The Iraqi police have made arrests in this morning’s twin bombings of the al Askaria mosque’s remaining minarets. While early reports indicated that the Iraqi National Police were responsible for securing the mosque complex, it was, in fact, a provincial police unit that was guarding the area. As the suspects behind the attacks were rounded up, unconfirmed reports of attacks on religious sites in Baghdad and Diyala began to surface. The suspects in the bombing came from the Salahadin Emergency Response Unit, not the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Brigade of the 1st Iraqi National Police Division (3-3-1 INP), according to Multinational Division North. “I can confirm … that Brig. Gen. Duraid, deputy commander for the National Police in Samarra, did arrest the Emergency Response Unit Iraqi Police commander and 12 of his Iraqi police who had been guarding the mosque at the time of the explosions,” Major Tage J. Rainsford, the spokesman for Major General Benjamin Mixon, Kuwaiti News Agency. A “correspondent of Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) said he saw US military tanks and bulldozers being stationed, blocking bridges over the waterway that separates Sadr city and central Baghdad,” in an attempt to keep the Mahdi Army from attacking from its bases in Sadr City. The Associated Press reports that “sketchy reports of sectarian strife” are starting to surface. Four Sunni mosques and a Shia shrine north of Baghdad were targeted. The AP also reported that the Khudair al-Janabi mosque in Baghdad’s Bayaa district was the site of an arson attack, while the Shia Imam Ali Kamal shrine in Khalis, Diyala province, was reported to have been destroyed in a bombing. IraqSlogger reports that three mosques in Baghdad–the Grand Iskandariyah Mosque, the Hiteen Mosque, and the Abdullah Mosque–were reported to have been destroyed, and fighting was reported in the mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhood of Ghazaliyah in northern Baghdad. Early reports of sectarian violence and of the destruction of mosques should be treated with caution. Reports of mosque bombings in Baghdad last summer were inflated or in some cases completely fabricated. Al Qaeda, Muqtada al Sadr, and other elements looking to incite further violence will manufacture incidents as part of their sophisticated Information Operations. But fallout from the bombing of the al Askaria mosque should be expected.
