BAGHDAD: Iraq’s top theater and film official narrowly escaped assassination Wednesday when a magnetic “sticky bomb” affixed to his car detonated shortly after he parked it.
The attack against Shafiq al-Mehdi, the general director for cinema and theater in the Culture Ministry, came just hours after the attempted killing of a top police chief in north Iraq, the latest in a recent spate of assassination attempts.
Mehdi was walking up the steps of the national theater in Baghdad, where his office is located, when the bomb went off Wednesday morning.
“I arrived at the national theater this morning, parked my car and had just gotten out,” said Mehdi, who is himself an acclaimed theater director. “Moments later, as I was walking up the steps, the car blew up.”
“I am an independent academic – all my work is for art and theater,” he added. “I never interfere in politics, I don’t know why they attacked me.”
The deputy police chief of Kirkuk province escaped an assassination attempt Tuesday involving four explosions in the oil-rich northern city.
One Kurdish security officer was killed and 30 people were injured.
Major General Torhan Abdulrahman Yusuf had been traveling through Kirkuk, which lies at the center of a tract of disputed territory that is claimed by both the central government and Kurdish regional authorities, when a bomb detonated, he said.
“We tried to inspect the area after the explosion, but another bomb went off in the same place,” he said. “Shortly after leaving, two more bombs exploded in the same neighborhood.”
The assassination bids are the latest in an apparent trend. A senior official in Iraq’s foreign ministry was shot dead Friday in north Baghdad and a police departmental chief was wounded.
In separate incidents a day later, the head of Iraq’s tax agency and an army lieutenant colonel were killed – in both incidents gunmen used silencers.
Last Thursday the Islamic State of Iraq, Al-Qaeda’s front group in the country, posted a statement on the Internet jihadist forum Honein, claiming to have carried out 62 “operations” from the onset of March until April 5.
Also Wednesday, separate roadside bombs in the east and center of Baghdad wounded six civilians, an Interior Ministry official said.