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Iraq ex-PM says survives assassination bid
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-05 07:55
HAIL OF MISSILES
Police said some of Allawi's guards and police fired in the air around the
sprawling mosque complex as the politician's party ran for safety. Allawi said
he heard several shots.
Two police officers said they believed Sadr's supporters were responsible:
"When Allawi entered the shrine, a few people, believed to be Sadrists picked up
batons and threatened to attack him," a captain said at the scene after the
incident.
Sadr aides were not immediately available for comment.
Allawi's electoral list includes several prominent Sunni Muslims and his
promises to crack down on pro-government religious militias have won backing
across the sectarian divide.
"We will punish these groups that terrify the Iraqi people and violate holy
places," said Allawi, who last week accused the government of abusing human
rights as badly as Saddam -- winning praise from the once dominant Sunni
minority which complains that Islamist militias are running death squads against
them.
U.S. troops found dozens of maltreated Sunni prisoners last month in a secret
Interior Ministry bunker in Baghdad.
Allawi supporters have complained that Islamist parties have prevented them
campaigning in Shi'ite cities like Najaf and Kerbala, using intimidation. Some
Shi'ite religious politicians have accused Allawi, once a member of Saddam's
Baath party, of planning to reinstate secular authoritarian rule.
One election poster in Shi'ite towns has portrayed simply a portrait of
Saddam with Allawi's face partly superimposed.
The neurosurgeon spent decades in exile after breaking with Saddam.
Axe-wielding assassins burst into his London bedroom in 1978, badly wounding
him. A long-time ally of British and U.S. intelligence, he was named interim
prime minister in mid-2004.
He stepped down after a January election gave a big majority to the United
Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Islamist parties.
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