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Three shootings across Iraq leave 4 dead
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-11 19:06
Three shootings killed four people across Iraq, police said Thursday,
including one attack in the capital that left a young girl wounded and her
parents dead. Negotiations between political leaders on the country's draft
constitution continued as a deadline loomed, the Associated Press reported.
Iraqi Prime
Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari speaks during a press conference Wednesday
Aug. 10, 2005 in the fortified Green Zone area in Baghdad, Iraq. Meetings
continued Wednesday in hopes of reaching a consensus over the 18 points of
disagreement which will enable the constitution committee to finish the
drafting of the new Iraqi constitution by the Aug. 15 deadline.
[AP] |
Insurgent attacks have continued as leaders from the country's disparate
groups have huddled for weeks in an attempt to write a new constitution that is
supposed to be complete by Monday. U.S. and Iraqi officials hope political
progress will deflate the insurgency that has launched waves of attacks on the
new government and security forces.
In the attack that orphaned the 12-year old, police said gunmen killed the
girl's mother and father, a pharmacist, late Wednesday in west Baghdad. The girl
was lightly injured and was picked up by relatives, said Dr. Muhannad Jawad of
the Yarmouk Hospital.
In a western district of Baghdad, a police officer traveling to work Thursday
was killed in a drive-by shooting. Police 1st Lt. Hamid Mahmoud was killed and a
taxi driver injured in the attack, Jawad said.
Gunmen burst into the home of an intelligence official from the Defense
Ministry and killed him Thursday in the southern city of Basra, 340 miles
southeast of Baghdad, said police Capt. Mushtaq Kadhim. Lt. Col. Ibrahim Khalil
was killed as he was preparing for work.
On Wednesday, gunmen kidnapped a senior Interior Ministry official in
Baghdad. Police said Brig. Gen. Khudayer Abbas, chief of the administrative
affairs office in the Interior Ministry, was dragged from his car and rushed
away in another vehicle.
Political leaders continued intense negotiations to complete the country's
draft charter, which Iraq's parliament is scheduled to approve by Monday. But
major differences among ethnic and political factions threaten to delay
completion of the document.
The major obstacle is the Kurdish demand that Iraq be transformed into a
federal state. The Kurds have insisted on federalism to protect their self-rule
in three northern provinces.
Sunni Arabs oppose federalism, fearing the Kurds want to break away from Iraq
and declare independence. The Shiites are divided, with some factions wanting to
build a Shiite federal region in the south.
In the holy city of Najaf, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, met separately Wednesday with two key Shiite figures 錕斤拷
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It was not known what
was discussed, but al-Sistani has taken a keen interest in the new
constitution.
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