Shiite Shrine in Samarra Is Hit Again

The Askariya shrine, which dates from the 10th century, contains the tombs of two revered 9th-century Shiite imams and is one of the four most revered mosques in Iraq.

No group asserted responsibility for the Feb. 22, 2006, bombing, which was a seminal moment in the four-year Iraq conflict, accelerating the country's disintegration and pushing it toward civil war. Iraqi officials blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Immediately after that attack, Shiite death squads increased their killings, dumping hundreds of mutilated bodies, mostly Sunnis, around the capital. More than 100 Sunni mosques were damaged in reprisals. Tens of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites were driven from their homes in bouts of ethnic cleansing. Numerous Shiites were driven from Samarra, and it now is almost exclusively Sunni.

Wednesday's destruction of the shrine's two minarets appeared to have been caused by explosive charges placed at their bases.

"We heard the first explosion, and when we turned around to see what happened, another explosion took place in the second minaret," Abu Abdullah, who lives near the shrine, said in a telephone interview. "To lose the shrine hurt us a lot and made us afraid about what will happen next." No one was injured in the blasts.

Maliki, in a visit to the shrine complex late Wednesday, said security forces responsible for guarding the site may have been involved in the attack. The mosque has been heavily guarded by Iraqi troops since the destruction of its dome.

Iraqi law enforcement officials said the 15-man unit responsible for defending the mosque, from the 3rd Battalion of the Salahuddin Provincial Police, had been detained.

The complex had two security forces on Wednesday -- one from Tikrit responsible for an outer ring of defenses, and the other, from the government's Facilities Protection Services, which was responsible for the site itself, according to a U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver.

But witnesses interviewed by The Washington Post said a special unit of commandos, apparently from Baghdad, arrived at the mosque Tuesday night.

"The shrine was guarded by a police force mostly from Tikrit, but yesterday around 6 p.m. a police commando force came from Baghdad and pushed the police force that was guarding the shrine away and took their place," Mahmood al-Samaraie, 42, who lives near the mosque, said in a telephone interview. "In fact, some disagreement and fighting between the two forces took place, because the previous force did not want to leave their position, but later they had to."

Garver said U.S. forces were helping the Iraqi government investigate the attack. Although there were U.S. troops in the region, he said, "the security for the shrine itself is an Iraqi responsibility."

In a separate development, Sunni tribal leaders met in Ramadi on Wednesday to discuss forming a new tribal coalition in Anbar province that could challenge an existing group, the Anbar Salvation Council, that the U.S. military has relied on to combat al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Raad Sabah al-Alwani, a leader of the council, which was formed last year, said he considered the creation of the new group an attempt to seize power from the organization.

"They came recently from Jordan and Syria and the other countries, they are not like us," he said. "We suffered and founded this council, and we fought al-Qaeda. They want to come and, after all these efforts, they want to take our place."

Since the U.S. military began its formal cooperation with tribal leaders, violence has dropped dramatically in the province. A leader in the move to create a rival organization, Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman, criticized council members for relying too heavily on Americans and for using the partnership for personal gain.

Maj. Jeffrey Pool, a U.S. Marine spokesman in Anbar, said in an e-mail that if "the Anbar Salvation Council would dissolve that does not mean this would be an anti Coalition action by the tribes." The council, he added, "will hopefully dissolve because it outlived its usefulness, which was to fight al-Qaeda."

Special correspondents Muhanned Saif Aldin in Samarra, K.I. Ibrahim and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad, and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.