Mideast edition, Thursday, June 21, 2007
Fighting in Samarra — where an attack last week destroyed the minarets of a revered Shiite shrine — has continued, as sectarian warfare appears to be ramping up once again.
Some 2,000 additional Iraqi security forces had been brought into Samarra after the mosque attack on June 13.
Earlier this week, gunmen attacked an Iraqi police outpost about two miles from the Askariya mosque. The attackers used small-arms fire and a suicide car bomb, U.S. military officials said. Two Iraqi national policeman were wounded in the attacks, officials said, though no other information was available.
“This [attack] demonstrates total lack of respect for the Askariya Mosque in light of its recent attack,” Col. Bryan Owens, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, was quoted as saying in a press release. “The policemen injured were dedicated to protecting the mosque from any future attacks.”
On Wednesday, two Sunni mosques south of Baghdad were heavily damaged by bomb attacks. Those were apparently in retaliation to a devastating suicide truck bomb that destroyed a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing nearly 90 people and wounding hundreds of others.
U.S. military officials have said they are hopeful the sectarian violence will not spread, as it did in February 2006 after the first Askariya attack. Shiite clerics, including Muqtada al-Sadr, have called for restraint, but officials see signs that those calls are losing their bite.
Al-Sadr called for a three-day mourning period after the mosque blast. Military officials have said the peace largely held during that time, but are wary of the days ahead.
In Sadr City, the sprawling Shiite district in East Baghdad named for al-Sadr’s father, troops have reported several attacks against the joint security station there. The JSS is the only permanent U.S. military presence in Sadr City, which has been a power base for al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.
Troops also reported that, in one incident, an Iraqi contractor working at the JSS was abducted and then later shot and killed in daylight hours in the middle of Sadr City.
