Sulamani,(Southern Kurdistan), A senior military commander with one of the main factions running Iraqi Kurdistan has been assassinated by Ansar al-Islam, a hardline Islamist group accused of having links to Baghdad and al-Qaeda, officials said Sunday.
Shaukat Haji Mushir, a leading member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was killed along with five other people on Saturday near the Iraqi Kurd zone's southeastern town of Halabja as he met with Ansar members to negotiate their defection.
"These Ansar members had volunteered to join us, so Shaukat agreed to meet them. But he walked straight into an ambush," explained PUK field commander Sherkh Jafar, who was among thousands of grieving mourners attending the official's funeral Sunday at Sulaymaniya, the PUK's headquarters.
"Ansar have shown their brutality, and the time has come for us to clean up this area," another PUK official said.
Among the mourners was also Ahmad Chalabi, who heads the Iraqi National Congress (INC) opposition umbrella group.
Another senior PUK security official was left in a critical condition by the ambush, carried out by three masked Ansar members who managed to flee the scene.
The other dead comprised two bodyguards and three civilian bystanders, including a woman and a young boy.
Ansar al-Islam, which means Supporters of Islam, have for over a year been battling the PUK from a tiny, mountainous area between Halabja and the Iranian border.
The hardline group has imposed Taliban-style rules in the cluster of 16 villages under its control, and has been blamed by the PUK for a series of bomb attacks and political killings.
Last week US Secretary of State Colin Powell echoed PUK allegations by accusing the group of being connected to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and Saddam Hussein -- even though the Ansar pocket is outside Baghdad's control -- raising expectations here that Ansar positions will be targeted during a wider US-led assault against Baghdad.
The ambush also came the same day as the Ansar allowed a group of journalists to enter their territory and visit a cluster of buildings shown by Powell during his dramatic multimedia presentation.
Powell said Ansar were developing chemical weapons at a place called Khormal, although that village is controlled by another Islamic group, Komali Islam. The buildings were in fact situated in the Ansar-held village of Sarghat.
However, the journalists only found long-abandoned structures and what appeared to be a former media centre, and no evidence of any scientific activity.
But Powell's allegations and Saturday's killing has heightened tensions in the Kurdish autonomous zone. One PUK official said the assassination may have been linked to Ansar anger that the PUK has been plying the United States with intelligence demanding Western air strikes against the group.
But questions have been raised about the accuracy of such PUK intelligence, given that the faction is openly backing the US and has much to gain from the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Most of rebel-held northern Iraq is in the hands of two mainstream Kurdish factions -- the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The area is widely expected to be provide a launchpad for a US attack on Baghdad, given that it lies close to the key government-held cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.
*Feb 9 (AFP)
