The age-old blood feud between Sunni and Shia has erupted again in Iraq: Iraq rocked by worst violence since fall of Saddam.

The bombing of one of the most sacred mosques in Shia Islam has triggered Iraq’s worst wave of sectarian violence since Saddam Hussein was removed from power.

At least 111 people have been killed in Baghdad and Basra in the 24 hours following the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra early yesterday morning. Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani called a crisis summit to prevent the outbreak of what he called “devastating civil war”.

However, the meeting was thrown into doubt when the Iraqi Accordance Front, the biggest Sunni political group, refused to attend, protesting at what it called the Shia-led government’s failure to protect Sunni mosques.

Dozens of Sunni mosques have been shot at, and several more have been burnt down.

UPDATE at 2/23/06 6:13:29 pm:

Iraq the Model says our old friend Muqtada al-Sadr is responsible for many of the attacks:

In our neighborhood the Sadr militias seized the local mosque and broadcast Shia religious mourning songs from the mosques loudspeakers.

In several other cases, worshippers were turned away by “gunmen in black” who surrounded the closed mosques. Other mosques are encircled by razor-wire to stop anyone from approaching them.

The sense in the streets and the statements given by some Shia clerics suggest that retaliation attacks are organized and under control and are focusing on mosques frequented by Salafi and Wahabi groups and not those of ordinary Sunnis.

Looking at the geographic distribution of the attacked mosques, I found they were mostly in areas adjacent to Sadr city forming a line that extends from the New Baghdad district in the southeast to al-Hussayniya in the northeast.

The Association of Muslim Scholars is accusing the Sadrists in particular, actually it’s not only the Association that accuses the Sadrists, most people here in Baghdad point out the role of Mehdi army of Sadr in carrying out most of the attacks.

The Association is trying to remind Sadr of the their times of solidarity during the battles in Najaf and Fallujah yet they are condemning his message to his followers in which he called for keeping up and escalating the “protests”.