Iraq's Sistani urges end to attacks on Sunni mosques

BAGHDAD, June 16 (Reuters) Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani today condemned attacks on Sunni mosques in the southern city of Basra and called for a halt to such violence.

The attacks have been apparent reprisals against Sunnis after militants blew up the minarets of a revered Shi'ite mosque in Samarra on Wednesday.

''He heavily condemns the attacks against the mosques of Talha ben Obaida Alla and al-Eshra al Mubashera in Basra,'' Sistani's spokesman, Hamed al-Khafaf, told Reuters. ''He calls on believers to prevent, as much as they can, such attacks from taking place on mosques and shrines.'' The Talha mosque, one of the most important Sunni mosques in the Basra region, was destroyed yesterday in an explosion.

Iraqi authorities have imposed a four-day curfew in Baghdad and other cities in an attempt to prevent a spike in sectarian violence since the attack at the al-Askari mosque in Samarra on Wednesday. A bombing at that shrine in February last year unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed that has pushed Iraq close to all-out civil war.

Up to a dozen Sunni mosques across Iraq have been targeted since Wednesday's bombing but there have been no reports of casualties.

Fiery Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia was blamed for much of last year's sectarian reprisal killings, called on his supporters to hold a peaceful march to Samarra next month.

REUTERS HK PM1653