Middle East News
9 Die as Assassins’ Blasts Wound Sunni Deputy Premier
BAGHDAD, March 23 — An assassination attempt on one of Iraq’s deputy prime ministers, a Sunni in the Shiite-dominated government, left nine people dead Friday and was another in the mounting number of cases of Sunni-on-Sunni violence.
The deputy prime minister, Salam al-Zubaie, received chest wounds from shrapnel when one of his Sunni guards blew himself up as Mr. Zubaie led midday prayers in a prayer room attached to his house.
Within minutes, a car bomb blew up outside Mr. Zubaie’s house, apparently part of a twofold attempt on his life, according to an account by Interior Ministry officials and members of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni political group.
Mr. Zubaie is from a tribe that is part of the Anbar Salvation Council, a group of tribal leaders that has taken a stand against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the most militant of the Sunni groups in the insurgency against the Americans and the Shiite-led Iraqi government.
Late Friday, a group called the Islamic State of Iraq, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, claimed responsibility on a Web site, according to the SITE institute, which tracks radical Islamic sites.
Recently, several Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province who have taken a stand against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia have been targets of Sunni extremists. The attacks included one on Feb. 23, when a truck bomb exploded near a mosque in Habbaniya, west of Baghdad, killing 36 people after the mosque’s imam denounced the group.
Mr. Zubaie was taken to an American-run hospital in Baghdad.
Dhafer al-Ani, an Iraqi lawmaker from the moderate Sunni bloc Tawafiq, said Mr. Zubaie’s condition was stable. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki visited Mr. Zubaie in the hospital and also looked in on other victims. The 15 people wounded in the attack included Mr. Zubaie’s close adviser and his secretary, the Interior Ministry said.
In the past year, the two other prominent Sunnis in the government, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi and the Parliament speaker, Mahmoud Mashhadani, were attacked personally or lost family members. Last year Mr. Hashemi’s sister and brother were gunned down, and a bomb exploded in a car belonging to Mr. Mashhadani, who was not in it.
The assassination attempt on Friday was one in a series of attacks or attempted attacks on politicians that involved people who worked closely with them. To try to protect themselves, many politicians choose guards who are members of their family or tribe, but Mr. Mashhadani said even that did not ensure safety.
“All Iraqi officials are under huge threat because of their guards,” he said. “Zubaie is from Abu Ghraib, the stronghold for the Al Qaeda organization, and it’s very easy for them to infiltrate his guards, so for this reason we have to check the guards, with the help of the intelligence forces and the Americans.”
Mr. Zubaie, 48, was educated as an agricultural engineer and specialized in potato nutrition and fertilization, becoming a lecturer at Anbar University. He refused to join Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.
The attempt on his life appears to have persuaded some Shiite leaders that those Sunnis who are in the government are under as much threat as Shiites are from violent Sunni militants. Many Shiite leaders had felt that most Sunnis in Parliament were wolves in sheep’s clothing.
“This attack against Mr. Salam al-Zubaie is kind of punishment because of his recent statement about terrorism and the Al Qaeda organization,” said Shiek Adel Ibrahim Subihawi, a Shiite and the leader of the Subihawi tribe. “These kinds of attacks are letting the Shiite people see that the Sunnis are more different from the terrorists than many of the Shiites thought, and these last attacks in Anbar showed that the Sunnis are also victims of the terrorism just as the Shiites are. That will be very useful to rebuild the national unity of Iraq.”
Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, a member of Parliament who is also an influential hard-line Shiite cleric, made much the same point.
“The terrorists now are targeting Sunni and Shia,” he said shortly after hearing of the attack on Mr. Zubaie. “In Ramadi and Falluja there are no Shia. The chemical attacks there have been on Sunnis.” Three vehicles laden with toxic chlorine gas that exploded last week killed at least two people and wounded or sickened more than 350.
Elsewhere in Baghdad on Friday, violence continued. In Sadr City, an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in the northeast, a midafternoon car bombing killed five people and wounded 19, according to a source at the Interior Ministry. Twenty-six bodies were also found throughout the city on Friday, according to an Interior Ministry source.
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