June 16, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 30, 1428

BASRA, June 15: Assailants pretending to be a film crew blew up and destroyed a Sunni shrine near the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Friday as militants carried out more revenge attacks for the bombing of a Shiite shrine.

The US military, meanwhile, announced the deaths of five more soldiers taking its losses already this month to 36.

The shrine of Talha bin Obeidallah in the town of Zubair, west of Basra, was destroyed at dawn, an Iraqi army officer said.

“A group of people carrying a camera arrived at the Talha bin Obeidallah shrine at 6:00 am (0200 GMT),” said Major General Ali Mussawi.

“They said they wanted to film the mosque. But they went about planting bombs around it.

“The structure is completely destroyed,” he said, adding that the shrine's security guards had been detained for questioning.

Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki condemned what he described as a terrorist act and ordered an indefinite curfew imposed on British-patrolled Basra from 4:00 pm (1200 GMT) Friday to prevent any further tit-for-tat violence.

“The terrorist act which targeted the shrine came as part of a series of crimes aimed at inflaming sectarian passions among the sons of the country,” the premier said in a statement.

“Those who have committed it are enemies of Allah, the country and the people.” Several mosques have been attacked in Iraq since Wednesday's bombing of the Al-Askari shrine in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Immediately after the bombing, at least four Sunni mosques were targeted, three south of Baghdad in the town of Iskandiriyah and one in the capital.

Three more were hit on Thursday and the US military said a Shiite mosque in the town of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, was also attacked.

But the imposition of curfews in both Samarra and Baghdad helped prevent any wider outbreak of sectarian violence.

On Friday, the curfew in Baghdad which was to be lifted Saturday was further extended till Sunday morning, state television reported, quoting government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

It was an attack on the same Samarra shrine by Al-Qaeda militants in February 2006 that triggered the sectarian fighting.

The earlier bombing destroyed the shrine's golden dome.

US officials blame Wednesday's bombing, in which the mosque's two gold-topped minarets were destroyed, also on Al Qaeda.

More than 650 Iraqi and US troop reinforcements have been sent to reinforce protection of the shrine since the attack, the US military said.

Iraqi authorities have also detained 13 police guards at the shrine for questioning.

Police snipers posted around the shrine shot dead two suspects, police Major Ahmed Majid told newsmen from the provincial capital of Tikrit.

The five latest deaths announced by the US military took its losses since the 2003 invasion to 3,512, according to a count based on Pentagon figures.

Three of the soldiers died from wounds sustained in a roadside bombing in the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Thursday.

A joint Iraqi and US team meanwhile raided the office of the radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr in the town of Suwaira, southeast of Baghdad, police Lieutenant Najim Abdullah said.—AFP