IRAQ: Iraq's former prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said gunmen tried to assassinate him in Shia Islam's holiest shrine yesterday, forcing him to cut short an election campaign visit pursued by an angry mob.
"It appeared to be an assassination attempt," the secular Shia said. Some 60-70 men in black, armed with guns and knives, set upon his small party as he prayed at the Imam Ali mosque.
One took aim but dropped his gun, said the former US-backed premier, who is mounting a strong challenge to the ruling Shia Islamist bloc in the run-up to the December 15th parliamentary vote.
No independent account of the incident was available.
Police said Mr Allawi's group was attacked by men with batons and fled the shrine under a hail of rocks, tomatoes and shoes - the latter a mark of grave insult in Iraqi culture. Television images showed people running out as others threw sandals.
Mr Allawi, who seems to relish playing up to a tough guy image and once barely survived an axe attack by agents of Saddam Hussein, refused to accuse any group directly. But broad hints that Shia Islamists had a hand in it are likely to inflame an already bad-tempered campaign for the majority Shia vote.
In particular, aides said his assailants chanted support for supporters of militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose black- uniformed Mehdi army militia rose up in Najaf against Mr Allawi's government in 2004, before being crushed by US troops.
"We believe this was premeditated ... it was very clear that they had evil intent to kill either the whole delegation or at least me," he said. This man who dropped the gun appeared to be panicked when the gun fell from his hand."
Referring to the killing in 2003 at the same mosque of a leading cleric, widely blamed on the Mehdi army, aides said the attackers chanted Sadr's name: "It was the same chanting...linked to the martyrdom of Abdul Majeed al-Khoei," Mr Allawi said.
Police said some of Mr Allawi's guards and police fired in the air around the sprawling mosque complex as the politician's party ran for safety. A colleague who was accompanying Mr Allawi said he heard several shots but was unaware who had fired.
Two police officers said they believed the cleric's supporters were responsible: "When Allawi entered the shrine, a few people, believed to be Sadrists, picked up batons and threatened to attack him," a captain said at the scene after the incident.