The president of Iraq’s Governing Council was killed this morning in a suicide bombing near the coalition headquarters, marking the second member of the Iraqi Governing Council to be assassinated. The first member was one of only three women on Iraq’s Governing Council, who was assassinated this past September.
In another deadly attack, two Iraqi women working for the Coalition Provincial Authority were killed by gunmen over the weekend while driving in a minibus in Baghdad. On the same day, an Iraqi woman working as a translator for US troops was killed in her house when gunmen broke in.
Threats against Iraqi women leaders and women working for the United States have been escalating in Iraq. Last month a leading women’s rights activist Fern Holland, who worked tirelessly in Iraq to help Iraqi women achieve their rights, became one of the first American civilian employees of the Coalition Provisional Authority to be killed in Iraq. In addition, Iraq’s only female interim minister, Nasreen Barwari, escaped an assassination attempt near Mosul just last month.
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