The Iraqi government is to impose a daytime curfew on Baghdad and three surrounding provinces tomorrow in an effort to avert sectarian clashes at have killed around 130 people.
Police will arrest those who take to the streets, even to go to mosques, sources in the prime minister's office and the Interior Ministry said after two days of sectarian violence between Shi'ites and minority Sunni Muslims.
Officials had been forecasting protest marches from both camps and US, UN and Iraqi leaders have been speaking out on the need for calm to prevent a descent into civil war.
The curfew will also affect the religiously mixed provinces of Salahaddin, Diyala and Babil to the north, east and south of the capital and the city's airport will be closed.
The draconian measure came as residents in at least two areas around the capital reported heavy clashes.
At least 130 people have been killed, according to official tallies, since a suspected al-Qaeda bomb destroyed the Golden Mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad, one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines. Dozens of Sunni mosques have been attacked in reprisals.
Washington, which wants stability in Iraq to help it extract around 130,000 US troops, has also called for restraint, reflecting international fears that the oil-exporting country of 27 million may be slipping closer to all-out sectarian war.
The main Sunni religious authority made an extraordinary public criticism of the Shi'ites' most revered clerical leader, accusing him of fuelling the violence by calling for protests.
President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, pressed ahead despite the Sunni boycott with a meeting that he had called to avert a descent towards a civil war. After discussions with Shi'ites, Kurds and leaders of a smaller Sunni group, he told a televised news conference that if all-out war came "no one will be safe".
Police and military sources tallied more than 130 deaths, mostly of Sunnis, around the two biggest cities Baghdad and Basra in the 24 hours since the bloodless but highly symbolic bombing of the Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra.
Dozens of Sunni mosques have been attacked and several burnt to the ground.
In the bloodiest single incident, officials said 47 people who had taken part in a joint Sunni and Shi'ite demonstration against the Samarra bombing were hauled from vehicles and were shot dead on the outskirts of the capital.
The identities of the gunmen and the victims was not clear.
The Interior Ministry said all police and army leave was cancelled, curfews were extended as the country locks down for three days of national mourning.
A bomb blasted an Iraqi army foot patrol in a market in the religiously divided city of Baquba, killing 16 people. Three journalists working for Al Arabiya television were found shot dead after being attacked while filming in Samarra.
The Iraqi Accordance Front, which won most of the minority Sunni vote in December's parliamentary election, said it would need an apology from the ruling Shi'ites before it would consider rejoining talks on a national unity coalition.
"We are suspending our participation in negotiations on the government with the Shi'ite Alliance," Tareq al-Hashemi, a top official of the Accordance Front, told a news conference at which he accused Shi'ite leaders of fostering the violence.
US President George W. Bush condemned the attack on the Samarra shrine as an "evil act" and appealed for restraint.
An Internet statement from the Mujahideen Council, which includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, blamed Shi'ite leaders for blowing up the shrine to justify attacks and vowed a "shocking response".
The United Nations Security Council sounded a note of alarm in calling on Iraqis to rally behind a non-sectarian government.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pinned the blame for the shrine bombing on "Zionists" and foreign forces in Iraq, warning Western powers like the United States and Israel that they would face the wrath of Muslims.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shi'ites' reclusive and ageing senior cleric, made a rare, if silent, television appearance that underlined the gravity of the crisis. He called for protests but also restraint
The Sunni Muslim Clerics Association said 184 Sunni mosques had been damaged, 10 clerics killed and 15 abducted.
Iraq cancelled all leave for the police and army and minority Sunni political leaders pulled out of US-backed talks on forming a national unity government, accusing the ruling Shi'ites of starting dozens of attacks on Sunni mosques.