Twenty killed in attacks on Shia mosques in Baghdad

IRAQ:SUICIDE BOMBERS struck at two Shia mosques in Baghdad yesterday, killing 20 people and wounding another 50 as they left prayers celebrating the festival ending the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

In restive Diyala province, a taxi driver, three women and two children, all Sunnis, and two policemen died in a shooting attack. Four US soldiers were wounded in the diplomatic quarter of the capital.

Sunni al-Qaeda was promptly charged with carrying out the mosque bombings which took place in an increasingly antagonistic atmosphere between Sunnis, 85-90 per cent of the global Muslim community, and Shias.

Last month a popular Sunni television preacher, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, launched a broadside at Shias, reviving the bitter 1,400-year-old feud between the two main branches of Islam.

"Shias are Muslims but they are heretics and pose a danger by trying to invade Sunni society to convert Sunnis to Shiism," he said. "Billions of dollars" are being spent by Shias in missionary work, suggesting that Iran is behind this effort, he alleged.

Lebanon's Shia Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah responded by charging Sheikh Qaradawi of promoting fitna (strife) and sectarianism. Further exchanges between religious figures were accompanied by hacker attacks on their websites where scholars' opinions on religious and social issues are aired.

These developments revived comments made by Sunni Arab rulers on the rise of fundamentalist Iraqi Shias under US occupation.

Jordan's King Abdullah spoke of the emergence of a "Shia crescent" extending from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon, and Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak observed that Shias are more loyal to Iran than to their homelands.

Although al-Qaeda is widely blamed for the mosque outrages, intra-Shia rivalries, manifested in the celebration of the feast, cannot be ruled out. The targeted mosques are frequented by followers of Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has not condemned the US occupation and has supported the unpopular Shia coalition which took power after the 2005 elections. He designated Thursday as the feast.

Iraqi Shias who follow Ayatollah Fadlallah, including Nuri al-Maliki and his Dawa party, celebrated the feast on Tuesday with Sunnis. But the majority of Shias, the poor adherents of the line of Iran-based Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, mentor of dissident cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, commemorated the feast on Wednesday.

Unlike Ayatollah Sistani, militant Sadrists demand an early US withdrawal from the country. They feel betrayed by Mr Maliki, who has driven Mr Sadr into exile in Iran, and members of his Mahdi Army militia underground. The Sadrists are set to compete in next year's provincial and central elections with Dawa and its ally, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which positions itself alongside Ayatollah Sistani.