims.
No group claimed responsibility for either attack, although
suspicion fell on Sunni extremists responsible for numerous
bombings against Shiite civilians. The Buratha mosque is affiliated
with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq, the
country's main Shiite party. The party said the attacks were part
of "a war of annihilation" against Shiites.
On March 13, a coordinated car bomb and mortar attack killed at
least 58 people in a market in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite area
of Sadr City. A suicide bombing January 5 killed 63 people near a
Shiite shrine.
Rising sectarian tensions worsened by armed, religiously based
militias and death squads? have emerged as a significant
threat to US efforts to form a stable society in Iraq. Those
tensions escalated dramatically after the February 22 bombing of a
Shiite shrine in Samarra.
That triggered a wave of reprisal attacks against Sunni mosques
and clerics. Many of them believed carried out by Shiite militias
and drove the country to the brink of civil war. Hundreds of
Shiites have also been killed in attacks since the shrine
bombing.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp, US
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad warned that Iraq faced the possibility
of sectarian civil war that could engulf the Middle East.
"That's a possibility if we don't do everything we can to make
this country work," he said. "What's happening here has huge
implications for the region and the world."
The ambassador said the best way to prevent such a conflict was
to form a government including representatives of all groups.
However, those efforts have stalled over Sunni and Kurdish
opposition to the Shiite candidate to lead the government, Prime
Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Al-Jaafari has refused to step aside, and his Shiite coalition
has been reluctant to reconsider his nomination for fear of
splintering the alliance. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew to Baghdad last weekend
to urge the Iraqis to speed up government talks in a move widely
seen as an effort to pressure out al-Jaafari.
However, several Iraqi figures complained Friday that the US and
British intervention had backfired, prompting al-Jaafari's
supporters to dig in their heels against what many Iraqis
considered foreign interference.
During a sermon Friday, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,
al-Jaafari's strongest supporter, accused the Americans of
"interference in Iraqi affairs," which he termed "a violation of
Islam."
"The visit by Rice and Straw has complicated things in Iraq,"
Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told the AP. "The visit had a
negative impact on this issue because al-Jaafari supporters are now
saying that the Americans are interfering in a purely Iraqi
issue."
(AP via China Daily?April 8, 2006)
