Candidate on Maliki’s Hilla list assassinated

BABEL / IraqiNews.com: A candidate on the list of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the forthcoming local elections was assassinated and four of his bodyguards wounded in an armed attack northeast of the city of al-Hilla on Friday, a security source in Babel said. “Unidentified gunmen opened a volley of fire at the vehicle of Haytham al-Husseini, the candidate for the provincial council elections in Babel for the area Ajrash, Jebla district, (50 km) northeast of Hilla, killing him and wounding four of his bodyguards,” the source told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The gunmen then escaped to an unknown place,” the source added. Husseini is also the chief of the local council of Jebla, he said. Husseini’s Dawlat al-Qanoon (State of Law) list is composed of Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party, the Dawa Party – Iraq Organization, the Islamic Solidarity List, Feyli Kurds, the Islamic Union for Iraqi Turkmen and the Mustaqiloon (Independents) bloc. The provincial council elections are scheduled to be held on January 31 in Iraq’s 18 provinces save Kirkuk and the three autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region provinces of Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Duhuk. Hilla, the capital city of Babel province, lies 100 km south of Baghdad. AmR (P) 2