Shrine Bombing as War's Turning Point Debated
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Feb. 22, 2006, is the day the Bush administration says everything in Iraq changed.
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Iraqi and U.N. officials toured a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine in northern Iraq on Wednesday as workers took the first steps in a long-delayed reconstruction Â nearly two years after the attack on the famed golden dome became a rallying point for Shiite rage.
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The tougher approach by US forces is intended to stabilize the country before elections, but offensives bring new risks. For the first time in the Iraq war, according to military officials, US aircraft last week directly bombed a mosque.
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The fallout from Shiites fighting U.S. Marines in a holy city could weaken Iraq's new government
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NAJAF, Iraq  - With his militants and human  shields holed up inside one of Shi'ite Islam's most sacred  shrines, radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is playing a  shrewd waiting game before an expected American-led offensive.
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Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric urged followers on Monday not to seek revenge against Sunni Arabs on the first anniversary of a Shi'ite shrine bombing that has pitched the country to the brink of civil war.
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NAJAF, Iraq  - US warplanes pounded areas near a shrine early Friday where radical Shi&#39;ite militiamen were holed up after their leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, defied a final demand from Iraq&#39;s interim prime minister to disarm.
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Wednesday's attack on the Askariya shrine mirrored a 2006 bombing at the Shiite holy site, but this strike may not spark the same sectarian bloodshed.
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For Iraq's embattled prime minister, the Askariya shrine bombing could not have come at a worse time and could end up bringing down Nouri al-Maliki's unpopular government.
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BAGHDAD, Aug. 25 -- A bomb placed beneath a parked car exploded outside a prominent Shiite shrine in Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least five people at the start of a major religious ceremony, U.S. military officials said.
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Iraq's prime minister is weighing whether to sever his alliance with a radical Shiite cleric blamed for much of the country's sectarian violence, aides said Wednesday. But isolating Muqtada al-Sadr could lead to more deadly attacks, even if the strategy could produce a more stable administration over time.
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In the face-off at the shrine, U.S.  and Iraqi leaders vowed to crush  al-Sadr's rebellion. But they may have stoked the insurgency even  more
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An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad &#151; a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign to bring democracy and stability to Iraq can succeed.
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A U.S.-Iraqi raid on the Abu Hanifa mosque &#151; one of the most revered sites for Sunni Muslims &#151; spawned a weekend of street battles, assassinations and a rash of bombings that changed Baghdad. The capital, for months a city of unrelenting but sporadic violence, has taken on the look of a battlefield.
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Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signaled he will likely go to a controversial shrine on a sensitive war anniversary despite appeals from neighboring countries and rising public opposition.
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Koizumi's visits to Japan's controversial war shrine leave his successor with a conundrum
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U.S. troops' pinpoint fire and munitions restrictions have ensured that Najaf's Imam Ali shrine remains all but unscathed. But the core of the city around it, dear to millions of Shiite Muslims, has been mauled by combat.