Bahrain's Top Diplomat Shot in Baghdad

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http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... mi_ea/iraq



BAGHDAD, Iraq - Bahrain's top envoy to Iraq was wounded Tuesday in the second attack against an Arab diplomat here in a week. A major Sunni Arab group called on Sunnis to take part in future elections, action that could diminish the insurgency

Elsewhere, gunmen ambushed a minibus taking seven Baghdad airport employees to work Tuesday, killing four women and wounding three men, police and hospital official said. A roadside bomb targeted a U.S. security convoy Tuesday near the Iranian Embassy, causing no U.S. casualties but injuring one Iraqi, officials said.

The Bahraini diplomat, Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, was shot on his way to work in western Baghdad, said Dr. Muhanad Jawad of Yarmouk Hospital. Al-Ansari was treated for a shoulder wound and was released, witnesses said.

The incident occurred three days after gunmen kidnapped Egypt's top envoy to Iraq, Ihad al-Sherif, and both attacks appeared to signal an insurgent campaign to discourage Arab countries from bolstering diplomatic ties to the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

"The aim is clear, just to create a state of fear," Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kuba said. Al-Sherif's kidnapping "was an attempt to ... scare the other diplomatic missions so that they won't expand their presence in Iraq."

The tiny Gulf state of Bahrain is a close American ally and home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which played a support role during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

In the attack on the airport employees, two bands of gunmen in separate cars ambushed the minibus on the dangerous airport road, police Capt. Talib Thamir said.

A mortar attack missed a U.S. military base and struck central Samarra, killing a 13-year-old girl and wounding four civilians, police said.

More than 1,400 people have been killed in insurgent attacks since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his new government, dominated by Shiites and Kurds, on April 28.

Despite the ongoing violence, Iraq's embattled government appeared to be making progress in moves to woo the country's Sunni Arab minority, which forms the core of the insurgency. Many Sunnis boycotted the Jan. 30 election, meaning the community is not strongly represented in the new National Assembly.

On Monday, Dr. Adnan Al-Dulami, spokesman of the General Conference for Sunnis in Iraq, called on fellow Sunnis "to organize themselves to take part in the coming elections and to start to register their names at the offices of the electoral commission."

Al-Dulami said Sunni clerics would soon issue a religious decree repeating the call. Clerics spearheaded the January boycott, saying any election held with U.S. and other foreign troops in the country would be invalid.

Following al-Dulaimi's call, Humam Hammoudi, head of the committee to draft a new constitution, said 15 Sunnis had been approved to join the committee and would begin work Wednesday. The inclusion of Sunnis on the committee had been delayed because majority Shiites and Kurds had accused nominees of links to Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

There was still no word Tuesday on the fate of the kidnapped Egyptian envoy, al-Sherif. Witnesses said the abductors accosted him Saturday night in western Baghdad and shoved him into the trunk of a car after pistol-whipping him. They accused him of being an American spy, witnesses said.

Egypt announced last month that it would become the first Arab country to post an ambassador to Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

On Monday, a hardline Sunni Arab cleric, Harith al-Dhari, condemned all kidnappings, calling them "a bad phenomenon that emerged after the occupation of Iraq by America and its allies."

Al-Dhari heads the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is believed to have contacts with some insurgent groups. Sunni Arabs are estimated to make up about 20 percent of Iraq's 26 million people and dominated Iraqi political life for generations until the collapse of Saddam's regime in 2003.