Militants attack revered Shi'ite shrine
Police said the attack involved explosives and brought down the minarets, which had flanked the dome's ruins.
Iraqiya state television reported the attack involved mortars. No casualties were reported.
Sheikh Saleh al-Haidiri, head of the Shi'ite endowment administrative body responsible for shrines in Iraq, said the minarets were blown up by "terrorists".
"It is a terrorist attack ... the second one against the shrine," Haidiri said in Baghdad.
"It is a terrorist attack aimed at sparking sectarian violence."
The Shi'ite group loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged its supporters to exercise calm.
A national police force under command of a major general was ordered to move immediately to Samarra, an Interior Ministry official said.
The US military warned the new attack on the shrine might provoke another spike in sectarian violence, and said it was keeping a close eye on the situation.
"Based on the results of last year's attack, we are obviously watching it very carefully," said spokesman Lt Colonel Christopher Garver.
The attack was likely the work of al-Qaeda, whose militants have recently moved into Samarra from surrounding areas, said an official close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, citing intelligence reports.
He and other officials spoke on condition of anonymity, either because of the sensitivity of the matter or because they were not authorised to share the information.
The Askariya shrine's dome was destroyed on February 22 last year, in a bombing blamed on Sunni Muslim militants believed linked to al-Qaeda.
The mosque compound and minarets had remained intact but the site was closed after that bombing.
Police imposed an indefinite curfew on the Sunni city, 95km north of Baghdad amid fears the bombing might further inflame the sectarian hatreds that swept Baghdad and other areas of Iraq in the months that followed the destruction of the shrine's dome.
The execution-style killings largely blamed on Shi'ite militias had begun to decline in February, at the start of a major US-Iraqi security push to pacify Baghdad, but the numbers have seen a recent rise as the bombings continued.
But while the numbers of people killed are down in Baghdad, violence has been on the rise elsewhere in Iraq after militants fled the security operation.
The United Nations warned earlier this week that the "situation in Iraq remains precarious".
"Insurgent attacks persist and civilian casualties continue to mount," the UN said in a report on Iraq covering the period from early March to early June.
"While there was a brief lull in the level of sectarian violence early in the reporting period, it now appears that militia forces are resuming their activities, including targeted killings and kidnappings."
After the bombing, Prime Minister al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, went into urgent talks with Sheikh Saleh al-Haidiri, chairman of the Shi'ite Waqf, the government agency that looks after Shi'ite mosques and religious schools, according to officials in al-Maliki's office.
He later met with the interior and defence ministers, along with other top advisers and security commanders to discuss measures to contain any possible explosion of sectarian violence following the bombing, al-Maliki's office said.
The Askariya mosque contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams - Ali al-Hadi, who died in 868, and his son Hassan Askariya, who died in 874. Both are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and Shi'ites consider them to be among his successors.
The shrine also is near the place where the 12th imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared.
Al-Mahdi, known as the "hidden imam," was the son and grandson of the two imams buried in the Askariyaya shrine. Shi'ites believe he will return to Earth restore justice to humanity.
After last year's bombing, the mosque was guarded by about 60 Federal Protection Service forces and 25 local Iraqi police who kept watch on the perimeter, according to Samarra city officials.
In the immediate aftermath of that bombing, US officials and others had promised to help rebuild the landmark dome, completed in 1905, but no rebuilding has begun.
Iraq has been plagued by violence since the war started in 2003, but the carefully orchestrated 2006 explosion, in which suspected al-Qaeda assailants wearing uniforms set off two bombs, touched a nerve.
The bombing unleashed Shi'ite militias, who ignored appeals for calm and instead attacked Sunni clerics and mosques. Nearly 140 people were killed the next day.
The United Nations reported that 34,452 civilians lost their lives in 2006 in the nearly unfathomable sectarian bloodshed that hit the capital hardest.
Sunni insurgents carried out bombings almost daily, and Shi'ite death squads dumped dozens of corpses on the streets and in vacant lots.
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