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Kurdish PUK official killed in clash over
power cuts in Iraq
1.9.2010 |
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September 1, 2010
KIRKUK, Iraq's border with Kurdistan region,
— An official from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was killed in a dispute
over electricity Wednesday in the northern Kurdish
city of Kirkuk, police said.
Ichneh Mohiuddin Hussen, was shot dead by gunmen who
attacked a power station owned by his son, Amanj
Mohiuddin. A relative was injured in the attack.
Two men, identified as a policeman and his brother
and armed with Kalashnikov automatic rifles,
attacked the power station because generators were
not turned on as scheduled, police said.
Power cuts in the city of Kirkuk have extended for
20 hours each day amidst soaring summer
temperatures. |
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 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,www.ekurd.net
Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km northeast of
Baghdad. Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional
attachment to Kirkuk,www.ekurd.net
which they call "the Kurdish
Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and
perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to
the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city
and other disputed areas through having back its
Kurdish inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs
relocated in the city during the former regime’s
time to their original provinces in central and
southern Iraq.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be
followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants
decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed
to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having
it as an independent province.
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.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency,
DPA | ekurd net | Agencies
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