Iraq: 2 electoral candidates survive assassination attempts

Two candidates who are running in next month’s Iraqi parliamentary elections survived assassination attempts yesterday.

“A car bomb planted next to the road exploded when the motorcade of the Kirkuk Provincial Council member candidate for the Iraqi Turkmen Front, Ammar Kahya, passed through the entrance of the exhibition street, south of the city of Kirkuk,” Kirkuk police Captain, Hamed Al-Obeidi, said.

“Kahya survived the assassination attempt and was unhurt, but a civilian was killed and ten others were wounded, including a driver and a bodyguard,” Al-Obeidi told the Anadolu Agency.

In Baghdad, Captain Ahmed Khalaf said: “Unknown gunmen riding in a civilian car shot at the convoy of MP Abdul Karim Abtan with pistols equipped with silencers, in the Dora area south of Baghdad.”

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Khalaf said: “MP Abtan was coming from an electoral rally for his list during an attempt to assassinate him, but he and his bodyguards were not hurt, and only a number of the vehicles were damaged.”

Abtan is a deputy in the current parliament and a candidate for the upcoming elections for the National Coalition bloc led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi.