A bomb has ripped through a Sunni Muslim mosque in a largely Shi'ite area of Baghdad, killing at least three people and wounding one, police say.
The blast, which gouged a gaping hole in the mosque nestled in Baghdad's Hurriyya district, raised the spectre of sectarian tension in Iraq, where Shi'ite Muslims persecuted under Saddam Hussein hope to consolidate political power in the government that replaces him.
As they poked through the wreckage, residents called the incident part of a pattern of intimidation by Shi'ites, who make up 60 percent of Iraq's population and whose leaders have largely opted to work with the country's U.S. occupiers.
"We are pointing the finger of accusation at the Shi'ites for this act," said Sheikh Ahmad Dabbash, who leads prayers at the damaged Ahbab al-Mustafa mosque, and linked the blast to previous attacks on Sunni mosques in the capital.
"Elements which claim to be Muslims, but which have nothing to do with Islam, came to divide Muslims and spread sectarianism in this country," he said.
The explosion, which struck about 7 a.m. (4 a.m. British time), shredded and scorched a car parked in the mosque's courtyard, left behind pools of blood mingled with dust.
"They were there this morning, and either let it happen or helped," said a man who identified himself as Hamid, pointing at armed guards affiliated with a Shi'ite Muslim political party patrolling outside a school by the mosque.
Like other residents of the area, he disputed the bomb account put forward by Iraqi police and insisted that a rocket or shell was fired into the mosque's courtyard from atop a nearby building.
A local police commander speculated that attackers got inside the mosque compound in the early hours of the morning and left the bomb there under a car.
"Our view is that someone passing by the wall of the mosque put the bomb under the car, where it was timed to detonate," said Captain Sabah Faid, who added there were no suspects in the blast as yet.
An association of Iraq's Sunni clerics called the attacks part of a campaign against the Sunni sect, of which Saddam is a member, and most of the people in areas where friction with U.S. forces is highest.
"Sunni mosques and those who pray in them are being attacked...across Iraq by elements we know of, on a pretext we reject: that these are the supporters of the former regime," the League of Muslim Clerics in Iraq said in a statement.