Religious figures try to calm passions in Iraq

Iraq’s most influential Shiite political leader today called for Sunni-Shiite unity as religious figures sought to calm passions and pull the nation from the brink of civil war after the bombing of a Shiite shrine two days ago and a wave of deadly reprisal attacks.

The government, meanwhile, announced stepped-up security measures, including a ban on entering or leaving Baghdad and deployment of armed forces in tense areas.

An extraordinary daytime curfew in Baghdad and three nearby provinces appeared to have blunted the wave of attacks on Sunni mosques that followed Wednesday’s bombing, which destroyed the golden dome of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra.

Still, Iraqis feared the violence that killed about 130 people after the Samarra attack had pushed the country closer to sectarian civil war than at any time since the US-led invasion nearly three years ago.

Several joint Sunni-Shiite prayer services were announced for today, including one at the Askariya shrine. But security forces turned away about 700 people, virtually all of them Sunnis, who showed up for the service.

In a statement read over national television, top Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said those who carried out the bombing in Samarra “do not represent the Sunnis in Iraq.”

Al-Hakim instead blamed Saddam Hussein loyalists and followers of al Qaida in Iraq boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“We all have to unite in order to eliminate them,” al-Hakim said in a statement.

“This is what al-Zarqawi is working for, that is, to ignite sectarian strife in the country,” he added. “We call for self-restraint and not to be dragged down by the plots of the enemy of Iraq.”

Dhafer al-Ani, spokesman for the biggest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, praised al-Hakim’s statement, calling it “a step on the road of healing the wounds.”

But he said his Iraqi Accordance Front was still waiting for an apology from the government for failing to protect Sunni mosques from reprisal attacks, as well as a commitment to repair the damage and bring those responsible to justice.

The Sunni bloc yesterday suspended talks with the main Shiite alliance about forming a new government until its demands are met.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad acknowledged the danger facing Iraq – and the US strategy for disengaging from this country. But he also said this was a “moment of opportunity” for Iraq.

“This tragedy can be used to bring people together,” Khalilzad told reporters.

He was confident Sunni politicians would return to the negotiating table, saying: “Iraqis do not have a better alternative than to form a government of national unity.”

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, said he had deployed Iraqi armed forces in areas of friction and banned all vehicles from entering or leaving the capital other than police cars, ambulances and government trucks.

He also said measures had been taken to protect holy sites, ban the carrying of unauthorised weapons in the streets, and to rebuild the Shiite shrine in Samarra.

A committee was appointed to establish responsibility for the “Samarra catastrophe,” he said. But he did not mention Sunni mosques damaged in reprisal attacks.

Late yesterday, Iraqi state television announced an extension of the nighttime curfew until today in Baghdad and the nearby provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salaheddin, where the shrine bombing took place.

But security forces permitted worshippers to walk to mosque for midday prayers, which were followed by demonstrations in a number of cities.

A large crowd attended the service at Abu Hanifa mosque, Baghdad’s most important Sunni site, where Imam Ahmed Hasan al-Taha denounced the attack on the Shiite shrine as a conspiracy intended to draw Iraqis into sectarian strife.

There was little sign of the curfew in Baghdad’s teaming Shiite slum, Sadr City, where armed militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been out in force since Wednesday’s attack. Iraqi police found six bodies handcuffed and shot near a car park in the area, the Interior Ministry said.

In the southern Shiite heartland, more than 10,000 people converged on Basra’s al-Adillah mosque, where a representative of Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called another joint service with Sunnis. A similar service was held at the city’s Grand Mosque.

The extraordinary security measures helped curb – but not eliminate – the violence.

In Samarra, a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed two officers 10 minutes after the daytime curfew expired in the predominantly Sunni city about 60 miles north of Baghdad, police said. The patrol opened fire after the attack, injuring a man and his wife who were driving past.

Another explosion set fire to an oil pipeline south of the city, police said.

South of Baghdad, in the religiously mixed area known as the “Triangle of Death,” gunmen burst into a Shiite home in Latifiyah, separated men from women, and killed five of the males, police said.

In Basra, where the curfew was not in effect, gunmen kidnapped three children of a Shiite legislator from near the family home today, police said. They were freed hours later in a raid that also netted a suspect.

Al-Jbouri is a member of the Islamic Dawa Party-Iraq Organisation and is the former head of Basra’s provincial council.

Elsewhere, police found the bodies of two bodyguards for the Basra head of the Sunni Endowment, a government body that cares for Sunni mosques and shrines. They had been shot.

Anger was running deep and it could take time to determine whether the country has passed through this latest crisis.

Yesterday, the Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said at least 168 Sunni mosques had been attacked. The Interior Ministry said it could only confirm figures for Baghdad, where it had reports of 19 mosques attacked, one cleric killed and one abducted.