Iraqi President: Danger Of Civil War

(CBS/AP)  Insurgents detonated bombs inside one of Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines Wednesday, destroying its golden dome and triggering more than 90 reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. The president warned that extremists were pushing the country toward civil war.

With the gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine reduced to rubble, leaders on both sides called for calm and many Shiites lashed out at the United States as partly to blame.

But the string of back-and-forth attacks seemed to push Iraq closer to all-out civil war than at any point in the three years since the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

"We are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq's unity," said President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. "We should all stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of a civil war."

CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier said that for Shiite Muslims, who make up two-thirds of Iraq, the attack is a declaration of war on their entire way of life.

The attack "could do more to drive the country toward civil war than all the suicide bombings against the Shiite community combined," Dozier reports.

"I think the violence will continue," CBS News Middle East Consultant Fouad Ajami said. "Alas we have learned not to believe that deliverance is around the corner. We are at the end of year three of this war and every hope that the violence has subside, has been betrayed."

In other recent developments:

In Basra, police said militiamen broke into a prison, hauled out 12 inmates, including two Egyptians, two Tunisians, a Libyan, a Saudi and a Turk, and shot them dead in reprisal for the shrine attack.

The head of the de-Baathification commission, to rid government of senior members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, said he escaped assassination in a drive-by-shooting Wednesday. Ali al-Lami said his two-car convoy was attacked by gunmen in a speeding car on a highway in eastern Baghdad. His driver was killed in the shooting, he said.

The court trying ousted President Saddam Hussein and seven members of his regime said Wednesday that their lawyers will be allowed back to defend their clients, reversing a decision taken after they walked out of the trial last month. The entire legal team left in protest Jan. 29, accusing chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman of bias against Saddam. Judge Raid Juhi gave no reason for the decision, but said the lawyers must get in touch with the court before attending the next session on Tuesday.

Reporters Without Borders said it was launching a weeklong international campaign for the release of kidnapped American reporter Jill Carroll and two abducted Iraqi journalists, Rim Zeid and Marwan Khazaal. Carroll's kidnappers have set Sunday as the new deadline for meeting their demands, which have not been publicized yet.

President Bush pledged American help to restore the mosque after the bombing north of Baghdad, which dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to keep Iraq from falling deeper into sectarian violence.

"The terrorists in Iraq have again proven that they are enemies of all faiths and of all humanity," Bush said. "The world must stand united against them, and steadfast behind the people of Iraq."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair also condemned the bombing and pledged funds toward the shrine's reconstruction.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, called the attack a deliberate attempt to foment sectarian strife and warned it was a "critical moment for Iraq."

No one was reported injured in the bombing of the shrine in Samarra.

But at least 18 people, including three Sunni clerics, were killed in the reprisal attacks that followed, mainly in Baghdad and predominantly Shiite provinces to the south, according to the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni political group.

Major Sunni groups joined in condemning the attack, and a leading Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation "before it spins out of control."

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