Insurgents bombed the two minarets of the Askariya Shiite shrine in Samarra on Wednesday morning, further damaging the revered Golden Mosque. It was the bombing of the gold dome on Feruary 22, 2006 that unleashed wave of sectarian violence that has torn the social fabric of the nation.

After the first bombing of Askariya, Shi'ite gunmen went on a rampage, destroying dozens of Sunni mosques, executing large numbers of Sunnis, forcing families to flee their homes, cleansing entire neighborhoods of the Sunni presence.

In fear of a similar backlash from the latest targeting of the mosque, the government ordered people and vehicles off the streets of Baghdad, putting the city under an indefinite curfew that began at 3 p.m. According to Reuters, Baghdad residents reported seeing large numbers of Iraqi troops in the capital.

The Washington Post covers the heightened tensions in Samarra, reporting that in the streets of the city, "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."

Establishing Security

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been widely blamed for the February 2006 attack, though no claim of credit has been made. After last year's bombing, the mosque was guarded by about 60 Federal Protection Service forces and 25 local Iraqi police who kept watch on the perimeter, according to Samarra city officials.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that after Wednesday's attack, the entire Iraqi security force responsible for guarding the mosque, the 3rd Battalion of the Salahaddin Province police, was being detained for investigation.

Maliki's office said the prime minister met with the U.S. commander in Iraq to ask that American reinforcements be sent into Samarra to help head off new violence in the flashpoint city 60 miles north of Baghdad.

A U.S. military spokesman condemned the "violence as another attack on the people of Iraq by people who try to continue to separate divide and weaken the Iraqi people."

The spokesman declined to say whether the military would deploy more troops on the streets: "We continue to conduct the operations we do normally. I will not discuss specifics, and I will not discuss operational security."

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said 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."

Maliki appeared on state television within hours of the attack, blaming Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and supporters of Saddam Hussein for the attack. Maliki said he believed other mosques could be targeted and that he had asked Iraq's security forces to step up security around them.

"I call on everyone to stand together against those who want to stir strife," he said.

US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus issued a joint statement condemning the bombing and also blaming it on al Qaeda: "This brutal action on one of Iraq’s holiest shrines is a deliberate attempt by al-Qaeda to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq."

Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite religious leader, called for restraint after the bombing. "He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis," said Hamed Khafaf, a spokesman for Sistani.

Sadr Response

The attack compelled the Sadrists to completely suspend participation in Maliki's government, announcing: "The Sadr bloc have announced their suspension from the parliament until the Iraqi government takes strong measures to reconstruct all the Sunni and Shia shrines, especially the Shia shrine in Samarra," a lawmaker from the 32-member bloc, Saleh Hassan Al Igaili, told AFP.

Reading a statement issued by the bloc, Igaili said the group had also demanded withdrawal of US troops from Samarra and "urgently demanded an investigation by the police" in the bombing of the shrine.

"All political and religious powers have to unify their efforts to rebuild the two shrines to avoid an eruption into sectarian and civil war, and if no one is able to protect them we are," the Shiite cleric added.

Sadr said in a statement that no Sunni could have been responsible for the attack and called for a three-day mourning period and peaceful demonstrations of Iraqi unity "to show that the only enemy of Iraq is the occupation and that's why everyone must demand its departure or scheduling its presence."

The Attack

According to CNN, the blast followed clashes between gunmen and Iraqi National Police guarding the site. During the firefight, the insurgents entered the mosque, planted explosives around the minarets and detonated them.

AP says Iraqi police fired guns to keep people away after the explosion, but other media outlets do not mention a firefight preceding the explosion, and report confusion over how the insurgents got the explosives into place.

The MNF press release reports, "The Iraqi police on site described hearing two near-simultaneous explosions coming from inside of the mosque compound, but they did not see any attackers in the vicinity."

"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, told the Washington Post 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."

VOI reports scores of Najaf residents staged a massive demonstration starting from al-Eishreen revolution region, 1 km east of Najaf, to Imam Ali cemetery at the center of the city, ending at the office of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to express anger to the revered religious leader over the recent attack.

The angry men blamed U.S. forces and the Iraqi government for the sectarian violence in the country and called for facing what they called "terrorism" and protecting Iraqis' holy places.

The Askariya mosque contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams - Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868, and his son Hassan Askariya, who died in 874. Both are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shiites consider them to be among his successors.

The shrine also is near the place where the 12th imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared. Al-Mahdi, known as the ''hidden imam,'' was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariya shrine. Shiites believe he will return to Earth restore justice to humanity.