Bombs destroy Shiite mosque
2005-02-04 21:54
Baghdad - Armed men stormed a Shiite mosque in northern Baghdad Friday before weekly prayers and detonated bombs that destroyed the place of worship, witnesses told reporters.
The Tawhid mosque in the capital's northern Al-Hurriya neighbourhood is frequented mainly by followers of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
"At seven this morning, I was startled by a huge explosion. I rushed to the prayer room and found about 12 or 13 gunmen, some of them masked," said Thaer Muhi, one of the guards living in the small mosque compound.
He said the attackers, who had blown in one of the doors with a grenade, were carrying rocket-launchers and machine guns.
"I started shooting at them but I did not hit them and they returned fire so I fled and hid behind a small water tank," the guard said.
"Then they planted four home-made explosive devices. They put one of them under the library of holy books, another where the imam usually prays, and two more in the opposite corner," he said.
Three of the bombs went off a few minutes later and the remaining one was defused by Iraqi police.
The blasts punched large holes in the walls of the mosque, which was littered with torn Koran pages and mangled bits of plastic chairs.
"The people who attacked the mosque are terrorists and are not Muslims. They are trying to create sectarian strife but they will not succeed," said the mosque's imam, Sheikh Bassem al-Waeli.