NAJAF, Iraq: Shia spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called yesterday for Iraq’s powerful tribes to be deployed to protect the country’s holy places after three attacks on Shia shrines in four days, his office said.
“Ayatollah Sistani, who received a tribal delegation from Kufa, asked that the Iraqi tribes reclaim their role of protecting the shrines,” said an official in Sistani’s office in the Shia clerical centre of Najaf.
“After the crimes against the places of worship, including the blowing up of the mausoleum in Samarra and the attacks against the tombs of Salman al-Farsi and Imam Ali bin Mussa al-Rida, the tribes must take a stand and claim a role in the protection of these sites,” Sistani was quoted as saying.
After the explosion that destroyed the golden dome of the Samarra shrine on Wednesday, sparking an outburst of sectarian violence, two mortar rounds struck near the tomb of Salman al-Farsi, just south of Baghdad, late on Friday.
A bomb then exploded early yesterday near the shrine of Imam Ali al-Rida, in the small town of Taza Khurmatu just south of the northern oil hub of Kirkuk.
The town of Kufa, from which the tribal delegation came, lies just outside Najaf and houses a revered shrine where Shia believe their first leader Ali was killed by Sunni forces in 661 AD. – AFP |
