Blasts at Iraq's Askariya shrine

A series of blasts have destroyed two minarets at an already damaged Shia shrine in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra. The explosions were heard in the vicinity of the Askariya mosque at about 9:00am (0500 GMT) on Wednesday. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

"The explosion targeted the two golden minarets. They have been damaged ... This is a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife," Saleh al-Haidari, the head of the Shia endowment in Iraq, said. The two minarets toppled on Wednesday even as security forces were guarding the holy site.

Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, has blamed the attack on al-Qaeda and supporters of Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s former president.

[More]


Comment:

I'm not one normally given to swearing, but ███!

This is the clearly the work of al-Qaeda. Maliki's contention that the Baathists had something to do with it is, with all due respect to the Honorable Prime Minister, bull. The Baathists are fighting because they want to rule Iraq, not because they want to destroy it. The only group with that objective is al-Qaeda. To quote Shaykh Umar Mahmud Abu Umar,¹

“Here it is necessary to caution against the error of the call of some of the leaders of worn-out groups for the necessity of preserving the national fabric, or the national weft, or national unity. This saying not only contains the doubt of unbelieving nationalism; it also indicates that they do not understand the Sunna method for the fall of civilizations and their construction.”

Al-Qaeda already succeeded in igniting the current sectarian conflagration the last time they struck the mosque. Let us hope they are not so successful this time.

¹"Articles Between Two Methods", translated with funding from the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.