Bloody Day In Iraq Leaves 79 Dead
Blood stained the chipped and crumbling floor next to a red prayer rug and spattered the dingy white walls of a nearby corridor, where a cupboard and plates lay shattered.
Rescuers raced to and from the Shiite mosque, ferrying bodies from the walled compound on blood-soaked wooden pushcarts and loading them on the beds of pickup trucks.
It was the deadliest attack this year in Iraq: Suicide bombers, one dressed as a woman, blasted worshippers as they left the Buratha mosque after Friday prayers, killing at least 79 people and wounding more than 160.
Five hospitals were overwhelmed, and Iraqi TV stations called for anyone who could, to give blood. Authorities had warned of possible attacks today – from up to seven car bombs, CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports.
Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, the mosque's preacher, accused Sunni politicians and clerics of waging "a campaign of distortions and lies against the Buratha mosque, claiming that it has Sunni prisoners and mass graves of Sunnis."
"Shiites are the ones who are targeted as part of this dirty sectarian war waged against them as the world watches silently," he told Al-Arabiya television. Al-Sagheer is one of the leading politicians in the country, where sectarian violence has stalled the political process.
Friday's horrific explosions were likely to stoke the already raw tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. The U.S. ambassador warned in an interview published Friday that civil war in Iraq could enflame the entire Middle East.
One top U.S. official told CBS News the country is so tense, all it would take is just one or two more attacks like this one and then calls for calm may get drowned out by a bloody free-for-all, Dozier reports.
Mainstream Sunni politicians condemned the bombings, calling on all religious and political leaders to come together in the interest of national unity.
"Bloodshed is forbidden," Sunni lawmaker Adnan al-Dulaimi told Iraqi television.
In other developments:
Police said there were two suicide bombings at the mosque, and an Associated Press photographer saw evidence of two blasts, one at the outer wall surrounding the compound and another at the entrance to the mosque building. The blast in the entrance likely killed some worshippers inside.
But al-Sagheer said there were three bombings. One assailant came through the women's security checkpoint and blew up first, he said.
The preacher, who was not injured, said another raced into the mosque's courtyard while a third tried to enter his office before they both detonated their explosives.
The attack occurred as worshippers left Friday prayers, the main weekly religious service. Several hours earlier, the Interior Ministry warned the public to avoid crowds near mosques and markets because of a car bomb threat.
Bits of clothing and remains of the victims lay along the outer courtyard wall, along with pictures of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's leading Shiite figure.
Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi, who gave the casualty figures, said one of the suicide attackers wore a black abaya, the full-length robe worn by devout Muslim women. He said police were unsure whether the attacker was a man wearing a woman's robe to conceal explosives.
At the compound's entrance, the AP photographer saw a leg and most of the head of what appeared to be one of the bombers. The skull had long hair and the leg was thin, and the photographer thought it was the remains of a woman.
The attack on the mosque was the second in as many days against a Shiite religious site. On Thursday, a car bomb exploded about 300 yards from the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf, killing 10 people. Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, is the most sacred city in Iraq for Shiite Muslims.
No group claimed responsibility for either attack, although suspicion fell on Sunni extremists responsible for numerous bombings against Shiite civilians. The Buratha mosque is affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic in Iraq, the country's main Shiite party. The party said the attacks were part of "a war of annihilation" against Shiites.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad warned that Iraq faced the possibility of sectarian civil war that could engulf the Middle East.
"That's a possibility if we don't do everything we can to make this country work," he said. "What's happening here has huge implications for the region and the world."
The ambassador said the best way to prevent such a conflict was to form a government including representatives of all groups. However, those efforts have stalled over Sunni and Kurdish opposition to the Shiite candidate to lead the government, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
Al-Jaafari has refused to step aside, and his Shiite coalition has been reluctant to reconsider his nomination for fear of splintering the alliance. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw flew to Baghdad last weekend to urge the Iraqis to speed up government talks in a move widely seen as an effort to pressure out al-Jaafari.
During a sermon Friday, radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Jaafari's strongest supporter, accused the Americans of "interference in Iraqi affairs," which he termed "a violation of Islam."
"The visit by Rice and Straw has complicated things in Iraq," Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told the AP. "The visit had a negative impact on this issue because al-Jaafari supporters are now saying that the Americans are interfering in a purely Iraqi issue."