Remnants of Samarra's Golden Dome Mosque Destroyed

Al Qaeda blew up the Golden Dome mosque in 2006, levelling the historic dome in the hopes of starting a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia. That hasn't entirely come to pass, but al Qaeda never gives up the ghost of trying to destroy those sites it has chosen as targets.

Today, terrorists blew up two of the remaining minarets, again in the hopes of inflaming passions and ratchet up the sectarian conflict.

Angry demonstrations erupted in Samarra following the attack, which destroyed the mosque’s two minarets. Security forces fired in the air, and the Iraqi government announced a curfew in Baghdad starting at 3 p.m. today.

Shiite leaders called for calm. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, condemned the bombing, but appealed to Iraqis to show restraint.

It was unclear who carried out the attack in the predominantly Sunni town about 60 miles north of Baghdad. Iraqi security forces secured the area around the mosque and were investigating the cause of the explosion, the American military said. Iraqi police reported hearing two nearly simultaneous explosions coming from inside the mosque compound at around 9 a.m. today.

The official Iraqia television station reported that local officials said that two mortar rounds were fired at the two minarets.

The shrine was badly damaged in the February 2006 attack by Sunni insurgents, but the destruction of the remaining two minarets is expected to have powerful symbolic importance to Iraqis.

Radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for peaceful demonstrations and a three-day mourning period to mark the shrine’s destruction.

Senior American military commanders in Iraq have said recently that they feared just such an attack on a Shiite shrine to refocus Sunni attention on the country’s struggle between Shiites and Sunnis.

This too should be a lesson to politicians here in the US who think that just because al Qaeda has not attacked inside the US since 9/11 doesn't mean that they're not plotting to carry out attacks.

UPDATE:
US investigators believe that today's attack may have been an inside job.