|
Gunmen in Iraq kill top Shiite cleric's aide
EFL: BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- An aide to Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric was shot to death Thursday in Baghdad, police said, the second of his aides killed this week. The attack is part of an upsurge in violence since the largely Shiite transitional government came to power. Many of the targets have been Shiites and Kurds. Authorities believe the insurgents are mainly Sunni Arabs. The aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, whose name is Sayid Mohammed al-Allaf, was shot to death in Sadr City, a largely Shiite neighborhood of northeast Baghdad, Iraqi police said. The other al-Sistani aide shot this week was Sheikh Qasin al-Ghiri. He and his nephew were killed in a drive-by shooting early Sunday in eastern Baghdad, where there is a large Shiite presence. Al-Allaf's assassination follows Wednesday's call by the Association of Muslim Scholars and the Iraqi Islamic Party to close Sunni mosques from Saturday dawn prayers until Tuesday dawn prayers to protest the treatment of Sunnis. According to the GlobalSecurity.org Web site, the association was created after the fall of Saddam Hussein and his largely Sunni government. It is the highest Sunni authority in Iraq. The association's statement says the Shiite-dominated transitional government disregards the Sunni community's rights, and has violated "mosques, (the) holy Quran and private homes; in addition to the arrest, torture and assassination of scholars and thousands of youth and worshippers without proper trial, along with a deliberate marring of the reputation of Sunnis through official and non-official media." The statement demands the end of government practices, threatening a "stricter" response if it does not. Sunnis represent a small portion of the 275-member transitional National Assembly. On Wednesday, the head of a Sunni group made fiery accusations against Shiites, directing his ire at a group that once was a militia for a powerful Shiite organization. Harith al-Dhari, head of the Association of Muslim Scholars, criticized the Badr Organization, once known as the Badr Brigade, the group that was formerly the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose party has members in the government. Last week, the Interior Ministry announced that the Badr Organization helped authorities arrest a handful of people in connection with a Baghdad attack. Sunnis are concerned that the Shiite government is allowing groups like the Badr Organization to behave like militias. Al-Dhari makes a reference to the arrests in a statement, referring to four Palestinians who were seized. "We knew the sides that stand behind the assassinations of imams, sheikhs, and prayers. They are the same sides that cordoned off the camp of our Palestinian brothers in al-Baladiat area to take them out of the country. They are the Badr militant group," al-Dhari said. "All the world should know that we are heading toward a catastrophe, only God knows when it ends. This is our warning." Posted by: Steve 2005-05-19 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=119548 |