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| Iraq |
| Gunmen Kill 3 Sunni Clerics in Iraqi City of Basra |
| 2015-01-03 |
| [AnNahar] Gunmen killed three Sunni holy mans near the mostly Shiite city of Basra in southern Iraq, a government front man said Friday, an apparent sectarian attack that drew immediate calls for calm. Interior Ministry front man Saad Maan told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named that the assailants ambushed a car Thursday night carrying the holy mans in the mostly Sunni district of Bab al-Zubeir near Basra, shooting dead the three and seriously wounding two other holy mans traveling with them. The ministry, he said, was investigating the killings. He gave no other details. There was no claim of responsibility for the ambush and no reports of retaliatory attacks by Sunnis. The attack followed a visit to Basra this week by Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his tour of a Sunni area north of Baghdad on New Year's Eve. Al-Abadi on both visits spoke emphatically about the need for all of Iraq's religious and ethnic communities to close ranks in the face of the threat posed by the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... group. An association of Sunni holy mans also called for calm in a statement issued Friday, arguing that the attack was carried out to ignite sectarian violence in Basra. Speaking later on state Iraqi television, the association's head, Khaled al-Mullah, said the Islamic State group and its supporters were the only beneficiaries of the attack. In other violence Friday, a roadside kaboom went kaboom!in central Baghdad, killing four civilians and wounding 12, police and hospital officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. |
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