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Senior Iraqi Official Killed
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 12, 2004; 6:38 AM
BAGHDAD, June 12 -- Gunmen shot and killed Iraq's most senior career diplomat on Saturday morning as he traveled to work in an unarmored car, the second attack on a member of the new interim government since it took office last week.
Relatives said Bassam Salih Kubba had just left his home in the Adhamiya suburb north of Baghad when gunmen in a black Opal fired at the car. Kubba died on the way to the hospital. His driver also was injured.
Kubba, 60, was a deputy foreign minister in the new government but had worked at the ministry since 1968. He served as Saddam Hussein's ambassador to China and was once the chief Iraqi envoy to the United Nations. He was on the committee that ran the foreign ministry after the war last year.
Kubba had just returned to Iraq on Friday after being away on ministry business and was due to leave again this weekend, his relatives said.
Officials with the U.S.-led occcupation authority have predicted a surge in violence in the days leading to the June 30 transfer of power. There is broad acknowledgement here that anyone associated with the new government is a likely target of that violence, which has been the case for months.
Izzedin Salim, who then headed the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council, was killed in a suicide car-bombing May 17 at an entrance to the heavily guarded headquarters of the occupation authority. On May 22, a car bomb exploded outside the home of Abdul-Jabbar Youssef Sheikhli, a deputy minister in Iraq's interior minister, wounding him and his wife and killing five civilians. The same day to the north in Baqubah, the dean of Diyala University, Khosham Atta, escaped injury when gunmen shot at his car as he went to work.
On Wednesday, a deputy health minister also escaped an assassination attempt in the same area of Baghdad where Kubba was gunned down.
Relatives and neighbors said Kubba shunned the body guards and extra security that many officials have, preferring to live as normal of a life as he could. They said he walked to the shops every afternoon with his wife to get groceries. His wife was away in London visiting their son when Kubba was killed.
Neighbors said Kubba had sat outside with them in a chair just a day ago, exchanging news and simply enjoying the day off.
"He never bothered or hurt or insulted anybody," said a neighbor who gave his name as Ghassan. "He was very simple, and he refusted to have guards and weapons."
He said Kubba told his neighbors that did not feel unsafe.
"He said he'd never bothered anybody so nobody would be go after him," Ghassan said
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