BAGHDAD, Oct 9: Gunmen in camouflage uniforms killed the brother of Iraq’s Sunni Vice-president Tareq al-Hashemi on Monday, drawing swift condemnation from across Iraq’s political divide and senior US officials.
Parliament’s biggest Sunni political group blamed militias and warned it could jeopardise Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s plan to reconcile warring Shia and Sunni sects.
Lt-General Amer al-Hashemi, a senior Defence Ministry adviser, was the third of Hashemi’s siblings killed since April. Gunmen also killed his sister and another brother.
Mr Hashemi is one of the most senior Sunni Arabs in Maliki’s Shia-led national unity government, which is struggling to contain the Sunni-Shia violence convulsing the country and, by some estimates, killing up to 100 people a day.
A car bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market at dusk as people were heading home to break their daylong Ramadan fast, killing 13 and wounding 46, police said. The US military has said bombings in Baghdad are at an all-time high.
Parliament opened its session on Monday with Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs condemning Hashemi’s killing.
“The security forces will capture the killers to bring them to justice,” Maliki said in a statement.
Iraqi police said gunmen driving in cars similar to those used by Interior Ministry special forces attacked Hashemi’s house at dawn. They kidnapped the guards outside the building and then killed the general and his bodyguard.
US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top US general in Iraq, General George Casey, called his killers the enemies of the Iraqi people and pledged their support in helping the Iraqi security forces bring them to justice.
Like many similar attacks in Iraq, however, Hashemi’s killers may never be found.—Reuters
