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| Iraq |
| Car bomb that targeted Chalabi is state-owned -- spokesman |
| 2008-09-09 |
| (VOI) -- The car bomb that targeted the motorcade of Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, in western Baghdad on Friday belongs to a state department, an official spokesman for the INC said on Monday. "The initial investigations held that the explosive vehicle that targeted the INC leader's convoy belonged to a state department and contained two cannon shells of 130 mm. caliber," Muhammad Hassan al-Musawi said in a press release by the INC as received by Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq -- (VOI). Chalabi's motorcade had come under a bombing attack in the western Baghdad area of al-Mansour, leaving two civilians killed and 17 others, including nine of his bodyguards, wounded. "Investigations are still going on to unravel this sinful operation," Musawi added. Chalabi, an ex-Iraqi deputy prime minister and former Pentagon favorite, survived the attack unscathed. A secular Shiite who was once viewed by Washington as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein, Chalabi was on his way to his headquarters in the area when the bomb exploded, his office said. After spending most of his life abroad, Chalabi returned to Iraq in 2003 and served in the 25-member Governing Council appointed by the American occupation authorities to run the country's day-to-day affairs. He was a member of the next two cabinets, serving as finance minister and then as deputy prime minister but failed to win a seat in parliament in the 2005 election. He now is chairman of the debaathification commission, which is responsible for keeping Saddam loyalists out of government posts and is believed to have escaped several assassination attempts since 2003. |
| Posted by:Fred |