A senior official at Iraq’s Ministry of Education was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday, the second such attack here in 24 hours, an official said.
Kamal Jarrah, the ministry’s director of cultural relations, was gunned down in front of his home in the west of the capital as he left for work, the official said.
”Unknown attackers opened fire on Kamal Jarrah in front of his house in the Ghazalia quarter, killing him immediately,” the ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
”The body has been taken to Yarmuk hospital,” he added.
Kamal Jarrah is the second high-ranking Iraqi official killed in the past 24 hours after Bassam Kubba, a deputy foreign minister, died in a similar attack early on Saturday.
A Foreign Ministry spokesperson blamed Kubba’s assassination on fighters loyal to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, under whom the Shi’ite diplomat had served as ambassador to China.
Kubba was the first official from Iraq’s new interim government, which will take charge of the country on June 30 from the United States-led coalition that overthrew Saddam, to be assassinated.
Kurdish Sunni religious leader Sheikh Iyad Kurshid Abdel Razzak was also shot and killed by assailants who attacked his home in Kirkuk, 255km north of Baghdad, on Saturday.
”Sheikh Iyad Kurshid Abdel Razzak … was killed by shots from assailants which had entered his house in the Kurdish neighbourhood of Rahimawa,” police Colonel Adel Ibrahim said.
Razzak (37), imam at the Almaza al-Thaniya mosque, was known for defending the rights of Kurds in the oil-rich city where Arabs were favoured under Saddam’s regime.
This was the first attack on a Kurdish Sunni religious leader, said Ibrahim.
Kurds, Arabs and Turkomens live in Kirkuk, and the tensions between the communities have flared since Saddam’s ouster by US-led forces in April 2003.
Meanwhile, a senior police officer in Baquba, 60km north-east of Baghdad, said he was shot and wounded by unknown attackers late on Saturday.
”I have escaped from an assassination attempt,” said General Majid Almani Mahal, commander of Atraf police station in Baquba. ”A group of armed people in a small car shot me.”
The attack took place near an industrial neighbourhood 5km south of Baquba at about 8pm local time on Saturday, Mahal said. — Sapa-AFP