Posted on 11/20/2006 12:58:11 PM PST by NormsRevenge
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen shot and killed a television comedian Monday who was famous for mocking everyone from the Iraqi government to U.S. forces to Shiite militias to Sunni insurgents.
Walid Hassan's slaying came as the Iraqi death toll rose to more than 1,300 for the first 20 days of November — the highest for any month since The Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005.
In all, 22 Iraqis were killed Monday in a series of attacks in Baghdad, Ramadi and Baqouba, police said. The bodies of 26 Iraqis who had been kidnapped and tortured also were found on the streets of the capital, in Dujail to the north of Baghdad and in the Tigris River in southern Iraq.
The Iraqi death toll this month is already well above the 1,216 who died in all of October, which had been the deadliest month in Iraq since the AP began its count.
The actual totals are likely considerably higher because many deaths are not reported. Victims in those cases are quickly buried according to Muslim custom and never reach morgues or hospitals to be counted.
In addition to the victims of violence, countless Iraqis have had close calls with death. Among them were two government officials who escaped assassination attempts Monday.
Minister of State Mohammed Abbas Auraibi, a member of Iraq's Shiite majority, said a roadside bomb hit his convoy at about 9:30 a.m. as it was driving on a highway in eastern Baghdad. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.
Hakim al-Zamily, a Shiite deputy health minister, also escaped unhurt when gunmen opened fire on his convoy in downtown Baghdad at noon, killing two of his guards, the minister said.
On Sunday, suspected Sunni insurgents kidnapped another deputy health minister, Shiite Ammar al-Saffar, from his home in northern Baghdad. Officials said the gunmen wore police uniforms and arrived in seven vehicles to abduct al-Saffar, who was believed to be the most senior government official kidnapped in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.
Al-Saffar was seized nearly a week after dozens of suspected Shiite militia gunmen in police uniforms kidnapped scores of people from a Ministry of Higher Education office in Baghdad. That ministry is predominantly Sunni.
Monday's civilian victims included Hassan, an actor and comedian on Al-Sharqiyah TV who was shot while driving in western Baghdad. The motive for his slaying was unknown. Hassan had performed in a comedy series called "Caricature," which mocked coalition forces, insurgents, militias and Iraq's government.
Assailants also shot to death Fulayeh al-Ghurabi, a Shiite professor at Babil University in the province south of Baghdad, as he was driving home at midday, police said.
A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on Saturday night and a U.S. Marine died during combat in Anbar province on Sunday, the military said, raising to at least 2,865 the number of U.S. service members who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war. This month in Iraq, 47 American service members have been killed or died.
Meanwhile, for the second day in a row coalition forces raided Baghdad's Sadr City Shiite stronghold, headquarters of a militia suspected of having carried out the mass kidnapping at the Ministry of Higher Education. Iraqi and U.S. forces suffered no casualties, no captives were reported found.
British and Iraqi forces also raided homes in southern Iraq and arrested four suspects in the kidnapping of four American security guards and their Austrian co-worker, an official said.
The raid took place in Zubair, a mostly Sunni-Arab enclave south of Basra, Capt. Tane Dunlop, the British military spokesman, told the AP. Most of Britain's 7,200 soldiers in Iraq are based in the city.
On Sunday, Iraqi police showed the media 200 suspected insurgents they had arrested the night before while raiding several areas north of Basra.
Both raids failed to find any of the hostages in southern Iraq, a mostly Shiite region.
Attention Bill Maher- job opening in Baghdad.
You've hit it on the head. Gutless!
Anyone know if the AP has written anything about this comedian prior to his death?
I think I saw a piece about him recently on TV. If it's the same guy, he was taking on the terrorists head-on with humor, and he worried every day about being attacked. His comedy was topical and rattled all cages equally.
not sure if it was AP specifically, but I seem to recall of a mention or two of him before.
Why did they wait so long?
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