Iraq Watch: August 19, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three members of the Iraqi Islamic Party - a Sunni political organization, who, in recent weeks has been urging minority Sunnis to register to vote in the upcoming referendum - were kidnapped and later exectued in the northern city of Mosul.

The three were snatched by masked gunmen while hanging up political posters in Mosul's southern district of New Mosul. Later, the kidnappers blocked off a major road in Mosul's nothern Nour neighborhood in front of the Dhi al-Nourein Mosque, then, as witnesses watched, lined the three Sunni political members up against a wall and executed them.

To the south of Mosul, in the cities of Baghdad and Baqouba, both Shiites and Sunnis marched in a demonstration against the federalization of Iraq, one of the key issues still dividing the ethnically and religiously diverse Iraqi drafting committe which has until Monday to agree on a draft constitution which then, if approved by parliament, would be voted on by the Iraqi public in an October referendum.

The event was organizaed by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

In another potential political development, Aljazeera reports that at least six Iraqi insurgent groups have called on Sunni voters to register and reject the draft constitution. The groups named in the joint statement released on Friday were the 1920 Revolution Brigades, Jaish al-Mujahdin, Islamic Army in Iraq, Islamic Front for Iraqi Resistance, Islamic Movement for Iraqi Resistance, and Asaib Ahl al-Iraq according to Aljazeera.

In other violence in Iraq on Friday, two civilians were killed and four wounded in a roadside bomb attack south of Baghdad. Another roadside bombing, this time in Saddam Hussein's hometwon of Tikrit, left two Iraqis dead according to the BBC.

Also, insurgents in the northern city of Hawija assassinated a local city council member. Aswad Omar Nayef was killed when gunmen ambushed him while he was on his way to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, located about 40 miles northeast of Hawija.