Senior official at Sunni institution killed

A senior official of a government department that manages Sunni mosques was killed this evening by unidentified gunmen, a colleague said.

Naji Mohammed al-Eithawi was driving home after offering the sunset prayers at al-Hameed mosque in a south-west Baghdad neighbourhood when gunmen opened fire from a passing vehicle, Zoheir al-Taan, another senior official at the Sunni Endowments said.

Al-Eithawi, who was 55 and is survived by a wife and six children, has at times acted as a spokesman for the Sunni Endowments and was a regular contributor to Iraqi newspapers.

He delivered the Friday sermon in one of Baghdad’s mosques, the only time when he sheds Western suits for a clerical robe and turban.

The motive for al-Eithawi’s killing was not immediately known, but Sunni as well as Shiite clerics have been frequent targets of unresolved murders in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. Members of the two communities often blame each other for the killings but both deny involvement, blaming militants they say are determined to drive a wedge between the Shiites and Sunnis and plunge the country into civil war.

Shiites comprise about 60% of Iraq’s estimated 27 million people, but had been oppressed for decades under the rule of a Sunni Arab minority. The 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, the Sunnis’ last patron, reversed the fortunes of both communities, heightening sectarian tensions and polarising the ethnically and religiously diverse nation.