Americans destroy Samarra's Islamic Shirne in Iraq
Americans destroy Samarra's Islamic Shirne in Iraq
Iraqi town struggles under curfew
Food and fuel supplies are reportedly running out in the central Iraqi city of Samarra because of a curfew imposed after an insurgent attack 12 days ago.
Four babies are said to have died in the city's hospital because of a lack of fuel to power their incubators. Two elderly patients have also died.
Residents have called on US and Iraqi troops to end the restrictions and allow humanitarian aid into the city.
But only some aid deliveries have been allowed through after intense searches.
One Iraqi Red Crescent worker from the nearby town of Tikrit said that three of his organisation's trucks had been turned away.
"The humanitarian situation in Samarra is terrible," he said.
'Collective punishment'
The restrictions began on 6 May after a bomb attack killed 12 police officers, including the police chief, Abd al-Jalil al-Dulaimi.
US and Iraqi forces responded by encircling the mainly Sunni Arab city, blocking off entrances with concrete slabs and sand bags.
These kind of military actions are an act of collective punishment on the city's inhabitants and cause deeper hardship for people
Doctors for Iraq
They then extended the hours of a curfew for the 300,000 residents and imposed very strict restrictions on the movement of people and goods into the city.
The problems caused by dwindling supplies of food and medicine were further exacerbated by the failure of the city's power grid and main water supply, which were both damaged by the bombing.
An Iraqi humanitarian group, Doctors for Iraq, said it was gravely concerned by the situation in Samarra.
"Doctors for Iraq condemns in the strongest terms any activities that prevent civilians from accessing healthcare or humanitarian assistance by all actors engaged in the conflict," it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group called for an immediate lifting of the access restrictions, which it said amounted to "an act of collective punishment", and for local NGOs and health workers to be allowed into the city as soon as possible.
The governor of Salahuddin Province said he would do what he could to end the crisis as soon as possible.
A spokesman for the US military in Iraq admitted the security measures had "made living very difficult", but said the local authorities had imposed them because of the risk of attacks by insurgents.
http://tinyurl.com/24jr2s
Remnants of Samarra Shiite Shrine Destroyed
The Washington Post Wednesday,
June 13, 2007; 6:12 AM
By John Ward Anderson and Muhanned Saif Aldin Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, June 13 -- Early morning blasts Wednesday destroyed two minarets at the same Shiite shrine in Samarra where an attack last year demolished the mosque's gilded dome and plunged the country into a wave of deadly sectarian violence.
The 9 a.m. explosions at the revered Askariya shrine in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, is the sort of event that could spark a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. U.S. officials have long worried that a major attack in Iraq could lead to uncontrollable bloodletting and undo recent gains in reducing violence made by the addition of thousands of extra U.S. troops stationed at high-profile posts on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere.
The Feb. 22, 2006 attack on the shrine -- often referred to as the Golden Mosque because of its brilliant golden dome -- was a seminal moment in the four-year Iraq war, sparking a vicious cycle of bloodshed that has never fully stopped. In the 16 months since, thousands of Iraqis -- and perhaps tens of thousands -- have been killed in Sunni-Shiite fighting.
Immediately after the attack, Shiite death squads accelerated their killings, dumping thousands of mutilated bodies -- most of them Sunnis Arabs -- around the capital. More than 100 Sunni mosques were damaged in counter strikes. Tens of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites were driven from their homes in bouts of ethnic cleansing, including in Samarra, which was always predominantly Sunni, but which is now almost exclusively so.
Fearing a backlash from the latest attack, the Iraqi government imposed an indefinite curfew across Baghdad starting 3 p.m. Wednesday. There were no immediate reports of retaliatory violence, and no reports that anyone was injured in the attack at the shrine.
"This is a terrorist attack that is aimed at inciting sectarian crisis, and it is the work of a foreign agenda whose aim is to stoke sectarian strife, instability and a collapse of the political process," said Hussein Al Musawi, spokesman for the Shiite Political Council, an umbrella group of Shiite political parties.
"There is an obvious failure on the part of the Iraqi security forces, and the multinationals, to guard these shrines and to deal the terrorists groups a blow, and to strike with an iron fist against the terrorists."
No one ever asserted responsibility for the earlier attack on the shrine. The blast was blamed on the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which over the years has launched attacks on both Shiite and Sunni targets in an effort to fuel religious battles and push the country into civil war.
