GUNMEN in Baghdad killed a prominent Shi'ite Islamist politician overnight as Condoleezza Rice appealed to Iraqis not to let the sectarianism fuelling an orgy of violence destroy their country. In what looked like a sectarian assassination, Ali al-Adhadh of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was shot dead with his wife as he drove in mainly Sunni west Baghdad, police and SCIRI member Adnan al-Obeidi said.US Secretary of State Rice said during a visit to Vietnam that Iraqis "have one future and that is a future together. They don't have a future if they try to stay apart".
A recent surge of kidnappings by men in uniform has stoked fears of infiltration of Iraq's security forces by members of both sectarian militias and criminal groups.