BASRA, Iraq, 16 June 2007 — Assailants pretending to be a film crew destroyed a Sunni shrine near the southern Iraqi city of Basra yesterday as militants carried out more revenge attacks for the bombing of a Shiite shrine. The US military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of five more soldiers taking its losses already this month to 36.
The shrine of Talha bin Obeidallah in the town of Zubair, west of overwhelmingly Shiite Basra, was destroyed at dawn, an Iraqi army officer told AFP. “A group of people carrying a camera arrived at the Talha bin Obeidallah shrine at 6:00 a.m. (0200 GMT),” said Maj. Gen. Ali Mussawi. “They said they wanted to film the mosque. But they went about planting bombs around it. “The structure is completely destroyed,” he said, adding that the shrine’s security guards had been detained for questioning.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki condemned the terrorist act and ordered an indefinite curfew imposed on British-patrolled Basra from 4:00 p.m. (1200 GMT) to prevent any further tit-for-tat violence. “The terrorist act which targeted the shrine came as part of a series of crimes aimed at inflaming sectarian passions among the sons of the country,” the Shiite premier said in a statement.
Several Sunni mosques have been attacked in tit-for-tat violence since Wednesday’s bombing of the Shiite Al-Askari shrine in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
The five more deaths announced by the US military took its losses since the 2003 invasion to 3,512, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
A joint Iraqi and US team, meanwhile, raided the office of the movement of Moqtada Al-Sadr in the town of Suwaira, southeast of Baghdad, police Lt. Najim Abdullah said.
“A team of Iraqi and US forces raided Sadr’s office in the town. There was an exchange of fire in which two militants were killed,” Abdullah said.
