Iraq slides towards civil war

Shiites vow to get revenge for the attack on the Golden Mosque. Picture / Reuters

BAGHDAD - Iraq is edging closer to outright civil war as furious mobs attack Sunni mosques in retaliation for the bombing of one of the country's most revered Shiite shrines.

Forty-seven people were killed in Baghdad alone in the 24 hours after the blasts which destroyed the golden-domed mosque at Samarra.

Gunmen sprayed a Sunni mosque in the city of Baquba, killing one person, in the latest of dozens of incidents that have left religious and political leaders scrambling to halt a descent into all-out civil war. In the same city, a bomb targeting an Iraqi army foot patrol killed 12 people and wounded 21.

Last night, an Interior Ministry source said all leave for police and army personnel had been cancelled and extended curfew hours imposed in Baghdad.

President Jalal Talabani summoned leaders of all sides to a summit in a bid to avert disaster.

In Samarra, three journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were found shot dead after being attacked while filming in the city, scene of the bloodless but highly symbolic bombing of the Golden Mosque.

Hazim al-Naimi, a political scientist at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University, said: "For the Shiites ... this is a major assault comparable to an attack on Mecca for all Muslims."

In one apparent reprisal, men in police uniform seized 12 Sunni rebel suspects, including two Egyptians, from a prison in the mainly Shiite city of Basra and killed 11.

In all, at least 90 Sunni mosques were attacked and three Sunni religious leaders killed.

In central Baghdad, a a veiled woman said she saw assailants throw grenades at the Sunni mosque and then set it alight.

United States President George W. Bush, whose diplomats and military commanders are pressing Shiite leaders to accept Sunnis in a national unity Government after they took part in an election in December, urged Iraqis not to rise to the bait of what American and Iraqi officials called an al Qaeda attempt to fuel civil strife.

"Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists sought to achieve," he said as 130,000 US troops stood by to back up Iraq's new security forces.

The United Nations Security Council, rarely able to find a common voice on Iraq since its bitter divisions over the US invasion in 2003 which ousted Saddam Hussein, sounded a note of alarm in calling on Iraqis to rally behind a non-sectarian Government and show restraint and unity.