A prominent civil society advocate was shot dead late on Sunday in Iraq’s shrine city of Karbalah while returning home from anti-government protests, a neighbor told reporters.
Fahem al-Tai, 53, had been taking part in weeks of rallies denouncing Iraq’s entrenched political elite as corrupt, inept and beholden to neighboring Iran.
On Sunday night, he was dropped off by two friends on a motorcycle near his home, a neighbor said.
“The area is close to the shrines, the police station, the provincial headquarters — it’s a very secure area,” they said. “He was with two of his friends when he was killed.”
In footage from a street security camera seen by reporters, Tai could be seen disembarking from a motorcycle when another motorcycle with two men pulled up behind him.
The passenger could be seen shooting Tai at least twice with a pistol that appeared to have a silencer on it, before the driver also begins shooting.
The footage shows the advocate collapsing and the assailants driving off.
The gunmen and a white vehicle then chased down the two advocates who had dropped Tai off, a relative said.
One of them was shot in the back, but they both survived.
More than 450 people have died and another 20,000 have been wounded since anti-regime rallies erupted in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, and Shiite-majority south in October.
They include several advocates gunned down in mysterious circumstances or abducted and later found dead.
In one particularly gruesome case last week, the bruised body of 19-year-old Zahra Ali was left outside her family home in Baghdad, hours after she had gone missing.
On Friday, relatives of Zeid al-Khafaji, a 22-year-old photographer, said he had been abducted while returning from Tahrir Square in the capital.
Protesters have for weeks complained of being monitored, threatened and harassed in an intimidation campaign meant to keep them from pursuing their movement.
There has been minimal accountability for the casualties or the kidnappings.
Tai, married with children, had been publicly critical of other intimidation attempts against protesters.
ROCKET ATTACK
Several rockets yesterday slammed into an Iraqi military complex that hosts US forces next to Baghdad International Airport, wounding six Iraqi troops, the military said.
Security forces found launchers with rockets that had not been fired properly, indicating a larger attack was planned, a military statement said.
It is the latest in an uptick in rocket attacks targeting either Iraqi bases where US troops are located or the US embassy in Baghdad.
US defense officials have blamed several on Iran-backed factions in Iraq.
Security sources told reporters that the wounded in the attack belong to Iraq’s Counter-Terrorism Service, an elite unit that was created and trained by US forces.
Two of them are in critical condition, the sources said.
The military complex also hosts a small group of US soldiers and diplomats.
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