46 bodies found in wave of Iraqi violence
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-23 21:24

A major Sunni Arab bloc Thursday suspended talks with Shiite and Kurdish parties on a new government after scores of Sunni mosques were attacked and dozens of bodies found in a wave of reprisal violence following the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine.

Iraqi soldiers inspect the scene following an explosion in Baqouba, Iraq, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006. A bomb exploded Thursday in this city northeast of Baghdad, killing eight Iraqi soldiers, the Iraqi military said. [AP]

Violence continued Thursday with an attack on a Sunni mosque in Baqouba, where eight Iraqi soldiers were killed in a bombing and nearly a dozen people were wounded.

Faced with the grim prospect of sectarian war, the government extended the curfew in Baghdad and Salaheddin province for two days in the wake of Wednesday's attack on the Askariya shrine in Samarra. All leaves for Iraqi soldiers and police were canceled and personnel were ordered to report to their units.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr slammed the Iraqi government and U.S. forces for not protecting the Samarra shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, and ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq.

"If the government had real sovereignty, then nothing like this would have happened," al-Sadr said a statement. "Brothers in the Mahdi Army must protect all Shiite shrines and mosques, especially in Samarra."

At least 46 bodies were found scattered across Iraq late Wednesday and early Thursday, many of them shot execution-style and dumped in Shiite-dominated parts of the capital, Baghdad.

They included a prominent Al-Arabiya TV female correspondent and two other Iraqi journalists, who had been covering Wednesday's explosion in Samarra. Their bullet-riddled bodies were found on the outskirts of the mostly Sunni Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad.

In mostly Shiite Basra, police said militiamen broke into a prison, hauled out 12 inmates, including two Egyptians, two Tunisians, a Libyan, a Saudi and a Turk, and shot them dead in reprisal for the shrine attack. They had been held in Basra after trying to leave the country following the 2004 U.S. attack on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

The destruction of Samarra's gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine sent crowds of angry Shiites into the streets. Many included members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias which the U.S. wants abolished.

The hardline Sunni clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said 168 Sunni mosques were attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 abducted. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

In Thursday's violence, unidentified assailants fired machine guns and threw hand grenades at the Abu Ayoub al-Ansari mosque in Baqouba, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. At least one mosque employee was killed and two others injured, police said.

The eight Iraqi soldiers died when a bomb exploded near their patrol in the center of the city, the army said.