Explosion kills two candidates ahead of Iraq vote

Iraqi men look at an electoral campaign banner for the upcoming

provincial elections bearing flood pictures  and the slogan "They

drowned Baghdad with their corruption" in Baghdad on 25 March

2013. (Photo: AFP - Sabah Arar)

Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013

A powerful bomb tore through an armored car in a town north 

of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing two officials and badly 

wounding a third, weeks ahead of Iraq's first polls since 2010.

Mayor Shallah Abdul, council chief Abdulqader Naimi and 

Salaheddin provincial councillor Rashid Khorshid had been 

travelling together to inspect a road paving project north of 

the town when the bomb went off close to their armored car.

Naimi and Khorshid, both candidates in provincial elections 

due to be held on April 20, were killed, and Abdul was 

badly wounded and transported to a hospital in the Kurdish 

city of Sulaimaniyah.

The blast, which also killed one of the officials' bodyguards 

and wounded another in the town of Tuz Khurmatu, brings to 

11 the number of candidates in the provincial council elections 

who have been killed.

Authorities have already postponed the polls in two large

provinces, throwing doubt on the credibility of the vote, Iraq's 

first since the March 2010 parliamentary elections.



Tuz Khurmatu, home to about 110,000 Arabs, Kurds and 

Shiite Turkmen, lies 175 kilometers north of Baghdad at the 

center of a tract of disputed territory claimed by both the 

mostly-Arab government in Baghdad and the autonomous 

Kurdish region.

The dispute is often cited by officials and diplomats as the 

biggest long-term threat to Iraq's stability.

The establishment in September of the federal Tigris 

Operations Command, which covers disputed northern 

territory, drew an angry response from Kurdish leaders and 

increased tensions with the federal government.

Then on November 16, a firefight broke out during an attempt 

by Iraqi forces to arrest a Kurdish man in the town, which 

killed one person and wounded others.

The crisis, which Iraq's parliament speaker warned could 

lead to civil war, has since eased, but the dispute over 

territory remains unresolved.