 Gunmen have killed a senior official of Iraq's main Sunni Muslim party, which last month withdrew from the Jan. 30 election race it wants postponed, the Iraqi Islamic Party said Wednesday. Omar Mahmoud Abdallah, a cleric who has written a number of books on Islam, was snatched from his pharmacy in the northern city of Mosul and killed Tuesday. "The Iraqi Islamic Party condemns this crime," it said in a statement. An Iraqi Islamic Party official said Abdullah was shot in the head after he was kidnapped Tuesday. Insurgents have targeted mostly election officials and politicians in a bid to undermine the polls. The violence has prompted calls for a delay in the election. The Iraqi Islamic Party pulled out of the January poll fearing persistent bloodshed would deter Iraqis in the Sunni north and west from casting their ballots, skewing the outcome and undermining its credibility. Iraq's 60-percent Shi'ite majority, oppressed under Saddam Hussein, is keen that elections expected to cement their increased political power, take place on time. While the Iraqi Islamic Party has withdrawn from the January poll, it remains a firm supporter of the transition to democracy in Iraq. The Iraqi Islamic Party was represented on the defunct Governing Council appointed by Washington immediately after the war and has members in the National Council set up in August. But the party later withdrew a minister from Iraq's interim government to protest against U.S.-led attacks on Sunni cities aimed at crushing an insurgency that has raged there for months. |