Shi’ite mayor of main Baghdad suburb killed

Rubaie was the successor of a Sh’ite mayor who was also killed earlier this year.

Scores of Christians and Shi’ites have been killed in Dora since the US-led invasion, including nine Christians in a minivan in September and Shi’ite mosque preacher last month.

Security officials say “fanatic” members of purist Sunni Muslim groups, known as Salafis, are behind the killings in Dora. The groups, whose influence has been rising after Saddam Hussein was toppled last year, deny involvement.

US and Iraqi forces surrounded a Baghdad mosque on Thursday which had been renamed after the war after a Salafi theologian and arrested Sheikh Mehdi al-Sumaid’i, a Salafi leader.

The government did not give a reason for arresting the sheikh, who had told the pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper that Iraq’s minority Sunnis believed interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Shi’ite, was unjustly waging war on them.

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