Minarets blown up at revered Iraq Shi'ite shrine

BAGHDAD, June 13 (Reuters) Suspected al Qaeda militants blew up two minarets of a revered Shi'ite mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra today, targeting a shrine bombed last year in an attack that sparked a wave of sectarian killing.

A senior Iraqi government official said the attack at Samarra's Golden Mosque was ''very bad news for Iraq'' while the US military expressed concern and said it was monitoring events. The minarets were destroyed, news photographs showed.

The bombing of the mosque last year, which wrecked theshrine's famous golden dome but did not damage the minarets, was a turning point for Iraq, unleashing violence that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed the country to the brink of all-out civil war.

Fearing further bloodshed, the government said it would impose a total curfew on Baghdad from 3 pm (11630 IST) until further notice.

''This is a criminal act which aims at creating sectarian strife,'' Saleh al-Haidari, the head of the Shi'ite endowment in Iraq, a major religious body, told Reuters.

Shi'ite officials blamed Sunni Islamist al Qaeda for the attack.

It was unclear exactly how the minarets had been blown up, but residents said there had been clashes in the area between gunmen and police before the blast at around 9.00 am (1430 IST) The Shi'ite group loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged its supporters to remain calm and accused militants of planting explosives to bring down the minarets.

After the bombing in 2006 gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia, loyal to Sadr, targeted members of Iraq's Sunni Arab community in Baghdad in revenge attacks.

The Golden Mosque is one of the four major Shi'ite shrines in Iraq. Samarra, north of Baghdad, is a predominantly Sunni city.

Other major sites are in the holy Shi'ite cities of Najaf and Kerbala and the Baghdad district of Kadhimiya, also mainly home to Shi'ites.

Two of the 12 revered Shi'ite imams are buried in the Samarra shrine -- Imam Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868 and his son, the 11th imam, Hasan al-Askari, who died in 874.

DOME DESTROYED Iraq's Shi'ite-led government has blamed al Qaeda for the attack on FebRUARY 22 last year, when militants entered the Golden Mosque at dawn and set off charges that destroyed its dome, one of the biggest in the Islamic world.

Police and the senior government official said the Shi'ite-dominated Interior Ministry had been responsible for security at the mosque. Police said the ministry took over from local security forces in April.

''We know that two weeks ago there was an attempt to also target it, but it was foiled,'' the official said.

Asked how it could have been attacked with the Interior Ministry in charge of security, the official said ''Apparently the force was not enough''.

A curfew had also been imposed in Samarra, where some protesters clashed with police in anger over the bombing.

The US military expressed concern.

''Based on the results of last year's attack, we are obviously watching it very carefully,'' said spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver.

Abdul Mahdi al-Mutiri, a senior Sadrist, said the movement held US forces and the Iraqi government responsible for the attack. He said charges had been planted in the minarets.

''We are calling on our people to show restraint, unity and to reject sectarian strife. We are also urging them to exercise calm,'' Mutiri said.

The 2006 Samarra bombing lifted the lid on tensions that had been boiling between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.

Before the bombing, sectarian violence was on the rise.

But attention was still on the Sunni Arab insurgency against American and Iraqi security forces, which erupted soon after the US-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein and enabled Shi'ites to assume power for the first time in Iraq.

In Baghdad in the months after the 2006 attack, Shi'ite and Sunni gunmen forced members of the opposing sect to leave mixed neighbourhoods. Baghdad is now roughly divided Shi'ites on the east side of the Tigris River and Sunnis on the west.

REUTERS SM ND1552