More Assassinations Across Iraq

[k98nights]

BAGHDAD — A burst of violence across Iraq on Tuesday claimed the lives of 14 people, most related to what appears to be a campaign of assassinations aimed at officials amid the country’s extended political crisis.

The two top vote-getters during Iraq’s Parliamentary election in March, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, met Tuesday, but there was no immediate announcement that the two had broken new ground in their impasse over the formation of the next government.

Mr. Allawi’s political party won two more seats than Mr. Maliki’s party, but neither won enough to form a government on its own. Among the unresolved issues is whether Mr. Maliki will continue as prime minister.

The targets across the country on Tuesday included two police officers in the city of Baiji, in northern Iraq, who died after a car rigged with explosives was detonated on the main street as a police convoy drove by, the authorities said.

The bomb exploded just outside a crowded marketplace shortly before 10 a.m. In all, 7 people were killed; 17 others were injured.

Lt. Col. Dawoon al-Sahin of the local police said he believed that the bomb may have been aimed at one of the slain officers, Lt. Col. Hussein al-Qaisi, who handled police personnel issues.

In Baghdad, a staff member of the capital’s provincial council who focused on social welfare programs was killed after an adhesive bomb that had been attached to his vehicle exploded as he passed through a security checkpoint, the authorities said. Two police officers were wounded in the attack.

The man, Qahatan Abdul Hussein, “had gotten out of his car and was getting back in when it exploded,” said the head of the provincial council’s security committee, Abdel Karim Thrib Saheed al-Tarboush.

Another of those killed on Tuesday was identified as Brig. Gen. Wareed Johan, a top supply officer in the Iraqi Army. He was killed when an adhesive bomb on his car detonated, the police said. Another officer in the car, Col. Talib Abdul Rahman, was wounded.

A roadside bomb in Baghdad’s Dora neighborhood killed an unidentified motorist and wounded four others, the police said.

In the Diyala Province town of Khalis, four members of a single family, including a 10-year-old girl, were killed in a gun battle with another family, the police said, saying the cause may have been tribal rivalry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/world/middleeast/30baghdad.html

[ReturnToGod]

Thanks for keping us all informed, despite the terrible circumstances that the Iraqis are living through. IMHO, they need the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Doc31]

Thanks for the post