BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed an Oil Ministry official on Thursday, the latest assassination in escalating violence that threatens to push Iraq towards civil war. Ali Hameed was shot outside his home as he left for work, a police official said.
Mainly Sunni terrorists insurgents have stepped up attacks on officials and security forces since a Kurdish and Shi'ite-led government was announced last month. They have killed more than 400 people in a bloody campaign that has challenged government promises of stability.
In violence on Thursday, a university professor was shot dead, one Iraqi soldier was killed and nine injured in a suicide bombing and four other Iraqi soldiers were kidnapped in a separate incident.
The surge of attacks have raised concerns the country could erupt into a full-scale civil war.
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Some of those killed were Shi'ite and Sunni clerics. Recent discoveries of people killed execution-style and then dumped at various sites have stirred sectarian passions. Most victims were Shi'ites but some were Sunnis.
A funeral service was held for Muhammad al-Allaq, a Shi'ite cleric who was gunned down on Wednesday, relatives said. Top Sunni Muslim cleric Harith al-Dhari publicly accused the Badr Brigades, the militia of the main Shi'ite political party, of assassinating Sunni preachers. It was the first time Dhari publicly accused the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which won January's elections in a Shi'ite coalition.
Dhari's Muslim Clerics Association called for a three-day closure of Sunni mosques in protest at the killings and he warned that Sunnis would not keep silent. The top Badr official denied the accusations. |