Council Member Shot in Baghdad

 

Sunday  September 21, 2003

Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 21 September 2003 — Gunmen shot and seriously wounded a member of Iraq’s Governing Council here yesterday, ambushing her convoy in the first attempt to assassinate an official of the US-installed administration.

Authorities said Akila Al-Hashimi was shot in the stomach, shoulder and leg near her house in western Baghdad and was in stable condition after abdominal surgery. Witnesses said two of her brothers and two bodyguards were also hurt.

At least five men in a pickup truck and backup car lobbed a bomb and sprayed Kalashnikov fire at Hashimi’s two-vehicle convoy as she was being driven to work about 8:45 a.m. (0445 GMT), police and witnesses said.

An Iraqi official, who asked not to be named, said at least one suspect was arrested after the ambush, the second attack on a prominent postwar Iraqi personality after last month’s massive car bombing which killed a revered Shiite cleric.

No group claimed responsibility for the shooting. But Ahmad Chalabi, current chairman of the Governing Council, blamed it on “remnants of the Baathist regime and Saddam’s assassins” from the ousted government. “The members of the Governing Council and ministers will not be intimidated by the terrorists,” Chalabi said in a statement. “They will continue to do their patriotic duty to move Iraq toward freedom, democracy and sovereignty.”

US civilian administrator Paul Bremer condemned the ambush as a “cowardly act” and “an attack against all the people of Iraq and against the common goals we share for the establishment of a fully democratic government.” Hashimi, a prominent Shiite diplomat and foreign policy expert, is one of three women on the 25-member interim Governing Council formed in July by the US-led coalition.

Residents of her Kharijiyah neighborhood said the attack occurred as she emerged from an alleyway in a Land Rover also carrying one brother and a bodyguard. A small car with another brother and two more men followed. Hashimi and the two others in the Land Rover were wounded, while the vehicle rounded a corner and crashed through the garage of a villa, witnesses said. The brother and another man in the smaller car were also wounded.

“I saw Akila on the back seat. The blood was flowing but she was conscious,” said Arkan Omar Saleh, 47, owner of the villa. “Her brother Zeid who was driving said ‘They tried to kill us’ then fainted.”

Relatives took Hashimi to Yarmouk Hospital here where she underwent an operation on her stomach before she was whisked off to an unspecified American medical facility by a US military ambulance. Hashimi, a onetime member of Saddam’s Baath Party and protege of former Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz, handled relations with international organizations under the old regime.

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