Al-Rubaie said al-Badri, Abu Qudama, four Saudi nationals, and two other Iraqis stormed the mosque on 21 February 2006, rounded up the shrine's guards, members of Iraq's Facility Protection Service, and bound their hands.

[12] In an August 2006 press conference, American president George W. Bush stated: "it's pretty clear – at least the evidence indicates – that the bombing of the shrine was an Al-Qaeda plot, all intending to create sectarian violence.

[14] A 2004 letter attributed by the Americans to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi accused him of attempting to incite a "civil war" between Iraq's Shias and Sunnis.

According to the Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars, 168 mosques were attacked in the two days following the bombing, while ten imams were murdered and fifteen others kidnapped.

In congressional testimony, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said a civil war in Iraq could lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East, pitting the region's Sunni and Shiite powers against one another.

Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington's ambassador to Iraq, and the top US commander in the country, Gen. George Casey, issued a joint statement saying the US would contribute to the shrine's reconstruction.

... After the crimes against the places of worship, including the blowing up of the mausoleum in Samarra and the attacks against the tombs of Salman the Persian and Imam Ali bin Mussa al-Rida, the tribes must take a stand and claim a role in the protection of these sites."

[44] Having called to stop mutual attacks, Sadr ordered members of his militia[45] to protect Sunni mosques in majority Shia areas in southern Iraq.

He called on Sunni groups such as the Association of Muslim Scholars to form a joint panel and ordered his militia to defend Shiite holy sites across Iraq.

On February 25[43] Sunni and Shiite clerics agreed to prohibit killing members of the two sects and banning attacks on each other's mosques in an effort to ease tension between Iraq's Muslim communities following sectarian violence after the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine.

According to Juan Cole,[46] three Iraqi clerics all employed their influence and authority among the Shiite rank and file to make the Samarra bombing work for them politically.

He remonstrated with the American ambassador, saying it was not reasonable to expect the religious Shiites, who won the largest bloc of seats in parliament, to give up their claim on the ministry of interior, and that, indeed, Khalilzad had helped provoke the troubles with his assertions to that effect earlier.

Grand Ayatollah and Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, urged Shi'ites not to take revenge[19] on Sunni Muslims for the attack on the Samarra shrine and deflected blame to the United States and Israel.

Syed Ali Nasir Saeed Abaqati, a leading Shia cleric from Lucknow, India, held al-Qaeda responsible for the destruction of the Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq.

"We may be on the verge of taking communal violence to the next level," warned Juan Cole, professor of Middle-Eastern history at the University of Michigan, who called Wednesday "an apocalyptic day in Iraq".

The previous "official" death toll for post-bombing sectarian fighting, of 3–400, was based on information from the Shiite-led government and the Sadr-run Health Ministry, which was directly involved in atrocities according to the logs.