Iraq Watch: October 26, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Following the release of voting results and subsequent ratification of Iraq's draft constitution three major Sunni political parties - Iraqi Islamic Party, Iraqi National Dialogue, and the General Conference for the People of Iraq - on Wednesday announced the creation of a joint alliance to combat the current Shiite and Kurdish domination of the Iraqi political spectrum.

The Iraqi Accord, as it is being called, will work as a political bloc for Iraq's minority Sunnis in an effort to contest the forthcoming December elections, which will be held to determine Iraq's parliament.

Another influential Sunni group, the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), criticized the newly-passed constitution on Wednesday claiming the charter "benefit[s] the occupiers and those who collaborate with them." Further, the organization announced that it will no longer support or take part in any political process in Iraq.

In violence on Wednesday, Nabil Yasir al Musawi, the top accountant for Iraq's Ministry of Culture, was killed along with his driver outside of his Baghdad home.

Elsewhere, the bodies of four people were discovered 140 miles northeast of Baghdad near Haditha. Three of the men were identified as members of the Iraqi army. All four men were bound, gagged, and shot to death.

In Ramadi, five Iraqi policemen were killed when insurgents opened fire on them and in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, three Iraqi policemen were killed and two others wounded in a roadside bombing.

Meanwhile, a U.S. soldier was killed in a vehicle accident at Camp Bucca yesterday the U.S. military announced on Wednesday.

Also, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's insurgent group, al-Qaida in Iraq, announced that it had abducted two Moroccan embassy employees. The two men - Abderrahim Boualam and Abdelkrim el Mouhafidi - reportedly went missing Thursday while driving back from Amman, Jordan where they had gone to pick up their pay checks.