 The leading candidate in a Shiite alliance expected to dominate Iraq's Jan. 30 elections said yesterday that majority of Shiites would not be dragged into a civil war despite a series of bloody attacks on them. Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, told Reuters in an interview that Al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi was leading a campaign to try to divide Shiites and Sunnis but would not succeed.
| "Nope. Nope. Ain't gonna do it. They'd have to kill us first!" |
"We are strongly standing in the face of this evil plan and any sectarian sedition," Hakim said. Hakim survived an assassination last month — a suicide bomb attack on his party's headquarters which for Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility. Hakim became SCIRI leader after his brother Mohammed Baqer was killed by a suicide bomb outside Shiites' holiest shrine in the city of Najaf in 2003. In the latest attacks on Shiites, a suicide bomb at a wedding party south of Baghdad killed at least 12 people and a blast at a Shiite mosque in the capital killed 14 on Friday. Hakim said these were all attempts to spark civil war. "It began with assassinating Mohammed Baqer Al-Hakim and it is continuing now with the attacks yesterday on a Shiite mosque and on the Shiite wedding," Hakim said. |