Iraq’s Nineveh: KDP candidate’s office torched in Sinjar
Shafaq News – Nineveh
Unknown attackers set fire to the campaign office of Iraqi lawmaker Mahma Khalil Ali Agha in Sinjar on Thursday, days after a Sunni candidate was assassinated in a car bombing north of Baghdad.
Khalil’s media office reported that the assailants stormed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) candidate’s headquarters before dawn, torching posters and banners. It described the perpetrators as driven by “ISIS-like ideology,” expressing confidence that security forces would apprehend those responsible.
Khalil, a current MP seeking re-election under the KDP banner—Iraq’s largest Kurdish faction led by Masoud Barzani which won 31 seats in 2021 and is expected to remain a key player in post-election coalitions—is contesting a seat in Nineveh—a diverse province of 2.1 million registered voters that includes Sunnis, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Shabaks, and holds 34 parliamentary seats, eight of them reserved for women.
Read more: Elections on schedule, legitimacy in doubt: Iraq heads toward November vote
The arson followed Tuesday night’s assassination of Safa al-Mashhadani, a candidate from the Sunni-led Sovereignty (Siyada) Alliance, who was killed when an explosive device planted beneath his vehicle detonated near Baghdad.
Read more: Iraq’s Sovereignty Alliance candidate killed: What we know?
