SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters):
A DAWN bomb attack wrecked a major Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra yesterday, sparking protests, some of them violent, and forcing an urgent government appeal to avoid sectarian reprisals.
Some Sunni mosques were damaged in revenge attacks, Shi'ite militiamen posted themselves on streets and Iraq's senior Shi'ite cleric called for peaceful protests.
The Iraqi president said the attackers wanted to derail efforts to form a national unity government. Iraq's national security adviser accused al-Qaida-inspired Sunni militants of blasting the Shi'ite shrine to foment civil war.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Gunmen burst into Samarra's Golden Mosque, one of Iraq's four holiest Shi'ite sites, and used explosives to bring down its 100-year-old gilded dome, among the biggest in the Muslim world, senior officials said. No casualties were reported.
An aerial photograph released by the United States military showed the 20-metre - (33-foot) wide dome reduced to a shell of brown masonry and twisted iron, with nearby buildings also wrecked.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said the attackers wore police uniforms, tied up the mosque guards and set the charges.
National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, a Shi'ite, who blamed the attack on al-Qaida, told state television 10 suspects had been arrested. "They will fail to draw the Iraqi people into civil war as they have failed in the past," he said.
As gunmen attacked Sunni mosques, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shi'ite, declared three days of mourning and called for Muslim unity. He said the interim government had sent sent officials to Samarra, 100 km (60 km) north of Baghdad.
CITY SEALED OFF
Security forces sealed off the mainly Sunni city and police said they had fired over demonstrators' heads at one point as they chanted religious and anti-American slogans.
Iraqi troops patrolled streets in the Sunni Baghdad district of Aadhamiya. The Defence Ministry said it was considering deploying troops to prevent clashes between rival communities. The U.S. military said its forces had taken no special action.
Top Sunni political leader Adnan al-Dulaimi urged Jaafari to impose a curfew to protect Sunnis and accused Shi'ite gunmen of killing a Sunni cleric in Baghdad.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, powerful leader of the Shi'ite SCIRI party, which has its own armed wing, said: "The great Iraqi people will not keep silent over this grave crime."
The leading Sunni religious body also condemned the attack, as did Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd.
In the mainly Shi'ite city of Basra, police said gunmen fired on the office of the main Sunni political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party. Witnesses said rocket-propelled grenades damaged a Sunni mosque in the city. A Reuters reporter said Sunni and Shi'ite gunmen were trading heavy fire.
Police said an Iraqi Islamic Party office was burned on the outskirts of Baghdad.
Gunmen fired on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's Ghazaliya district and burned its gate, police and witnesses said. A Sunni clerical group said three Baghdad mosques were fired on. A Sunni cleric said rocket-propelled grenades hit mosques in the eastern area of Baladiyat. Iraqi troops prevented journalists reaching the scene. Some similar reports turned out to be false.
SHI'ITE PROTESTS
Thousands of people marched in Shi'ite towns across the country and through the capital, condemning the Samarra attack.
Black-clad militiamen of the Mehdi Army, loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, were out in force in Shi'ite strongholds like Sadr City in Baghdad and the southern city of Samawa.
In nearby Diwaniya, a local government official said a Mehdi militiaman was killed in clashes with Sunni residents. Some shopkeepers closed their stores for the mourning period.
U.S. officials, most recently ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Monday, are pressing Jaafari to form a cabinet with support across the nation to avert the threat of a civil war that could thwart Washington's efforts to withdraw its 130,000 troops.
Jaafari angrily dismissed the envoy's intervention.
Sunni rebels are strong in Samarra and there have been attacks recently on Shi'ite pilgrims visiting the shrine to the revered 9th-century Imam Ali al-Hadi and his son, Imam Hassan al-Askari. Shi'ite Web sites said relics of the buried imams, including a helmet and shield, were damaged in the explosions.
In the holy city of Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, revered by millions of Shi'ites and a key force for restraint in the face of Sunni insurgent attacks, made a rare call for protests and declared seven days of mourning.
He insisted in a statement, however, that there must be no violence and in particular no reprisals against Sunni mosques.
Outside his office, where Sistani was meeting his most senior colleagues, 2,000 demonstrators chanted: "Rise up Shi'ites! Shi'ites take revenge! Rise up Shi'ites!"
"For the Shi'ites ... this is a major assault comparable to an attack on Mecca for all Muslims," said Hazim al-Naimi, a political science professor at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University.
"We will definitely see more sectarianism after this attack ... It could push the country closer to civil war."
Smaller protests erupted elsewhere and shopkeepers in some Shi'ite areas closed their stores for the mourning period.
Sectarian attacks by the likes of al Qaeda, led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on Shi'ite gatherings including suicide bombings that killed 170 people at a Shi'ite festival in 2004 have failed to spark all-out reprisals, although Sunnis accuse the Shi'ite-led government of condoning police death squads.
The symbolic attack on the shrine appeared to spark greater violent outrage than the many attacks on Shi'ite worshippers.
Ordinary Shi'ites were dismayed by the violence: "Whoever did this are not human beings. They are less than animals," said Wuroud Kathim, 29, a computer specialist, in central Baghdad.
Wednesday's attack followed bombings in Baghdad on the two previous days that killed 40 people and broke a month's lull.
