A prominent Sunni Arab political leader was badly wounded yesterday when gunmen fired on his car in Baghdad, police, doctors and political allies said.
Fakhri al-Qaisi, a spokesman for the National Dialogue Council, was hit five times when assailants opened fire with automatic weapons as he drove alone in the west of the city.
Amid chaotic scenes at the capital's Yarmouk Hospital, as friends and relatives crowded round anxiously for information, a doctor who treated Qaisi told reporters one of the bullets hit him in the chest and he had been taken elsewhere for surgery.
"His injury is life-threatening," the doctor said. Six weeks before the first parliamentary election at which the once dominant Sunni minority is expected to take part in large numbers, the attack provoked anger against the Shi'ite-led government - though Sunni militants have also threatened the lives of those who engage in the US-backed political process.
"We don't want to accuse anyone," Qaisi's political colleague Hussein al-Falluji said. "But this is evidence the government is unable to control the situation."
Sunni leaders accuse the government of failing to stop, or even colluding with, "death squads" formed by Shi'ite militias bent on asserting the once oppressed majority's domination and on reprisals against Sunni supporters of Saddam Hussein's rule.
Police said Qaisi had been in his car in Baghdad's mainly Sunni Ghazaliya neighbourhood when he was attacked. A dentist, Qaisi was prominent among Sunni leaders who joined negotiations on a constitution this summer.
These ended in bitter disagreement and the once dominant Sunni Arab minority came close to vetoing the charter at last month's referendum.