Iraq's religious leaders called for calm yesterday amid fears of revenge attacks one day after a suicide bomber killed 47 Iraqis and wounded more than 80 in a packed Shiite funeral tent in Mosul.
Grieving families cancelled a planned public funeral procession for the victims in the northern city after a mortar shell early yesterday slammed into the site of the carnage 24 hours earlier.
Sunni Muslim leaders, fearful of reprisals, urged calm in the city.
PHOTO: EPA
"It was a terrorist attack meant to spark civil war but I think the Sunnis and Shiites will not succumb," said Nureddine Hayali, a spokesman for the Islamic Party.
Iraq's Shiite clerics urged cool heads after the latest calamity.
The office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual guide for Iraq's Shiites, said the revered cleric was calling for "unity and solidarity among all Iraqis despite the attacks targeting the innocent."
Sistani has consistently denounced vigilante justice against Iraq's Sunnis, perceived as fuelling the insurgency, whom the 15-million strong Shiite majority blames for many attacks carried out against it.
Mosque struck
The bomber struck on Thursday as mourners gathered next to the Sadreen mosque, where a service was being held for Hisham al-Araji, the Mosul representative for radical Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr.
Shiite cleric Sayed Jassem Mohamed recalled the moment when the explosion shredded a jammed funeral tent at 5:20pm.
"A ball of fire shot out, followed by falling debris, and panic swept the outdoor tent next to the Sadreen mosque," Jassem said.
"Volunteers started to put out the flames while others evacuated the dead and the wounded from the middle of the tent, which was destroyed by the blast."
Doctors put the dead at 47 and the wounded at 81.
In Mosul, residents expressed their anger.
"Who pretends this is holy war? The authors of this cowardly attack are looking to destroy Iraq and push it into the abyss," said Jalal Qassem, a doctor.
Sunni Muslim Arabs make up about half of Mosul's 1.5 million population, while the rest are divided among Kurds, Turkmen, Shiites, Christians and other groups.
The city is a stronghold of Islamic militant fighters and former regime loyalists. It has been gripped by violence since November when rebels launched an offensive and police abandoned their posts.
Coalition planned
The latest blow for Iraq's majority Shiites came as their political alliance, which swept the elections, was putting the final touches on a deal with the Kurds to form a coalition ahead of the new parliament's first session on Wednesday.
The two sides have drafted a three-page principle of understanding that will formalize their alliance, the Shiite side said.
"Both sides agree. Most likely it will be signed Sunday [tomorrow]," said Adnan Ali, an aide to the frontrunner for prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, a Shiite.
The document reaffirms Iraq's commitment to the transitional law (TAL), passed under the US occupation.
"We all agree that the TAL is the constitution for this government," Adnan said, adding it would govern the sensitive issue of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, which Kurds claim as their own.
He said the sides were in accord that Jaafari would be prime minister and Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani would be president.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
RSS