The Syria conflict continues to reach into and unsettle Iraq. Thousands of Shi'ite Muslims from Iraq and beyond will take up arms against Sunni al Qaeda "savages" in Syria if fellow Shi'ites or their shrines come under attack again, a powerful minister in Iraq's Shi'ite-led government said. The conflict is splintering the Middle East along a divide between the two main denominations of Islam, becoming a battlefield in a proxy war between Assad's main regional ally, Shi'ite Iran, and his Sunni enemies in Turkey and the Gulf Arab states. Amiri said the killing of around 60 members of their sect at the hands of Sunni insurgents in Syria’s eastern province of Deir al-Zor earlier this month had galvanized Shi’ites. Shi'ite leaders such as Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon have also issued warnings against any repeat of that attack against shrines in Syria.
As predicted last week violence continued in the west and northern provinces as Baghdad re-launched the local elections agenda in the wake of a postponement earlier in the year, however it did not seriously affect widespread voting as Sunnis returned in force to the ballot box.
"The people of Anbar and Nineveh overcame threats to cast their vote today, and violence failed to disrupt the democratic process," United Nations envoy to Iraq Martin Kobler said in a statement despite the fact that a suicide bomber killed seven people at an Iraqi vote counting center on Thursday evening, hours after polls closed in Anbar and Nineveh provinces.
The suicide bomber blew himself up at a vote-counting center in the city of Ramadi in Anbar province, killing seven people, four of whom were members of Iraq's electoral commission. Earlier on Thursday, a roadside bomb hit a bus carrying five electoral officials in the town of Baiji in Nineveh, killing one and in the provincial capital Mosul, a mortar round was fired at a checkpoint near a voting center, wounding two soldiers.
Earlier on Wednesday 19 June, a suicide bomber embraced and killed a Sunni political leader, also in Nineveh.
Comments are closed.