A Sunni Muslim cleric was wounded on Thursday in what he claimed was an assassination attempt against him that killed his son and son-in-law.
Nazem Khalaf, a cleric at the Rahman mosque in Abu Dsheer, a suburb in southwestern Baghdad, said that assailants drove up next to his car and opened fire.
He was wounded in the head and hand, and his 21-year-old-son and 37-year-old son-in-law were killed.
"Whoever tried to kill me is trying to ignite sectarian violence," said Khalaf, who claimed that three days before the attack, a member from a Shiite Muslim militant group threatened to kill him if he didn't stop going to the mosque. He said he was accused of belonging to the Wahhabis, a militant sect whose adherents are mainly in Saudi Arabia.
The alleged attempt is the second known attack on a Sunni Muslim cleric following the bombings at Shiite Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad on March 2 which killed at least 181 people and left 573 wounded. It was the bloodiest day since the ouster of Saddam Hussein last April.
On Wednesday, the US military said that the imam of the al-Qubaisi mosque, in west Baghdad, was shot and killed by unknown assailants on Sunday. The imam, Sheik Ali al-Dhabi, was killed in a drive-by shooting.
US and Iraqi officials said the March 2 attacks were aimed at starting a civil war in Iraq and accused foreign elements of being behind them.
Police at the Bilat al-Shuhada police station in the Abu Dsheer district refused to comment on the alleged attempt on Thursday.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
COMMUNITY CONFLICT: Concerns about disease spread from corpses has run up against friends and families’ desire to bury their dead as infection spreads in the area Angry residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) attacked and burned a tent that was part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, the staff there said Saturday. It was the second such attack in the region in a week. No one was hurt in the attack, according to reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections fled the facility and are unaccounted for, a hospital director said. Angry residents arrived at the clinic in the
INSURGENT ACTION: A local independence movement in Balochistan, alleged by Pakistan’s government to be backed by India, claimed responsibility for the strike A suicide bomber detonated an vehicle-borne IED near a railway as a passenger train passed through the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta yesterday, killing at least 23 people and wounding over 70, officials said. The explosion caused two of the train cars to overturn and catch fire, according to footage shared online. The attack happened in an area where security forces are usually stationed, badly damaging several nearby buildings and smashing more than a dozen vehicles parked along the road, according to witnesses and images circulating on social media. Doctors at local hospitals said they had received the wounded, with 20 in critical
RSS