In response to Wednesday's attack, the entire Iraqi security force responsible for guarding the mosque, the 3rd Battalion of the Salahaddin Province police, was detained for investigation, Iraqi law enforcement officials said. The collapse of the 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 next to the shrine, said in a telephone interview. "The Askariya shrine means a lot to us, the people of Samarra," Abdullah said, noting that even though it was a Shiite shrine, Sunnis had always respected it. "To lose the shrine hurt us a lot, and made us afraid about what will happen next. Someone wants to create sectarian strife by doing this act."
After Wednesday's explosions, Iraqi security forces patrolled the city, firing in the air and announcing the curfew from loudspeakers mounted on jeeps. In Baghdad and elsewhere, Shiite mosques broadcast calls for demonstrations.
In a sign of the sectarian tensions quickly provoked by the incident, members of the Iraqi security forces, which are dominated by Shiites, yelled threats at Samarra residents, blaming them for the destruction of the mosque and threatening revenge. Some citizens, meanwhile, hurled remarks back, asking how anyone could destroy the minarets when the entire religious complex was being so carefully guarded by Iraqi security forces.
The mosque, one of the four most revered in Iraq, has been heavily guarded by Iraqi troops ever since the destruction of its gilded dome in the 2006 attack.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for peaceful demonstrations and a three-day mourning period to mark the minarets' destruction, the Associated Press reported. The wire service said Sadr appeared to be taking a conciliatory stance by saying that that no Sunni Arab could have been responsible for the attack.
"We declare a three-day mourning period . . . and shout Allahu Akbar (God is greater) from Sunni and Shiite mosques," Sadr said in the statement.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said that U.S. forces were assisting the Iraqi government in responding to the attack and had provided a team to help assess the damage. Although there were U.S. troops in the region, he said, "The security for the shrine itself is an Iraqi responsibility."
U.S. forces also were closely monitoring the reaction to the attack, Garver said. "It may incite another round of sectarian violence, or it may be a case of two steps forward, one step back," like is often the case in efforts to bring better security to Iraq, he said.
Anderson reported from Baghdad, Saif from Samarra. K.I. Ibrahim and Naseer Nouri also contributed to this report from Baghdad.
(yahoo.group)
Iraqi town struggles under curfew
Food and fuel supplies are reportedly running out in the central Iraqi city of Samarra because of a curfew imposed after an insurgent attack 12 days ago.
Four babies are said to have died in the city's hospital because of a lack of fuel to power their incubators. Two elderly patients have also died.
Residents have called on US and Iraqi troops to end the restrictions and allow humanitarian aid into the city.
But only some aid deliveries have been allowed through after intense searches.
One Iraqi Red Crescent worker from the nearby town of Tikrit said that three of his organisation's trucks had been turned away.
"The humanitarian situation in Samarra is terrible," he said.
'Collective punishment'
The restrictions began on 6 May after a bomb attack killed 12 police officers, including the police chief, Abd al-Jalil al-Dulaimi.
US and Iraqi forces responded by encircling the mainly Sunni Arab city, blocking off entrances with concrete slabs and sand bags.
These kind of military actions are an act of collective punishment on the city's inhabitants and cause deeper hardship for people
Doctors for Iraq
They then extended the hours of a curfew for the 300,000 residents and imposed very strict restrictions on the movement of people and goods into the city.
The problems caused by dwindling supplies of food and medicine were further exacerbated by the failure of the city's power grid and main water supply, which were both damaged by the bombing.
An Iraqi humanitarian group, Doctors for Iraq, said it was gravely concerned by the situation in Samarra.
"Doctors for Iraq condemns in the strongest terms any activities that prevent civilians from accessing healthcare or humanitarian assistance by all actors engaged in the conflict," it said in a statement on Wednesday.
The group called for an immediate lifting of the access restrictions, which it said amounted to "an act of collective punishment", and for local NGOs and health workers to be allowed into the city as soon as possible.
The governor of Salahuddin Province said he would do what he could to end the crisis as soon as possible.
A spokesman for the US military in Iraq admitted the security measures had "made living very difficult", but said the local authorities had imposed them because of the risk of attacks by insurgents.
http://tinyurl.com/24jr2s
Remnants of Samarra Shiite Shrine Destroyed
The Washington Post Wednesday,
June 13, 2007; 6:12 AM
By John Ward Anderson and Muhanned Saif Aldin Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, June 13 -- Early morning blasts Wednesday destroyed two minarets at the same Shiite shrine in Samarra where an attack last year demolished the mosque's gilded dome and plunged the country into a wave of deadly sectarian violence.
