Another Iraqi official killed

Gov. Mohammed Ali
al-Hassani was murdered on his way to work.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

BAGHDAD — A roadside bomb Monday killed the governor of Iraq’s Muthanna province, making him the second governor in as many weeks to become a casualty of violence between rival Shiite Muslim militias in southern Iraq.

Word of the assassination came as two prominent members of the Senate Armed Services Committee completed a two-day visit to Iraq and offered a bleak assessment of prospects here.

In a joint statement, Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee’s chairman, and John Warner, R-Va., the committee’s senior Republican, said that though a surge of U.S. troops had tamped down violence in some parts of Baghdad, there was no sign of political reconciliation between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite rivals and “we are not optimistic about the prospects.” They said U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker shared their views.

Levin later told reporters during a conference call from Tel Aviv that he believed the Iraqi parliament should replace Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “The Maliki government is nonfunctional and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders,” Levin said.

Levin said he and Warner spent two hours with Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, but that Petraeus didn’t say what he planned to recommend about U.S.-Iraq policy in a much-anticipated report to Congress next month.

Gov. Mohammed Ali al-Hassani was killed at about 8 a.m. while traveling from his hometown, Rumaitha, to his office in Simawa, police said. Two other people traveling with him also were killed, and three of his guards were injured.

Other details

Police said the bomb had been planted on the main route between the two cities. Muthanna is about 170 miles south of Baghdad.

A hospital worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release details said Hassani was dead when he arrived at the hospital.

Hoping to prevent any revenge killings that sometimes follow high-profile attacks, local officials immediately imposed a curfew.

Another provincial governor in southern Iraq, Khalil Jalil Hamza of the Diwaniyah province, was killed Aug. 11, also by a roadside bomb.