Iraqi leaders gunned down

By PATRICK COCKBURN

BAGHDAD - A senior official in Iraq's Education Ministry was shot and fatally wounded in Baghdad yesterday in the second assassination of a top Government official in as many days.

Kamal al-Jarrah, director-general for cultural relations, was attacked by gunmen as he left his house and died later in hospital, a ministry official said.

Gunmen assassinated an Iraqi deputy foreign minister on Saturday, shooting him as he drove to work through the centre of Baghdad.

Bassam Salih Kubba, Iraq's senior career diplomat, was sitting in the back seat of a car being driven to the Foreign Ministry. Near the al-Assaf mosque in Azamiyah, a Sunni Muslim district notoriously hostile to the occupation, gunmen drove up behind him and opened fire.

As they passed Kubba's car they fired more shots through the side windows, mortally wounding him. His driver was injured less seriously. The diplomat died in hospital. Kubba, 60, from a well-known Shia family, was recently appointed the director-general of the ministry.

The killings are also a sign that the resistance is becoming more organised in Baghdad. The base of support for Saddam Hussein's regime came from Sunnis in rural areas and towns such as Fallujah, but the war appears to be spreading to the capital.

Izzadine Saleem, the president of the disbanded Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), was killed by a suicide bomber on May 17 in his car entering the Green Zone. Salama al-Khafaji, another council member, was attacked south of Baghdad on 27 May; her son and bodyguard were killed. Less well-known officials have also been assassinated.

The level of violence has fallen over the past week. This is mostly because the US Army has stopped its advance into Najaf and has left Fallujah, besieged by the US Marines in April, to the resistance.

Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister in the interim Government to which power is to be transferred on 30 June, has said: "What happened in Fallujah and other places is not to be repeated."

Allawi will be held to his word. He received support from a surprising source. The radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has been fighting US troops in Najaf, said he was ready for dialogue with the Government if it worked to end the occupation. "I support the new interim Government," Sadr said at Friday prayers in a sermon read out by an aide. "I ask you open a new page for Iraq and for peace."

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia leader, has similarly given qualified support to the interim government.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle as police tried to stop him reaching a US and Iraqi base in Baghdad yesterday, killing four policemen and two civilians, police at the scene said.

The car was driving towards an Iraqi military college in southeast Baghdad, where many US soldiers are also based. Two police cars tried to intercept the vehicle and it exploded, destroying one police car and badly damaging another.

Guerrillas regularly target Iraqi police, who they accuse of collaborating with the US-led occupation.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq