Party offices linked to former Iraqi PM attacked

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
KARBALA, Iraq, Dec 8 (AFP) - The offices of a party allied to former Iraqi
prime minister Iyad Allawi were ransacked in the southern town of Karbala,
the second such attack in 24 hours, a party official said Thursday.

Unknown gunmen raided the offices of the Arab Socialist Movement in the
Muwazafeen neighborhood of Karbala late Wednesday, said the official.

Gunmen sprayed bullets in the air and then set fire to the furniture after
tying up the guards. Police in the Shiite holy city confirmed the report.

On Tuesday, Allawi's party office in the nearby city of Najaf was hit by a
rocket. Two days earlier, the former premier, a secular Shiite, was pelted
with shoes and tomatoes at that holy city's Imam Ali shrine.

In further election-related violence, a candidate from Mithal al-Allusi's
Iraqi Nation list was killed in Baghdad's Sunni Arab neighborhood of
Adhamiya on Wednesday.

"Abdel Salam Kassem al-Furaiji was shot dead by unknown gunmen," Allusi told
AFP.

The run-up to Iraq's landmark December 15 legislative elections has seen
numerous attacks on activists of various parties.

The UN chief's special representative to Iraq, Ashraf Qazi, has expressed
"serious concern" over election-related violence ahead of the polls.

Iraq has imposed a 30-day state of emergency in the restive western
provinces of Al-Anbar and Nineveh, and shut down the border with Syria to
all but authorized commercial traffic ahead of the vote.
 
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