|
BAGHDAD, Iraq Jan 14, 2005 — A veteran Iraqi
extremist movement claimed responsibility Friday for
the killing of a community leader who was working to
get out the vote on behalf of the country's top
Shiite cleric, and three American troops were killed
in persistent violence ahead of this month's
elections.
The Sunni Muslim group of Ansar al-Islam said it
singled out Sheik Mahmoud Finjan for assassination
as a supporter of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
and "as a big supporter of the elections."
A separate ambush in Iraq's north killed three
officials of a party representing Iraq's Kurds like
the Shiites, working aggressively for a high turnout
in a vote expected to pry a large measure of power
from Iraq's long-dominant Sunni Muslim majority.
Finjan was one of many representatives of Sistani
Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric working to get
Iraq's suppressed Shiite Muslim majority to the
polls in U.S.-backed Jan. 30 national elections.
Finjan was shot to death Wednesday as he headed home
after evening prayers in a mosque at the town of
Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad. Attackers also
killed Finjan's son and four bodyguards.
The attacks were the latest blamed on Sunni
extremists in what's expected to be an escalating
campaign of violence aimed at intimidating would-be
voters.
"We … call upon all brother citizens not to
participate in the elections because we are going to
attack voting centers," Ansar al-Islam said in the
statement claiming responsibility, renewing Sunni
extremist demands for a vote boycott. The message
was posted on a Web site used by insurgents.
Established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Ansar
al-Islam is one of Iraq's older extremist groups
predating even the U.S. toppling of Saddam Hussein.
The group has been linked to al-Qaida.
One of its offshoots, Ansar al-Sunnah, has emerged
in recent months as the deadliest homegrown Iraqi
group.
Attacks claimed by Ansar al-Sunnah include a
December suicide bombing that killed 22 people,
mostly Americans, at a U.S. military mess tent in
the northern city of Mosul; the August executions of
12 Nepalese construction workers; and twin suicide
bombings in February that killed 109 members of
Iraq's assertive Kurd minority.
Many Sunni Muslim leaders say Iraq remains too
violent to allow for a free election and have urged
its postponement.
The U.S. military reported some of the latest
violence Friday the deaths of three U.S. troops in
two provinces feared to be too violence-wracked for
the vote.
Two Marines of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
died in action Thursday in the western province of
Anbar, the U.S. military said in a statement.
And a 1st Infantry Division soldier died while
supporting Task Force Olympia operations around the
volatile northern city of Mosul the same day, the
military said. American forces gave no details.
Another Mosul attack Thursday saw gunmen ambush a
car carrying officials of the Kurdish Democratic
Party, killing three of them, another party official
said.
The Kurdish Democratic Party of Massoud Barzani is
one of two main factions of Iraq's Kurds, who make
up about 20 percent of the population.
Iraq's Kurds and Shiites, dominated by Iraq's Sunni
Muslim minority since the Ottoman era, have been
fervent supporters of the Jan. 30 vote, which will
seat a temporary government charged with writing a
post-Saddam Hussein constitution and overseeing new
elections under it.
Anbar and Mosul's province of Ninevah are two of
four provinces conceded by U.S. ground force
commander Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz to be potentially too
dangerous for significant voter participation.
The four, among 18 total provinces in Iraq, hold
nearly a quarter of Iraq's 26 million people.
In the north, police arrested four people Friday
after finding machine guns and rockets packed into
their car. The suspected insurgents were pulled over
and searched on a road near the ethnically mixed
city of Kirkuk, police Brig. Sarhat Qadir said in
Kirkuk.
http://abcnews.go.com
Top |
® 