Would this surprise anyone?
London, Feb. 24 ? The London-based Arabic-language website Elaph carried a report suggesting that Iran?s notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security may have been behind Wednesday?s bombing of a holy Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, which destroyed the golden dome of the Askariyain shrine, the resting place of two revered Shiite Imams.
On Friday, several prominent Sunni Muslim groups in Iraq pointed the finger at Iran for being involved in attacks on more than 150 Sunni mosques across Iraq in an attempt to flare sectarian divisions in the country.
The deputy governor of Saladin Province, where Samarra is situated, announced that the attackers were wearing Iraqi Interior Ministry uniforms. Iraq?s Interior Minister, a senior official in the Iran-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has been stripped of his authority after United States forces discovered that he was running secret torture chambers in collusion with Iran?s intelligence ministry.
The Iraqi National Accord party, headed by former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, accused the pro-Iran Shiite coalition United Iraqi Alliance and the followers of the firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr of carrying out revenge attacks on Sunni mosques during which over 100 people were left dead.
The Iraqi Islamic Party had a similar position. The party?s secretary general Tareq al-Hashemi told the al-Arabia satellite channel on Thursday, ?The Shiite coalition and the followers of Sadr as well as their foreign supporters are behind this aggression?.
Meanwhile the curfew that was put into effect along with calls from various leaders for calm seem to be working somewhat:
BAGHDAD, Iraq? ? Religious leaders summoned Iraq’s Shiites and Sunnis to joint prayer services Friday amid an extraordinary daytime curfew aimed at halting a wave of sectarian violence that has killed nearly 130 people since the bombing of one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines.
Police and soldiers blocked major roads and surrounded Baghdad’s two main Sunni mosques as streets throughout this city of nearly 7 million emptied of people and traffic. The nation stood on the brink of civil war and the American strategy in Iraq faced its gravest test since the 2003 invasion.
Despite the curfew, a large crowd attended Friday prayers at Baghdad’s Abu Hanifa mosque, the city’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.
Residents in Samarra, where the shrine bombing took place Wednesday, were instructed over loudspeakers to stay indoors “until further notice.” Many planned to attend a joint Shiite-Sunni prayer service at the Askariya shrine, whose famed golden dome was reduced to a pile of rubble.
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.
The extraordinary measures helped curb ? but did not eliminate ? the violence.
It sure appears that outside influences are behind these retailations and it would sure wouldn’t surprise me that Iran is behind this.
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I’m not surprised at all. I said the minute it happened, it was Iran and their thugs that have somehow been allowed to spread their evil BS in Iraq. I don’t see the She’at’s as being the victim in this at all. They have allowed the devil into their midst, now they have to pay for it.