Dari accuse "government forces" of attacking his house.

Additional Reporting By Mazen Ghazi, IOL Correspondent

BAGHDAD, Iraq, February 25, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A group of Shiite and Sunni scholars huddled together on Saturday, February 25, to defuse raging sectarian tensions, which were further inflamed by a car bombing in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and an attack on the house of a top Sunni scholar.

"Scholars representing the Shiite Sadr and Khalsi movements and the (Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS) are currently in a behind-the-scene meeting to tackle how to end the crisis," Muthna Harith Al-Dari, an AMS spokesman, told IslamOnline.net.

Shiite scholar Jawad Al-Khalsi told Al-Jazeera news channel the meeting would discuss the establishment of a long-awaited umbrella body of Shiite and Sunni scholars.

"A joint religious authority is the only way out of the current crisis," he said.

Painstaking efforts are underway to establish a body of Sunni and Shiite scholars speaking, in one voice, on behalf of the Sunni and Shiite communities.

Al-Khalsi blamed some scholars for using "sectarian" language that inflamed tensions and categorizing mosques in Iraq as Shiite and Sunni.

"But there is a group of wise and responsible people who are working for the welfare of this country," he said.

Sunni Leader Attacked 

In another sign of the raging sectarian tension, gunmen opened fire Saturday at the house of the head of Sheikh Harith Al-Dari, the head of Iraq's influential AMS.

Sheikh Al-Dari said gunmen showed up in cars resembling Interior Ministry's vehicles and opened fire on his Baghdad house in the morning.

"The government forces are behind this. The forces in front of our house are government forces," he told Al-Arabiya television by telephone.

"The issue is one of civil war declared by one side."

Dari's security guards returned fire and there appeared to be injuries on both sides, police sources said.

Abdul Kader Kurdi Sleiman, the head of Dari's office, said two nieces aged four and 15 years were hurt.

Al-Dulaimi, however, denied Dari's house was targeted.

He said the house was "mistakenly" caught up in the middle of a shootout between his troops and militants.

The AMS spokesman blasted the minister's account.

"The troops were told that this was the house of the AMS secretary general, but they went on firing indiscriminately," he told Al-Jazeera over the phone from Cairo, Egypt.

"The minister is trying to play down the incident, that's it." 

More Killings

Iraqi policemen inspect the wreckage of a vehicle used as in the Karbala car bombing. (Reuters)

A car bombing targeted Saturday a busy shopping street in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of Baghdad, killing eight people and wounding 31, Reuters reported.

Akil Mohammed, 30, said he saw two people drive the car into the street.

"I was with my friends near a square when two men drove up in a car, parked it near the shops and left. A few minutes later, the explosion happened," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Three policemen were among those killed, said police who later announced that a suspect had been arrested.

Bombers further Saturday blew up a well-known Shiite tomb in Taz Khurmatu, in northern Iraq, according to AFP.

In other violence, the bodies of 14 police commandos were found Saturday near a mosque where clashes with gunmen took place overnight, police told Reuters.

Gunmen attacked the Qubaisy mosque and the Sunnis' revered Abu Hanifa mosque located in two areas of Baghdad, police said, adding that police and Iraqi troops repelled assailants who wore the black of Shiite militias.

Earlier Saturday, two policemen were killed and five wounded when a bomb targeted the funeral procession west of Baghdad of Al-Arabiya journalist Atwar Bahget, who was killed Wednesday in Samarra while reporting on the shrine bombing.

Furthermore, 12 farm laborers were shot to death in an orchard Saturday morning in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

They included both Shiites and Sunnis, a relative of the victims told AFP.

Police said that seven more bodies were found in Baghdad, four in the capital's Sunni Azamiyah district and three in the southeastern Kamaliyah district.

On Friday, gunmen stormed a house near the city of Baquba north of Baghdad and killed 12 members of a Shiite family.

The government slapped a 20-hour curfew both Friday and Saturday on Baghdad and three more central provinces .

Army and police checkpoints sprung mushroom-like in the streets of the capital Saturday forcing people to stay indoors.

The country's defense minister said Saturday he would not hesitate to dispatch tanks to the streets to end violence and impose security.

"We are ready to fill the streets with armored vehicles," Saadoun Al-Dulaimi told a news conference televised live to the nation on state television.

The fresh attacks came after more than 140 people, mostly Sunnis, were killed nationwide in a surge of sectarian blood-letting triggered by the bombing Wednesday, February 22, of one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Shiite scholar Jawad Al-Khalsi told Al-Jazeera the shrine bombing was a planned and a specialist work as the Samaraa tombs were heavily guarded.

"Security around the Shiite sites couldn't be penetrated that easily. The bombing was well-organized," he said.

Iraqi Construction Minister Jassem Mohamad Jaafar made a similar judgment on Friday.

"According to initial reports, the bombing was technically well conceived and could only have been carried out by specialists," he told Iraqia state television.

Jaafar, who toured the devastated thousand-year-old shrine a day after the bombing which brought down its golden dome, said "holes were dug into the mausoleum's four main pillars and packed with explosives.

"Then the charges were connected together and linked to another charge placed just under the dome. The wires were then linked to a detonator which was triggered at a distance," he added.

The minister maintained that to drill into the pillars would have taken at least four hours per pillar.