Shi’ite politician killed in bomb blast

SUICIDE car bomb killed an Iraqi Shi’ite politician and three others near Baghdad as they were heading to parliament yesterday in an attack likely to further fuel tensions between the minority Sunni Arabs and the country’s Shi’ite majority.

Separately, more than 1,000 US troops and Iraqi forces launched Operation Sword in a bid to crush insurgents and foreign fighters in western Iraq, making it the third major offensive in the area in recent weeks.

The military campaigns, however, have not been able to capsize a resilient insurgency that has killed more than 1,360 people - mostly civilians and Iraqi security forces - since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Shi’ite-dominated government on April 28.

National Assembly legislator Sheik Dhari Ali al-Fayadh and his son were killed in the suicide attack while travelling to parliament from their farm in Rashidiya, 32 kilometres north-east of Baghdad, said parliamentarian Hummam Hammoudi.

Two of al-Fayadh’s bodyguards were also killed and four more were wounded. The attack occurred on the first anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities.

Al Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for the assassination on a website.

Al-Fayadh was also a senior sheik from the al-Boamer tribe in the Mahmoudiya area, about 32km south of Baghdad and a hotbed of the Sunni-dominated insurgency. Al-Boamer, however, includes both Sunni and Shi’ite clans.

Al-Fayadh, in his late 80s, was the eldest member of the new parliament that was installed about three months ago and he had acted as speaker until one was elected.

He was a member of the country’s largest Shi’ite political party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The party is the senior partner in the ruling coalition.

Al-Fayadh was the second Shi’ite legislator to be killed since the new parliament started work in March. Lamia Abed Khadouri al-Sagri was killed on April 27 in eastern Baghdad.

The country’s Shi’ites are already on edge following a series of car bombings last week that killed nearly 40 people in predominantly Shi’ite neighbourhoods in Baghdad. The wave of killings has slowly been pushing the country toward civil war.

Other violence yesterday throughout Iraq saw at least 12 more killed, including a US soldier who died in a suicide car bomb blast in Balad, 80km north of Baghdad.

Five people were killed and at least nine others were injured in one of three car bomb explosions in Baqouba, a city north of Baghdad, police said. Separately, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive-laden belt blew himself up at a checkpoint, killing a policeman and wounding 17 more near Musayyib, about 64km south of Baghdad, police said.

A suicide car bomber slammed into a convoy carrying Kirkuk traffic police chief Brig Gen Salar Ahmed, killing one of his bodyguards and a civilian in the northern city.

Four were wounded, including Ahmed and three of his bodyguards. The oil-rich city of Kirkuk is 290km north of Baghdad.