At approximately 6:44 a.m. local Iraqi time, explosions occurred at the al-Askari Shrine in Samarra, Iraq. The attack on the shrine, one of the holie...

At approximately 6:44 a.m. local Iraqi time, explosions occurred at the al-Askari Shrine in Samarra, Iraq. The attack on the shrine, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, caused the escalation of sectarian tensions in Iraq into a full-scale civil war.