Baghdad Tuesday, February 8, but his two sons and a bodyguard were killed, news reports said. Almost at the same time in the Iraqi capital at least 21 people apparently died when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd waiting outside a military base to enlist in the Iraqi Army. The Voice of America (VOA) network quoted medical workers as saying that many of the victims were "literally torn apart by the blast."
Politician Alusi, who survived several previous attempts on his life. appeared shaken in television footage taken shortly after the attack against him, when he confirmed his sons had died, VOA reported. "Yes, my two sons died and my bodyguard as well. It was a gunfire attack on my car near my house," the French News Agency (AFP) quoted the 52-year-old Alusi as saying.
Alusi was apparently waiting for his car when the gunmen opened fire on the vehicle. "I was the target of the attack, there is no doubt," AFP cited Alusi, who also escaped a grenade attack against his home on January 12. The attack, which was believed to have been carried out by Islamic militants, came just months after he became the first Iraqi politician to openly visit Israel.
EXPULSION FROM PARTY
The September visit was condemned at home and lead to his expulsion from the Iraqi National Congress party of Ahmad Chalabi, who was once supported by the Pentagon but fell out of favor with American leaders However Alusi defended his trip to Tel Aviv and has vocally, and controversially, supported the normalization of ties between Iraq and Israel, VOA said.
He told VOA that in "the new Iraq there is no place for old ways of thinking" and his main concern was doing what is "in Iraq’s best interest, regardless of what others in the Arab world think." The attack was expected to add to concern among Iraq’s Christians and Jews about growing pressure on authorities to establish an Islamic state.
With Shi’ites expected to take most of the 275-seats in the National Assembly, their top religious leaders on Sunday, February 6, demanded that the new constitution must clearly stipulate that Islam be the sole source of legislation.
"All of the ulema (scholars) and marjaiyas (religious authorities), and the majority of the Iraqi people, want the National Assembly to make Islam the source of legislation in the permanent constitution and to reject any law that is contrary to Islam,” said a statement published by a representative of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ishaq Al-Fayad, one of the four top
Shiite authorities in Iraq.
IRAQI CHRISTIANS "LEFT OUT"
It comes as Iraqi Christians have already expressed worries that they will be left out of the political process as election officials confirmed there was "substantial sabotage of Iraq’s 30 January elections in the Mosul area" that prevented thousands of people from voting, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) said.
RFE/RL quoted Iraqi Election Commissioner Safwat Rashid as saying that "only 93 out of a planned 330 polling centers opened on election day" in Ninevah Province, of which Mosul is the capital. He also said there were a number of polling stations where voting materials "were looted by gunmen and that a number of people were not able to cast their votes." The interference from insurgents in Nineveh, a restive, mixed population province in north-central Iraq, was described as "the largest-scale irregularity to be reported so far."
It was also unlikely to encourage tens of thousands of Christian refugees in Joran and Syria to return home. There was however some good news for four kidnapped Egyptian telecommunications workers in Iraq, amid reports they were freed after two days in captivity. The company they work for said Tuesday, February 8, two of the men were rescued
by a U.S. military patrol, while the other two escaped on their own, VOA added.
However that news was overshadowed by conflicting reports about the fate of a kidnapped Italian journalist who has been missing since Friday, February 4.
(By: BosNewsLife News Center with Stefan J. Bos, sources in and outside Iraq).
