Iraq mosque bombers kill 79

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Suicide bombers stalked into the leading Shiite Muslim mosque in Baghdad on Friday, setting off three explosions that killed worshipers leaving after prayers and others seeking safety as the bombs went off, witnesses and police said.

At least 79 people died and more than 160 were wounded as the blasts ripped through hundreds of faithful at the Buratha mosque. The country's largest Shiite political party uses it as their center of operations in the capital.

The blasts came during a tense political standoff between that party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and another Shiite group, the Dawa Party, over who will be the nation's next prime minister.

Suspicion, however, fell immediately on Iraq's Sunni insurgency, which has been trying to push the nation into civil war through a series of attacks designed to spark fighting between Shiites and Sunnis.

In an intensifying, six-week campaign of violence targeting Shiite shrines, Friday's attack was the second in as many days at a mosque associated with one of Iraq's dominant Shiite religious parties, representing the country's Shiite majority and are backed by armed militias. A car bombing Thursday near the Imam Ali mosque in the southern city of Najaf killed at least 13 people.

The Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the largely Sunni Arab city of Samarra, north of Baghdad, touched off Iraq's worst sectarian violence since U.S. forces invaded three years ago.

Baghdad had been on high alert amid rumors that car bombers were roaming the streets Friday looking for targets.

At the Buratha mosque, affiliated with the Supreme Council, security is routinely tight, with worshippers body-searched as they enter. But the bombers apparently slipped in as worshipers left the mosque after prayers. News agencies quoted a police officer as saying two of the bombers were dressed in the type of black cloak worn by Shiite women, hiding the bombs strapped to them.

The first explosion tore through worshipers at the main exit, witnesses said. Survivors rushed back inside the mosque, where a second bomb went off three minutes later. Ten seconds after that, a third bomb exploded.

Outside, survivors clambered up the fence around the mosque and leapt over, fearing more bombs. Blood-soaked wounded ran through the streets, looking for a place to hide.

"Don't gather in one spot! Don't gather in one spot!" police loudspeakers warned.

Within minutes, the sealed-off streets around the shrine resembled a battlefield. Iraqi security forces broke through security cordons to carry off the wounded. As always after bombings in Iraq, bursts of automatic-weapon fire by adrenaline-charged security forces kept survivors huddling in fear for long minutes after the blasts.

Immediately after the blasts, police and officials from the Shiite movement led by cleric and militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr said two Baghdad mosques linked to al-Sadr also had been hit, with many dead. But health workers at Baghdad's main hospitals said they treated no casualties from the areas of those two mosques, and residents said they had heard no explosions.

As many as 1,000 people have died and tens of thousands have been driven from their homes in sectarian violence following the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra. Immediately after that bombing, Shiite militia fighters poured out of Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Sadr support in Baghdad, and al-Sadr's armed men were blamed by some for a wave of retaliatory attacks.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Friday, "I urge all Iraqis to exercise restraint in the wake of this tragedy, to come together to fight terror, to continue to resist the provocation to sectarian violence, and to pursue justice within the framework of Iraq's laws and constitution."

Ridah Jawad Taqi, a spokesman for the Supreme Council, repeated the Shiites' long-held assertion that attacks such as the one Friday were calculated provocations by those "wishing to ignite a sectarian conflict."

One of the bombers was headed toward the office of the mosque's imam, Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer, when someone dressed in women's clothing detonated a bomb, according to witnesses. Al-Sagheer is a prominent member of the Supreme Council.

In an interview broadcast on the Arab TV news station Al Arabiya after the bombing, al-Sagheer lashed out at the Muslim Scholars Association, a hard-line Sunni clerical group, and at top Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi, accusing them of "launching a campaign of distortions and lies against [Buratha] mosque, claiming that it contains Sunni prisoners and mass graves of Sunnis."

The accusations, al-Sagheer said, gave "a justification for these criminals to kill Friday worshippers in this brutal way."

But, al Sagheer said, "this will not pull us in the direction of sectarian strife."

Mainstream Sunni Arab politicians condemned the bombings, calling on all religious and political leaders to come together in the interest of national unity.

"Bloodshed is forbidden," al-Dulaimi told Iraqi television.

Shortly before Friday's attack, another ranking Supreme Council leader suggested the country's crisis had reached such a point that it was time to turn to Shiite religious leaders for political guidance. Shiites must ask Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential religious figure, "to solve this crisis," Sader al-Deen al-Qubbanchi said in his Friday sermon at a mosque in Najaf.

Efforts to form a government have been stalled for nearly four months over reappointment of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, supported only by his Dawa party and by al-Sadr's organization. On Friday, Dawa suggested for the first time that al-Jaafari might withdraw his candidacy, but only if another member of the party were appointed prime minister instead, an official close to the talks said. Other Shiite parties were said to be considering the idea.

Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Associated Press is included in this report.