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Iraqi Kurdish general assassinated in
disputed city of Kirkuk
1.12.2009 |
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December 1, 2009
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
—
A general from the Iraqi army's military
intelligence service was killed in the disputed
northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Monday, police told
DPA. Mohammed Khader, 46, was an ethnic Kurd and a
member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK, one
of the two political parties that have for decades
dominated Iraqi Kurdish politics.
Armed men jumped out of a civilian car in front of
his house in the eastern Kirkuk district of al-Nasr
and fatally shot the general, police said Monday.
His assassination comes amid heightened political
tensions in the city ahead of the 2010 parliamentary
elections.
Kirkuk and its environs are among the most
ethnically diverse regions of Iraq.
Many Iraqi Kurds hope to make the city the capital
of a future, independent state, calling it their
"Jerusalem." Iraqi Arab politicians,www.ekurd.netallied
with northern Iraq's Turkmen minority, view the
city, and its nearby oilfields, as an integral part
of the country.
Massoud Barzani, president
of northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region,
has said on October 28, 2009 that the
Kurds will not accept
any solution that gives Kirkuk "a special status" in
the 2010 polls.
Kirkuk
city is historically a Kurdish city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region, the
population is a mix of majority Kurds and minority
of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km northeast of
Baghdad. Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional
attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the Kurdish
Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and
perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
"Kirkuk
is Kurdish, and
a Kurdistani city
like Erbil, Sulaimaniyah
or Duhok, and is part of Kurdistan," Iraqi
Kurdistan region
president Massoud Barzani said on July 14. "All of
the historical and geographical documents prove
this."
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
had forced over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up
their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the
city and the region's oil industry.
The last ethnic-breakdown census in Iraq was
conducted in 1957, well before Saddam began his
program to move Arabs to Kirkuk. That count showed
178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and
10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in the
city.
Rancorous debate between Kurdish and Arab lawmakers
over voting in the city delayed passage of the
country's elections law for months.
The region's largest bloc of Arab politicians last
week threatened to boycott the vote, which now
appears likely to take place in mid- February or
March, if parliament does not agree to increase the
percentage of seats to be chosen by expatriate
Iraqis.
In the similarly divided region around the northern
city of Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad,
police on Monday told Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news
agency that gunmen had shot a police officer from
the nearby, predominantly Turkmen town of Tal Afar.
The slain man was visiting family in eastern Mosul,
Aswat al-Iraq reported.
Despite successive security pushes that police say
have netted hundreds of suspected terrorists, Mosul
and its environs remain among the most dangerous
regions in Iraq, and insurgents continue to launch
near-daily attacks there with deadly effect.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency,
DPA | Agencies
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