Baghdad, Iraq - One of Iraq's holiest shrines was virtually destroyed today by a bomb blast in the third attack on the country's Shia Muslims this week, as insurgents stepped up their campaign to undermine talks to form a new government.
Iraqi leaders declared three days of mourning and called for peaceful protests but the symbolic attack has provoked reprisals: Sunni Arab politicians said that more than 25 Sunni mosques across Iraq had been attacked in retaliation, although there was no independent confirmation of the number.
The dome of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, 60 miles (95km) north of Baghdad, suffered "catastrophic" damage, according to an United States military spokesman, when a string of bombs were detonated at around 6:55 this morning, local time.
Witnesses said the dome was blown off and television footage showed a stripped bare roof and shattered masonry. No one is reported to have been killed in the blast.
The explosives were set by gunmen dressed as members of the Iraqi special forces, according to Iraqi security officials. Mouwafak al-Rubaiel, the Iraqi National Security Adviser, said four militants overpowered local policemen before laying the explosives and escaping.
As thousands of angry Shia demonstrators gathered with flags and copies of the Koran outside the ruined shrine, which holds the tombs of two ninth century imams, five Iraqi policemen were taken into custody, according to Samarra's chief of police.
The Shia Prime Minister of Iraq, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who is under pressure to include more Sunni leaders in his government to avoid a slide to civil war, called for unity and described the bombing as an attack on all Muslims.
"I announce on this occasion three days of mourning," he said in a live televised address. "I hope our heroic people will take more care on this occasion to bolster Islamic unity and protect Islamic brotherhood and Iraqi national brotherhood."
Loudspeakers throughout Samarra, a predominantly Sunni town that has been an active base for insurgents since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, condemned the attacks as Iraqi and American soldiers searched the wreckage for people who may have been buried in the blast.
Across Iraq, leaders spoke out against the bombing, which was seen as an attempt by Sunni extremists to further inflame relations with the country's majority Shia population. More than 30 people have already been killed in two explosions in Shia quarters of Baghdad this week.
The Sunni Endowment, which oversees religious activity for Sunni Muslims in Iraq, called for calm and said it would send a delegation to investigate the damage while the office of the most powerful Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, declared a week of mourning and told supporters not to attack Sunni mosques for revenge.
The head of Shia endowments in charge of Shia mosques and shrines took a less conciliatory line: "We demand that the Iraqi government takes the most extreme measures against these terrorists. Forgiving these people would be totally rejected," Salah al-Haidari told a Shia television station.
The radical Shia cleric, Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, heard the news while on tour in Lebanon. He cancelled a meeting with the Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud, and headed back to Iraq by road according to Al-Manar television, the channel of the Shia militant group Hezbollah.
Despite the calls for calm, several Sunni mosques in Baghdad suffered damage in the aftermath of the attack. Iraqi and American soldiers were deployed to protect the main Sunni mosque in Baghdad, Abu Hanifa, but three other mosques were attacked by gunmen and rocket propelled grenades. One bystander, a street vendor, was reported killed.
The unrest has brought thousands of Shia Muslims onto the streets. In Baghdad’s Sadr City, thousands of protesters, some brandishing machine guns, marched and shouted anti-American slogans. In Diwaniyah, a Shia city south of Baghdad, clerics told people to demonstrate. Shops closed and Iraqi police said the town had come to a standstill.
Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, called the attack a "blatant and despicable attempt by terrorists to ignite civil strife" and asked Iraq's Shias to keep calm.
"This is a most shocking outrage against a holy shrine of the Shia community so all of us have to understand the anger when such spoliation [sic], such defilement, takes place," he said.
The Askariya shrine and mosque, which attracts thousands of pilgrims from across the Muslim world every year, is said to hold the bodies of the 10th and 11th Shia imams, Ali al-Hadi and Hassan al-Askari, both direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
The shrine also marks the location where Al-Askari's son, the twelfth and "hidden" Shia imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi, is held to have disappeared in 878. Al-Mahdi is believed to have gone into hiding under the shrine and Shias maintain that he will return one day to banish sin and divide truth from falsehood.
Celebrated for its simplicity of design and thousands upon thousands of gold and blue tiles, the shrine, a dome flanked by two golden minarets, was retaken by Iraqi special forces in October 2004 in the first major joint US and Iraqi offensive on an insurgent stronghold. The dome was built in 1905.