BAGHDAD — Iraqi police fatally shot a Kurdish politician in one of Iraq’s most volatile provinces Saturday, a killing that underlines the growing tensions between Kurds and Arabs in parts of the north.
Riya Qahtan, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, was killed Saturday morning in Jalula, a small town 80 miles northeast of Baghdad in the ethnically mixed province of Diyala, said Jabar Yawer, a spokesman for the Kurdish military, or peshmerga.
The incident occurred after two Sunni Arab policemen stopped three members of the Kurdish secret service at a market and demanded they show identification. They refused, and within minutes police reinforcements arrived at the scene, arrested them and took them to police headquarters, Yawer said.
Qahtan then went to the police station and persuaded police to release the detainees, who had been working as guards for his party. But as the group was leaving, two policemen shot Qahtan, Yawer said.
