Election friction flares in Iraq's violent north
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Tensions are mounting between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in the Iraqi city of Mosul, where political violence is increasing ahead of provincial elections.
The United Nations this week condemned attacks on candidates competing in the January 31 provincial council vote in Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh.
Predictions that violence could flare ahead of the polls are already bearing out. On Wednesday, gunmen walked into a cafe in central Mosul and killed Mowaffaq al-Hamdani, a member of the Sunni Arab "Iraq for Us" party list.
He was the second candidate to be shot dead in a month.
In Nineveh, minority Kurds stand to lose the control they won when many of the area's Sunni Arabs stayed home during the last provincial elections in 2005.
An ethnic feud between Kurds and Arabs in the north has worsened in recent months, even as sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in other parts of Iraq has eased.
Disputes have simmered across an ethnically mixed swathe along the "green line" that separates the autonomous Kurdish region from the rest of the country. In Kirkuk, a divided city Kurds want as their capital, the election has been postponed.
In Mosul, a mainly Arab Sunni bloc, al-Hadba, which takes its name from an askew mosque minaret, says it has been targeted in a crackdown orchestrated by Kurdish officials ahead of the vote. The United Nations says the group has been hit by raids. Continued...
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