BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen attacked a vehicle on Tuesday that was carrying
employees of a government agency that cares for Shi'ite mosques in Iraq, killing
13 of them and wounding eight, the organization said.
The coffin of Ahmed Ali Mahmoud who was killed Sunday
when clashes erupted between groups of Shi'ites and Sunnis, wrapped by the
Lebanese flag, is carried by anti-government protesters, in front the
Lebanese Government House, in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, Monday Dec. 4,
2006.[AP]
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The gunmen, traveling in one car,
carried out the attack by intercepting the Shi'ite Endowment minibus in northern
Baghdad on Tuesday morning as it was carrying the employees to work in the
capital, said Salah Abdel-Razaq, an Endowment spokesman. Three other people on
the vehicle apparently escaped injury, he said.
A similar attack occurred late last month in southern Iraq against the Sunni
Endowment, the government agency that cares for Sunni-Arab mosques in Iraq.
In that attack on Nov. 30, gunmen fired at a convoy carrying an official from
that agency, killing him and three of his bodyguards, police said. The attack,
which also wounded two bodyguards, occurred in Basra, the largest city in mostly
Shiite southern Iraq, a police spokesman said. Nasir Gatami, the official who
died, was the deputy of the Sunni Endowment chapter in Basra. All the victims
were Sunnis.
On Nov. 15, suspected Shi'ite militiamen kidnapped three employees of the
Sunni Endowment in Baghdad, the agency said. At the time, Ahmed Abdul Ghafour
al-Samaraie, the head of the Sunni Endowment, was quoted by Sunni-operated
Baghdad Television as urging Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to work for the
men's release.
