TEHRAN, Feb 23: Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Western powers like the United States and Israel that they would face the wrath of Muslims following the devastating bombing of a Shia shrines in Iraq.
Echoing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ahmadinejad pinned the blame for Wednesday’s Samarra shrine bombing on “Zionists” and foreign forces in Iraq.
“These heinous acts are committed by a group of Zionists and occupiers that have failed. They have failed in the face of Islam’s logic and justice,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state television.
“But be sure, you will not be saved from the wrath and power of the justice-seeking nations by resorting to such acts,” he said to cries of “Death to America” “Death to Israel” from a crowd of thousands of supporters in central Iran.
Khamenei on Wednesday urged Shias not to take revenge on Sunni Muslims for the attack on the Samarra shrine.
“There are definitely some plots to force Shias to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunnis,” he said. “Any measure to contribute to that direction is helping the enemies of Islam and is forbidden by Shariat,” he added.
Khamenei ordered a week of national mourning in Iran over the bombing.
In Beirut, Lebanon’s Hizbollah group called for Muslim unity in the wake of the mosque bombing.
“I tell the Americans, the Zionists and the criminals who committed yesterday’s crime in Samarra that all your aims will fail,” Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told a rally attended by thousands of Lebanese Shias in the southern suburb of Beirut.
“I tell them that this (Muslim) nation will not be torn apart ... It will not fall for the tricks of the occupier.”
Hizbollah, a Shia guerilla group backed by Iran and Syria, has opposed Washington’s role in Iraq. The United States lists Hizbollah as a terrorist group and has called for it to be disarmed in line with a 2004 UN Security Council resolution.—Reuters
