BAGHDAD, Iraq – Gunmen killed the chairman of the Al-Fallujah City Council on Saturday, striking a blow to American and Iraqi efforts to develop a functioning representative government in the volatile western province of Al-Anbar.
Sami Naib al-Jumaili, who was slain in a drive-by shooting in front of his house, was at least the third leader of the Al-Fallujah council killed by insurgents. One resigned after receiving death threats.
Although police investigators said they did not know who killed Jumaili, suspicion has fallen most heavily on the extremist insurgent group Al-Qaida in Iraq, which has conducted an intimidation and killing campaign against politicians and tribal leaders in Al-Anbar who have cooperated with the Iraqi and American authorities.
Maj. Jeffrey Pool, a spokesman for the American military command in Al-Fallujah, said the assassination was “designed to cause fear and to intimidate the populace to cow them into submission.”
In the northern oil city of Kirkuk, gunmen stormed the house of a Kurdish family on Saturday, killing all four family members, including an 8-year-old girl who was beheaded, according to Brig. Gen. Adel Zain al-Abdeen, the chief of the local police.
Police investigators and neighbors of the victims said they had no idea why the attackers had singled out the family, which included the girl’s parents and her 18-year-old sister.
Killings have been on the rise in Kirkuk in recent months as tensions have escalated among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen in advance of a referendum, expected to be held before the end of the year, to decide whether the city should join Iraqi Kurdistan.
Also on Saturday, three American soldiers were killed and six were wounded in three separate attacks in and around Baghdad, the American military said. The military also reported that a Polish soldier was killed and four were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a bomb Friday on a roadway in Ad-Diwaniyah, south of the capital.
In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City on Saturday, killing two and wounding five, an Interior Ministry official said.
A volley of at least six mortar shells exploded in and around the capital’s fortified “green zone” Saturday afternoon, wounding at least two people, the Interior Ministry official said.
An official in Al-Azamiyah, a predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhood in Baghdad, lashed out at the Americans on Saturday for their decision to build a 12-foot wall along the eastern flank of the neighborhood.
Daood Salman al-Adami, acting head of the Al-Azamiyah council, said that the American military had asked him to sign a document assenting to the wall before they began construction last week, but that he refused to do so until he had polled the community.
The U.S. military has said that the wall was meant to secure the Sunni community of Al-Azamiyah, which “has been trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation.”
The area, located on the eastern side of the Tigris River, would be completely gated, with entrances and exits staffed by Iraqi soldiers, according to the military.
Some residents and local officials in the neighborhood complained that they had not been consulted in advance about the barrier.
“This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Al-Azamiyah,” said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area. “They are going to punish all of us because of a few terrorists here and there.”
The military insisted its aim was only to protect the area and this was one of many measures being undertaken as part of a U.S.-Iraqi security plan to pacify the capital, which began on Feb. 14.
“The intent is not to divide the city along sectarian lines,” said Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell, the deputy commander of American forces in Baghdad.
“The intent is to provide a more secured neighborhood for people who live in selected neighborhoods. Some of the people who I’ve talked to have had favorable comments about it, and they want us to build some of them faster.”
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, prepared to begin an Arab tour today that will take him to Egypt, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Oman, his adviser Yassin Majid said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
