Iraqi Clerics Appeal For Calm
Iraqi religious figures sought to calm passions and pull the nation from the brink of civil war after the bombing of a Shiite shrine two days ago and a wave of deadly reprisal attacks. Iraq's most influential Shiite political leader called Friday for Sunni-Shiite unity.
An extraordinary daytime curfew in Baghdad and three nearby provinces appeared to have blunted the wave of attacks on Sunni mosques that followed Wednesday's bombing which destroyed the golden dome of the Shiite Askariya shrine in Samarra.
The curfew is an attempt by the Iraqi government to put a lid on Shiite-on-Sunni violence, reports
. There was more killing overnight: At least a dozen Iraqis turned up dead in Baghdad Friday morning, including six who had been handcuffed and shot execution style. But that's a fraction of the hundred or so killed the day before, so the security crackdown seems to be working — for now.Still, Iraqis feared that the two days of violence which followed the Samarra attack had pushed the country closer to sectarian civil war than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion nearly three years ago.
In other developments:
Several joint Sunni-Shiite prayer services were announced for Friday, including one at the Askariya shrine. But security forces turned away about 700 people, virtually all of them Sunnis, who showed up for the service.
In a statement read over national television, top Shiite leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said those who carried out the Wednesday bombing at the Askariya shrine in Samarra "do not represent the Sunnis in Iraq."
Al-Hakim instead blamed Saddam Hussein loyalists and followers of al Qaeda in Iraq boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"We all have to unite in order to eliminate them," al-Hakim said in a statement. "This is what al-Zarqawi is working for, that is, to ignite a sectarian strife in the country," he added. "We call for self-restraint and not to be dragged by the plots of the enemy of Iraq."
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad acknowledged the danger facing Iraq — and the U.S. strategy for disengaging from this country. But he also said this was also a "moment of opportunity" for Iraq.
"This tragedy can be used to bring people together," Khalilzad told reporters.
"What will determine whether it turns into a civil war or not is what the clerics decide to do, not what the government of Iraq decides to do or what the United States military does,"
said on CBS News' The Early Show. "The people who are in control and who have power over the people are the clerics on both sides, the Sunnis and Shias."The clerics calling for restraint is a good sign, says Mitchell.
"As long as they maintain that stance of calling for restraint, I don't think you'll see any type of all-out civil war," the retired Army colonel said.
Late Thursday, Iraqi state television announced an extension of the nighttime curfew until 4 p.m. Friday in Baghdad and the nearby provinces of Diyala, Babil and Salaheddin, where the shrine bombing took place. But security forces permitted worshippers to walk to mosque for midday prayers.
A large crowd attended Friday prayers at Baghdad's Abu Hanifa mosque, Baghdad'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.
There was also little sign of the curfew in Baghdad's teaming Shiite slum, Sadr City, where armed militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have been out in force since Wednesday's attack. Iraqi police found six bodies handcuffed and shot near a parking lot in the area, the Interior Ministry said.
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 security measures helped curb — but not eliminate — the violence.