Reminder to the World: No Repair for Iraq’s Imam-i Azam Tomb

The city’s people would like the Islamic world never to forget this picture and keep it as a symbol of the attack. They maintain that they have been keeping guard over the mosque since the first day of the war. The Muslim world harshly criticized the damage to the mosque.

Baghdad’s Azamiye district, which was named after Imam-i Azam, the imam of the Hanefi religious sect, has had a harder time of it during this conflict than during the first Gulf War. The clock tower next to the mosque was hit by warplanes last week after the Saddam Hussein regime had fallen and by U.S. Marines looking for Saddam and his troops within the city. Marines besieging the mosque just before Morning Prayer at 5:00 a.m. blew off the door of the Imam-i Azam tomb. In addition, the gate to the tomb now has a hole measuring nearly half a meter as a result of the bombs.

Fatih Ugur / Baghdad / IRAQ