BAGHDAD, 15 June 2007 — Three Sunni mosques were torched and mortar bombs hit Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone yesterday, police said, despite curfews imposed after suspected Al-Qaeda militants hit a Shiite mosque.
Thousands of Iraqi and US soldiers were on the streets of Baghdad and other cities trying to enforce the curfews that were imposed after Wednesday’s bombing, blamed on Al-Qaeda, felled the two golden minarets of Samarra’s Al-Askaria Mosque.
Police said more than a dozen mortar rounds hit the Green Zone, home to Iraq’s Parliament and the US Embassy, causing some casualties.
A resident at the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone said one mortar round fell in the hotel courtyard, killing one employee and wounding several. The hotel is home to some members of Parliament, journalists and foreign contractors.
The mortars fell while US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was in a nearby building discussing the Iraq government’s efforts to meet key political targets set by Washington and aimed at promoting national reconciliation.
Separately, an Iraqi Al-Qaeda-led group said it had killed 14 army and police personnel after a deadline expired.
A video posted on the Internet showed a masked man shooting the kneeling, handcuffed men in the head.
An attack on Samarra’s Al-Askaria Mosque in February 2006 unleashed waves of sectarian violence in which tens of thousands of people were killed, tipping Iraq close to all-out civil war between majority Shiites and minority Sunni Arabs. The latest Samarra attack, condemned as barbarous by US President George W. Bush, immediately raised fears of similar retaliatory violence, but there has so far not been a repeat of the widespread killings of 2006.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki blamed security guards for the bombing of the Samarra mosque and said they will be punished. “The guards present there had a role in this attack and they will be punished,” Maliki told reporters during his visit to Samarra on Wednesday that was broadcast by Al-Iraqiya TV yesterday.
“Anyone who is involved or participated or played any role in this brutal crime will be punished,” he said, adding that the government was close to signing a contract to rebuild the shrine before it was bombed.
The streets of Samarra were quiet yesterday, but there was a grim mood as Iraqi soldiers fanned out around the mainly Sunni city. Residents said military snipers could be seen on rooftops.
Police said unidentified gunmen yesterday attacked the Al-Mustafa and Huteen mosques in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, where the Sunni Grand Mosque was destroyed Wednesday. The Al-Bashir Mosque in nearby Mahaweel was also attacked.
Despite the curfews, thousands of supporters of Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr took to the streets of Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City slum in noisy but peaceful protests. Protests were also staged in southern Najaf and Basra.