The 9 a.m. explosions at the revered Askariya shrine in Samarra, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, is the sort of event that could spark a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. U.S. officials have long worried that a major attack in Iraq could lead to uncontrollable bloodletting and undo recent gains in reducing violence made by the addition of thousands of extra U.S. troops stationed at high-profile posts on the streets of Baghdad and elsewhere.
The Feb. 22, 2006 attack on the shrine -- often referred to as the Golden Mosque because of its brilliant golden dome -- was a seminal moment in the four-year Iraq war, sparking a vicious cycle of bloodshed that has never fully stopped. In the 16 months since, thousands of Iraqis -- and perhaps tens of thousands -- have been killed in Sunni-Shiite fighting.
Immediately after the attack, Shiite death squads accelerated their killings, dumping thousands of mutilated bodies -- most of them Sunnis Arabs -- around the capital. More than 100 Sunni mosques were damaged in counter strikes. Tens of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites were driven from their homes in bouts of ethnic cleansing, including in Samarra, which was always predominantly Sunni, but which is now almost exclusively so.
Fearing a backlash from the latest attack, the Iraqi government imposed an indefinite curfew across Baghdad starting 3 p.m. Wednesday. There were no immediate reports of retaliatory violence, and no reports that anyone was injured in the attack at the shrine.
"This is a terrorist attack that is aimed at inciting sectarian crisis, and it is the work of a foreign agenda whose aim is to stoke sectarian strife, instability and a collapse of the political process," said Hussein Al Musawi, spokesman for the Shiite Political Council, an umbrella group of Shiite political parties.
"There is an obvious failure on the part of the Iraqi security forces, and the multinationals, to guard these shrines and to deal the terrorists groups a blow, and to strike with an iron fist against the terrorists."
No one ever asserted responsibility for the earlier attack on the shrine. The blast was blamed on the Sunni extremist group al-Qaeda in Iraq, which over the years has launched attacks on both Shiite and Sunni targets in an effort to fuel religious battles and push the country into civil war.
In response to Wednesday's attack, the entire Iraqi security force responsible for guarding the mosque, the 3rd Battalion of the Salahaddin Province police, was detained for investigation, Iraqi law enforcement officials said. The collapse of the 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 next to the shrine, said in a telephone interview. "The Askariya shrine means a lot to us, the people of Samarra," Abdullah said, noting that even though it was a Shiite shrine, Sunnis had always respected it. "To lose the shrine hurt us a lot, and made us afraid about what will happen next. Someone wants to create sectarian strife by doing this act."
After Wednesday's explosions, Iraqi security forces patrolled the city, firing in the air and announcing the curfew from loudspeakers mounted on jeeps. In Baghdad and elsewhere, Shiite mosques broadcast calls for demonstrations.
In a sign of the sectarian tensions quickly provoked by the incident, members of the Iraqi security forces, which are dominated by Shiites, yelled threats at Samarra residents, blaming them for the destruction of the mosque and threatening revenge. Some citizens, meanwhile, hurled remarks back, asking how anyone could destroy the minarets when the entire religious complex was being so carefully guarded by Iraqi security forces.
The mosque, one of the four most revered in Iraq, has been heavily guarded by Iraqi troops ever since the destruction of its gilded dome in the 2006 attack.
Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for peaceful demonstrations and a three-day mourning period to mark the minarets' destruction, the Associated Press reported. The wire service said Sadr appeared to be taking a conciliatory stance by saying that that no Sunni Arab could have been responsible for the attack.
"We declare a three-day mourning period . . . and shout Allahu Akbar (God is greater) from Sunni and Shiite mosques," Sadr said in the statement.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said that U.S. forces were assisting the Iraqi government in responding to the attack and had provided a team to help assess the damage. Although there were U.S. troops in the region, he said, "The security for the shrine itself is an Iraqi responsibility."
U.S. forces also were closely monitoring the reaction to the attack, Garver said. "It may incite another round of sectarian violence, or it may be a case of two steps forward, one step back," like is often the case in efforts to bring better security to Iraq, he said.
Anderson reported from Baghdad, Saif from Samarra. K.I. Ibrahim and Naseer Nouri also contributed to this report from Baghdad.
(yahoo.group)
bin66 - 14. Jun, 02:22
