Attack in Baghdad kills 13 Shiites

Gunmen today attacked a vehicle carrying employees of a government agency that cares for Shiite mosques in Iraq, killing 13 of them and wounding eight, the organisation said.

The gunmen, travelling in one car, carried out the attack by intercepting the Shiite Endowment minibus in northern Baghdad this morning as it was carrying the employees to work in the capital, said Salah Abdel-Razaq, an Endowment spokesman.

Three other people on the vehicle apparently escaped injury, he said.

A similar attack occurred late last month in southern Iraq against the Sunni Endowment, the government agency that cares for Sunni-Arab mosques in Iraq.

In that attack on November 30, gunmen fired at a convoy carrying an official from that agency, killing him and three of his bodyguards, police said.

The attack, which also wounded two bodyguards, occurred in Basra, the largest city in mostly Shiite southern Iraq, a police spokesman said. Nasir Gatami, the official who died, was the deputy of the Sunni Endowment chapter in Basra.

All the victims were Sunnis.

On November 15, suspected Shiite militiamen kidnapped three employees of the Sunni Endowment in Baghdad, the agency said.

At the time, Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samaraie, the head of the Sunni Endowment, was quoted by Sunni-operated Baghdad Television as urging Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to work for the men’s release.