Iraq on Tuesday announced that it would close its borders during this month’s elections, with the news coming as more Shia election candidates were targeted by militants.
The independent electoral commission said the country’s international borders would be closed for three days from January 29, except to Muslim pilgrims returning from the hajj in Saudi Arabia. The elections are due to take place on January 30.
Commission member Farid Ayar also said Iraqis would be barred from travelling between provinces, and that a night curfew imposed, with the measures intended to combat the threat from Sunni insurgents.
Many Sunnis fear a loss of power to the Shia majority, which strongly supports the election. Shia candidates are expected to win most of the 275 seats in the new Iraqi national assembly, and several leading Sunni parties have said they will boycott the polls.
In the southern city of Basra, a candidate being fielded by the interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, was assassinated on Tuesday. Officials in Basra confirmed an election candidate had been killed on Tuesday, but declined to name him.
His death came shortly after a suicide car bomber had targeted the offices of a leading Shia political party in Baghdad, killing three other people. Another Shia candidate was shot dead by masked gunmen in the Iraqi capital on Monday afternoon.
The suicide bomb was detonated outside the Baghdad headquarters of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a party with close ties to Iran and a leading contender in the election. The bomber was reported to have told guards at a checkpoint that he was part of the party’s security staff, but blew up the car at the guard post when he was not allowed to enter.
”SCIRI will not be frightened by such an act,” Ridha Jawad, a spokesperson for the party, said. ”SCIRI will continue the march toward building Iraq, establishing justice and holding the elections.”
Several people were killed in another car bombing outside the party’s headquarters last month. Last week, gunmen shot dead Mahmoud Finjan, a representative of Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
The family of a 48-year-old Shia election candidate said he had been assassinated in the Sadr City area of Baghdad on Monday afternoon. Shaker Jabbar Sahl was a member of the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, which is headed by Sharif Ali bin Hussein, a cousin of Iraq’s last king.
In the north of the country today, there were reports that a Christian archbishop seized by gunmen on Monday had been released after his kidnappers demanded a $200 000 ransom. Basile Georges Casmoussa (66) was the most prominent member of Iraq’s Christian community — which makes up 3% of the country’s 26-million population — to be targeted so far.
The abduction of the archbishop, who was taken from outside the Syrian Catholic church in Mosul, was earlier condemned by the Vatican. ”The Holy See deplores this act of terrorism in the firmest manner and demands that the worthy pastor is swiftly freed unharmed to continue to carry out his ministry,” Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told Reuters. – Guardian Unlimited Â