The bombs themselves injured no one—there would be no accusations this time that Zarqawi had murdered innocent Muslims. But destruction of the shrine touched off waves of killings and reprisal killings as rival bands of Shiites and Sunnis shot and hacked their way through the town, sometimes wiping out entire blocks. Days later, the body count at the city morgue had surpassed thirteen hundred, and the entire country appeared to be teetering. At the U.S. Embassy, the diplomat Robert Ford’s office convened a series of urgent meetings with Iraq’s political and religious leaders, pleading for
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