baghdad Roadside bombs killed the top Shiite official in a volatile area south of Baghdad on Thursday and, to the north, a Sunni sheik who was an al-Qaeda foe as internal power struggles within both Islamic sects threatened to complicate U.S. efforts to stabilize the country.
Car bombs, meanwhile, struck Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and the northern city of Tall Afar, with at least 31 people killed or found dead nationwide, according to police reports.
Abbas Hassan Hamza, a political moderate and the top official in the Iskandariyah district, was killed by a bomb that struck his convoy while he was going to work, a police officer said. Four of his bodyguards also were killed and one was wounded, the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.
Hamza had defected two years ago to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa Party from the largest Shiite party, now known as the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.
Suspicion for the killing fell on Shiite extremists jockeying for power ahead of likely provincial elections.
Iskandariyah has a volatile population mix that is about 60 percent Shiite and 40 percent Sunni. The Mahdi Army militia, loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is active in the area, about 30 miles south of Baghdad. The Sadrists boycotted the previous provincial elections in January 2005, ceding most local leadership posts to the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and other rival groups.
Meanwhile, Sheik Muawiya Naji Jbara, the Sunni head of the Salahuddin Tribal Awakening Council, died of head injuries after a roadside bomb exploded as his convoy traveled near Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, said his brother, Marwan Jbara.
He said two guards also were wounded.
The blast occurred as the prominent sheik was traveling to an area southwest of Samarra to support al-Qaeda opponents there, a day after 16 members of the council were wounded during clashes with gunmen, according to his brother.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, but al-Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents have been fighting back against initiatives promoted by the U.S. military to turn Sunni sheiks against the terror network.
U.S. and Iraqi troops meanwhile detained a lawmaker from Iraq’s biggest Sunni bloc, after he allegedly attended a meeting of suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters.
Naif Jassim Mohammed was taken into custody Wednesday during a funeral for one of his neighbors in Shurqat, about 140 miles north of Baghdad, according to Salim Abdullah, a spokesman for the Iraq Accordance Front, an alliance of three parties that have 44 of parliament’s 275 seats.
Related
Faster pace for arms deliveries
Santiago, Chile – The United States must deliver weapons to Iraq more quickly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday after an announcement that the Iraqi government has ordered $100 million in military equipment from China.
The U.S. military has expressed concerns that it is harder to track weapons purchased from countries other than the United States. In many cases, the Iraqis cannot account for arms flowing into the country, which often end up in the hands of insurgents.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview that Iraq ordered the Chinese military equipment for its police force in part because the U.S. is not delivering the arms fast enough.
Gates noted that the U.S. has already delivered about $600 million worth of equipment to the Iraqis and has another $2 billion to $3 billion on order.
