MUTHANNA, Iraq - Dozens of tribesmen gathered in the southern province of Muthanna on Monday night displaying their weapons while firing into the air as they vowed to revenge against anyone affiliated with an Iraqi lawmaker’s alleged assassination attempt a day prior.
Independent MP Bassim Khashan and supporters from his tribe - al-Barki - accused Muqtada al-Sadr’s Saraya al-Salam militia of having attempted to assassinate him by attacking his motorcade in the town of Affak in Samawa on Sunday, due to criticisms allegedly published against Sadr on Khashan’s social media platforms.
"These fresh-blooded young people are all here because they know that aggression has been committed not against an individual only, but the entire tribe. They consider this attack of aggression against the state,” Khashan told Rudaw’s Mustafa Goran.
“What I have written on my accounts are of my personal views that I have openly expressed,” he added.
Saraya al-Salam has denied involvement in the attempted assassination.
Khashan is known to have close ties with the pro-Iran Shiite Coordination Framework, a parliamentary block that is currently engaged in a serious political dispute over the formation of the next Iraqi government.
Iraq has been in the midst of a political crisis which has further deepened by calls for the dissolution of the parliament and holding of new snap elections by Shiite cleric Sadr, and ongoing sit-in protests by his supporters in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.
The political process in Iraq has been stalled by the inability of the parliament’s political blocs to agree on the formation of a new government, 10 months following the elections of October 2021.
