Funeral ceremony for Ubeidi begins in Baghdad

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A funeral ceremony held for MP Hareth al-Ubeidi, who was gunned down inside a mosque in the capital yesterday, began on Saturday with the participation of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Vice President Adel Abdulmahdi and several parliamentarians. The guards carried the casket, draped in an Iraqi flag, to its final resting place, according to the semi-official al-Iraqiya TV. On Friday (June 12), a security source said Ubeidi was assassinated by an unidentified gunman inside al-Shawaf mosque in Baghdad’s district of al-Yarmuk. “A gunman was hiding at one of the restrooms inside the mosque of al-Shawaf in al-Yarmuk, southwestern Baghdad, and opened fire from his Walther gun at Ubeidi, a legislator from the (Sunni) Iraqi Accord Front (IAF), who was then leading worshippers for the Friday congregational prayers,” the source told IraqiNews.com news agency. “Ubeidi’s guards chased the escaping gunman but he blew himself up amidst them. The blast left the gunman and some guards killed,” the source added. The IAF had elected Ubeidi, a leading member of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), by majority in early May to be the head of its parliamentary bloc, succeeding the incumbent Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Iyad al-Samarraie. SS (S) 1