Iraqi general assassinated in disputed city of Kirkuk

Nov 30, 2009, 17:00 GMT

Kirkuk, Iraq - A general from the Iraqi army's military intelligence service was killed in the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Monday, police told the German Press Agency dpa.

Mohammed Khader, 46, was an ethnic Kurd and a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two political parties that have for decades dominated Iraqi Kurdish politics.

Armed men jumped out of a civilian car in front of his house in the eastern Kirkuk district of al-Nasr and fatally shot the general, police said Monday.

His assassination comes amid heightened political tensions in the city ahead of the 2010 parliamentary elections.

Kirkuk and its environs are among the most ethnically diverse regions of Iraq.

Many Iraqi Kurds hope to make the city the capital of a future, independent state, calling it their 'Jerusalem.' Iraqi Arab politicians, allied with northern Iraq's Turkmen minority, view the city, and its nearby oilfields, as an integral part of the country.

Rancorous debate between Kurdish and Arab lawmakers over voting in the city delayed passage of the country's elections law for months.

The region's largest bloc of Arab politicians last week threatened to boycott the vote, which now appears likely to take place in mid- February or March, if parliament does not agree to increase the percentage of seats to be chosen by expatriate Iraqis.

In the similarly divided region around the northern city of Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, police on Monday told Baghdad's Aswat al-Iraq news agency that gunmen had shot a police officer from the nearby, predominantly Turkmen town of Tal Afar.

The slain man was visiting family in eastern Mosul, Aswat al-Iraq reported.

Despite successive security pushes that police say have netted hundreds of suspected terrorists, Mosul and its environs remain among the most dangerous regions in Iraq, and insurgents continue to launch near-daily attacks there with deadly effect.